The True Story of the Actual First Shot Fired in the Civil War

It was the autumn of 1865—a quiet, bitter autumn after four hollowing years of war—when James Gilmore received a manuscript from a ghost. Well, not a ghost exactly. There’d been rumors, of course, about what had become of William Parker.

Résumé

Christiana Riot origins

In September 1851, a violent confrontation known as the Christiana Riot erupted in rural Pennsylvania, near the Mason-Dixon Line—a border separating slave-holding Southern states from free Northern states.

The conflict began when Edward Gorsuch, a wealthy Maryland plantation owner and church elder, arrived with his son Dickinson and a Philadelphia police officer to reclaim four enslaved people who had escaped to freedom.

The enslaved individuals had been living in integrated communities in Pennsylvania, where they were protected by local abolitionists.

The standoff escalated into a battle when Gorsuch and his group were met by armed resistance led by William Parker, a formerly enslaved man who had himself escaped bondage.

The confrontation resulted in the deaths of Gorsuch and his son, with at least twenty others wounded.

Newspapers at the time sensationalized the event, portraying it as a clash between a small group of armed men and a larger, angry mob.