Christiana Riot Episode 1 Fugitive Slave Act

With the future of the United States balanced upon a knife's edge due to the question of slavery the Compromise of 1850 hold's the promise of easing those tensions. Yet part of that Compromise the new fugitive slave act only serves to bring the country closer to civil war as southern slaveholders look to recapture the people who had fled to the north seeking freedom. This series then focuses on some of the clashes that resulted from this law like the one that happened in Christiana Pennsylvania between slave holder Edward Gorsuch and the enslaved men who had fled from his farm in Maryland.




Ad free version available through Patreon subscription. Available on Spotify and through podcast aps that use RSS feeds. For more information:
https://www.patreon.com/distortedhistory




Please Rate and Review the podcast
To contact me:
Email: [e-mail]
Twitter @DistortedHistor https://twitter.com/DistortedHistor
Bluesky @distortedhistory.bsky.social
If you would like to support the podcast: ko-fi.com/distortedhistory

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Eric Gaskell, and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast. And I can't give you many names.
And joy a Blunder. Hey, look, I'm Raisling. I've got

(00:23):
the bara a long struggle for freedom. It really is
a revolution. As his son was just beginning to rise
on the small world farming community of Christiana, Pennsylvania, on
the e limit of September eighteen fifty one, a band

(00:46):
of safecatchers from Maryland came running through the fog approaching
a two and a half story stone farmhouse. Inside this building,
they believed for at least two of the four men
who had several years earlier fled, the former one Edward Gorsuch,
who now took an active role in this save catching posse.
As they rode down the lane. Gorsuch and his men
were armed not just with guns, but with the power
of the law itself, as they were accompanied by a

(01:08):
federal marshal bearing warrens for the capture of the so
called fugitive slaves. Yet, no matter how much Gorsuch believed
he was in the right and how much the law
was indeed on his side, neither would save the slaveholder's life.
On this day, as instead of a couple of making
pliable saves, we was convinced would be eager to return
to the farm with him, and would Gorsig would encounter

(01:28):
a community of men and women who were determined to
fight and kill to preserve their freedom. Yet, before I
get into this bloody clash, how this set the country
on the course of an eventual civil war, or even
just how these respective parties got to this point. First,
like always, I want to acknowledge my sources for the
three part series, which include Thomas P. Slaughter's Bloody Dawn,

(01:49):
the Christiana Ride, and racial violence in the Antebellum North
Ella Forbes but We Have No Country, Stanley Harald's Border
war fighting over slavery before the Civil War, Stanley W.
Campbell's The Slave Catcher's enforcement of the feutitive slave Ball
eighteen fifty to eighteen sixty, Jane McPherson's banel Quire Freedom,
and Jonathan Kat's resistance at Christiana. And like always, these

(02:12):
and any additional sources like websites that I used, will
be available on this podcast, Bluesky and Koffee pages plus
for anyone who doesn't want to be bothered skipping through commercials.
There was always an ad free feet available to subscribers
at patreon dot com. Slash's started history. And with all
that being said, let's begin the story of the so
called Christiana Ride or the more appropriately named Christiana Resistance.

(02:34):
Started on the Retreat Farm in Baltimore County, Maryland, a
piece of land that Edward Gorsuch had inherited from his
uncle in which was named for the rolet had played
in the War of eighteen twelve. Now northern Maryland, where
the farm was located, was known for its fertile farmland
due to the fact that the farms here produced more
than half of the odin wheeg grun in Maryland, not
to mention seventy percent of these states ryan buckwheat as well.

(02:56):
The Retreat Farm, then, as you might expect, was a
very prosperous agrico cultural farm, a prosperity that was illustrated
by the fact that the original section of the house,
which was built out of logs, speaking to its frontier origins,
had been greatly expanded upon with sizeable stone additions, which
included an additional two stories. The Retreat Farm then could
boast of having some forty or so cows, fifty pigs,

(03:17):
thirty sheep, a number of docks and chickens, a dozen horses,
and six plows, in addition to having a number of
outbuildings including a sheep fold and ox stable, a barn,
a corn house, a hog house, a blacksmith shop, and
a slave quarters which toused the twelve slaves who lived
and worked on the farm. Notable among these slaves were
four young adult men, Noah Buley, Nelson Ford, and brothers

(03:40):
George and Joshua Hammond. Now, according to Gorsuch and his family,
Edward was what he and others of his kind would
call a quote unquote kindly master. Indeed, Edward saw himself
as a kind of benevolent father figure to both his
family and his slaves. He very much considered himself to
be a man of honor, and indeed his neighbors were
known to bring their disputes to him to let him
sae side them. As such, Edward Gorsuch fully believed that

(04:03):
he took good care of the people that he enslaved,
treating them like quote unquote family. After all, he was
convinced that he fed them well and saw to it
that they wanted for no essentials. In fact, he had
even set it up so they would be freed when
they turned twenty eight, which for the four aforementioned young men,
meant they likely had at least a minimum of eight
years and likely more before they could taste actual freedom. Now,

(04:25):
to be clear, for as much as Edward Gorsuch liked
to view himself as a beneficent figure, there was nothing
actually stopping him from freeing the people he saved before
they turned twenty eight, and nor was there anything stopping
him from paying there for the years of labor they
provided him with, but he did not intend to do either.
It also has to be noted that Gorsuch wasn't exactly
a revolutionary in deciding to free his slaves, as by

(04:46):
eighteen forty nine, only five percent of the population of
northern Maryland where they lived wasn't slaved. Meanwhile, a fair
amount of these states residents by that time were actually
free blacks. Indeed, Edward Gorsuch was among the largest save
holds in Maryland at that time, as only ten percent
of these slaveholders in the state owned eight or more slaves. Now,
this was in no small part because in saving people

(05:09):
just simply wasn't all that profitable where they lived. As
you see, while connon sugar growers could grow quite wealthy
off of enslaved labor, and the same was not true
for regular old farmers like Edward Gorsuch, especially since Gorsach,
like a number of the other farmers in the region,
have moved away from growing tobacco to grow wheat and
the like, a change that meant a number of people

(05:29):
in Maryland suddenly had to deal with the moral quandaries
of in saving people without having the financial benefits to
justify their cruelty, a situation which was especially problematic for Gorsach,
who had Quaker neighbors. While with the Quakers being famously
anti savory, a stance that had apparently started with the
Society of Friends, as Equakers called themselves in Philadelphia, over

(05:50):
the coming years, all their groups of Quakers, like those
in London, would adopt this belief as well, with the
Baltimore branch of the religion by the seventeen nineties coming
to the conclusion that one could not be equip and
a safeholder at the same time. Plus, in addition to
having neighbors with such beliefs, Gorsuch attended and was a
prominent figure in the local and fairly liberal Methodist Episcopal Church.

(06:10):
Which is all to say that Edward Gorsuch was not
some kind of outlier who risked is standing among his
peers by freeing the people he enslaved, although to be fair,
Gorsuch could have always chosen the path taken by a
fair amount of others in Maryland and Virginia and opted
to instead sell as slaves down the river, where their
labor was much more valuable and desired. Now, our story
really starts in earnest in eighteen forty nine, when Edward Gorsuch,

(06:34):
while taking stock of the year's harvest, noticed that he
was missing about five bushels of wheat, which was simultaneously
not a huge amount to be missing, meaning was not
an amount of wheat that would affect him or his
family in any serious way, while also still being a
loss that could not be explained under normal circumstances, meaning
it was significantly more than you would expect to be
eaten by rodents and the like, making this a perplexing,

(06:56):
if not all that pressing mystery. Meanwhile, as Edward Gorse,
which was pondering over his missing five bushes of wheat,
Abe Johnson, a free black man, was attempting to sell
five bushes of wheat to the local miller, Elias Matthews,
a simple transaction that you wouldn't think would be that
notable had it not been for the fact that Abe
had no fields of its own where the grain could
have come from. Suspicious d Miller pressed Abe about where

(07:19):
he had gotten the wheat, at which point the black
man decided to confide in Elias the origins of the grain,
likely trust an the white man because he was a Quaker.
Johnson then revealed that several of Edward corsetz Says had
brought the Grand Tomb after the person they usually brought
it to had quote unquote closed off. The problem was
Abe's trust in the miller had been misplaced. As you see,

(07:40):
Maryland's Quakers did not quite live up to these standards
that were held by their fellows in places like Philadelphia
and London. Indeed, Marylnd's Quakers would feel compelled to defend
their more accommodating approach of dealing with their safeholding neighbors
by stating that quote these circumstances which surround us are peculiar,
and our situation and difficulties are hardly to be appreciated
by fred at a distance, which is to say, they

(08:02):
lived among slaveholders and thus felt the need to be
delicate with them and in helping blacks, both free and enslaved. Indeed,
the Maryland Quakers felt that their more stringent Northern abolitionist
brethren were making their work harder. As such, the Quaker
miller Elias Matthew's optitude, rather than keeping Abe Johnston's secret
about the whaeding Gorsuch slaves, to instead immediately go and

(08:23):
tell Edward Gorsuch everything. Gorsuch, then, upon figuring out that
his missing five bushes of grain was likely the same
five bushels that Abe Johnson had tried to sew them,
Matthews had a warren't put out for the rest of
Abe Johnston, all the while not saying a word about
these events to the people he enslaved, as Edward seemly
hoped to get from the freedmen the names of the
enslaved individuals responsible for the theft. Abe, though, would learn

(08:45):
of this development and would go into hunting. In doing so,
he was quite likely aided and hidden by the very
same enslave men whom Edward Gorsuch was confident were still
unaware that he had learned of their deeds. It was
and as a result of this situation that only six
and events number eighteen forty nine, that four of Edward
Gorsuch and saved men Noah Bully, Nelson Ford, and brothers

(09:06):
George and Joshua Hammond escaped under the cover of night,
doing so by climbing up and out of the skylight
in the back building before descending down a ladder and
stinking away from the farm, potentially doing so because they
feared what might happen to them should they be identified
as the thieves, as there was always the possibility that
they might be sold down the river, and thus any
help of freedom would be taken away from them. At

(09:28):
the same time, though, it's also entirely possible that they
had already been planned to run away anyway, and that
the grain thefts were in their way of obtaining the
money to help make their escape and or get their
new lives started in the north. Regardless, the quartet rannon
and doing so, they likely took the York Road northward
to freedom. Although a rumor would have it that another
u Saved man had taken the foreman by wagon to Baltimore,

(09:51):
where they then boarded a train that took them north
to Pennsylvania. Such a path over would have been much
more difficult, as Baltimore had precautions and placed to guard
against such flights. That story, though, might have been purposely
circulated so as to not only frustrate the pursuit of
these particular men, but to also keep the true path
they used to escape open for subsequent flights northward. Meanwhile,

(10:12):
back on the retreat farm, Edward Gorsrich was apparently quite
shocked by this turn of events. Indeed, Gorsich never bothered
with any kind of precaution so's to prevent his unsave
from running away, because he saw himself as such a
kindly beneficent, patriarchal figure. He then was sure that his saves,
who he saw as being part of a kind of
extended family, would never even dream of running away. Gorsuch,

(10:34):
in fact, would blame Abe Johnson, the free black men
who brought the grain to the miller on their behalf,
as being the one responsible for his quote unquote boys
running off, as he was convinced that Abe has seduced
and lied to his boys about the life they would
find across the border in Pennsylvania, which may sound silly
to you and me, but this was not a unique
conclusion that come to as slaveholders had long looked with

(10:56):
suspicion at any free blacks living among them, as in
their minds they they were potentially corrupting influence on their
good and loyal slaves. Indeed, Maryland, with its large free
black population, had passed a series of laws making it
illegal for free black individuals to own firearms, purchase slicker
or ammunition without a special license. They also were not

(11:16):
even allowed to own dogs. Then, when it came to
running farms and conducting business, free blacks were required to
get a certificate to prove that they owned the tobacco, grain,
or meat that they were trying to sell. Meanwhile, anyone
who wasn't seen as actively working was liable to be
in saved because they stated passed a law that required
quote unquote idle blacks to be sold into temporary servitude.

(11:38):
As far as basic rights as defined by the Constitution go,
free blacks were completely forbidden from owning or even seeking
out abolitionist literature, and they also were only allowed to
hold church services at certain times that were determined by
these states legislature. They also, of course, could not testify
and caught against a white person regardless of the crime,
which basically made anything up to and including the murder

(12:01):
of a free black person pretty much legal unless witnessed
by a white person who cared. Meanwhile, the only time
an enslaved person could testify in court was if they
were giving testimony against a free black individual accused of thievery.
As basically, any theft that happened in Maryland was blamed
on free blacks, which was essentially a blank check to
any enterprising white thief, as they were free to steal

(12:23):
all they wanted because as long as they weren't caught
in the act, more often than not, no one would
suspect them. Now, of course, the greatest theft that free
blacks were guilty of was the theft of human capital,
as they were suspected not only a providing inspiration or
in the minds of these safeholders, tricking the enslaved to
flee by convincing them that life was better not being enslaved,

(12:43):
but they were also assumed to be guilty of aiding
and abetting their efforts. For example, free blacks were accused
of lending, fleeing, and slaved their official paperwork that proved
they were free, so as to make their flight easier.
Edward Gorsuch, then was not unique in blaming free blacks.
Verson slaved running away. After all, gorse which would very
much like to think of himself as a kind of
beneficent master, and thus there was no reason for his

(13:06):
quote unquote boys to run away. The thing was, though,
according to Frederick Douglass, who himself Fledden, Slaman, and Maryland
round about this time period in his own experience, the
kind of the master, the more likely the unsafe person
was to dream of freedom, as the closer they got
to it, the more intantalizing it became, and thus the
more frustrating it was being denied true actual liberty, As

(13:28):
according to Frederick Douglas, quote, Keep him hungry and spiritless,
and he will follow the chain of his master like
a dog. But feeding clothe him well, work with him moderately,
surround him with physical comfort, and dreams of freedom will intrude.
Give him a bad master, and he will aspire to
a good master. Give him a good master, and he
wishes to become his own master. In Edward Gorsuch's mind,

(13:52):
though it cannot be the people say that the basic
human yearning to be free. Instead, it had to be
the free black man a Johnston Ussrian responsible because in
Gorsuch's tiny race's brain says were naturally complacent and incompetent.
As such, they were wholly incapable of making their own
way in the world. In fact, Edward Gorsich was apparently
convinced that any data quote unquote boys were going to

(14:15):
return home begging for their kindly patriarch's forgiveness. Indeed, he
apparently didn't even have any desire or intention of punishing them.
But Abe, on the other hand, Gorsich wanted him punished severely.
Edward then obtained an official requisition from the Governor Maryland
for the capture and extradition of Abe Johnson for Pennsylvania,
later obtaining a similar document for the capture return of

(14:37):
his boys when he first received worder where they had
fled to. It was with this official legal documentation and
Edward dispatched his son Dickinson the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Yet, despite
following the rule of law, Dickinson was shocked to find
the officials in Pennsylvania as being in his own words,
unsympathetic to their plight, as they very clearly had no

(14:57):
real interest in assisting in the capture and extra d
dation of fugitive slaves, a problem which notably wasn't unique
to Gorsuch, and one which many in the South felt
needed to be rectified. The South by this point in

(15:41):
time and tied much of its economy to the production
of kind and other crops that they then relied upon
slave labor to produce. This system, though, was not only
at the core of their economy, but it was also
the basis on which their entire society and culture was
based upon. As to keep an entire population enslaved, they
had to base their entire way of life and society
keeping that system intact. Meanwhile, many in a North tyne

(16:03):
up as they were with the South, and in particular
the South's kun which made a good chunk of their
own economy successful. They too saw the system as slavery,
as a necessary if to some distasteful evil, and by
doing so, they too embraced and perpetuated racist ideas so
as to justify the continuation of this system. The thing
is this time passed on, all felt so tied to

(16:24):
this cruel system. Some even began seeing it as a
threat to their own interest in freedom, while others simply
recognized it as a great, cruel moral evil that it was.
This resulted in the formation of abolitionist groups, who, by
the eighteen thirties were actively advocating for an immediate and
to slavery and the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, with

(16:45):
some among them even calling for granting such individuals equal rights.
Among these various abolitionist groups were the likes of William
Lloyd Garrison's American Anti Savory Society that denounced churches in
the US Constitution Unlike as being pro slavery. They to
distance themselves so much from the institution of slavery that
they were willing to split the country between North and south. Meanwhile,

(17:07):
Lewis Tappans American and Foreign Anti Savory Society looked to
spread the message of abolition through churches. And then there
was the Liberty Party, a small organization that looked to
use the political system to end the institution of slavery.
Which is all to say there were a number of
different groups, all with different approaches and even end goals
that in one way or another opposed Savory. The South

(17:28):
and those who defended slavery meanwhile, saw no difference between
any of these groups. Instead, they saw all such anti
Savory sentiments as a threat to them and their entire
way of life. Indeed, supporters of Savory came to see
the very continued existence of such anti Savory groups as
a sign that the North as a whole could not
be trusted, because if they had their way, they would

(17:49):
silence any and all such talk by arresting and punishing
any who dared to speak out against the system of slavery.
These abolitionist sentiments and the virulent pushback against them then
began to and or deep in divisions between the two
sections of the nation, with the areas that experienced the
most tension due to this conflict, of course, being the
ones that settled along the border between the Save and

(18:10):
Free States, places like Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Indeed, Waal Kansas would become the
most common story told about the pre Civil War battles
between pro and anti Savory forces, as both sides fought
to determine whether the territory would enter the Union as
a free or in save state. There were other outbreaks

(18:31):
of violence in the years leading up to the Civil War.
Now one of, if not the main source of this
tension was the issue of runaway or fugitive slaves and
the ongoing fight to recapture and reinsave them by Southern safeholders.
To do so, they relied upon the original seventeen ninety
three Fugitive Save Law, which gave alleged fugitive slaves no
right to a jury trial nor any ability to testify

(18:53):
on their behalf, a law that then embold in particularly
wicked and uncarrying safe catchers, which is saying something as
these men were actually worse than those who simply dedicated
their lives to hunting down and reinsaving people who had
successfully escape from that cruel and inhumane system. As you see,
these particular unscrupulous individuals would capture any free African Americans

(19:14):
that came across, claiming that they were an escape save,
just as they could collect a bounty regardless of the truth. However,
when such cruelty became better known, some Northern states passed
personal liberty laws to try and counteract and prevent such abuses. Now,
to be clear, these laws were not designed to prevent
the quote unquote legal capture of actual fugitive slaves. They

(19:34):
were simply designed to stop the kidnapping of individuals who
were legally free. For Southern safholders, though even the slight
pushback was too much, as such laws potentially complicated their
attempts to retrieve their quote unquote property. Time and again.
Then they would attempt to strengthen the fugitive slave law,
and time and again Northern States would seek to undermine them.

(19:54):
For example, when Southern States tried to pass revise fugitive
slave law in eighteen eighteen, it was under mine when
a Congressman from New York made an amendment to the law,
an amendment which made it so that anyone who made
a false claim about a fugitive slave would then be
in present for fifteen years, while also facing a fine
of up to five thousand dollars. The Southern States sen

(20:15):
voted down the spell of Zayfer that it would allow
judges in Northern States to decide whether or not fugitive
should be returned and whether saveholders should be imprisoned. Southern
safeholders ninemares En came true when in eighteen thirty seven,
Edward Prigg was convicted of kidnapping when all he had
done was to seize a woman and her children to
transport them back to Maryland against their will to be

(20:36):
reensaved by our quote unquote owner. Now, this case would
eventually be brought before the Supreme Court, which would free
Prig as a dean Pennsylvania's anti kidnapping law to be unconstitutional.
In doing so, the Court further deemed that the enforcement
of the seventeen ninety three Fugitive Savelall was a federal responsibility,
as it declared that quote the owner of a slave

(20:57):
is closed with entire authority in every state dame the Union,
to seize and recapture his slave whenever he can do it,
without any breach of the peace or any illegal violence. Yet,
while the court had struck down Pennsylvania's anti kidnapping law Pennsylvanian,
other similarly minded states at Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island,
and Ohio responded by passing a series of new personal

(21:18):
liberty laws laws which notably forbade state officials from cooperating
with slave catchers This included not allowing such individuals to
make use of state jails to hold fugitive slaves, laws
which again then had the effect of hampering the efforts
of Southerners like Edward gorsuch and in pursuit of their
escaped property. For example, in eighteen forty two, George Latimer

(21:39):
would escape slavery in Norfolk, Virginia, eventually making his way
up to Boston, where he would be spotted and arrested
as a fugitive on behalf of his quote unquote owner
James Gray. Before George would be swept off back to Virginia. However,
lawyers Amos Merrill and Samuel E. Seawall intervened taking up
the case. And if you're wondering like I was, of this,

(21:59):
Samuel sea Wall was related to the one judge in
the Salem which trials to actually repent and apologize for
his role and said trials you are right as he
is at Samiel's great great grandson. As Sewaugh and Merrill
fought for George Latimer's freedom in court, they managed to
convince the judge to give them time so they could
then go down to Norfolk to look for evidence of
whether or not George had actually been and saved there

(22:20):
or not, During which time it was decided that Latimer
would be held in Boston's jail, as the city's jailer
was appointed as acting as James Gray's agent in his manner,
a situation that deeply upset a number of people in Boston.
Public meetings were then organized, during which large crowds gathered
to hear speeches condemning both slavery and the use of
the city's jail to hold an alleged fugitive slave. The

(22:42):
city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts itself were
then rarely condemned by the people for their participation in
this cruelty. Indeed, influential citizens would sign up a petition
that the men of the sheriff dismissed the jailer or
be himself removed. Not wanting to deal with all this,
James Gray then agreed to officially released Lanamer after being
paid four hundred dollars to do so by Reverend Nathaniel Kolver. Meanwhile,

(23:05):
another petition that demanded the passage of a law that
prevented state officials from aiding in the recent attention of
fugitive slaves would gather some sixty five thousand signatures and
would indeed lead to the passage of just such a law.
This law and others like it, would then be characterized
by a Virginia legislative committee assigned to look into the
issue of fugitive slaves as being examples of quote disgusting

(23:27):
and revolting exhibitions of faith as an unconstitutional legislation. Indeed,
according to this virgenial legislative committee's report, quote, fuditive saves
were hobbared and protected. Vicatious suits and prosecutions were instituted
against the owner or his agents, resulting sometimes in imprisonment
for want of bail. Irresponsible mobs composed of phonetics, ruffians,

(23:47):
and fugitive slaves who had already found asylum abroad were
permitted by a local authortist to rescue, recapture slaves in
the lawful custody of their masters, and to imprison, beat, wounder,
even put to death. Since all the United States seeking
to enforce bid law for proceedings the rights guaranteed them
by the Constitution. Now, this talk was widely overblown, especially

(24:10):
the claim of white Southerners being killed, because, as we
will see, that would have been really big news hadn't
actually been happening. As again, the main concern for Northerners
in the handful of states that had passed personal liberty
laws was the fact that since black people were being
taken away from a Northern state to a Southern state
without any kind of legal process happening, it meant that
legally free black people were liable to be kidnapped and enslaved,

(24:33):
especially with the Southern states offering high bounties for the
capture of fugitive saves. And indeed, unlike the claims of
Southerners being killed in pursuit of runaway saves, which seemly
either did not happen or did so incredibly rarely, a
number of free blacks weren't actually kidnapped from their homes
in the North and enslaved. As such, the northern states
weren't so much interfering with the capture and return of

(24:53):
escape slaves as they were primarily just trying to prevent
the illegal kidnapping of legally free individuals. Now, there were
those who had no interest in helping save catchers in general,
and still others who were looking to actively interfere with
their efforts, but again, such people were in the minority,
and thus the only official opposition from the Northern States

(25:13):
was aimed at keeping free black people from being kidnapped.
The thing was, even without any kind of active interference,
the pursuit of human beings to return them to encagement
was both expensive and time consuming, in part because there
were only a small number of judges who had the
authority to provide the paperwork necessary to retrieve a runaway save. Plus,
even when they were able to acquire this paperwork, it

(25:34):
didn't come with an official warrant for the rest of
the fugitive save, and nor were they given any kind
of assistance from federal marshals or the like in their
pursuit of their quote unquote stolen property. According to the
Virginia Assembly's Committee, the process worked like this quote. A
stranger must go into a free state caesar is save
with that in informal process of law, and unaccompanied by
a single civil officer, must carry that save in the

(25:57):
face of a venetical and infuriated popularfce, perhaps from the
center of extremists of the state, a distance of two
or three hundred miles to the place where the judge
may happen to reside before he can have any legal
or judicial action in his case, And supposed he had
passed through the almost insurmountable barriers incident to such an undertaking,
and had succeeded in bringing a say before the judge,

(26:19):
and had obtained the certificate which the law prescribes. There
is no provision in that law by which the judgment
can be enforced, or the power of the national government
being vote through its marshals and officers, to sustain the
rights of property thus adjudicated in his favor, which is
on a saying that Southern safe holders were not satisfied
with the Feutative Save Act as it stood, which brings

(26:41):
us to the Compromise of eighteen fifty. Issues between the
northern and Southern States had been heating of for some
time now, with talking as union in particular percolating in
certain corners of the South due to the fact that
they were increasingly being outnumbered by the North, whose population
was being expanded through immigration. A situation was fran to
undo the unfair advantage they had bait into the Constitution

(27:04):
by making it so the people they ensaved and thus
by definition did not intend to represent in any way
were counted toward the number of representatives they had in
the House and how many Electoral College votes they got,
which was especially bad as he convinced themselves that the
North as a whole was openly hostile to them, their
interest and their very way of life. The situation then

(27:25):
seemingly came to a head when the territories of California
and New Mexico both sought to join the Union as
free states, meaning that savery would be outlawed within their borders,
a situation that would destroy the quote unquote balance of
power between the Northern and Southern states, which, againing more
of the unfair advantity, had up through this point in
the House of Representatives and in presidential elections thanks to

(27:47):
the three fifths Compromise that significantly inflated the South's population. Regardless,
news of these two territories looking to join the Union
as free states led to talk of this union becoming
popular among certain segments of Southern states and particularly among
some of their politicians. This and led to a contentious
electure for the Speaker of the House, as pro savery politicians,

(28:07):
regardless of party affiliation, vehemently refused to support the chosen
candidate due to his support of free soil policies, with
Robert Tombs of Georgia, the future Secretary of State for
the Confederacy, declaring quote, if by your legislation you seek
to drave us from the territories of California and New Mexico,
I am Forda's Union. To try and resolve this situation,

(28:27):
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Stephen Arnold Douglas came together
to form a plan which would resolve these issues and
allow the country to continue on as a united body.
This plan, which was put forth by Clay, would come
to be known as a Compromise of eighteen fifty as
an involved agreeing to allow California to enter as a
free state, abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia,

(28:48):
while ensuring that savory remained legal within the district, ensuring
that Congress would have no power to prohibit the slave
trade between the states. Meanwhile, when future territories sought to
join the Union, the choice of whether they would become
a freer safe state would be left up to a
popular vote of its inhabitants, and, most importantly, a new
instructor fugitive slave law had to be created and passed,

(29:09):
all of which would be put forth by Senator Stephen
Douglas of Illinois and would eventually be approved at their
Monst de Vade in various alterations. Now, the reason why
the passage of a new fugitive save law was so
crucial was because, in the minds of Southerners they had
been wrong by the always aggressive North as it had
grown in both population and wealth, while the Southern language behind,

(29:31):
with the greatest affront, of course, being the criticisms of
their quote unquote peculiar institution, as by daring to criticize safety,
you were, by extension, criticizing their very way of life.
In the minds of Southerners and the new fugitives save
lall was the only concession that was being made to them.
As you see from the South's perspective, all they were
doing was asking for the Constitution to be followed. Because

(29:53):
Article four or Section two, Clause three was the fugitive
slave clause, which explicitly stated, quote no person help to
service or labor in one state under the law thereof
escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered upon claim of the party to whom
such service or labor may be due. A statement in

(30:15):
which you'll note used a phrase feuded as from service
or labor, as that was the founder's way of getting
around the phrase slave or savory, as they seeming recognized
those were loaded and estatesful words, which seems odd that
they were willing to keep doing the thing, but they
didn't want to actually use the proper words to describe
the thing they were actually doing, as they were too inchy. Regardless,

(30:36):
safeholders then assume that this clause in the Constitution would
be enough to guarantee them the preservation of their property,
as according to the aforementioned Virginia Legislative Committee report quote,
it was to be expected that the abundance engagious people
of the North would see at a glass of the
violation of that compact, would create and continually recruit on
the soil a class of paupers at the prise of Hindustan,

(30:58):
of outcasts from society, men who are neither save nor citizens,
a win on the body of politics and anomaly on
their institutions, and a pestilent curse to them and their posterity.
As such, they believe that the Northerners would be more
than willing to return the runaway saves of their quote
unquote rightful masters. Indeed, the initial seventeen ninety three Fugitive
Slave Law was primarily drafted just to providing legal framework

(31:21):
within which feuditist slaves could be returned, although the law
actually originally came about as a result of an incident
where a free black man living in Pennsylvania was captured
by a trio of white men and taken to Virginia.
The trio white men were then charged with kidnapping in Pennsylvania,
at which point the governor of the state attempted to
have the men extradited back to Pennsylvania to stand trial.

(31:42):
The governor of Virginia, however, refused to comply with this request,
based upon the fact that there was no established law
concerning the transfer of fugitives. The Governor of Pennsylvania then
brought the case to President George Washington, who handed it
off to Congress that then created the seventeen ninety three
Fugitive Slave Law, the first half of which dealt with
the urn under fugitives in general. Like the oncee Governor

(32:02):
of Pennsylvania want to return to stan Trauver kidnapping. The
second half of this law, though completely veered off course
as it explicitly dealt with feuditives slaves. Yet even with
this law in place, as previously stated, it was still
potentially difficult to retrieve feuditas saves would fled to the north. Indeed,
while there were no official numbers to back the zump,
Southern politicians would make claims about the astronomical financial losses

(32:25):
that they and their elk suffered due to people fleeing
their cruel bondage. For example, Senator Thomas George Pratt would
claim that Maryland suffered the loss of eighty thousand dollars
a year and runaway slaves, while Senator James Array Mason
would claim that Virginia was losing one hundred thousand dollars
a year in lost slaves, with Southerners putting most of
the blame for these losses on northern abolitionists. As again,

(32:46):
in their tiny little racist mind, see people thein saver
and capable running away on their own, and in fact
would not even think of fleeing the great life they
had as slaves. It was and only due to the
meddling of these wicked northern abolitionists, that the ensaved every
thought about running away just as surely as they were
only able to escape with their aid, which of course
was not at all true. Yet, in addition to the

(33:08):
interference of northern abolitionists, there were also the laws passed
in northern states that seemly hampered the easy capture of
fugitive slaves. For example, one resident of Martinsburg, Virginia, will
complain to John C. Calhoun that Pennsylvania's anti kidnapping law,
which again was explicitly designed to prevent the kidnapping of
legally free blacks, made it so that all the quote
unquote slave property in Maryland and Virginia was now quote

(33:31):
utterly in secura. Indeed, this man would claim that since
the law was passed, saves from Maryland and Virginia had
taken to escaping in quote gangs of chance. In twenties,
identical worry sash fears were felt by all border saved states.
For example, the Missouri Republican of Saint Louis would declare
that quote probably no state in the Union has suffered
more by the enticing away of saves in Missouri, and

(33:53):
everyone who has had the misfortune to lose property in
this way knows how unavailing it has been to attempt
to recapture. Now, when listening to all of these complaints,
you have to remember abolitionists were very much in the minority,
and anti savory sentiments were not universal by any stretch
of the imagination. Yet for these Southern safeholders, just the
embarrassed in of any kind of resistance, any bit of

(34:14):
people not rushing around to appease their every whim was
alarming to them and their allies. It is for these reasons, then,
that Southern politicians were so hard set on creating and
passing this new structor fuditis slave law. Now, their original
plan involved a setup where save howners or their agents
could go before a whole sew of various judges or officials,
including postmasters, and present them with proof that some individual

(34:36):
was a runaway save, at which point these officials would
be required to present the safeholder or the representative with
what was essentially a warrant that would in power federal
marshals to arrest the individual in question and then return
them to the state where they were allegedly supposed to
be enslaved, while also making it an offense punishable by
one thousand dollars fine to attempt to conceal or rescue

(34:57):
fugitive slaves, a propulsal that so Northern politicians pushed back against,
as they sought the inclusion of a trial by a
jury in these cases in an attempt to prevent legally
free blacks from being kidnapped and slaved at will. However,
the South had no interest in jury trials taking place
in states where there were potentially widespread anti savory sentiment
or at the very least not full third support of slavery.

(35:19):
As a result of this back and forth, instead of
jury trials are just random authorities making the decision, special
federal commissioners would be empowered to hear these cases, trials
during which the alleged feuditus were notably not allowed to
testify or present their own evidence, while in contrasty slave
catcher could rely upon white witnesses or even affidavits from
Southern courts to support their claims. Now, to be clear,

(35:41):
these hearings were offered up as a way to prevent
freedman from being wrongfully captured and enslaved. The problem was,
by law, the evidence was coming from the state wherey
person was allegedly enslaved, which was problematic for multiple reasons,
as to start with, the courts in such states would
simply be more amenable to accept testimony that someone was
a futureative slave. Plus there's also the fact that the

(36:02):
saveholder in question more than likely houndsome degree of power
and influence in such locales, which made it especially troubling
that the law prescribed that the evidence being produced by
these likely biased Southern courts was to be damned as
being sufficient for federal commissioners. Meanwhile, the new law also
mainta so that anyone who interfered with the capture of
fugitive slaves was liable to be fined for up to

(36:23):
one thousand dollars and jailed for up to six months.
This meant that African American families could be charged with
aiding and abetting their own family members who had escaped
from slavery. Additionally, should any marshals or deputy marshals refuse
to cooperate with this law, they faced a potential five
of one thousand dollars plus if the enslaved individual were
to escape from their custody. The marshal would then be

(36:44):
liable for their full value. On top of that, further
tipping the scales in favor of the Southern safeholders was
the effect that the federal commissioners who decided these cases
would receive five dollars if they rolled on behalf of
the alleged fugitive, or ten dollars if the instead rolled
with the slave catcher, meaning that they would double their
money simply by declaring that someone was a fugitive slave

(37:04):
who would then be taken south and enslaved. Now, the
people behind the law would claim that the extra five
dollars was simply because there was more paperwork involved with
returning someone to a life of crul enslavement, but anti
savory advocates saw this extra five dollars as a bribe
because it meant that the commissioners were financially motivated to
side with these slaveholders, a suspicion that was seemingly proven

(37:27):
out when in the first fifteen months of the new
Fugitive Slave Law, eighty four supposed fugitives were sent south
to be enslaved, compared to only five individuals who were
allowed to continue living free in the North. Indeed, throughout
the course of the following decade, before the Civil War
ultimately brought an end to this cruelty. Three hundred and
thirty two supposed fugitives were sent south to be enslaved,

(37:49):
while just eleven were released by these federal commissioners, who
were actively being paid to a side in such a manner. Now,
for some, the passage of the Compromise of eighteen fifty,
including the new Fugitive Slave Act, was a thing to celebrate.
For example, President Mellard Fillmore, who had been a major
supporter of the eighteen fifty Compromise, when in his first
annual message at Congress in December, declared that it was

(38:12):
a way of quote, I believe those measures who have
been required by the circumstances and the conditions of the country,
I believe they were necessary to allay asperities and animosities
that were rapidly destroying those fraternal sentiments which are the
strongest supports of the Constitution. They were adopted in this
spirit of conciliation and for the purpose of conciliation. Meanwhile,

(38:33):
others had a much different reaction, as you see in
the immediate wake of the passage, of the new Feudadist
Slave Act, meanings were held in city after city in
the North, as certain groups within these cities when of
their outrage and their opposition to this bill to be
made clear, these people recognized a new law for what
it was, as it brought the full force of the
federal government against black people in general, while also effectively

(38:55):
nullifying state laws that potentially protected free blacks. People as
a whole then were effectively stripped to one few legal
protections they had because according to this law, they were
not afforded due process and could not testify on their
own behalf. Additionally, as Frederick Douglas would assertain, this law
was seemingly more than anything else, quote designed to involve

(39:16):
the North in complicity with savory and deadeness moral sentiments,
than to procure the return of fugitives or the so
called owners. Because federal marshalls could now deputize and demand
that citizens assystem and their efforts in capturing and holding
suspected fugitives, which meant that white Northerners were now required
to assist in the capturing of black individuals alleged to
be fugitive slaves, meaning they could no longer just sit

(39:39):
back and do nothing, as they were now being made complicit,
unless they were willing to defy the law and be
potentially punished for doing so, a reality that, to be clear,
some were very much okay with. For example, the New
York Herald would warn that any resistance to this new
law would result in quote bloodshed and civil war. Indeed,
according to the paper, no disobe medians of the law

(40:00):
would be accepted because quote, if necessary, the whull swarm
of the white phonetics and their dupes the colored people
will be exterminated by the guns of our military. This
the colored people and the fanatical whites may rest assured
of that. So soon as a force the issue on
the public, so soon will a war of extermination against
the blacks be commenced. As far as this New York

(40:23):
City paper was concerned, then quote, if the abolition agitation
go on, and the next election should be carried onto
the cry of abolition, we may make up our minds
that a dissolution of the Union will take place in
less than five years. The New York Tribune meanwhile, struck
a much different tone, as they rode quote, no act
of Congress can make it right for one man to

(40:43):
convert another into his personal property, or wrong for that
other to refuse to be so treated. In general, though,
it seems that the attitude of many whites in the North,
even those who nominally opposed slavery, was simply that the
law was a law, even if it was unjust. These
people then were large when blacks in the North began
issuing statements in defiance of the new law of the land.

(41:04):
Black men in Springfield, Massachusetts, for example, only seventeenth December
eighteen fifty, would issue an anti fuditist Save Law manifest
in which they wrote, quote resolved that we will repudiate
all in every law that has for its object the
impression of any human being, or seek to assign us
degrading positions. And whereas we hold to the declaration of
the poet that he who would be free himself must

(41:26):
strike the blow, and that resistance to tyrants is obedience
to God. Therefore resolved that we do welcome to our
doors everyone who feels and claims for himself the position
of a man it has broken from the Southern house
of bondage, And that we feel ourselves justified in using
every means which the God of Love has placed in
our power to sustain our liberty. Meanwhile, members of the

(41:48):
Zion Church in New York City on the first of
October had also issued a similar statement in which they
had declared that quote, we utterly repudiate the law and supervisions,
that it is so repugnant to every principle of justice
that it can have no bonding force whatever upon us,
And that we do here in the sight of God,
and before all men, declare that should anyone attempt to

(42:09):
execute its provisions on any one of us, either by
invading our homes or arresting us in the street, we
will treat such a one as assaulting our persons with
intent to kill, and God, being our helper, will use
such means as well repel the aggressor and defend our
lives and liberty, meaning they would fight and defend themselves
against any attempts to capture them, doing so because quote

(42:30):
God willed us free men, men willed us slaves. We
will as God's will, God's will be done. Blacks across
the country then made similar statements, asserting that if their
or their family's freedom was threatened, they would not hesitate
in defending themselves from this tyranny, with more than a
few referencing the founding Fathers and their justifications for rebelling

(42:51):
against England as they did so, some of whom even
put this talk into action, as some professional safe catchers
dispatched to Bosson on behalf of one Robert Collins of Macon, Georgia,
would learn in November of eighteen fifty these men you
see had been sent and pursued a William and Allen
Kraft who had run away about a month after the
new slave law had passed, with the pair being able

(43:12):
to evade detection long enough to make it to the
north by having Allan disguise herself as a slavemaster in
the company of her man servant, William now Collins. Their
quote unquote owner had first attempted to capture the pairy
about a month prior to these events, but this had
failed when these slave catchers had approached the home of
one Lewis Hayden, who was sheltering the pair, as hey
didn't have been waiting for these slave catchers by sitting

(43:33):
on his porch atop a couple of kegs of gunpowder
with a lid torch in his hand, with the implications
of this greeting clear, the posse of would be kidnappers fled,
Yet despite this setback, Collins insisted that his men persist
in their efforts, doing so because he wanted to test
the new fugitive slave law. Boston abolitionists, meanwhile, were seemingly
up to this challenge, as they sought to intimidate these

(43:55):
slave catchers by posting signs up all over the city
announcing the arrival would be kidnappers, along with descriptions of
their appearances, which meant that by the time they arrived,
pretty much everyone knew who they were and why they
were there, something that they apparently didn't appreciate. But like always,
if you're so ashamed of the job that you actively
don't want people to know what you're doing, maybe you

(44:16):
shouldn't be doing it. Although the general disapproval of the
people of Boston pound to the fact that the abolitionists
had the two slafecatchers arrested not once or twice, but
three times, accusing them of slandering the good names of
William and Ellen Craft, to which one of these safe catchers,
Willis Hughes, would complain quote, there was no protection of
this city offices offered to me, and no one turned

(44:39):
out in my favor, further adding that quote city of
thoughts were disposed to give protection to an abolitionist, which
they withheld from me while engaged in my lawful business. Therefore, quote,
my opinion is if we had succeeded in arresting the Negroes,
they would have been rescued by the citizens. This entire
situation for hughes En was completely intolerable, declaring in a

(45:00):
huff that quote out went to Boston as an agent
to execute a lawful trust, thinking I should be protected
and assisted by the laws of my country. But on
the country from the first the laws of the country,
instead of a protection, were made an engine of cruelty, impression,
in justice, and abuse. And when he puts things that way,
you really feel for thee would be kidnapper. I mean,

(45:23):
no one else could possibly understand a situation where the
laws of the country were turned against you in such
a way. Frustrated by being denied the return of his
quote unquote property, Robert Collins would complain about this situation
to Millard Fillmore, the President of the United States himself,
to which Fillmore would promise that quote for the purpose
of overcoming such forcible combinations against laws, the militia and

(45:47):
the army and the Navy would be employed in the future,
as he insisted that the preservation of the Union was
the most important thing. As for William and Ellen Craft,
they would flee to Great Britain, unable to trust the
American legal system to keep them safe. As according to Alan,
she was prepared, if necessary to quote starve in England.
A free woman then be a safe for the best

(46:08):
men that ever breathed upon the American continent. That, apparently, though,
wasn't necessary, as the couple would continue to engage in
anti Savory work from the safety of their new home. Meanwhile,
back in the United States, Henry Long, who had escaped
from Savory, was a resident in New York in January
eighteen fifty one. Unfortunately, even though abolitionists tried, they were
unsuccessful in using legal means to free Henry. As a result,

(46:31):
Long was shackled and led through the streets of the
city surrounded by armed policemen in a show of force.
At guaranteed that Long was returned to Virginia. At the
same time, though this also put the sheer cruelty and
injustice of this situation on Front Street, where all the
city and the country could see. Then there was Shadrack Minkins,
who escaped from enslaveman in Norfolk, Virginia in May eighteen fifty.

(46:52):
He eventually settled in Boston under the name Frederick Wilkins,
before being captured a little over a year later in
February eighteen fifty one. However, when Minkin slash Wilkins was
brought into the courtroom to have the warrant for his
capture formally presented to the Federal Commissioner, a group of
black individuals would burst into the room. The invaders and
captured Minkin slash Wilkins, taking him out of the courtroom

(47:13):
before ultimately whisking him away to Montreal and freedom. Eight men,
four of them black, would later be indicted for this action,
but none were ever convicted, at which point President Millard
Fillmore attempted to have federal charges brought against him, but
nothing seems to have come of this. Boston would be
the scene of yet another notable incident involving the feuded
as slave law in April of eighteen fifty one. It

(47:36):
all started when Thomas Simms, who had escaped from slavery
in Georgia after about a month in Boston, sent a
telegraph to Savanna to inform his wife, who was a
free woman, to come with their children up to Boston
to join him. Unfortunately, this message would be intercepted and
slave catchers were then dispatched to Boston to capture Thomas. Sadly,
there would be no rescue this time, as three hundred

(47:57):
armed federal troops would surround Simms when he was taken
in the middle of the night to the ship that
took him back to Georgia and enslavement, a result that
led the National Intelligencer to run the headline quote supremacy
of the law sustained as they celebrated the fact that
the feuditive slave vall had been carried out successfully, as
the preservation of law and order was all that mattered. Meanwhile,

(48:19):
Thomas Simms, since his quote unquote owner and the South
a large wanted to make an example of him. He
would be publicly lashed thirty nine times in Savannah before
ultimately being sold to a slaveholder in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Simson
would spend a further deca plus in bondage, presumably separated
from his wife and children, before finally escaping in eighteen
sixty three in the midst of the Civil War, at

(48:41):
which point he again made his way to Boston. Scenes
like these would play out time and again over the
coming years, as Southern slaveholders looked to recapture their runaway
property while blacks and sometimes their allies in the North
fought back, with one of the most notable instances of
this resistance playing an in Christiana, Pennsylvania, and involving the
four men who had escaped from Edward Gorsuch. Two years

(49:29):
had passed in Snoah Bullie, Nelson Ford, and brothers George
and Joshua Hammond had escaped from savment on Edward Gorsuch's
retreat farm. Yet despite this passage of time, the safe
owners seemed as determinus ever to bring them back. Now
they had a general idea of where the four men
had gone to, as rumors placed them somewhere in southeastern Pennsylvania,
but exactly where they were was unclear. Gore such then,

(49:52):
over the course of the previous two years, had regularly
pursued every rumor he heard, while also trying repeatedly to
reach aln so as to speak with his boy still,
though he could not quite pin down exactly where they
had gone to so that he might retrieve them utilizing
a new fugitive slave valve eighteen fifty, behavior which was
fairly inexplicable because again Gorsuch had already promised to free

(50:14):
them when they turned twenty eight, something which he was
willing to do because, as much as anything else, the
math was pretty clear that keeping slaves wasn't exactly making
him a lot of money. Indeed, if anything, it might
have actually been costing him money. It then didn't make
any sense to spend even more time and money in
pursuit of them, since there wasn't some great financial benefit

(50:34):
to his farm, and since they were now two years
closer to leaving anyway, the only thing that comes anywhere
close to explaining this behavior is that it had become
a matter of pride and honor for Edward Gorsuch. He
likely felt betrayed that his quote unquote boys had run off,
but it was likely more than that as well, as
he likely also felt embarrassed in front of his neighbors,

(50:54):
because the belief was save orders by their very nature,
should be respected and listened to. By that logic, if
a safeholder was unable to get his own slaves to
and listen to him, it was shameful not only for
himself but for his family as well. This, then, being
potentially a matter of honor and pride, may help to
explain exactly why Edward Gorsuch was willing to sacrifice so
much to get back a group of enslaved men that

(51:17):
he supposedly intended to liberate in a couple of years anyway.
To be clear, though, for as much time and money
as Gorsuch was apparently willing to invest in this pursuit,
he seemingly never once paused to consider that he ulterately
might be risking more than just that should he attempt
to personally try and bring these men back and enslave them.
After all, Gorsuch considered himself to be a kindly master,

(51:37):
and as such, he, like many other saveholders, saw himself
as beneficent patriarch who says we're like family. Now, to
be clear, these are apparently members of the family that
they forced to labor and were willing to sell off
if the need arose, or if there was profit to
be had. But still quote unquote family. Nonetheless, as such,
it was their belief that the enslaved thoughty kind of

(51:58):
attachment to them and thus would never actually harm them. Plus,
slaveholders in general tended to see their own slaves as
being incapable of violence. As you see, one of the
ways they justified in saving Africans was by claiming that
Savory tamed them. Southern slaveholders then lived any weird world
where while there was a general fear of save uprisings

(52:19):
as seen in my series on the Natural Rebellion, at
the same time, they all seem to believe that while
other people's slaves might be dangerous, their own were not,
or at the very least, they believed their own slaves
are never harmed them and their family, which is just
another example of the weird mental gymnastics these people had
to do. Regardless, two years after the four young men

(52:41):
had fled from Gorsag's retreat farm, the old safeholder got
a message from an informant in Lancaster County named William Paget,
a young man who had been born and raised in
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but who had lived for a time
in the Baltimore area, where the Gorsages called home. Paget
then was apparently at least passingly familiar with the family,
although not particularly close. Still, though he claimed to have

(53:03):
been able to identify the four escaped and slaved men
on site. Furthermore, to prove that his information was good,
Paget went on to inform Gorsuch that he had assisted
others in similar matters in the past. Indeed, as it
turns out, Paget was not the most popular figure in
Lancaster County, as he locals viewed him as being a
quote unquote miserable creature. Paget, you sy, was nominally a

(53:24):
clock repairman, a job that he used to aid in
his other occupation of being an informant and slave catcher,
as he would enter various individuals and families homes to
work on their time pieces, and while there he would
hunt for signs of feuditive slaves. Then, in addition to
spying in people's homes, according to one resident of the area,
quote during the fall months, he pretended to be gathering

(53:45):
sumactops for the dying in Morocco. By these means, he
became aware of every cow path in a by road
and could keep a close watch whenever he suspected a
victim might be concealed and thus make an accurate report,
with the victims in question being runaway slaves that he
hoped to aid the capture of and thus gained a
reward for their being reenslaved. It also seems that sometimes Paget,

(54:05):
from time to time, was even able to ingratiate himself
with certain local blacks in an attempt to use these
relationships to try and locate funatives. Doing so despite the
fact that Patrick was reportedly a part of the so
called Gap Gang or Gap Hell Gang, a group of
local working class whites who wanted to terrorize Lancaster's black community.
The group, which took their name from the Gap Hills

(54:26):
where many of them lived and the Gap Tavern, which
was a main hangout for the gang and which sat
about three miles away from Christiana, was reportedly guilty of
horse stealing, property damage, highway robbery, murder, slave beating, and kidnapping.
In particular, the group, ever since he passed into the
new Fugitive Slave Act in eighteen fifty, had undertaken a
campaign of spying and kidnapping against African Americans who had

(54:49):
fled to the area for freedom, creating a situation, according
to one white Lancaster resident, where quote, quiet homes and
peaceful communities were constantly threatened with midnight incursions of man
with their treacheries, stratagems, their ruffian outrages, and bloody violence,
and menacing the defenses people of color with a reign
of terror. Indeed, the gang showed little care for whether

(55:10):
the black person they were kidnapping was actually a runaway
or not. Josiah Pickle would provide an example of the
gang's activities as recalled one of their kidnappings that took
place on his father's farm, stating that quote, the negro
was a post and railer by trade and very industrious.
One evening after dusk, a couple of men in a
wagon drove up to his house and asked his wife

(55:31):
if John was home. She replied that he was not,
but was working for a neighbor and probably was coming
off the road. They drove away and met him, talked
for a while, and one knocked him down and then
threw him into the wagon when they drove rapidly away.
A scream when he was attacked was the last his
wife and family ever heard from him. And no doubt
a large sum was received for him by his captors

(55:52):
in some southern market. It was then with such people
that Edward Gorsuch aligned himself, as he had long last
got word of the location of his quote unquote boys,
and so on the first week of September eighteen fifty one,
various members of the extended Gorsuch family came together in
a tavern sash roadhouse that was owned by Edward's cousin,
Captain Joshua Gorsuch, which sat across the road from Edward's

(56:15):
retreat farm and amidst the Lansley family's other state the
retirement farm. Joining Edward on this day was his son Dickinson,
his cousin, the aging owner of the tavern, Captain Joshua,
Edward's nephew, doctor Thomas Pears, and two of their neighbors,
Nicholas Hutchins and Nathan Nelson, all coming together to discuss
the information that Edward had received and to plan on

(56:35):
how to retrieve his four runaway sites. Now. Padgett had,
along with his information, also provided Edward with a suggusted
plan as the best waiter trieve as quote unquote property.
Patchet's idea then was that Edward Gorsuch should come to
the area in disguise, while his son should first make
a stop in Philadelphia, where he would be able to
get the assistants a Deputy Marshal John Nagel, as Nagel

(56:57):
would be able to procure for them the force required
to capture the four fugatives, with the informant estimating that
about twelve or so men should get the job done,
as that way they could split up and capture all
four men at the same time, taking them all by surprise.
The gorsuch Is, then, after reviewing the information and the
proposed plan, would take some cues from it, as Edward

(57:18):
notably ignored his son Dickinson's suggestion to just abandon this
pursuit entirely. Edward Gorsuch then would be the first from
their group to leave Maryland, setting off ahead of the
others as he took an express train in Philadelphia, where
on the ninth of September he was able to secure
the four warrants necessary to capture the foreign saved men
whould fled farmers Farm seeking freedom, and in doing so,

(57:40):
Edward Gorsuch effectively sealed his own fate because the four
men would not, in fact, just happily return with him
to Maryland like he believed would happen. The story of
their attempted capture in the town the people who joined
them in the resistance, however, will have to for now
remain a story for another time. Thank you for listening

(58:02):
to Distorted History. If you would like to help out,
please rate and review the podcasts and tell your friends
if you think they'll be interested. If you would like
ad free in early episodes, I set up such a
feed over at patreon dot com slash Distorted History. By
paying ten bucks a month, you will gain access to
these special ad free feed available on Spotify or likely
through your podcast app as long as it uses an

(58:24):
RSS feed. I will continue to post sources on Koffe
and Twitter, though, as it's just a convenient place to
go to access that information. Regardless, once again, thank you
for listening and until next time. App