Albert Hazlett was among several of John Brown’s raiders who were not with their leader on the morning of October 18, 1859 when US Marines attacked the engine house at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Instead, Hazlett and Osborne Anderson watched the short battle from afar. The two men had left Harpers Ferry undetected late on October 17. After they could not find the five raiders who also escaped, they decided to head north – which eventually brought them into southern Pennsylvania. While Anderson lived to publish a book in 1861 about his experience, Hazlett was arrested in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on October 22, 1859. Local authorities, however, at first thought that they had in custody “a man supposed to be Capt. Cook.” (John E. Cook was arrested three days later outside of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania). The initial confusion offered an opportunity for Hazlett, who claimed that he was actually William Harrison and had nothing to do with Brown’s raid. On October 29 Hazlett appeared before a judge in Carlisle on a writ of habeas corpus, but Hazlett’s claim that he was the wrong person failed to convince the judge. While “there is no evidence that we have any man in our custody named Albert Hazlett,” the court ruled that “we are satisfied that a monstrous crime has been committed [and] that the prisoner…participated in it.” Hazlett was sent back to Charlestown, Virginia on November 5 for a trial and was executed on March 16, 1860. Historian David Reynolds, who wrote John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, notes that the judge sent Hazlett back to Virginia “even though the evidence linking him to Harpers Ferry was circumstantial.”
Martha C. Slotten, “The McClintock Slave Riot of 1847,” Cumberland County History 17 (2000): 14-35.
In this definitive account of a June 1847 riot in Carlisle over fugitive slaves, Martha C. Slotten explains how two slaveowners from Hagerstown, Maryland – James Kennedy and Howard Hollingsworth – arrived in Cumberland County, caught three fugitive slaves in Shippensburg, and then encountered disaster when they were hauled into court at the county seat for kidnapping. Slotten narrates the complicated legal maneuvers that resulted in a temporary judicial victory for the Maryland slaveholders but then produced a riot in the Carlisle town square that fatally wounded Kennedy. In her wide-ranging article, Slotten provides vivid details about Dickinson College professor John McClintock, accused (falsely) of organizing the disturbance, free black residents in Carlisle who actually spearheaded the resistance, and the subsequent legal odyssey of those who were at first convicted but later released from prison by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in what became a dramatic blow to the federal fugitive slave system and a ringing endorsement for northern personal liberty statutes.
This essay has been posted online with permission from the Cumberland County Historical Society.
John Weigel, “‘Americans Shall Rule America!’ The Know-Nothing Party in Cumberland County,” Cumberland County History 15 (1998): 3-18.
John Weigel, “Free Soil: The Birth of the Republican Party in Cumberland County,” Cumberland County History 17 (2000): 36-57.
John Weigel, “In Defense of Union and White Supremacy: The Democratic Alternative to Free Soil, 1847 – 1860,” Cumberland County History 17 (2000): 103-117.
In a series of three essays John Wesley Weigel traces the political history of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania between the late 1840s and the Republican victory in the Presidential election of 1860. Weigel’s articles are based in large part on primary sources, in particular three local newspapers: Carlisle (PA) Herald , Carlisle (PA) American Volunteer, and the Shippensburg (PA) News. All three articles include extensive endnotes. Weigel’s essay of the rise of the Republican party in Cumberland county includes two maps and a graph related to voter turnout. In addition, Weigel provides two detailed charts that breakdown Cumberland county votes by party between 1839 and 1873.
These essays have been posted online with permission from the Cumberland County Historical Society.
Dickinson College‘s 1860 commencement exercises occurred on Saturday evening, July 7, 1860. Two local papers’ contrasting reports on the evening demonstrate the partisan nature of nineteenth century newspapers. The Carlisle paper, The Herald, founded by Ekuries Beatty in 1799 originally supported the Whig party, but by 1860 printed articles with a strong Republican bias. In contrast the American Volunteer (another Carlisle paper) founded by William B. and James Underwood in 1814, reported the Democrat Party’s view of the news. The Volunteer charged Dickinson’s commencement speakers with attacking the “vulnerable” democratic president James Buchanan, himself a Dickinson alum from “when the institution was worthy of the name of a college.” According to the Volunteer many of the commencement speeches were full of dangerous “Abolitionist preaching” which must “be stopped.” Mr. George A. Coffey, of Philadelphia, spoke at an alumni gathering on the Wednesday before commencement and particularly offended the writers of the Volunteer who labeled his speech as “fierce and outrageous.” While the Herald admitted that Mr. Coffey introduced “topics which were offensive to many in the audience,” the paper concluded “it was a masterly speech.” Overall, the Herald presented a very different picture of the commencement exercises, carefully listing the names of the student speakers followed by a brief, usually complimentary, analysis of their speeches. The two Carlisle papers’ distinctly partisan accounts of Dickinson’s 1860 commencement reflect the political spin of the press throughout the Civil War era.
For modern scholarship on the subject of partisanship and the press see David T. Z. Minchin’s Just the Facts: How “Objectivity” Came to Define American Journalism (1998). The Library of Congress also provides an online newspaper directory to find more information on newspapers from across the country.
When Democrats held a rally in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on October 6, 1860, the Carlisle (PA) American Volunteer reported that no one had been ready for the “overwhelming avalanche” of delegates from “every town and township in the county.” Over 8,000 people filled the streets before noon, according to some estimates. The American Volunteer backed Senator Stephen Douglas and supported this event as a means to rally Democratic voters before a critical election. In the months before the election, the American Volunteer tried to convince Cumberland County residents that the Republican party represented a serious threat. “The election of LINCOLN will be the death-knell to our Republic,” as the American Volunteer warned. As Republican “Wide Awake” groups held parades in northern cities, the American Volunteer reported that “each man carried a six-barreled revolver” in order to demonstrate that “LINCOLN and his party are determined to carry out their sectional doctrines at all hazards and at any sacrifice.” The American Volunteer saw Republicans as a “sectional Abolition party” which was determined to “humble the South [and] root out slavery.” If Republicans carried out their plan, the American Volunteer predicted that “every State in the Union will be bathed in blood.” Only a Democratic victory in November 1860 would ensure a future for the Union. If Lincoln won, the American Volunteer observed that it “will be regarded as a declaration of war.” Yet the American Volunteer’s arguments failed to convince a sufficient number of Cumberland County voters – Lincoln ended up with a 400 vote majority. “A long dreary winter is ahead,” the American Volunteer predicted.
The Cumberland Valley played a significant role in America’s Civil War. This region of Pennsylvania provided sanctuary to runaway slaves and even participants in John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry. When the war began, local residents rushed to join the Union army. Area families made deep sacrifices for the war effort culminating with the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in summer 1863. Southern troops passed through the valley, occupied communities, skirmished with militia and sometimes even shelled towns. With the Union triumph in 1865, came relief and a “new birth of freedom” but not a final answer about how Americans defined equality. Frederick Douglass visited in 1872, for example, but found himself excluded from segregated dining rooms.
In 1848 Maryland slaveowner Mary M. Oliver filed a lawsuit in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania against Daniel Kauffman and two associates for helping thirteen fugitive slaves escape. Early in October 1847 two families of slaves – four adults and nine children – left Williamsport, Maryland and headed north into Pennsylvania. As “their master had died and their mistress was going to sell them,” Joseph Whitcomb explained at Kauffman’s trial that “they thought it was best to run off while they had a chance.” Eventually the fugitive slaves arrived in Chambersburg and found George Cole, a free black resident. On October 18 Cole helped the two families get to Kauffman’s farmhouse. Kauffman, who lived in Boiling Springs with his family, had started helping fugitives in 1837 when he was nineteen. Apparently the families hid in a wagon and later that night Kauffman took them to Stephen Weakley, who helped them continue on their trip north. While Mary Oliver’s cousin John Stake determined that the fugitives had stopped at Kauffman’s house, he could not track their movement after that point. As he later testified, Stake told Kauffman’s wife Catharine that “[he] intended to bring suit against Mr. Kaufman for harboring and aiding those colored persons.”
In November 1848 Judge Samuel Hepburn presided as the trial started at the Cumberland County Courthouse in Carlisle. “A great number of witnesses were produced by [Oliver’s] counsel, who proved that the slaves were brought…to the barn of Kauffman, and after remaining there a part of the night, were taken in his wagon across the Susquehanna River,” as the (Bellows Falls) Vermont Chronicle reported. Yet some witnesses had to be coerced to testify against Kauffman. Some of the “immediate neighbors of Kauffman” had “obstinately refused to answer any questions or inquiries,” but the Chronicle explained that “after remaining [in jail] a short time, they concluded it was better to come forward and give evidence.”
Later that month Judge Hepburn pronounced the defendants guilty and fined Kauffman $2,000. Kauffman, however, hired Thaddeus Stevens and appealed the decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In 1849 the Boston (MA) Courier reported that Judge Hepburn’s ruling had been reversed because “state courts have no jurisdiction” and “that the action should have been brought in the Federal courts.” While the slaveowners filed a lawsuit later that year in federal court, a jury was unable to reach a decision. Another trial took place in federal court in 1852, but this time Kauffman lost and Judge Robert Grier fined him $4000. Newspapers around the country had been following the case and published reports about the outcome. The Rochester (NY) Frederick Douglass’ Paper described Judge Grier as a “judicial tyrant” and noted that “no slave case in the United States has been disposed off more infamously than this.” In addition, abolitionist groups raised money to assist Kauffman and other defendants pay the fine. Joseph Barker, who lived in Salem, Ohio, called on “Anti-Slavery friends” to donate money to ensure that “the pro-slavery monsters [did not] have the pleasure of thinking that they have either ruined a man for harboring a fugitive, or frightened others from imitating his example.” Kauffman lived in Boiling Springs until he died in July 1902, but after the trial he apparently stopped working on the Underground Railroad.
Stephen Burg, “Shippensburg’s Locust Grove African-American Cemetery,” Cumberland County History 26 (2009): 33-47.
Professor Stephen Burg explores the history of the Locust Grove African-American Cemetery in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania in this article. The grandson of Shippensburg’s founder gave the land, which had been used as a slave burial ground, to the town’s black residents in 1842. Burg also provides details on some of the individuals buried in this cemetery (also known as North Queen Street Cemetery), including several veterans of the United States Colored Troops. In addition, Burg includes an index of the headstones in this cemetery.
This article has been posted online with permission from the Cumberland County Historical Society.
Richard J. Coyer, ed., “Carlisle Barracks—1854-1855: From the Letters of Lt. Thomas W. Sweeny, 2nd Infantry,” Cumberland County History 16 (1999): 100-115.
This article contains nine letters to Ellen Sweeny about Lt. Sweeny’s experiences and acquaintances at the Carlisle Barracks. Editor Richard J. Coyer introduces the letters with a biographical sketch of Sweeny, including details about his military service from the Mexican War through Reconstruction. This article includes extensive notes where Coyer indentifies figures and provides context for Sweeny’s letters.
This essay has been posted online with permission from the Cumberland County Historical Society.
Richard J. Coyer, ed., “Carlisle Barracks—1854-1855: From the Letters of Lt. Thomas W. Sweeny, 2nd Infantry,” Cumberland County History 16 (1999): 100-115.
This article contains nine letters to Ellen Sweeny about Lt. Sweeny’s experiences and acquaintances at the Carlisle Barracks. Editor Richard J. Coyer introduces the letters with a biographical sketch of Sweeny, including details about his military service from the Mexican War through Reconstruction. This article includes extensive notes where Coyer indentifies figures and provides context for Sweeny’s letters.
This essay has been posted online with permission from the Cumberland County Historical Society.
