On April 1, 1858, Blairsville's former physician Dr. Robert M. S. Jackson and his travelling companion Mr. Peter Lesley encountered a mob of Blairsville citizens attacking two slave catchers and a deputy US Marshal who had come to Blairsville in search of Richard Newman, a runaway slave from Virginia. Jackson and Lesley, described as good Christian men and ardent Abolitionists, interceded on behalf of the slave catchers because they feared the men would be killed. Although beaten and pelted with rocks and sticks, the slave catchers and marshal were saved by the combined efforts of Jackson, Lesley, Blairsville's Mayor C.C. Davis, and Constable Wilkinson. After the slave catchers were driven out of town, Jackson and Lesley continued to the Blairsville PRR Depot, where they encountered Blairsville's Vigilance Committee. Lesley later wrote to Theodore Parker that thirty armed men were concealed in the depot, fifty more in the barn, and the woods were full, and that three thousand good and true men could be concentrated in thirty-six hours at any point in Indiana County.