The Christiana Riot and the Treason Trials of 1851: An Historical Sketch

Table of Contents I propose to write the history of the so-called “Christiana Riot” and “Treason Trials” of 1851, as they occurred—without partiality, prejudice or apology, for or against any of those who participated in them. As is inevitable in all such collisions, there were, on either side of the border troubles of that period, men of high principle and right motive and also rowdies and adventurers, disposed to resort to ruthless violence for purposes of sordid gain. There were slave-masters who sincerely believed in the righteousness of an institution of ancient origin, while even the more sagacious of their class recognized it as at variance with the divine law and the trend of Christian civilization, and inevitably doomed to extinction. There were on this side of the line many who, believing themselves humanitarians, were mere mischievous agitators, lawless in deed and treasonable in design, reckless of those rights of property which are as sacred in regard of the law as the rights of man. There were, too, in the North wicked slave catchers and kidnappers whose brutalities aroused the just resentment of the communities in which they operated, even when they kept within the limits of strict and technical legal rights.It was of course impossible, as Mr. Lincoln pointed out, for the republic to endure forever half slave and half free—to run a geographical marker through a great and complicated moral, economic and political issue—especially in view of the far flung border line and the rapidly increasing development of communication and transmission.If, however, all the great statesmen, economists and churchmen who had struggled with the slavery question since the formation of the Union were unable to solve it, without the awful carnage of a tremendous and long lasting civil war, can it be the cause of special wonder that a handful of Marylanders in lawful search of their escaped property, and a larger group of free and fugitive negroes, with...