Whatever anybody was doing in the way of vindicating whatever law or laws had been violated, the perpetrators of the killing were being allowed to escape. There were no daily newspapers in Lancaster then and the Philadelphia journals of Friday, September 12th, had very meagre accounts of the affair. But meantime the Federal officials in Philadelphia and the Commonwealth authorities in Lancaster County “got busy.” Constable William Proudfoot, of Sadsbury, acted under the direction of ’Squire Pownall and District Attorney John L. Thompson. In Philadelphia John M. Ashmead was United States Attorney, and Anthony E. Roberts was Marshal. When District Attorney Thompson made his second visit to the scene on Saturday following the riot, accompanied by a “strong party of armed men,” he found there the United States Marshal, District Attorney and Commissioner “with a strong force of U. S. Marines and a detachment of the Philadelphia police.” A controversy arose between the local District Attorney Thompson and the United States Attorney Ashmead as to whether the prisoners should be held for murder in Lancaster County, or for treason against the United States. Commissioner Ingraham sustained the latter charge. The difficulty was adjusted by an agreement that each party should make its own arrests. Some forty-five United States Marines who went to Christiana were in command of Lieutenants Watson and Jones. United States Marshal A. E. Roberts had a civil posse of fifty. There were county constables and deputies sheriff on the scene. With these three detachments landed in a little country village and scouring the surrounding farms, of whose inhabitants half the many blacks had fled the State and the other half were in hiding, and the whites mostly suspected of sympathy with the fugitives, a local reign of terror ensued; “the valley” was in a state worse than subjection to martial law. The tendency of a “little brief authority” is toward abuse of it; and the class of persons easily secured for the service then required of temporary officers of the law was not such as to insure delicacy of treatment or tender consideration for the objects against whom their summary processes were directed. Whites and blacks, bond and free, were rather roughly handled; few households in the region searched were safe from rude intrusion; many suffered terrifying scenes and sounds. [Illustration: CASTNER HANWAY. TRIED FOR TREASON AND ACQUITTED.] Peter Woods, sole surviving sufferer and prisoner of the occasion, was working for Joseph Scarlet when he and his employer were arrested. He tells his story thus to the author of this history: