William Camp Gildersleeve— Wilkes-Barre’s Ardent Abolitionist

This is the first in a series of articles about the people featured in Inspired By Their Voices: Poetry from Underground Railroad Testimonies. Although the work, published by Mammoth Books, includes some biographical information, the articles will go into more depth about these courageous and principled individuals who risked their personal freedom, social standing and financial well-being to do what they knew was right.

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“Do you know this man Gildersleeve of Wilkesbarre?” 

US Supreme Court Justice Grier asked this question of an associate, John Butler, sometime in 1851. Butler replied that indeed he did, that Gildersleeve was a respectable merchant, and a conscientious, good man.  Grier said he understood Gildersleeve harbored enslaved fugitives and gave them arms, to which Butler replied, “He may harbor negroes, but I think he would not arm them.” Grier then gave Mr. Butler a chilling message for Gildersleeve: “If he, Gildersleeve, should ever be brought before me, I will hang him.” Since Judge Grier presided over the 3rd Circuit Court, which included Pennsylvania, the threat was real.  

Butler delivered the Judge’s ominous message to William Camp Gildersleeve. Two years later, Butler attested to this extraordinary conversation through an affidavit taken by the Luzerne County Justice of the Peace, just as Gildersleeve was preparing to testify before that very same Judge in the matter the papers had dubbed “The Wilkesbarre Fugitive Slave Case.” The timing was deliberate: Gildersleeve’s allies wanted to show that Judge Grier was not impartial.

There was a lot at stake — even more than Gildersleeve’s personal safety.

The court case requiring Gildersleeve’s presence had garnered national attention, dramatically highlighted the controversy of the draconian Fugitive Slave Law passed in 1850. It concerned the actions of three US marshals — Deputies John Jenkins and James Crossin, and Marshal George Wynkoop — who had crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania and proceeded northeast to Wilkes-Barre. They had a warrant for the capture of a runaway, William Thomas, on behalf of his owner, a Virginian named Isham Keith.

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It is easy to see why the dramatic events taking place on September 3, 1853, captured the attention of the increasingly divided country. It all started in the restaurant of the Phoenix Hotel, on River Street overlooking the Susquehanna. Thomas, who had settled in the town, was clearing tables when the marshals attempted to capture him. What happened next was reported in several papers, but not unlike media today, the facts were slanted depending on the political alignment of the editors. Papers sympathetic to the Southern Democratic defense of slavery and supportive of the Fugitive Slave Law downplayed any mention of the force used by the marshals and emphasized the efforts that Thomas made to avoid capture. He armed himself with a knife and fork from one of the set tables, and violently resisted arrest, they reported. On the opposite end of the spectrum, readers of abolitionist papers, African American journals and sympathetic Republican presses were told that the federal officers used extreme force, handcuffing and severely beating the fugitive, before he broke away, half-shackled, and fled to the river, where he waded out up to his neck.

While all versions of the confrontation agreed that the marshals discharged their pistols, some said they only shot in the air to warn Thomas as he waded out into the Susquehanna. Others claimed that they shot at him, and that he suffered a bullet wound to the neck.

A crowd quickly gathered, some clearly hostile to the efforts of the officers. Bleeding, Thomas began to wade upstream, encouraged by supporters on shore. The federal agents, sensing that their effort was futile, and probably concerned about the growing and disapproving audience, left the scene.

But that was not the end of the story.

On October 4, a warrant of arrest was served on Deputies Jenkins and Crossin, charging them with a riot, and assault and battery against William Thomas, with the intent to kill him. (Wynkoop was not served, as he was not in the immediate area.) The warrant was issued by Gilbert Burrows, a Justice of the Peace for the borough of Wilkes-Barre, on the oath of none other than William Camp Gildersleeve.

Instead of being tried in a Pennsylvania State courtroom as the borough had hoped, the men were brought before Grier’s US Circuit Court in Philadelphia through a writ of habeas corpus, used to wrest control of the case from the State and bring it into the jurisdiction of the federal government. The case became a test of the Fugitive Slave Law and state sovereignty.

It also meant that Gildersleeve again came to the Judge’s attention, who made it known:

“If this man Gildersleeve fails to make out the facts set forth in the warrant of arrest,
I will request the prosecuting attorney of Lucerne county to prosecute him for perjury.
I know that the United States have a limited authority, but where they have it, it is clear,
undoubted and conclusive that theirs is a sovereign authority. If any two-penny
magistrate… can come in and cause to be arrested the officers of the United States
whenever they please, it is a sad state of affairs.”

Unsurprisingly, Grier dismissed the charges against the deputies on the grounds of insufficient evidence. There were those that believed the Judge should have recused himself from presiding, since he had threatened Mr. Gildersleeve with hanging a few years prior.

The drama didn’t end there. There were further legal machinations that are not critical to this story. In the meantime, after recovering from his wounds with help from neighbors, William Thomas escaped to Canada. Mr. Gildersleeve remained a household name for at least a period of time, until the “Wilkesbarre Fugitive Slave Case” faded from the front page. The great orator Frederick Douglass memorialized the actions of the townspeople who had interfered with thedeputies’ actions, nursed William Thomas to health, and orchestrated his escape. “There, in immortal splendor, Wilkes-Barre will remain,” he penned, “until the Almighty has allowed us to work out the most glorious triumph of Liberty in America.”

A visitor to Wilkes-Barre today can read a plaque erected on East Ross Street near the site of Mr. Gildersleeve’s dry goods store: “Prominent merchant and ardent abolitionist significant to the Underground Railroad in Wilkes-Barre. He provided refuge to fugitive slaves at his home and business near here. In 1853, Gildersleeve testified in a U.S. Supreme Court case, Maxwell vs. Righter, in which a fugitive, William Thomas, was shot and wounded by deputy U.S. marshals. The case and his testimony received national attention, especially in African American newspapers.”

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As compelling as they were, the circumstances surrounding the highly charged and divisive Fugitive Slave Case, and Gildersleeve’s role in it, are not what led me to write the poem about Wilkes-Barre’s ardent abolitionist in the book Inspired By Their Voices. Instead, his poem draws from stories going back nearly twenty years earlier, and speaks to Gildersleeve’s unwavering anti-slavery activism over many decades. In fact, the poem named for William C. Gildersleeve combines two stories; one in 1837, and the other two years later.

In the 1830s, tensions between slave and free states had been steadily building, with abolitionist organizations becoming increasingly active in the courts, on the pubic lecture circuit and in print. In January of 1837, abolitionists in Wilkes-Barre invited a prominent anti-slavery speaker, Reverend John Cross (1797-1885) to give a lecture. Cross was active in the American Anti-Slavery Society.

He was not welcomed, as this letter to a local newspaper demonstrated:

“Having understood that a Mr. Cross, professing himself to be a minister of that Gospel 

proclaims peace on earth and good will to men, had arrived as an agent or missionary 

from a society of fanatics called Abolitionists…the people of the county assembled to 

express their abhorrence and detestation of the doctrines of the Abolitionists, and their

utter content of the individual who has been so base and depraved as to undertake

such an agency… We assure the slave holding states that our warmest feelings and 

sympathies are enlisted on their behalf…

The Anti-Abolitionists met to determine what actions they would take to squelch Reverend Cross’s activities. Enter Mr. Gildersleeve, who offered Reverend Cross the use of his home. This led to what Gildersleeve would call a “disturbance” in a letter to the papers, but what amounted to a destructive mob taking paintings from his walls and furniture from his rooms. 

But Gildersleeve was not so easily dissuaded from his anti-slavery passion.  Two years later, he invited another prominent abolitionist, Charles C. Burleigh (1810-1878) to speak on March 11.  A room had been reserved in the county courthouse for the event.  After the lecturer and his supporters arrived, they were confronted by a gang determined to disrupt Burleigh’s speech. The meeting ended abruptly with Burleigh hastily retiring to a tavern a mile out of town.  When he returned the next day to Wilkes-Barre at Gildersleeve’s request, he was accosted, and held at a local establishment until his stagecoach arrived.  The locals even paid his fare to make sure of his departure. 

Or course, Mr. Gildersleeve too became a target of the anti-abolitionist crowd.  According to some press accounts, Gildersleeve was enticed from his home by a note the dissenters forged as if it was from Burleigh.  As Gildersleeve made his way to meet Burleigh, the gang seized him, dumped tar and feathers on his head, and “road him on a rail,” parading him for ridicule and abuse around the town.   Other accounts claimed that the mob broke into his home and seized him there.  All accounts agreed that he was subjected to punishing physical abuse and derision.

None of this mattered.  Gildersleeve continued his anti-slavery and abolitionist activities, turning his home and store into one of two Underground Railroad stations in Wilkes-Barre and famously providing the oath that led to the arrest of US Marshals on the grounds that they intended to kill a fugitive from slavery.

When William Gildersleeve died in 1871, the Black community of Wilkes-Barre met and passed a series of resolutions praising the “noble deeds of [their] true friend.”  Their resolutions were published in the Scranton Republican and elsewhere.  The ardent abolitionist had lived to see the emancipation of the enslaved and the end of the institution of slavery.  Reflecting on his life, one wonders what was at the heart of his steadfast commitment to the cause he had adopted in spite of the obvious perils. The answer lies in the recollections he shared with anti-slavery activist Theodore Dwight Weld in the book, American Slavery As It Is, published in 1839.  

Gildersleeve was born in Liberty County, Georgia, deep in the heart of slave country.  His father, Cyrus, who was a Presbyterian minister, had moved there from South Orange, New Jersey in 1792, after the Church in Midway was left without a pastor.  Cyrus married a twice-widowed woman and plantation owner, Amarinthia Renchie Norman (1770-1807), becoming a slaveowner himself.  William was their second child out of six that lived past their birth year.

Slavery was all around young William. In his testimony recorded by Weld, Gildersleeve recalled:

Acts of cruelty, without number, fell under my observation while I lived in Georgia. I will mention but one. A slave of a Mr. Pinkney, on his way with a wagon to Savannah, ‘camped’ for the night by the road side. That night, the nearest hen-roost was robbed. On his return, the hen-roost was again visited, and the fowl counted one less in the morning. The oldest son, with some attendants made search, and came upon the poor fellow, in the act of dressing his spoil. He was too nimble for them, and made his retreat good into a dense swamp. When much effort to start him from his hiding place had proved unsuccessful, it was resolved to lay an ambush for him, some distance ahead. The wagon, meantime, was in charge of a lad, who accompanied the teamster as an assistant. The little boy lay still till nearly night, (in the hope probably that the teamster would return,) when he started with his wagon. After traveling some distance, the lost one made his appearance, when the ambush sprang upon him. The poor fellow was conducted back to the plantation. He expected little mercy. He begged for himself, in the most supplicating manner, ‘pray massa give me 100 lashes and let me go.’ He was then tied by the hands, to a limb of a large mulberry tree, which grew in the yard, so that his feet were raised a few inches from the ground, while a sharpened stick was driven underneath, that he might rest his weight on it, or swing by his hands. In this condition 100 lashes were laid on his bare body. I stood by and witnessed the whole, without as I recollect, feeling the least compassion. So hardening is the influence of slavery, that it very much destroys feeling for the slave.

Weld’s compilation includes other observations by Gildersleeve on the topics of food, clothing, housing and working conditions.  All tell of the horrors he witnessed, leading to his lifelong determination to end the institution of slavery, and help runaways find freedom.  He had this to say about the clothing provided:

It is an everyday sight to see women as well as men, with no other covering than a few filthy rags fastened above the hips, reaching midway to the ankles. I never knew any kind of covering for the head given. Children of both sexes, from infancy to ten years are seen in companies on the plantations, in a state of perfect nudity. This was so common that the most refined and delicate beheld them unmoved.

His mother Amarinthia died in 1807, and Cyrus married another widow, Francis Caroline Wilkinson (1783-1856). The couple added seven children to the growing family, although not all lived to adulthood.  William must have been relieved when the Gildersleeves moved away from Georgia in 1811 to the free state of New Jersey. They lived in Bloomfield, where Cyrus was pastor of the Presbyterian Church from 1812 to 1821.  Cyrus’s final ministry was in Wilkes-Barre, as pastor of the Presbyterian church there. Along with his father, William settled in the town, became an elder of the church, and opened his dry goods store, where he was known to hire formerly enslaved people.  Eventually that store became an important stop on the Underground Railroad, along with the nearby Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church.  

History is a harsh winnower.  The names of the mob leaders who raided Gildersleeve’s house in 1837, who paraded him around the town with tar and feathers in 1839, or castigated him in the newspapers during the Fugitive Slave Case, are long forgotten. None have a plaque acknowledging their contributions to the history of Wilkes-Barre.  But of Gildesleeve, the Scranton Tribute said, “He was one of our oldest and best citizens, known and honored by all men.”  

I honor his memory.

Note: Footnotes with sources for all references and quotes are available upon request.  Email me for a PDF of this post with all footnotes.  I can be reached at patriciathrushart@gmail.com.