[Long before the 9/11 of 20 years ago, another episode of violence
took place on that day in 1851 and portended our nation’s deepest
divide.] [[link removed]]

THE 19TH CENTURY’S 9/11  
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Marc Steiner
September 10, 2021
The Nation
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_ Long before the 9/11 of 20 years ago, another episode of violence
took place on that day in 1851 and portended our nation’s deepest
divide. _

, Wikimedia Commons

 

The events of September 11 shook this nation to its core. They stunned
the citizenry, exposed our country’s vulnerabilities, and captured
every headline. The events portended our nation’s deepest divide.

Long before the 9/11 of 20 years ago, another episode of violence took
place on that day in 1851. That September 11 is long forgotten,
despite its being one of the country’s most seminal events. Most
Americans called it the Christiana Riot. To Quakers and others who
opposed slavery, it was known as the Christiana Resistance.

In the early 1850s, America was already at war with itself, over
slavery and its expansion into new territories. Abolitionists, while
representing a political minority, were highly organized, and 100,000
members of the population had become fugitives from slavery. In
response, in 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, making it a
federal crime to assist those seeking freedom. The act also ordered
the US Marshals to pursue runaway slaves, monetarily incentivizing
slave catchers and creating an industry of hunting down Black
Americans, whether free or enslaved.

The Christiana Resistance represented the first challenge to the
Fugitive Slave Act, culminating in a violent confrontation between
fugitive slaves and enslavers. Two men were central to this moment and
embodied its essence: William Parker, who was born a slave on the
Roedown Plantation in Davidsonville, Md., and William Gorsuch, the son
of a plantation owner in northern Baltimore County, Md.

William Parker began contemplating his escape from slavery when he was
10, after seeing family members sold away. Then, one day in 1839, when
he was about 17, Parker was too exhausted to go work in the fields.
His owner responded by beating him with an oxen whip. As he wrote
years later
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in 1866, in _The Atlantic Monthly_, “we grappled, and handled each
other roughly for a time, when [he] called for assistance. He was
badly hurt. I let go my hold, bade him goodbye and ran for the woods.
As I went to the field, I beckoned my brother, who left work and
joined me at a rapid pace.” Now fugitives, the Parker brothers made
their way north, to Baltimore and then to Christiana, Pa.

Years later, Parker realized that he couldn’t find safety, even in
the North. He would later lament that “slaveholder or kidnappers…a
party of white men would break into a house, take a man, no one knew
where; and again, a whole family would be carried off. There was no
power to protect them, nor prevent it.… I vowed to let no
slaveholder take back a fugitive, if I could get my eye on them.”

In the early 1840s, in Christiana, Parker formed the Special Secret
Committee, a militia and spy network. As Parker described it, they
“formed an organization for mutual protection against slaveholder
and kidnappers.… Resolved to prevent any of our brethren being taken
back into slavery, at the risk of our own lives…whether the
kidnappers were clothed in legal authority or not, I did not care to
inquire.” Parker and his band had frequent violent confrontations
with slave catchers, freeing those who were kidnapped and killing many
of the kidnappers.

Into that world came four escaped men: George and Joshua Hammon,
Nelson Ford, and Noah Burley, who fled Edward Gorsuch’s plantation
in 1849 after being accused of stealing wheat. Gorsuch was confounded
at their show of disrespect, thinking himself the benevolent lord who
cared well for his servants. Thinking otherwise, the four men fled to
Christiana and came under the protection of William Parker and his
wife Eliza, who had become his full partner in the Special Secret
Committee.

Edward Gorsuch tried all legal methods to retrieve “his
property”—to no avail. Then the Fugitive Slave Act was passed.
Emboldened, Gorsuch went to Philadelphia to enlist the help of a man
notorious for capturing escaped slaves, Deputy US Marshal Henry H.
Kline.

Soon the cohort of Kline, Gorsuch, and two of Gorsuch’s sons had
grown to a band of 15. They headed out of Philadelphia to Christiana,
armed with guns and federal subpoenas. What this group of slave
catchers didn’t realize was that Parker’s Secret Society had spies
everywhere. One day, an inebriated Kline talked too much at a tavern
and was overheard by Samuel Williams, who followed the men onto the
train. Soon the word was out that kidnappers were coming to Parker’s
home.

At daybreak on September 11, 1851, Gorsuch and Kline’s little army
came bursting into Parker’s home. Kline said he had federal warrant
for the runaway slaves. Parker yelled down that he “didn’t give a
damn about the United States” and “If you come any closer I will
break your neck!” Some of those who were hiding out wanted to turn
themselves in, but Parker told them never to give up to the
slaveholders. Parker threatened to kill Gorsuch after he said he would
retrieve his property or die trying. They began loudly exchanging
Bible passages peppered with threats. Caster Hanaway, a white Quaker,
rode up and was shown the warrant. He refused to help and told
Gorsuch’s gang that they should leave.

The kidnapping party, unprepared for resistance, let go a hail of
bullets when Eliza Parker blew the ram’s horn. It was too late,
though. The Black militia came streaming in, armed with farm
implements and guns, and the battle began. Parker shot Gorsuch; one of
Gorsuch’s sons was badly wounded; and Kline and the others fled.

In Maryland, 6,000 people gathered to demand retribution. Many went
north to join other whites rounding up, beating, and arresting Black
men wherever they found them. The US Attorney charged 38 Black men and
three white men with treason in the largest conspiracy trial in
American history. Leading the defense was the abolitionist Congressman
Thaddeus Stevens. The nation was gripped by the headlines emblazoned
on every newspaper—“A Black revolt, A prominent white citizen
killed.”

Parker fled, made his way north to Frederick Douglass’s home. The
two had met once while enslaved and knew each other by reputation.
Douglass, who helped Parker flee to Canada, later wrote in his
autobiography, “I could not look upon them as murderers. To me they
were heroic defenders of the just rights of man against manstealers
and murderers. So I fed them, sheltered them in my house…. I shook
hands with my friends, received from Parker the revolver that fell
from the hand of Gorsuch when he died…a token of gratitude and a
memento of the battle for Liberty at Christiana.”

Back in Philadelphia, the trial began. The prosecutors could not
believe that Blacks could be this organized, so they tried Caster
Hanway first. The defense’s closing argument was: “Leveling war
against the United States…. Sir, did you hear it? That three
harmless, nonresisting Quakers, and eight and thirty wretched,
miserable, penniless Negroes, armed with corn cutters, clubs, and a
few muskets, and headed by a miller, in a felt hat, without a coat,
without arms, and mounted on a sorrel nag, levied war against the
United States. Blessed be God that our union has survived the
shock.” The jury took only 15 minutes to acquit. The three whites
were released and the 38 Black men spent another three months in jail
before being acquitted of all charges.

Outrage rumbled across the country. The State’s Attorney wanted to
try the men for murder but couldn’t. Headlines now declared,
“Civil War—The First Blow Struck.” People cried for blood and
Gorsuch became a martyr. For decades to come, Christiana—not Fort
Sumter—was known as the first shot of the Civil War.

Back in Baltimore County, Gorsuch’s youngest son, Thomas, was in
boarding school. His best friend, who’d become obsessed with the
trial and the killing of Thomas’s father, wrote in his 1860 diary,
“My bossom friend…as noble a youth as any living. He had two
brothers grown to be men. And an old father who loved and was beloved
by them.… Two of his negroes committed a robbery, they were informed
upon. They nearly beat the informer to death. They ran away from
Maryland, came to this state [Pennsylvania]. The father, the two sons,
and the boy my playmate, came to this state under the protection of
the fugitive slave law (not only to recover their property, but to
arrest the thieves who belonged to them).” His best friend’s name
was John Wilkes Booth
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After decades of remembrances, the last of the participants died and
the Christiana Resistance was lost to our collective memory. But it
remains our nation’s first 9/11, and equally significant to the
course of our nation.

_MARC STEINER is the host of Marc Steiner Show on the Real News._

_Copyright c 2021 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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