In the early hours of September 11, 1851, long before the first rooster crowed over Christiana, Pennsylvania, a group of armed white men climbed the hill to William Parker’s home. They came with warrants. They came with chains. They came under the full authority of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a law crafted to drag escaped enslaved africans back into bondage, even if they had tasted freedom for years.
But what they found waiting at the top of that hill was not submission. It was resistance.
The Law That Made Everyone a Slave Catcher
By 1851, the United States was already in a quiet civil war. The Fugitive Slave Act had made it so that no Black person in America, free or fugitive, was truly safe. White slaveholders could storm into free states, backed by federal marshals, to drag people back into slavery. And anyone who refused to help? They could be jailed for treason.
That’s the climate Edward Gorsuch walked into when he set out from Maryland to reclaim what he still called his “property”, four men who had fled his farm and remade their lives in Pennsylvania. George Hammond, Joshua Hammond, Nelson Ford and Noah Buley.
They had found refuge in Christiana, where the soil was cold but the people were warm. Christiana was a haven, a place where free Blacks, fugitive slaves, and even a few white allies stood shoulder to shoulder. And William Parker, a formerly enslaved man himself, had become one of its fiercest protectors.
Parker wasn’t naive. He knew the day would come. He had built his house not just as a home, but as a fortress. When his wife, Eliza, blew the horn that morning, it was a call that rang through the countryside like a war drum.
The night before, a white ally had warned them: slave catchers were coming. But instead of fleeing, the people of Christiana stood their ground. By the time Gorsuch arrived with his slave catchers, Parker’s house was ready. Guns were loaded. Voices were firm. And the message was simple: “You will not take anyone from this house.”
Inside the home were not just Parker and his family, but also two of Gorsuch’s former slaves, known by new names, living free lives. Outside, Gorsuch tried to reason, to command, to intimidate. He had federal law on his side. But the people inside knew something greater: they had moral law, and they had each other.
Soon, Eliza’s horn brought the community. Black men and women, armed, defiant, resolute, began to arrive. White allies, like Castner Hanway and Elijah Lewis, also appeared. They didn’t carry guns. But they carried something even more dangerous to the system of slavery: conscience.
The slave catchers, Edward Gorsuch, his son Dickinson, their relatives, and a few hired men, found themselves outnumbered and surrounded. Still, they would not retreat. Gorsuch, the patriarch, insisted that his “property” be returned.
Words collapsed under the weight of rising tension. Shouts turned into curses. Guns were raised. And in a matter of moments, violence exploded.
Shots rang out, who fired first remains uncertain, but once the first bullet flew, the rest followed in a frenzy. Some say Edward Gorsuch tried to enter the house, demanding the surrender of the men who escaped from his farm. Others say he struck one of the fugitives with his cane. Whatever the spark, the fire was instant.
By the time the smoke cleared, Edward Gorsuch lay dead, surrounded not by servants, but by people who had once bowed to him and now stood above him, armed and unafraid. Several others were wounded, including three members of his party. Not a single defender in Parker’s home had fallen.
Realizing the severity of the situation, Parker and the fugitives fled the area. William Parker made it to Rochester, where he was sheltered by none other than Frederick Douglass, who ensured Parker’s safe passage into Canada. Douglass, a man once enslaved in the same state as Parker, called the Christiana incident not a riot, but a battle for liberty.
The US federal government, humiliated and furious, cracked down hard. Marines were sent in. Dozens were arrested. Forty-one people, Black and white, were charged with treason, an offense punishable by death. President Millard Fillmore, feeling the pressure from Southern slaveholders, hoped to make an example out of Christiana.
The first man tried was Castner Hanway, a white miller who had refused to aid the marshal. The prosecution expected a swift conviction. But after only 15 minutes, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Public opinion in the North rallied behind the defendants. One by one, the charges were dropped. The law had reached into Christiana, and failed.
The Christiana Uprising didn’t stop the Fugitive Slave Act. It didn’t end slavery. But it shook the system. It sent a message: that Black people were not waiting to be saved. They would save themselves, with words, with action, and when necessary, with gunpowder.
Today, the Christiana Resistance is often forgotten, overshadowed by larger battles. But it was one of the first open, armed rebellions against the Fugitive Slave Act, and perhaps the most successful. It proved that even in the darkest hours, even against the full weight of the federal government, a united community could say:
“No more.”
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