The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America, (Hardcover)

<b>For fans of <i>Master Slave Husband Wife</i> and <i>Django Unchained </i>comes the extraordinary forgotten story of an event known in its day as "the first shots of the Civil War," from the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Dr. Mütter's Marvels</i>.</b> <p>The year, 1851. The place, a Quaker farming community turned Underground Railroad stronghold, where a Maryland enslaver had journeyed in pursuit of four men who'd fled his plantation years before. In a few hours, he'd be dead...and twenty-seven men from the village of Christiana would be rounded up and put on trial. Not for his murder, but for <i>treason</i>--for waging war against the United States, at a time when it was a crime against the government to obstruct an enslaver looking to reclaim his "property." </p><p>This is story of what happened in Christiana that September morning--and in the ensuing "trial of the century," which saw the president himself advise the prosecution on strategy and a sitting congressman serve as lead attorney for the defense. But <i>The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker</i> is also a much larger tale, one spanning decades, following a whole startlingly diverse community of abolitionists in their fight to convince their fellow Americans of the subversive idea that now found itself on trial: that the nation ought to live up the ideals it was founded on, and respect all men as equals. </p><p>It's a story that whisks readers from the quiet farmlands of Lancaster County--where a self-emancipated man named William Parker, whom legend had it bullets could not kill, rallied his neighbors to ride out each night to battle the slavecatchers who stalked their countryside--to Philadelphia's genteel Society Hill, where socialite Harriet Forten Purvis had the ear of the mayor (and a cellar filled with fugitives). It's stylish, propulsive, intimately human tale of bravery, ingenuity, and hope--and of ordinary people with little in common who came together to stand against injustice...and won.</p>

• The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America, (Hardcover)
• Author: Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
• ISBN: 9781668035931
• Format: Hardcover
• Publication Date: 2026-09-08
• Page Count: 448