Project Scroll Research Note 2026-35
The Kentucky raid at Cassopolis in the papers of 1847: a messenger on the Sabbath, Charles E. Stuart for the Kentuckians, and a South Bend report
Summary
In August 1847 a party of Kentuckians raided the Quaker settlements of Calvin and Penn townships, Cass County, Michigan, for freedom seekers, and were themselves arrested; at a hearing at Cassopolis the nine captives were set free. Three reports of 1847 that the county histories and modern accounts do not use bear on it. A Centreville report reprinted in the Signal of Liberty of 4 September says “A messenger arrived in this village on Sabbath evening last, to procure the legal services of C. Gurney Esq.,” and that “the Kentuckians were still brandishing their bowie-knives”: the case was undecided on a Sunday. The Jackson Patriot, quoted in the Signal of 6 November, says Charles E. Stuart of Kalamazoo, newly elected to Congress and later a United States senator, “got into his buggy, went over to Cassopolis,” “held a consultation with the Prosecuting Attorney,” and “the complaint of kidnapping was dismissed”; the 1882 county history knows him only as the lawyer in whose office the Kentuckians’ spy read law. And the South Bend Register of 27 August, reprinted on the front page of the New-York Daily Tribune of 11 September, reports that at Cassopolis “another lot of these hunters” had to “back out and call it a drawn game, leaving their slaves to the liberty they had achieved.”
The record
“Slaveholding Outrages,” Signal of Liberty (Ann Arbor), 4 September 1847, p. 2, quoting a Centreville paper
“A messenger arrived in this village on Sabbath evening last, to procure the legal services of C. Gurney Esq.” … “the Kentuckians were still brandishing their bowie-knives and making terrible threats.”
Ann Arbor District Library · See the record
“Charles E. Stuart,” Signal of Liberty (Ann Arbor), 6 November 1847, p. 2, quoting the Jackson Patriot
“Mr. Stuart got into his buggy, went over to Cassopolis” … “held a consultation with the Prosecuting Attorney” … “and the complaint of kidnapping was dismissed.”
Ann Arbor District Library · See the record
New-York Daily Tribune, 11 September 1847, p. 1, “Runaway Slaves,” from the South Bend (Ind.) Register of 27 August 1847
“At Cassopolis another lot of these hunters were stopped in their efforts to take back some runaways, and were obliged, to save themselves from trouble, to back out and call it a drawn game, leaving their slaves to the liberty they had achieved.”
Library of Congress, Chronicling America · See the record
History of Cass County, Michigan (Chicago: Waterman, Watkins & Co., 1882), the Kentucky raid
“Early in 1847, a young man who gave his name as Carpenter, arrived in Kalamazoo, and entered the law office of Charles E. Stewart, for the alleged purpose of studying law.”
Internet Archive · See the record
What it changes
The Kentuckians are shown with a lawyer of standing, Charles E. Stuart, whose part at Cassopolis no county history records; the case is shown still undecided on a Sunday, which, read with the Niles letter of 21 August that already reports the nine freed, points to Friday 13 August for the raid and Monday 16 August for the hearing; and an Indiana paper is shown reporting the outcome within two weeks.
Limits
The Centreville report is undated and its paper unnamed; by itself its “Sabbath evening last” could be 15 or 22 August, and the dating rests on the Niles letter. The Jackson Patriot printed its account as a charge against Stuart in an election season. The South Bend report gives no day and names no one at Cassopolis. The South Bend item was also reprinted in the New-England Religious Herald (18 September) and the Green-Mountain Freeman (23 September 1847).
What we searched before calling it new
The county histories of 1875, 1882 and 1906; the House Divided Project’s stampede pages (Wingert); Chardavoyne (2004); Marty (2022, 2026); the Underground Railroad Society of Cass County’s pages and Yawkey’s book; Wikipedia; the Clio; full-text searches of the Signal of Liberty at the Ann Arbor District Library and of Chronicling America (October 2026).
Our standard for calling a finding new is set out in How we research, and how we weigh each kind of record in Scrollsigns.
“New” means new to print as far as we can tell. If you know of an earlier publication, tell us and we will credit it here and raise the note’s version.
Project Scroll is independent research. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the Underground Railroad Society of Cass County, and it does not speak for the society. The society did not commission, review or approve this page. Its name is used only to identify it, and its history here is drawn from the published and public records cited on this page; nothing on this page is a statement about the society’s present management, finances or conduct. People active today are named only in the public roles the sources give them. Project Scroll welcomes sponsorship, collaboration and contributed articles; sponsors and collaborators are always credited, and the research stays independent.
Works cited
Earlier work, catalogues and databases named in this note, besides the records quoted above.
- Michael Urbanski, “The Kentucky Raid of 1847,” Project Scroll (2026). https://projectscroll.com/news/the-kentucky-raid-of-1847/
The full story
The finding is set out in context, with the rest of its sources, in The Kentucky Raid of 1847. In the discoveries register:
How to cite this note
Michael Urbanski, “The Kentucky raid at Cassopolis in the papers of 1847: a messenger on the Sabbath, Charles E. Stuart for the Kentuckians, and a South Bend report,” Project Scroll Research Note 2026-35, version 1 (5 November 2026), https://projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-35/. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23968703.
BibTeX
@techreport{urbanski202635,
author = {Urbanski, Michael},
orcid = {0009-0006-8183-5828},
title = {{The Kentucky raid at Cassopolis in the papers of 1847: a messenger on the Sabbath, Charles E. Stuart for the Kentuckians, and a South Bend report}},
institution = {Project Scroll},
type = {Project Scroll Research Note},
number = {2026-35},
year = {2026},
month = {nov},
url = {https://projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-35/},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23968703},
note = {Version 1}
}