Fugitive Slave Incidents in Central Pennsylvania
George F. Nagle
Introduction
As
a border state between the free North and slaveholding South, Pennsylvania
was a key part of many escape routes for northern-bound runaway slaves in
the years before the Civil War.
The Underground Railroad traced some of its most important
“lines” from the Mason-Dixon line through many quiet south-central
Pennsylvania farming communities, northward to the relative safety of the
New York state border.
Although
in a free state, runaway slaves could not relax once inside of
Pennsylvania’s borders. Federal
and state laws guaranteed the right of southern slaveholders to pursue and
recover their “property” on northern soil. Only the national border dividing Canada and the United States
provided a real barrier to slave-catchers and safety for fleeing slaves. Despite the dangers, however, many slaves felt secure enough
in Pennsylvania to settle down and begin a new life, taking jobs in towns
and cities that already had sizable free Black populations. As a result, in the two decades prior to the Civil War, the African
American population in south central Pennsylvania swelled with a mixture
of freeborn Blacks and resettled fugitive slaves.
In
towns such as Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, Columbia, and Carlisle, the
transformation of a growing African American population into a tightly
knit Black community happened fairly quickly once Blacks broke free of
dependence on local whites for housing and employment. Black churches, businesses and property holders all emerged in the
1830’s, creating conditions for several vibrant and healthy African
American communities across central Pennsylvania. In addition to providing employment, housing, social interaction
and religious solace, these communities provided some insulation from
white hostility, and more importantly, protection from the southern slave
hunters who frequently ventured into them.
That
protection most often consisted of hiding fugitive slaves until safe
passage could be arranged for their journey further northward, or finding
work and shelter for those who decided to take their chances and become a
part of the community. The
latter strategy was based upon the concept of establishing long-term
residence in a free state, thus nullifying any claim of ownership that a
southern slaveholder might have should he discover the fugitive’s
whereabouts years later. This
concept was not based upon legal precedent, but rather drew strength from
African notions of a village as a means of mutual protection.[i]
Despite
the support offered by the surrounding African American community,
fugitive slaves were occasionally located by persistent slaveholders and
remanded to slavery after trial before a federal judge. Although local African Americans usually observed the proceedings and
frequently assembled in large, agitated groups outside of the courthouse,
violence between slaveholders and free Blacks was rare. The surrounding white community exhibited little interest in the
plight of those former local residents bound for the return to slavery,
and only became involved when the outrage of local Blacks threatened to
disrupt order in the community. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850, however, changed the ways in which each group reacted to incursions
by southern slave catchers. The
authoritarian measures of the law threatened the security of the African American
community and intimidated and angered many local whites. It also widened the ideological divide between the northern and
southern states and set the scene for numerous incidents along the way
toward a sectional clash.
Local Slavery Traditions
Black
slaves existed and were held in Pennsylvania from its earliest years as a
British colony. The first
Quaker settlers bought the entire slave cargo of the merchant ship Isabella,
consisting of 150 Africans, in 1684. Prior to that, a few African slaves existed in the region populated
by the Dutch, Swedes and Finns.[ii] In central Pennsylvania, slaves were held chiefly by the wealthier
and established residents of each county, and were used for agricultural,
industrial and domestic work. Runaway slaves were not uncommon during the
colonial period, and local residents generally accepted the enslavement of
Negroes as a fact of daily life.
Advertisements
for the runaway slaves of local slaveholders existed side by side with
those for the runaway slaves of Maryland and Virginia slaveholders in
local and locally read newspapers. Central
Pennsylvania residents who took the time to either return slaves or alert
the slaveholders to the fugitive’s location frequently collected rewards
for their efforts. County
sheriffs jailed suspected runaways and published advertisements seeking a
restitution of costs from the owners.[iii]
While
slaveholding in Central Pennsylvania remained firmly entrenched through
the Revolutionary War, support for the practice was waning in
Philadelphia. The new state legislature, which was influenced and
dominated by a younger generation of revolutionary-minded Quakers, in
March 1780, passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. This act did not free any currently held slaves, but stipulated
that all children of slaves born after the passage of the act would be
free upon reaching their 28th birthday. In this manner, Pennsylvania was to gradually abolish slavery while
protecting the property rights of its current slaveholders. This inconsistent effort regarding abolition was characteristic of
the attitude that most white central Pennsylvanians held toward slavery
during the next seventy years.
Nevertheless,
slavery did fade in central Pennsylvania. Census figures for Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon,
Perry and York counties show a diminishing population of slaves-for-life
from 1790 through 1840, with the most dramatic decreases occurring between
1810 and 1820, and 1830 and 1840.[iv] As local slaves died or were emancipated by slaveholders, Negro
slavery became increasingly associated with the south, and reports of
fugitive slaves always seemed to involve Blacks from the neighboring
states of Maryland and Virginia.
Early Fugitive Slave Incidents
The
first widely reported incident of involvement by Harrisburg’s free Black
community in the plight of a fugitive slave came in April 1825 when a
Maryland slaveholder in search of one of his runaway slaves entered town,
located the fugitive and had the man jailed until a trial could be held.
Word of the capture spread through the town’s small Black
population and, according to early historian Luthor Reily Kelker, “a
large number of local colored people…armed with clubs, and exhibit[ing]
a menacing appearance” waited outside of the courthouse until the
slaveholder and captured fugitive left the building at the conclusion of
the trial.[v]
Another
reporter described the crowd as “tumultuous,” and “desperate,”
writing, “they came streaming in hot haste,” but were not successful
in rescuing the fugitive. Kelker
noted that one of the would-be rescuers was shot in the arm when he landed
a punch on the slaveholder, and another scuffle occurred at the public
house where the slaveholder took the slave in preparation for the journey
back south. Local authorities
moved in and arrested sixteen local Blacks, twelve of whom were convicted
and sentenced to hard labor.[vi]
Although
southern slaveholders would pursue their slaves into south-central
Pennsylvania communities through the next several decades, it would be
twenty-five years before Harrisburg Blacks again organized en masse to
attempt another rescue. This
twenty-year lack of spectacular attempted rescues did not indicate a lack
of activity regarding fugitive slaves, however. Some incidental evidence exists that indicates a readiness on the
part of the town’s Black community to respond to emergencies. State historian Frederic A. Godcharles recorded that in 1842 a
“great mob of Negroes” attacked some slave catchers with clubs and
stones. Five years later, he
relates, in November 1847, ten fugitive slaves hiding in Dr. William
Rutherford’s barn in present-day Paxtang were cornered by four
Marylanders who had tracked them to the hiding place. A tense standoff occurred until nightfall when some of the slaves
were able, with the aid of several local Black Underground Railroad
“conductors,” to make their escape. Meanwhile, another group of Harrisburg Blacks arrived to aid the
fugitives, having been alerted to the standoff by one of the UGRR agents,
but by the time of their arrival the slave catchers were gone.[vii]
Efforts
both covert and legal were undertaken to either hinder or aid escaping
slaves in the north. The
mid-1830’s is believed by historians to be the birth of the organized
Underground Railroad system in Lancaster County. Pennsylvania lawmakers also worked to get around the federal 1793
Fugitive Slave Act with laws passed in 1826 and 1847, both attempting to
regulate the process of reclaiming fugitive slaves. The 1826 statutes, called the Personal Liberty laws, required
documentation of ownership by slaveholders in order to make a valid claim
on their wayward slaves. But
these requirements were mild in relation to the 1847 act, which prohibited
the kidnapping of Blacks, the use of unnecessary force in their
apprehension, and the use of Pennsylvania jails as holding places before
the mandated habeas corpus hearing. Furthermore, it forbade the participation by any officer of the
state in assisting with the capture of fugitive slaves or the enforcement
of the 1793 federal act, or even to take cognizance of any case that arose
as a result of that act.[viii]
These
sweeping laws were a direct result of the 1842 Supreme Court decision in
Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, in which Pennsylvania’s Personal Liberty
Laws, and all state fugitive slave laws, were declared unconstitutional
because of a constitutional clause declaring that no fugitive slaves could
find haven anywhere in the Union. Writing
the opinion for the majority, Justice Joseph Story specifically cited the
clause on interstate extradition that upheld the constitutionality of the
1793 federal law. Enabling
legislation passed by the states, according to Justice Story, was
unnecessary because the extradition clause was self-executable and the
1793 federal law merely acted as supplemental interpretation. Pennsylvania’s 1826 law, by requiring documentation of ownership,
not only violated the constitution’s extradition clause, but, by placing
undue additional burden of proof on the slave owners, also violated the
1793 federal law and thus became doubly unconstitutional.[ix]
Finally,
Justice Story bowed to states’ rights pressures and ruled that although
state officials could and should uphold the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law, they
were not compelled to do so. This
became the basis for the non-compliance features of the 1847 state law,
which was carefully written so as not to contravene the high court’s
decision. This was the first
northern state fugitive slave law passed in response to Prigg vs.
Pennsylvania and it reflected the growing anger and frustration by
northern legislatures attempting to protect their Black citizens.[x]
First Test in Carlisle
The
1847 Pennsylvania law was barely on the books when Dickinson College
professor John McClintock, while attending a hastily arranged habeas
corpus hearing in the Carlisle courthouse for three Blacks held by a
pair of Hagerstown, Maryland slaveholders, witnessed, in his words, “a
melee in the courtroom, the nature of which I did not understand.”
Arriving in the courtroom toward the end of the hearing, McClintock
had been unaware of the rising tension between local Blacks and the
sheriff and deputies who quite openly sided with the Marylanders. Hours earlier George Norman, a Carlisle resident and free
husband of the detained slave Hester, had attempted to rescue his wife as
she was being jailed prior to being remanded back to slavery. In the hours between that first small rescue attempt and the
beginning of the hearing, the size of the crowd of local Blacks waiting
outside of the courthouse grew to such an extent, and their mood seemed so
defiant, that five local whites were deputized to aid the sheriff and his
assistant in maintaining order and guarding the three prisoners.[xi]
Not
long after McClintock entered the courtroom and seated himself with the
counsel for the slaves, some Blacks in the back of the courtroom rushed
the prisoners’ box, again with the intention of rescuing Hester. Robert McCartney, assistant to Sheriff Jacob Hoffer, pulled a
pistol and threatened to shoot anyone who did not back away. The judge cleared the courtroom and all of the observers were
pushed down the stairs and into the street. McClintock witnessed a local Black man, an acquaintance, being
menaced by one of the deputies near the door and a little later saw an
elderly Black woman being accosted by two toughs. In both cases the professor came to their rescue by intimidating
the attackers with legal threats.
McClintock
went to his room for a copy of the recent 1847 law that prohibited
compliance by state officers in the capture and detaining of fugitive
slaves, as well as the detention of fugitive slaves in state jails. As he returned to the courthouse he saw the slaves being led
from the courthouse into a waiting carriage. A melee erupted and rocks, sticks and bricks were thrown.
The slaves made a break down an alley and the slave catchers chased
after them, with most of the crowd following. In the stampede and fighting, the slaveholder who claimed Hester,
James Kennedy, was trampled. Another
man, a bystander, was injured in the fighting. Kennedy’s injuries were said to be not dangerous, but on June 23rd,
exactly three weeks after the riot, he unexpectedly died of his injuries.
McClintock and thirty-four Black citizens of Carlisle were indicted
for riot, rescuing slaves lawfully in possession of their owners, and
assault and battery.[xii]
The
incident has come to be known as the McClintock Slave Riot, but the
college professor barely had a hand in the event. Carlisle’s Black community had quickly organized through word of
mouth and assembled in force to attempt a rescue of the wife of one of
their members. The trial
began August 25th and a verdict of guilty was returned against
thirteen of the Black defendants several days later, with acquittals for
all the rest. Eleven of those
found guilty were sentenced to three years in solitary confinement at
Eastern Penitentiary, but the Supreme Court reversed the sentence a year
later as being unduly harsh and unfair.[xiii]
Harrisburg Incidents
As
in Carlisle, the Harrisburg constabulary routinely ignored the
non-compliance provisions of the 1847 act. In September 1849, two slave catchers chased and caught one of a
family of five fugitives who had made it to Harrisburg, and attempted to
drag the man to the Camelback Bridge, they apparently having
reinforcements on the Cumberland County side. The fugitive was rescued by two local Black men who sent him and
his family to hide in the Tanner Alley neighborhood until evening, when
they could be safely conducted further north. Fearing a raid by the slave catchers on the neighborhood, a watch
of twenty-five or thirty citizens was set up at Short Street to safeguard
the fugitives for the night.
County
sheriff Jacob Shell, in company with several deputies, ordered the Blacks
to disperse. When they
refused, a scuffle ensued. The
outnumbered sheriff called upon a local militia company for assistance,
which assembled at Third and Market Streets by 11 p.m. and marched upon
the neighborhood. Finding the watch disbanded, the militiamen arrested what few
Blacks they could find in the vicinity, beating several who resisted and
firing upon at least one who fled. Despite
the militia’s success in scattering the watch group, the slave catchers
were unable to find the fugitives the next day. Harrisburg’s Black community expressed outrage at Sheriff
Shell’s actions, believing him to have overstepped his authority in
accommodating the slave catchers.[xiv]
Nearly
one year later Harrisburg’s constabulary would again summon the militia
to quell riotous Blacks in what would be the town’s largest uprising by
its African American community against invading slave catchers. On August 17, 1850, Harrisburg constable Solomon Snyder arrested
three Blacks on charges of horse theft brought by two Virginia men. By the time the three accused men were brought before Dauphin
County Judge John J. Pearson on August 23 for a hearing, Harrisburg’s
Black community had arranged a considerable legal defense, hiring local
attorneys Mordecai McKinney and Charles Coatesworth Rawn. The Virginians had in turn hired three Harrisburg lawyers to
represent their interests. The
hearing took the entire day, during which a restless crowd gathered
outside of the courthouse.[xv]
Judge
Pearson waited until the next day, August 24th, to rule on the
case. The crowd of mostly
local African Americans returned early in the morning, anticipating an unfavorable
ruling. Their agitated mood
unnerved the sheriff, who called up a company of fifty militiamen to
maintain order. The militia
was nearly assembled by the time Judge Pearson ruled that that, although
the horse-stealing charge was groundless and clearly a ruse to force the
state to hold the fugitives, the Virginia slaveholders could take custody
of their slaves if they could preserve the peace in doing so. Hoping to avoid the crowd outside, the slaveholders began to
handcuff the slaves as soon as they left the jail. Their efforts were met with cries and resistance from the slaves,
and the Virginians began to beat the slaves in an effort to subdue them,
which was the worst thing they could have done in the tense situation.
One
man in the street, Joseph Pople, broke from the crowd and charged up the
stone steps of the courthouse, brandishing a large stick. Pople struggled with the slave catchers
after succeeded in
prying open the heavy iron door to the jail entrance, allowing one of the
fugitives to make an escape. The
Virginians beat Pople and forced him back into the street, then turned to
the remaining two slaves, whom they beat terribly before handcuffing them.
Although no one in the noisy crowd attempted to storm the jail
entryway again, their menacing presence kept the Virginians from chasing
down the escaped slave. Blacks
on the balcony of the nearby Exchange Building threw bricks and stones at
the southerners and in the confusion a group of perhaps twenty Blacks sped
off with the escaped fugitive east on Walnut Street toward Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, the militia rolled out a cannon from the arsenal and set
it up at the intersection of Third and Walnut Streets.[xvi]
With
the potential for a much bloodier confrontation looming, the crowd,
intimidated by the fieldpiece and unwilling to see a repeat of the
previous year’s tangle with local militiamen, slowly melted away. Judge Pearson ordered the immediate arrest of the slave catchers
and the two remaining slaves and issued warrants for the arrest of nine
local Blacks on charges of creating a riot. By the time that the habeas corpus hearing for the slaves arrived,
the provisions of the new Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 had gone into effect,
allowing the owner of the two remaining slaves to retrieve them without
incident. They were taken out
of town with the help of a federally appointed posse of Harrisburg men.
The trial of the Virginians in November ended in not guilty
verdicts, and the nine Harrisburg Blacks escaped trial due to the efforts
of several leading white citizens of the town who petitioned Judge Pearson
for a dismissal of the case.[xvii]
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
In
sharp contrast to the August hearing, the two fugitive slaves were taken
south in September with no commotion. This was a direct result of the new provisions set forth in the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Passed
as part of the Compromise of 1850 and signed into law by President
Fillmore on September 18, the act was the southern response to the
Pennsylvania Fugitive Slave Act of 1847 and similar obstructionist laws
passed by other northern states.
The
new law provided sweeping changes in the method of dealing with fugitive
slave cases, providing for a specially appointed federal commissioner to
hear cases instead of state courts. The
process would involve a hearing before the commissioner, instead of a
trial, with only the sworn testimony of the slaveholder or agent required
to secure possession of the slaves. The
slaves were not permitted to testify at all, and did not have the right to
legal counsel or to call witnesses to testify on their own behalf. An attorney could speak for the defendants, but because no notice
of the hearing was required, most accused fugitives had no time to secure
help. Indeed some hearings in
Harrisburg were held in the pre-dawn darkness and in one instance local
attorneys McKinney and Rawn rushed almost directly from bed to the
commissioner’s office, only to be refused time to prepare a defense.[xviii]
In
addition to the hearing changes, the new law mandated that all citizens
must help enforce the law, and the harboring of fugitives or the
obstruction of the law was punishable by a fine or imprisonment. It supported the appointment of federal posses to escort
slaveholders and their slaves back to the south. Perhaps most controversial was the fee system, which seemed to
amount to a federally sanctioned bounty on captured slaves. Federal commissioners who returned alleged slaves to
slaveholders received fees of ten dollars per slave returned, but only a
five-dollar total fee if he released the captives.
Appointed
by U.S. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney on September 30, 1850, Harrisburg’s
United States Commissioner was local lawyer Richard McAllister, who
approached his new appointment with unabashed pro-southern sympathies.
One of his first actions after releasing the two fugitives
from the August riot to their Virginia owners was to issue a warrant to
several slave catchers for six fugitives known to be living in
Wilkes-Barre. The capture of
the slaves, reported in the anti-slavery National Era, bemoaned the
fact that little could be done on the part of the slaves due to “the
charter of abominations, The Fugitive Slave Law.”[xix] In October, in two separate incidents, Black women in Harrisburg
were seized by white slave hunters. In
both instances the women were not taken south, but only because they could
quickly prove their free status. In
November Commissioner McAllister issued a warrant for four alleged
fugitives known to be in town. Constable
Solomon Snyder and John Sanders arrested the men, and, without even
bothering with a hearing, took the captives immediately to the professed
owner in Baltimore to collect a $1,000 reward. This blatant circumvention of the hearing process brought strong
protests from Harrisburg’s Black community. Two Black citizens brought charges of kidnapping against Snyder and
Sanders, but the pair escaped punishment in the April 1851 trial.
McAllister
heard numerous cases during the next year, beginning in January with a
Virginian who claimed a local young man, David, as his property. David was returned with the slaveholder without protest.
In April, however, Constable Snyder and another local man, Michael
Shaeffer, arrested an entire family. Daniel Franklin, his wife Abby, daughter Caroline and an infant
were brought before Commissioner McAllister as the property of two
separate slaveholders in Maryland. The
Franklins had escaped together two years prior, settled in the large Black
community at Columbia, Lancaster County, where the infant child was born.
As
the family was led through the darkened, pre-dawn streets of Harrisburg,
to the Commissioner’s office, word of the capture spread quickly through
Harrisburg’s Black community. In
was in this instance that attorneys McKinney and Rawn were awakened with
the news, and who rushed to McAllister’s office only to be denied time
to learn the situation and prepare a defense. A reporter from the Philadelphia
Ledger wrote, “The
thoroughfares of this usually demure borough were again thronged, early
this morning, with an excited and threatening populace—the colored
community. From the clenched
teeth of one and all was hissing forth the news that a man and wife, and
a baby, had arrived in their midst in custody as fugitive slaves, and
were about to be remanded by the Commissioner.” Another reporter portrayed a sense of desperation on the part of
Harrisburg Blacks at the dramatic events unfolding before their eyes,
naming community leader William Jones and others who “rushed around the
corners a little,” unable to help the fugitives. The Franklin’s infant child, being born free in Pennsylvania, was
taken by family friends, but the rest of the family was returned south
with a young man representing the two slaveholders.
A
man named Bob Sterling was brought before Commissioner McAllister in
August 1851 as the property of a female slaveholder, who, upon observing
the crowd of Blacks who gathered around the office during the hearing,
requested that the commissioner assist her in getting her slave back home.
Harrisburg Blacks were quickly learning the value of making public
demonstrations, at least in numbers, as a show of protest against the law,
and of support for the fugitives. In
this case, the slaveholder’s fears did not prove groundless. Because she was not taking Sterling home until the next day, she
lodged him in a local hotel, Pennsylvania jails still being denied to
slaveholders as holding areas, and during the night a fire was set in the
hotel, probably as a crude attempt to make a rescue. It failed, however, and the woman returned south with her
slave.[xx]
Any
fugitive slave cases in Harrisburg in September 1851 paled against the
events in Lancaster County that month. Maryland slaveholder Edward Gorsuch, backed by U.S. Marshalls,
surrounded the Christiana home of William Parker, a Black community leader
and an escaped slave himself. Parker
had previously vowed not to surrender any fugitives to the law, openly
defying one of the key components of the 1850 act. Parker’s wife Eliza Ann sounded an alarm and local Blacks, who
had been planning a defense, flocked to the scene. Gorsuch was killed by a gunshot blast and three members of his
party were wounded. Parker
and the fugitive slaves were forced to flee to Canada. The situation was so serious that President Fillmore dispatched a
company of U.S. Marines to reinforce a contingent of Philadelphia police
that had been hastily dispatched to restore order.[xxi]
Fallout
from the Christiana Revolt did not affect Harrisburg immediately, but it
appears Commissioner McAllister saw an opportunity to use the white
community’s fear of Black uprisings to his advantage. In October 1851 four Blacks were arrested on the charge of
complicity in murder for having participated in the Christiana uprising.
At McAllister’s request, Judge Pearson postponed their hearing
for one day. The following
day, Pearson , finding no evidence against the men, dismissed all charges
and lambasted the magistrate for false imprisonment. McAllister and District Attorney James Fox both admitted wrongdoing
in the matter, yet immediately handcuffed the men and took them across the
street to McAllister’s office where a party of southern slaveholders
awaited. A brief hearing
behind closed doors followed, after which the slaves left with the
slaveholders for the south.
This
incident was widely reported upon in local newspapers and picked up by
both the pro-slavery and anti-slavery newspapers. An anonymous source reported that McAllister, knowing from
circulars that the four men were runaway slaves, had them imprisoned on
the false Christiana charges and delayed the proceedings until he could
notify the owners in Baltimore to quickly come to Harrisburg to claim the
men. The source also reported
that McAllister accompanied the large posse, appointed to intimidate the
usual gathering of local Blacks, with the slaves and slaveholders back to
Baltimore where he collected an $800 reward.[xxii]
If
1851 was a year of fear and uncertainty for Harrisburg Blacks, 1852 was
worse. Christiana’s
bloodshed was still fresh in everyone’s mind; the acquittal of the lone
defendant who came to trial and the dismissal of charges against the
others produced a fierce determination to resist in Blacks throughout the
state, and a bitter resentment in southern minds. The furor had not yet subsided when two sisters, Rachel and
Elizabeth Parker, were kidnapped from their Chester County homes and taken
to Maryland. Elizabeth was
almost immediately sold into slavery and later turned up in New Orleans,
while Rachel and her kidnapper were followed by a party of friends, one of
whom was Joseph Miller, with whose family she had been living for six
years. Miller located Rachel
in a slave pen in Baltimore, then brought her assailant, Thomas McCreary,
before a magistrate on kidnapping charges. Miller was on his way home with friends when he became separated
from them and was waylaid and murdered. Rachel spent more than a year in Maryland prisons while the
competing state courts tried to find a solution that would satisfy
everyone. In the end,
Maryland courts agreed to declare Rachel and Elizabeth free women in
exchange for a dismissal of all charges by Pennsylvania courts against
McCreary and those under investigation for Miller’s murder.[xxiii]
Long
before that legal compromise, which ended up pleasing no one, another
outrageous murder occurred in Columbia. In May 1852, Harrisburg’s Solomon Snyder and Henry Lyne,
accompanying Baltimore police officer A.D. Ridgely with a warrant for a
fugitive slave believed to be living in Columbia, found their man working
at a lumberyard in that town. Snyder
and Ridgely took hold of the man, William Smith, who apparently struggled
somewhat before Ridgely drew a pistol and shot him in the neck. The bullet severed his jugular vein and Smith died within two
minutes. Ridgely agreed to
give himself up, but instead fled to Maryland, and the two Harrisburg
lawmen returned to Pennsylvania. Inflamed
Pennsylvania newspapers called for Ridgely’s arrest and murder trial,
while Maryland newspapers printed the Baltimore policeman’s version of
events that involved shooting Smith accidentally, then changing it later
to self-defense. The incident
received national attention and Maryland’s Governor Lowe, still under
pressure in the Miller murder case, appointed two commissioners to make an
investigation and confer with Pennsylvania’s Governor Bigler.[xxiv]
In
the end, Ridgely was not prosecuted. Pennsylvania’s Attorney General declined to pursue charges, based
upon another incident involving a young free Black child from Harrisburg.
Young John Johnson, missing for several months, was located in
Baltimore as the property of a Mr. Petherbridge, who bought the child’s
time to age twenty-one from the local jailor. How the young boy got to
Baltimore has never been determined, but his new owner demanded $100 for
his return to Pennsylvania. Johnson’s mother, unable to raise the money,
appealed for help locally. Commissioner
McAllister, seeing an opportunity to repair his much maligned reputation,
agreed to intercede on the boy’s behalf and wrote a letter to the two
Maryland commissioners investigating the Columbia murder. He appealed to them to return the child to his mother, which
they were successful in doing. Characterized
in the Frederick Douglass Paper as “a peace offering to
Pennsylvania,” the incident ended happily for the Johnson family, and
also had the effect of ending the legal aspects of the Columbia murder
case.[xxv] It did nothing to end the fear and resentment felt by Black
communities in Pennsylvania, who viewed the agreements that ended the John
Johnson and the Rachel Parker cases, as political ransom.
“Kidnapping”
and “ransom,” inflammatory words used freely in the Parker and Johnson
cases, were particularly apt in the James Phillips case, which began just
as those other cases had ended. Phillips,
a well-known Harrisburg teamster, had lived in the town for many years and
was married with two small children. Two Virginians, a Mr. Hudson and a Mr. Vowles, came to town in June
1852 and had Phillips arrested as a fugitive slave from their client.
They claimed that Phillips had escaped in 1833, and that they
remembered him, despite the passage of nineteen years. McAllister frustrated every attempt made by attorneys McKinney and
Rawn to defend Phillips, and, in defiance of the still valid 1847 state
law forbidding the use of Pennsylvania jails to hold fugitive slaves, sent
Phillips to the Harrisburg jail until the southerners could take him back
to Virginia the next morning.
Again
the Black citizens of Harrisburg turned out in large numbers, vocal in
their protest of the injustice they saw, and menacing the office of
Commissioner McAllister. No
violence erupted, however. The
difference this time was that, although most of the crowd was Black, the
feelings of injustice began to penetrate into many in Harrisburg’s white
community as well. Not long
after he had been taken south, a letter arrived in the Harrisburg post
office from Richmond, addressed to Mary Phillips. The letter, dated June 20, 1852, was from her husband James, who
wrote, “I am now in a trader’s hands, by the name of Mr. Branton, and
he is going to start South with a lot of negroes in August. I do not like this country at all, and had almost rather die than
to go South. Tell all of the people that if they can do anything for me,
now is the time to do it. I
can be bought for $900.”[xxvi] White residents of Harrisburg began a fundraising drive to buy back
Phillips, and attorney Rawn traveled to Richmond where he was able to
purchase the Harrisburg man’s freedom for $800.
Political Fallout
Commissioner
Richard McAllister and his constables were roundly hated in Black
communities throughout central Pennsylvania and were regularly lambasted
in widely distributed anti-slavery newspapers. That unpopularity did not necessarily extend to the white
community, though, in the first year after the passage of the Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850, but it definitely increased in 1852 with the number of
fugitive slave incidents, escalating levels of violence, public
demonstrations and charges of improper and illegal behavior in carrying
out the duties of their office. White
dissatisfaction with the way in which borough officials were complying
with the federal law manifested itself at the polls the following year.
In an unusually high turnout, the three borough constables who had
assisted McAllister in catching fugitive slaves were turned out of office
in March 1853. McAllister
himself, although an appointed official, began to feel the heat and looked
to newly elected Democratic president, Franklin Pierce, for a new higher
appointment. He was
disappointed in his quest in Washington, though, and not long after
returning to Harrisburg, resigned his position as slave commissioner.
The post was not filled and slave catchers were forced to turn to
Commissioner Ingraham in Philadelphia as the closest sympathetic federal
authority. [xxvii]
Without
federally sanctioned protection, former constables Snyder and Loyer soon
found themselves in trouble as they pursued their slave-catching
activities. A Lancaster grand
jury indicted them in 1853 on charges of kidnapping a free Black citizen,
and although they were found not guilty, the fact that they had to stand
trial was a move forward in the eyes of the Black community. Snyder apparently did not learn his lesson from that experience,
being charged in 1855 with attempting to kidnap a Harrisburg man, George
Clark. This time, Snyder was convicted and sentenced to six years in
prison.[xxviii]
Conclusion
Fugitive
slave incidents in central Pennsylvania fell off sharply after the
resignation of Richard McAllister and the imprisonment of Solomon Snyder.
Fugitive slaves continued to escape in increasing numbers into the
Underground Railroad system that operated through this area, and Southern
slaveholders continued to pursue them, but found considerably less aid
from local lawmen despite the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850. Events were transpiring
nationally that would soon make the 1850 law virtually unenforceable, and
place north and south in irreconcilable positions.
For
Harrisburg’s Blacks, and Black communities throughout the mid-state, the
lessons of the previous two decades were clear. Safety could be found only in strong, organized communities
that were willing to resist unjust laws by any means. Tactics such as hiding fugitives and public demonstrations,
combined with a good communications network and influential white allies
were key to survival in the turbulent years before the war.
[i] A contemporary example of
this mutual protection concept is the Jamaican free village system
that emerged in the 1830’s in response to emancipation. For a discussion of mutual protection as it related to African
Americans in the south, see W.E.B. DuBoise The Souls of Black Folk
(Microsoft Encarta Africana Third Edition).
[ii] Joe William Trotter, Jr.
and Eric Ledell Smith, Editors, African Americans in Pennsylvania:
Shifting Historical Perspectives (Harrisburg, PA, 1997) 41.
[iii] For examples of local
runaway slave advertisements, see The Farmer's Instructor, and
Harrisburgh Courant, October 21, 1801; The Oracle of Dauphin,
and Harrisburgh Advertiser, July 1, 1815; Harrisburg Argus,
July 26, 1828 and November 22, 1828; Pennsylvania Reporter and
Democratic Herald, December 28, 1828. For examples of Maryland runaway slave advertisements from the
same era, see The Farmer's Instructor, and Harrisburgh Courant,
May 28, 1800; The Oracle of Dauphin, and Harrisburgh Advertiser,
November 11, 1815; Harrisburg Argus, March 8, 1828, July 26,
1828 and March 13, 1830. For examples of a local jailor ad, see The Oracle of
Dauphin, and Harrisburgh Advertiser, May 9, 1796.
[iv] Census figures show only
slaves-for-life as “slaves,” and count the children of slaves, or
“term slaves” as free Blacks. The total slaves enumerated for all of the counties named, by
census year, are: 1790:
1283; 1800: 690; 1810: 470; 1820: 80;
1830: 162; 1840: 29. There were no
slaves-for-life enumerated in the 1850 census throughout the entire
state. (Inter-University
Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor. Study 003: Historical
Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: U.S. 1790-1970 [published on the internet at
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu]).
[v] Luthor Reily Kelker,
History
of Dauphin County Pennsylvania (New York, 1907) 576.
[vi] Reports differ on the
number of local Blacks arrested, ranging from 19 to 16. (Michael
Barton, Life by the Moving Road: An Illustrated History of Greater Harrisburg [Woodland Hills,
California, 1983] 42; Kelker, 576).
[vii] Frederic A. Godcharles,
Chronicles
of Central Pennsylvania (New York, 1944) 146. Another source, Samuel S. Rutherford, in a 1928 paper published
by the Historical Society of Dauphin County, dates this incident as
October 1845, and puts the number of Black rescuers from Harrisburg at
forty.
[viii] Martha C. Slotten,
“The McClintock Slave Riot of 1847” in Cumberland County
History, 17/1 (Summer 2000) 17.
[ix] Roger C. Schonfeld,
“Prigg vs. Pennsylvania: Thoroughly Flawed.” (Published on the internet at http://pantheon.cis.yale.edu/~rschon/acad/prigg.html,
1996).
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Slotten, 15.
[xii] Ibid., 25, 29.
[xiii] Ibid., 31-32.
[xiv] “Kidnapping in
Harrisburg,” The North Star (Rochester N.Y.), October 12,
1849.
[xv] Gerald G. Eggert, “The
Impact of the Fugitive Slave Law on Harrisburg: A Case Study,” in
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 109 (October 1985), 540-541.
[xvi] Ibid, 542-543. For details about the Exchange Building and the militia
fieldpiece, see J. Howard Wert “The Harrisburg Slave Law Riot,”
reprinted in G. Craig Caba, Episodes of Gettysburg and the
Underground Railroad (Gettysburg, 1998), 83.
[xvii] Eggert, 545.
[xviii] Ibid., 547.
[xix] “Fugitive Slave Law,”
The National Era, October 31, 1850.
[xx] Eggert, 546-547.
[xxi] “Christiana Revolt of
1851,” Microsoft Encarta Africana Third Edition.
[xxii] Eggert, 548-550. The Frederick Douglass Paper quoted the
New York
Evangelist, a newspaper with southern sympathies, as seeing “no
violation of the law” in the incident. It later quoted the Massachusetts Spy, an abolitionist
newspaper, with a stinging rebuke to the Evangelist with “So
does the iron will of one of Millard Fillmore’s contemptible
Commissioners over-ride the decisions of a local Judge. So does this Whig administration establish a secret
inquisition, and in the face of a judicial decision, trample upon the
right of trial by jury.” (Frederick Douglass Paper, October
9, 1851; October 16, 1851).
[xxiii] “Letter from
Baltimore,” The National Era, January 15, 1852; “Kidnapping
and Murder,” Frederick Douglass Paper, January 29, 1852; The
National Era, April 22, 1852; Frederick Douglass Paper,
March 4, 1853, April 22, 1853.
[xxiv] “Murder of a Supposed
Fugitive,” The National Era, May 6, 1852; “The Fatal Slave
Case at Columbia,” Frederick Douglass Paper, May 13, 1852;
“The Columbia Murder,” The National Era, May 20, 1852; May 27, 1852;
[xxv] Frederick Douglass
Paper, June 17, 1852; Eggert, 551-552.
[xxvi] James Phillips to Mary
Phillips, June 20, 1852, in John W. Blassingame, Slave Testimony
(Baton Rouge, LA, 1977) 95-96. Frederick
Douglass Paper, June 24, 1852. Eggert, 552-553.
[xxvii] Eggert, 565-569.
The National Era, October 5, 1854.
[xxviii] “Excitement at
Harrisburg—Arrest of Slave Catchers,” Frederick Douglass Paper,
March 2, 1855. Eggert,
566.
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