[The Christiana Riot Trial]: The Pennsylvania Freeman. December 4, 1851. New Series Vol. VIII No. 49

Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 1851.

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Unbound. Tabloid bifolium. [4]pp. Measuring approximately 18" x 24" folded. Subscriber name ("E. Stockton") in ink on first page, old folds and small tears, but sound and near very good. About three-quarters of the issue is devoted to covering the trial of Castner Hanaway for Treason, for failing to assist in arresting his neighbors when called upon by slave hunters, in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Hanaway, a white miller, had answered an alarm bell rung at the home of his neighbor, William Parker, a fugitive slave, who had been tracked down by eight slavehunters from Maryland. There they were met by armed resistance from other blacks. The leader of the slavehunters, Edward Gorsuch, was killed and Hanaway and approximately 40 blacks were charged with treason. Hanaway was tried at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, defended by Thaddeus Stevens, and Lucretia Mott attended the trial each day. U.S. Deputy Marshal Henry Kline testified that Hanaway was responsible for inciting Parker and the resisters, but later admitted that he had been hiding in a cornfield with an obstructed view of the activity. Hanaway was quickly acquitted and the prosecution declined to press charges against the other defendants. The verdict served as an accelerant for the abolitionist movement, displaying how African-Americans could organize themselves to resist attempts to kidnap fugitive slaves. This issue of *The Pennsylvania Freeman* gives an incomplete but very detailed in-person account of the trial. According to the text, the copious details of the trial were so voluminous that they planned to published a supplement. Whether it was published is not known by us. In any event, a rarity.


Item #415151

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Item #415151 [The Christiana Riot Trial]: The Pennsylvania Freeman. December 4, 1851. New Series Vol. VIII No. 49. Oliver JOHNSON.