After the trial William H. Seward sent the following Christmas greeting to District Attorney Ashmead, whose son, Henry G. Ashmead, historian of Delaware County and resident of Chester, cherishes the manuscript; Mr. Seward was then in his first term as United States Senator, but had already distinguished himself as an anti-slavery leader:
Washington December 25, 1857
My Dear Sir,
I thank you for the kind remembrance manifested by you sending me a copy of your opening Argument on the late Trial for Treason. While I cannot but rejoice in the result of that trial as a new assurance of the security of Popular Liberty, I am not unable to appreciate the ability with which you have maintained the untenable position which the Government was made to assume. The argument is highly logical and eloquent, and I cannot better manifest my good wishes for you and for the Country than by expressing a hope that it may be the good fortune of the cause of truth and justice hereafter to enlist you on their side.
I am, my dear Sir,
Very respectfully & truly
Your friend,
William H. Seward.John W. Ashmead Esq.,
District Attorney of the United States
Philadelphia.
In his message to the General Assembly of Maryland at the following January Session, Governor Lowe referred at length to the Gorsuch tragedy. Despite the assurances of the Federal administration through Secretary of State Daniel Webster, that all the energies of the law would be exerted to bring the offenders to justice, Maryland had felt constrained to actively participate in the prosecution. “The blood of a Marylander,” he declared, “cried out from the earth; whilst the Genius of the Union called aloud for a vindication of outraged laws.” Otherwise “the flame of excitement would spread from the hills of Maryland to the savannahs of the extreme South, until every Southern State would unite in one common feeling of horror and indignation.” Senator Cooper had been retained by him; and despite the high ability and signal service of both him and Maryland’s Attorney General, there had been a gross miscarriage of justice. With a fervor of rhetoric that was more common then in State papers than it is now, he declared: “Shall domestic feuds destroy our power, when the eyes of all nations are turned to the star of our empire, as the harbinger of their deliverance? Shall Kossuth blast Hungary with the breath of our discord? Shall O’Brien, in his lonely exile, see the hope of Ireland pass down the horizon, with the western sun? May so incalculable a calamity be spared to the nations of the earth. And yet, when American blood is made to flow upon American soil, as a grateful libation to American fanaticism; when whole communities stand listlessly by, and a prostituted press and venal politicians are found, in the open day, to glory in the human sacrifice; when the Law proclaims its own weakness from the Bench, and Treason stalks unpunished, through the halls of justice; the Nations can judge of the probable remoteness of that calamity.”
The official report of his Attorney General justified the Governor in becoming somewhat heated over the outcome at Philadelphia. Mr. Brent had suffered not only some personal irritation over his position there, but a keen professional disappointment in his failure to convict. The blame for this he distributed very generally among the people of the North who sympathized with resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law; the partisan character of the jury panel; the partiality of the daily press reports; the sympathy of the spectators; the treachery of the prison officials; the bribery of Scott, the government’s witnesses; and egregious errors of law committed by Judge Grier. Even the amiable Marshal did not escape criticism, as evinced by this paragraph:
“I brought to the attention of the court, the fact stated in the ‘Pennsylvania Freeman,’ that the Marshal (Mr. Roberts) had actually dined with the prisoners, or some of them, during the trial, on Thanksgiving day, and when I was about to read the article from the paper I was stopped by his Honor, Judge Grier, who in behalf of the Marshal, denied the truth of the statement that he had so dined; but unfortunately for the Judge’s interposition, the Marshal immediately afterwards made his own explanation, and admitted that he had not only assisted at the dinner, ‘but had set down and partaken sparingly’ of the Thanksgiving dinner, with the white prisoners. I cannot but consider such conduct as highly unbecoming that officer from whom, next to the Judge, we had a right to expect impartiality and a due regard for decorum.”
It is only fair to all concerned to say that the Attorney General’s indignation was not taken very seriously. Attorney Jackson’s history of the case corrects some of his exaggerations, and especially points out that all of Mr. Brent’s colleagues exculpated Marshal Roberts from any misconduct. Judge Kane’s own son, was known to have extended various kindnesses and courtesies to the prisoners.
Mr. Brent’s complaint on this score seems almost ridiculous when one reads the full particulars of the affair, as published in the Philadelphia Freeman of December 4, 1851. That newspaper says:
“It affords us great pleasure to state, that the Christiana prisoners were not wholly forgotten on Thursday last in the distribution of the good things pertaining to Thanksgiving. Thomas L. Kane, Esq. (son of the Judge), sent to the prison for their use six superior turkeys, two of them extra size, together with a pound cake, weighing 16 pounds. The turkeys were cooked with appropriate fixings, by order of Mr. Freed, the Superintendent, in the prison kitchen, by a female prisoner detached for the purpose. The dinner for the white prisoners, Messrs. Hanway, Lewis and Scarlet, was served in appropriate style in the room of Mr. Morrison, one of the keepers. The U. S. Marshal, A. E. Roberts, Esq., several of the keepers and Mr. Hawes, one of the prison officers, dined with the prisoners as their guests. Mayor Gilpin coming in, accepted an invitation to test the quality of the pound cake, Mrs. Martha Hanway who has the honor to be the wife of the ‘traitor’ of that name, and who has spent most of her time with her husband since his incarceration, served each of the 27 colored ‘traitors’ with a plate of turkey, potatoes, pound cake, &c., and the supply not being exhausted, all the prisoners on the same corridor were similarly supplied.
“Who will stand best with posterity—the father who prostitutes his powers as a judge to procure the conviction of peaceable citizens as traitors for refusing to aid in the capture of fugitive slaves, or the son who ministered to the wants of those citizens while incarcerated in a loathsome prison? Need we answer the question?”
The Maryland witnesses do not appear to have had as cheery a Thanksgiving as the prisoners. Dickinson Gorsuch’s diary had this entry: