Scholarship
David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 80.
Just as [William] Parker’s violence was both understandable and probably unwise, so was the reaction in the South. Blacks had murdered a white Southerners acting wholly legally, with the white North figuratively looking on. The South saw treason, and to pacify the region, [Castner] Hanway and the rest were tried for this crime; Maryland attorney general William Brent was imported to direct the case. And gradually, as black leader William Still made clear, the hostility against black violence was shifted toward anger at Southern indifference, while respect grew for the dignity and courage of those on trial, very ably defended by old abolitionists David Paul Brown and political leader Thaddeus Stevens. Increasingly, Northerners agreed with the explanation Hanway gave his wife from jail: "I do not regret my course; I simply did my duty." Certainly it was hard for Americans to deny the conclusion of the Boston Christian Register that Parker did simply "what any white man would be applauded for doing." It was another in the long series of events in which North and South defined duty oppositely and showed progressively weakening regret at the violence their "duty" entailed.