A federal jury in 1851 refused to convict Christiana resistors despite treason charges

Evidence

The judge’s instructions to the jury, however, emphasized that those in what would be called the Battle of Christiana were just trying “to protect one another from what they termed kidnappers.” Slave catchers, the judge told the jury, had invaded homes and snatched people away, and it didn’t matter if they were “a free man or a slave.” This “odious” business, spurred by the greed of rewards, had driven Black people to “resist…aggressions.” This wasn’t about treason; this was about self-defense compelled by an unjust law. In fact, after that clear repudiation of the Fugitive Slave Act, no one was ever convicted for Edward Gorsuch’s death or the wounding of his son and his nephew. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 799

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: jury nullification as the first meaningful expression of antislavery federal power — the Christiana verdict anticipating the Civil War-era breakdown of federal authority in slavery matters, decades before states’ rights conflicts.
• XREF: This judge’s repudiation of the Fugitive Slave Act connects to the reader’s case-study frame of how origin stories and ‘deviation vs. design’ get adjudicated — here a court itself declaring the law odious.