Bloody Dawn

The Christiana Riot occurred in Pennsylvania, near the Maryland border, in 1851. The Fugitive Slave Law, passed in 1850 as part of the famous Compromise of that year, granted the right of Southern slaveholders to recover and have returned to them runaway slaves, even if they had fled into territories in the North that were free of slavery. In this incident, four slaves escaped from the farm of Edward Gorsuch in Maryland and fled to Pennsylvania. When Gorsuch and a posse pursued them, a gun battle occurred in Christiana in which Gorsuch and several of his party were killed. The slaves subsequently escaped to Canada. The Pennsylvania courts refused to prosecute anyone involved in the riot on the slaves' side, nor were the courts prepared to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law.

The Christiana Riot became a cause celebre, with the South denouncing the Pennsylvania courts and treating Gorsuch as a martyr. Slaughter sees the Riot as a key event leading to the Civil War, for it indicated that the nation was incapable of resolving disputes over slavery without resorting to force that eventually led to the sectional war. The book also puts the Riot in the context of the overt racism that existed in America, both north and south, in these pre-Civil War years.