“Thursday, Nov. 27. Thanksgiving Day. This has been a great holiday here; there was no court today. We went to Mr. Ashmead’s office and stayed awhile. John Bacon went home after the clothes I wore when I was shot.”
During their imprisonment the colored people and their families were largely supported by outside friends and sympathizers; and many an item such as this, recorded in the cash book of B. L. Wood (father of Mrs. David W. Jackson), is set down to the credit of sympathetic friends:
10th mo. 8, 1851. Dr. 1 pair of pants and 1 shirt given to Elijah Clark in Moyamensing; also sent his wife qr. middlings.
In another respect the official complaints of Maryland’s Governor and Attorney General against Pennsylvania justice call for correction at even this late day. Both aver that “the murder” of Kennedy, a slave owner, at Carlisle, killed in resistance of the fugitive slave law, went utterly unpunished: The facts are that in that offense the rioters and rescuers were led by John Clellans and he and thirty-six others were indicted. Besides Clellans twelve of the accused were convicted of riot and of riotously rescuing fugitive slaves from the lawful custody of their owners. Judge Hepburn sentenced them to solitary confinement at labor in the Eastern Penitentiary for three years. Charles Gibbons represented them on an appeal to the Supreme Court; and Deputy Attorney General (District Attorney) Bonham for the Commonwealth, argued before that tribunal that Pennsylvania followed the law of England, which upon conviction for riot authorized fine, imprisonment and the pillory, and therefore sentence to the penitentiary was lawful. Justice Burnside delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court, declared “it was an aggravated case of riot”; but that as Pennsylvania had adopted the English common law, the imprisonment must be in the county jail, and the final judgment of the court was that as the prisoners had been confined in the Eastern Penitentiary about three-fourths of a year, “we deem this as severe a punishment as if they had been confined in the county jail, where they legitimately should have been sent, for two years.” (Clellans vs. Com. 8 Barr. 223.)
Meantime the friends of Hanway, Lewis and others, incensed at the continued prosecutions in Lancaster county, assumed the aggressive.
They procured the indictment to the January Sessions, 1852, No. 38, in Lancaster County, of Deputy Marshal Henry H. Kline, for perjury. It was laid in this indictment that he had sworn falsely at the hearing before Alderman Reigart, wherein he averred that he had shown his warrant to Hanway, asked him and Lewis to spare his men, that they defied the warrant and encouraged the rioters and in various other particulars. Upon this bill of indictment appeared the names of a large number of witnesses, and Kline was held in $1,000 bail before Charles G. Freeman, alderman of Philadelphia, to answer at the Lancaster Court.
It appears from the subsequent history of the case that all parties involved were by this time willing to have “somebody help them to let go”; and accordingly at the January Sessions, Joseph McClure, of Bart township, being foreman of the jury, this bill against Kline for perjury, being No. 38, was ignored, and also the following, indictments all to the same sessions and for Riot: No. 57, William Brown; No. 58, Wm. Williams; No. 59, Henry Green; No. 60, William Brown, Jr.; No. 61, Benjamin Johnson; No. 63, Daniel Caulsberry; No. 64, George Wells; No. 65, George Williams; No. 66, Alson Pernsley; No. 67, Lewis Gales; No. 68, Lewis Clarkson; No. 69, Chas. Hunter; No. 70, Nelson Carter; No. 71, Jacob Woods, a brother of Peter Woods; No. 72, Peter Woods; No. 73, Israel Clarkson; No. 74, John Williams; No. 75, John Jackson; No. 76, Castner Hanway; No. 77, Elijah Lewis; No. 78, John Morgan; No. 81, Benjamin Pendergrass; No. 82, John Holliday; No. 83, Thomas Butler; No. 84, Elijah Clark; No. 85, Collister Wilson.
With this termination of the cases in the local courts all prosecutions were finally ended except that of Samuel Williams, in the United States District Court at Philadelphia. He was there charged with interfering with the execution of warrants for the arrest of Noah Buley and Joshua Hammond, runaway slaves. His case was first called for trial on January 5, and continued until January 12. Mr. Ashmead and Messrs. Ludlow appeared for the prosecution, and R. P. Kane, W. S. Pierce and David Paul Brown for the defense. The following jury was empanelled to try his case; the last name on the list will be recognized as that of an estimable citizen of Lancaster County:
Pratt Roberts, Chester County; Thomas Vaughan, Philadelphia; Henry McMahen, Philadelphia; Patrick McBride, Philadelphia; Michael Keenan, Philadelphia; Fredk. Boley, Sr., Philadelphia; Joseph Dowden, Chester County; Samuel Culp, Germantown; Minshall Painter, Delaware County; Joseph Thornton, Philadelphia; Francis Parker, Chester County; Peter McConomy, Lancaster.
Kline was the principal witness on this trial, and his testimony was practically a repetition of what he had sworn to in the Hanway case. The trial judge fell ill during the progress of the case and it was continued the third time and resumed on February 2, argued to the jury on February 3, and, on February 4, a verdict of “not guilty” was rendered.