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MORE ABOUT THE CHRISTIANA AFFAIR.
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LANCASTER, Pa., Sept. 6, 1851.
Mr. GRAY: Rumor has doubtless, ere this, reached you of the recent Slave Case which occurred in the lower part of this county. I hasten to give you an account of the matter in all its essential and important features.
On the morning of Thursday, the 11th inst., about 4 o'clock, a slaveholder from Maryland, named Gorsuch, together with his son and several understrappers, made their appearance before the tenant-house of Mr. Pownall, a Quaker, residing in this county, on the borders of Chester, and which was occupied by a colored man supposed to have harbored a slave of the aforesaid Marylander, whom they intended to capture. As a colored man, a guest of the tenant, issued from the door of the dwelling, this chivalrous party made an attack upon him, when he retreated into the house, into which they followed him. The man, however, proved not to be the slave of whom the party were in pursuit; and in the course of a colloquy which followed, he advised the slaveholder to leave the premises, assuring him that it would be impossible for him to capture any slave and carry him out of the neighborhood. The Marylander declared that he would not be baffled in his purpose of recovering his "property," adding that he would not leave the place alive without accomplishing his purpose. "Then," replied the man, "you will not leave the place alive. At this juncture, the son entreated his father not to suffer such insolence from "a nigger," when the latter immediately fired upon the man, with a revolver, three or four times, one bullet passing through his hair, and another grazing his body. The man, who is possessed of great personal courage, stood all the while in the doorway without flinching. The slaveholder, prepared to adopt means so singularly persuasive toward that portion of his fellow-men who he claimed as his individual property, and had so thoughtlessly absented themselves from his patriarchal care, was a pious and exemplary exhorter in the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Almost immediately an onset commenced from an entirely different quarter. A number of colored men, who were aware of the intended attack, and had assembled in the vicinity, fired upon the party in pursuit, killing the slaveholder on the spot, and wounding the son in such a manner that it is scarcely possible he can recover. The latter has been, ever since, lying at the house of Mr. Pownall.
The county, for miles around, is in a state of the highest excitement. The notorious Ingraham, the Philadelphia Commissioner, is on the ground, together with the United States Marshal, Roberts, and a company of marines from the Navy Yard. They have taken up their head-quarters at Christiana a village on the State Railroad, about twenty miles below this city.
Gangs of armed riflemen from Maryland, assisted by the lowest ruffians this region can furnish, are prowling round the county, over a district of ten or twelve miles square, arresting indiscriminately all colored persons whom they meet, gallantly, including the women. A colored woman, who had been employed by Mr. Pownall to wash the clothing of the two Marylanders; was seized at the wash-tub; and dragged away by her brave captors, who were repeatedly assured that she had been expressly employed for the above-mentioned purpose. All this is done ostensibly upon suspicion that the persons arrested were engaged in the affray which ended in the death of the slaveholder. Not less than fifty persons, in all, have been arrested; among them two white men, who were seized on no other ground than that of a refusal to assist the government officers in the capture of their neighbors. The conduct of these patriotic officials is doubtless founded upon that clause of the Fugitive Slave Law, in which "all good citizens" are called upon to assist in the noble enterprise of our general government, viz., the catching of runaway slaves in general.
Two colored men, employed by our friend Lindley Coates, in whose neighborhood the affair occurred, were seized, on Saturday, and taken to Christiana. He followed them to those head-quarters of "law and order," or rather to within half a mile of the village, but was there dissuaded, by his friends, from going farther, by the earnest representation that his life would be in imminent danger. Cyrus Burleigh, while passing by, was seized and treated very rudely, but was protected from personal injury by the intercession of the Marshal, with whom, I believe he is personally acquainted.
Such is the insolence of these scoundrels from Maryland, backed by the officers of the government, that people passing along the public highway in their carriages have been rudely stopped and detained without any pretext whatever; and it is considered unsafe for any one not of their own kit and kin to approach their rendezvous. I have all these facts from perfectly reliable authority. It is highly to the credit of the neighbourhood that not a man could be found to obey the orders of the government officers in any of these infamous proceedings.
A prospectus is in circulation for the establishment of a new Whig newspaper, to be published in this city, but designed for the State in general, and which will be the organ of that portion of the Pennsylvania Whigs of whom Mr. Thaddeus Stevens is the representative. There is little doubt that the effort will meet with success, and that the journal will be speedily established and ably conducted. H.W.G.