lly request the chief executive
magistrate of Pennsylvania to take into consideration the
necessity of vindicating the outraged laws, and sustaining the
dignity of the Commonwealth on this important and melancholy
occasion."

Under this high pressure of public excitement, threatening and alarm
breathed so freely on every hand, that fugitive slaves and their friends
in this region of Pennsylvania at least, were compelled to pass through
an hour of dreadful darkness--an ordeal extremely trying. The
authorities of the United States, as well as the authorities of the
State of Pennsylvania and Maryland, were diligently making arrests
wherever a suspected party could be found, who happened to belong in the
neighborhood of Christiana.

In a very short time the following persons were in custody: J. Castner
Hanaway, Elijah Lewis, Joseph Scarlett, Samuel Kendig, Henry Spins,
George Williams, Charles Hunter, Wilson Jones, Francis Harkins, Benjamin
Thomson, William Brown (No. 1), William Brown (No. 2), John Halliday,
Elizabeth Mosey, John Morgan, Joseph Berry, John Norton, Denis Smith,
Harvey Scott, Susan Clark, Tansy Brown, Eliza Brown, Eliza Parker,
Hannah Pinckney, Robert Johnson, Miller Thompson, Isaiah Clark, and
Jonathan Black.

These were not all, but sufficed for a beginning; at least it made an
interesting entertainment for the first day's examination; and although
there were two or three non-resistant Quakers, and a number of poor
defenceless colored women among those thus taken as prisoners, still it
seemed utterly impossible for the exasperated defenders of Slavery to
divest themselves of the idea, that this heroic deed, in self-defence,
on the part of men who felt that their liberties were in danger, was
anything less than actually levying war against the United States.

Accordingly, therefore, the hearing gravely took place at Lancaster. On
the side of the Commonwealth, the following distinguished counsel
appeared on examination: Hon. John L. Thompson, District Attorney; Wm.
B. Faulney, Esq.; Thos. E. Franklin, Esq., Attorney-General of Lancaster
county; George L. Ashmead, Esq., of Philadelphia, representative of the
United States authorities; and Hon. Robert Brent, Attorney-General of
Maryland.

For the defence--Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, Reah Frazer, Messrs. Ford,
Cline, and Dickey, Esquires.

From a report of the first day's hearing we copy a short extract, as
follows:

"The excitement