Tragic Bi-Ethnic Negro

In January 1847, a single gunshot rang out in Marshall, Michigan. It was not a signal of attack. It was a warning that armed slave catchers had arrived at the home of Adam and Sarah Crosswhite, a Black family who had escaped slavery in Kentucky with their children. The Crosswhites had fled in 1843 after learning that their family could be separated through sale. They settled in Michigan, where their children could attend school and the family began building a new life. But freedom in a free state did not mean they were beyond the reach of slaveholders. Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, enslaved people who escaped could still be pursued across state lines. When four Kentuckians arrived to take the Crosswhites back, Adam fired the warning shot. Neighbors quickly gathered, and the crowd grew to nearly 100 Black and white residents. The slave catchers were prevented from taking the family, giving the Crosswhites time to escape to Detroit and eventually cross into Canada. The confrontation did not end there. Francis Giltner, the man who claimed ownership of the Crosswhites, sued residents of Marshall for interfering with his attempt to recover the family. The case became known as Giltner v. Gorham. After an earlier mistrial, a jury awarded Giltner damages in 1848. The incident became part of the increasingly bitter national conflict over slavery and the rights of people who had escaped it. Just three years later, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which greatly strengthened the federal government's power to pursue escaped enslaved people and punished those who assisted them. The Crosswhite family eventually reached Canada and remained together. Adam later returned to Marshall, where he died in 1878. Today, his story survives as an example of the risks freedom seekers faced even after reaching states where slavery was prohibited, and of the communities that sometimes chose to stand between an escaped family and the people determined to reclaim them.