treason. Fifty, eighty, or a
hundred persons, whether white or black, who are deliberately in
arms for the purpose of resisting the law, even the law for the
recovery of fugitive slaves, are in the attitude of levying war
against the United States; and doubly heavy becomes the crime of
murder in such a case, and doubly serious the accountability of
all who have any connection with the act as advisers,
suggesters, countenancers, or accessories in any way whatever."

In those days, the paper from which this extract is taken, represented
the Whig party and the more moderate and respectable class of citizens.

The following is an extract from a leading democratic organ of
Philadelphia:

"We will not, however, insult the reader by arguing that which
has not been heretofore doubted, and which is not doubted now,
by ten honest men in the State, and that is that the
abolitionists are implicated in the Christiana murder. All the
ascertained facts go to show that they were the real, if not the
chief instigators. White men are known to harbor fugitives, in
the neighborhood of Christiana, and these white men are known to
be abolitionists, known to be opposed to the Fugitive Slave Law,
and _known_ to be the warm friends of William F. Johnston,
(Governor of the State of Pennsylvania). And, as if to clinch
the argument, no less than three white men are now in the
Lancaster prison, and were arrested as accomplices in the
dreadful affair on the morning of the eleventh. And one of these
white men was committed on a charge of high treason, on Saturday
last, by United States Commissioner Ingraham."

Another daily paper of opposite politics thus spake:

"The unwarrantable outrage committed last week, at Christiana,
Lancaster county, is a foul stain upon the fair name and fame of
our State. We are pleased to see that the officers of the
Federal and State Governments are upon the tracks of those who
were engaged in the riot, and that several arrests have been
made.

We do not wish to see the poor misled blacks who participated in
the affair, suffer to any great extent, for they were but tools.
The men who are really chargeable with treason against the
United States Government, and with the death of Mr. Gorsuch, an
estimable citizen of Maryland, are unquestionably _white_, with
hearts black en