“Dear Mother,

…This place is very healthy now. I know of no disease or sickness at all except among a few old people. We had a great many alarms of fire a few days ago, a party of fellows from Phil. came up here and threatened to burn this place down but they were discovered too soon. They have had a watch out since and nothing is heard of them now. The place is not large enough for such persons to do any injury to it...”

Why did the writer not mention the cause of the threatened arson? Mary Louisa Harbaugh was the newly-married young wife of Rev. Henry Harbaugh, a minister of the German Reformed Church, a conservative of Swiss-German descent who was a prolific writer and orator but was remarkably silent on the subject of slavery.  On the other hand, Mrs. Harbuagh’s father, a prominent Lewisburg lawyer, was an adamant Abolitionist who had broken with the Democratic Party in 1840 to support the Free Soil presidential candidacy of James Birney.  Maybe the young woman, 10 years younger than her husband, thought it best to avoid the subject for the sake of domestic harmony.

But it would not be surprising if Lancaster and the neighboring town of Columbia, 11 miles to the west, were favorite targets of pro-slavery fanatics. Lancaster was the home of Thaddeus Stevens, one of the most vehement “radical” abolitionists in the US Congress, and, even before the passage that year of the Fugitive Slave Act, the city was an important way station of the Underground Railroad fugitives who proceeded from there to Columbia to cross the Susquehanna River, counting on assistance from the large free Black population.  This notoriety must have attracted pro-slavery “incendiaries” who found arson a convenient weapon.

Perhaps the subject of slavery, which often caused dissension within the German Reformed Church, was also a sensitive topic throughout the community. The Lancaster newspaper only reported that week that some “young scamps” had attempted to set fire to a building near the Rail Road. But only a young Black man was arrested on suspicion of arson, soon being released “for want of sufficient evidence.”  The day after Mrs. Harbaugh wrote this letter, a large fire did rage in Columbia, burning down nine houses of “indigent” families, as well as the offices of the Columbia Spy newspaper. (“Spy” in the title was allegedly a subliminal reference to the city’s reputation as a secret refuge for escaped slaves.) The Lancaster paper noted only that this was “the work of incendiaries”, who were seen running from the scene before they could be arrested.