For the first time, however, I think, the subject has been studied with some care and consideration for the facts as disclosed and from the point of view occupied at the home of the Gorsuches. The family of Dr. F. G. Mitchell, whose wife is a daughter of Dickinson Gorsuch, and who now owns the property then of her grandfather, Edward Gorsuch, from which the slaves fled, have been especially gracious and helpful, withal fair and generous in their attitude toward an event which brought brutal death to one ancestor and long suffering to another. J. Wesley Knight, long resident of the neighborhood of Monkton and Glencoe, Maryland, and who was under the roof of the Gorsuch homestead when the slaves escaped, has given me much accurate information as to their previous condition of servitude. If their contribution to the history of the encounter and the events preceding it presents the relation of the Southerners to it in a far more favorable light than has hitherto attended its narration, no fair-minded student of history can object to the whole truth, even at this late day. That the Gorsuch runaways were not heroic and scarcely even picturesque characters; and that their owners were humane and Christian people, and not the brutal slave traders and cruel taskmasters who figured in much of the anti-slavery fiction, can no longer be doubted. But if the Lancaster County Historical Society exists for any purpose it is illustrated in its apt motto: “History herself as seen in her own workshop.” Every such shop must show some chips and filings; and occasionally the more these abound the better will be the craftsman’s product. I cannot hope--and I certainly do not desire--this should be the “last word” about the “Christiana Riot”; but the occasion of its Sixtieth Anniversary and the Commemoration seemed to call for a historical review up to date; and the story of its few survivors had to be caught before it was lost. It may be confidently predicted that when our long-looked-for local Stronghand in imaginative literature shall seek for a theme near at home, he will find it in the dramatic story of the “Christiana Riot”; or when some gifted Lancaster County Son of Song shall arise and strike the trembling harp strings, the scene of his epic will follow the winding Octoraro and lie along the track of the Fugitive Slave. CHAPTER II. THE LAW OF THE LAND. The Early Compromises of the Constitution--Pennsylvania’s Move Toward Abolition--The Act of 1826--The Prigg Case--Border Troubles--The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850--Wrongs of Escaped Slaves and Rights of Their Owners.