e^^ Reading for Children HISTORY. ANTHONY BURNS. 7>u^ /''x.^^^ yVbsHT; !V!AY29188G') CAMBRIDGE : JOHN WILSON AND SON. 5!anibcrsttg i^rrs*. 1886. Copyright, iS86, by N. Moore. ANTHONY BURNS. 1854. I. At about eight o'clock one evening in May, 1854, a man, returning late from his work, walked hurriedly up Court Street. He was glad to be hidden by the falling dusk ; yet the darkness had its dangers, and he glanced into the shadowed door-ways, as he passed, with fear. He might well be afraid ; he was Anthony Burns, the fugitive slave. He had escaped from Richmond some months before, and had come to Boston, hoping that here he could call himself free. But not in Boston was freedom to be found. The Fugitive Slave Law ruled instead. This law allowed a master to claim his slave in any part of the nation to which the friendless creature might have fled. It 4 forbade men to give to the fugitive any aid, shelter, or succor. Anthony Burns might foil his pursuers, but no one could lawfully shield him from them. Even in liberty-loving Mas- sachusetts no man could openly defy them: the law was on their side. Burns, fearing betrayal, kept his story to himself. He knew that he could earn his living wherever he might be, for while he was in Rich- mond he had helped earn a living for his master. In Richmond his wasfes had G^one into another man's purse ; in Boston they would be his own to spend or save. He found work with Coffin Pitts on Brattle Street, and was going on this May evening from Brattle Street to his lodg- ings, which were in a different part of the city. As he hastened through Court Street a sound of running came from behind him. The footsteps overtook him ; a rough hand seized his shoulder. "Stop, old fellow!" cried a voice at his ear. " You broke into the silver-smith's shop last night." 5 Burns denied it. Turning, he saw six men at his back. " You must come along with us," said they ; *' and if you are not the one we want, we will let you go." Among them they pressed him onward, not to a police court, not to a jail, but into the Boston Court House. There he would be under United States' control. Waiting there, supperless, for the *' silver- smith" to arrive. Burns began to suspect the truth. It was no silver-smith who was to confront him, but a dealer in other w^ares. Some slave-hunter, perhaps, from Richmond, or, worse still, his master. Colonel Suttle, from the plantation at Alexandria. After a time steps came down the passage. The door opened, and a man, entering, spoke his name. At the sound of that voice Burns's courage died within him. He felt himself a slave again ; and in the slave's phrase, he answered, " How do you do. Master Charles ? " 6 It was indeed Colonel Suttle who stood before him. On Colonel Suttle's plantation lived a brother of Anthony Burns. Anthony had written to this brother, and the letter had fallen into Colonel Suttle's hands. A letter sent to a freeman would not have been opened by any third person: the law forbade. A letter sent to a slave found no safeguard in the law. Colonel Suttle took Burns's letter, broke its seal, read the contents, and was soon on his way to the North. The letter had been sent to Canada and mailed again from there to Alexandria, so that it bore a Canada postmark; but it was headed " Boston," and told that Burns was at work for Coffin Pitts. Colonel Suttle, therefore, had little trouble in tracing Burns, and was so sure of being able to seize him that he waited for several days, forming all his plans before making any at- tempt to arrest him. He was told that a room in the Court House would be set apart for the 7 safe-keeping of the prisoner, and also found that he could secure a revenue cutter — a gov- ernment vessel — in which to carry Burns away when the trial should be over. The scheme was ripe ; and now Anthon}^ Burns stood face to face witli his master. To show the by-standers that Burns knew him, and would not deny his claim. Colonel Suttle tried to make Burns talk. "Anthony," he said, " how came you here } " Burns muttered something about its being an accident, — he was working on board a ves- sel, got tired, fell asleep, and was carried away. "Did I ever whip you.?" continued Colonel Suttle. " No, sir." " Did I ever hire you out when you did not wish to go ? " " No, sir." " When you were sick, did I not prepare you a bed in my own house, and put you upon it and nurse you ? " " Yes, sir." 8 " Are you willing to go back ? " " Yes, sir." "Do you think I shall have any trouble in taking you back ? " " I don't know, sir." This was enous^h ; Colonel Suttle turned to *iD' go- "I make you no promises, and I make you no threats," he said, and left the room. Through the night Burns had time to weigh his master's words. No threats were needed; he knew what was done to rebellious slaves, — prison, or the lash awaited them. There were stories of slaves who had been beaten to death. To oppose Colonel wSuttle might double the punishment; to submit might lessen it, — this idea now filled his mind, deadening it to all other thoughts. He was benumbed and stupe- fied with despair. In the morning, the men who came to fetch him found him quiet and dull. Though he offered no resistance, they fastened iron hand- cuffs upon his wrists. Then they led him into 9 the court-room, and seated him in the prison- er's dock. If all went well for his master, the trial would be rushed to an end that very day. All had gone well for Colonel Suttle thus far, but he was not to carry Burns off so easily. Word of the arrest had reached the ears of a few earnest men, and, unknown to Burns as he sat there alone and forlorn, the first stir of a mighty protest had already begun. The court -room filled. Burns, looking toward the door, saw a man of his own color coming toward him. One of the guards objected when this man wished to draw near the prisoner, but another allowed him speech. He w^as a minister, a Mr. Grimes. Mr. Grimes talked with Burns for a few moments ; then there was a slight bustle in the court-room ; the Commissioner had come in and was taking his seat. Mr. Grimes ceased speaking, and some one else drew near. This was Theodore Parker. lO Something in Mr. Parker's voice and manner made Burns, dazed as he was, Hsten to his words. " I am a minister," said Mr. Parker, " I have been made minister-at-large in behalf of fugi- tive slaves. Do you not want counsel ? " For Burns, as yet, had no counsel, and un- less he asked in court that some one should defend his case, no one would be appointed. "Do you not want counsel.^" said Theodore Parker. " I shall have to go back," muttered Burns. " If I must go back, I want to go back as easy as I can ; " and his eyes turned restlessly toward his master. A third adviser pressed forward to urge and persuade ; this was Wendell Phillips. Burns was not friendless now. " It can do you no harm to make a defence," persisted Mr. Parker. Burns yielded at last. " You may do as you have a mind to about it," he said to them, weari- ly. Soon after that the examination began. II Burns sat with half unheeding ears. He heard presently : " Time should be allowed the prisoner to recover himself. . . . He is . . . not in a state to say what he wishes to do. . . . He does not know what he is saying." The speaker was Mr. Dana. Mr. Dana and Mr. Ellis were ready to act as his counsel if only he would say that he wished defence. Then the judge ordered the prisoner to be brought to him. Burns rose, and the officers led him to the judge's bench. ^'You may have counsel if you wish it," said the judge; he pointed to Mr. Dana and Mr. Ellis. Burns glanced up timidly, but did not speak. The judge asked again, " Would you like counsel ? " Burns looked piteously into the judge's face, then at his master. Back and forth his glance wavered, until, turning wholly away from Sut- tle, he muttered something under his breath. The judge looked doubtful, but said, "An- thony, I understand you to say you would." 12 " I should," said Burns, in a stronger tone. " Then you shall have it," said Judge Loring. Burns returned to his seat. Mr. Dana and Mr. Ellis asked for time for consultation with their client. Colonel Suttle's counsel fought against delay, but delay was granted. The trial was postponed, and Burns was taken back to his room. 13 II. The news of the capture spread throughout the city. The excitement became intense. The Vigilance Committee spent a day in consultation. Money was raised with the hope that Burns might be bought; but Colonel Suttle, who at first had seemed willing to sell, finally refused to yield Burns upon any terms. What then could be done ? A rescue was not impossible. Fresh in mind was the rescue of Shadrach, a fugitive who had been imprisoned in that very Court House three years before. A party of men had then burst into the court-room and swept Shadrach away without striking a blow. Here were men ready to do the same for Burns. Burns was more strongly guarded ; but these were men who were held in high esteem, and who were well known to the city officials. It seemed to them that they might surround Burns, quell resist- ance by their very presence, and, with the 14 authority of right, wrest him from the hold of that shameful law. But how to reach him ? Hours went by, and nothing was settled. Late in the afternoon, however, a few of the com- mittee agreed that an attempt should be made. Their plan was this. A great indignation meeting was to be held that night at Faneuil Hall. While all good Abolitionists would be supposed to be at the meeting, a few stanch men were to be ready for an attack upon the Court House. Word of the attack was to be carried to the hall ; the large audience, it was thought, would rush to Court Square; there would be an overwhelming crowd ; the guard would be powerless before it. Burns could be hurried from the building and set upon his way to Canada before the morning. Wendell Phillips did not know of the plan ; Parker did, but apparently not very clearly. Evening came. Faneuil Hall was filled. Samuel E. Sewall called the meeting to order, George R. Russell was president, William I. Bowditch and Robert Morris were chosen 15 secretaries. Theodore Parker and Wendell Phillips were among the speakers. " See to it," said Wendell Phillips from the platform, "that to-morrow, in the streets of Bos- ton, you ratify the verdict of Faneuil Hall, that Anthony Burns has no master but his God." " Fellow-subjects of Virginia," began Theo- dore Parker, " Fellow-citizens of Boston, then: A deed which Virginia commands has been done in the city of John Hancock and the ' brace of Adamses.' . . . It is our own fault that it is so. . . . Gentlemen, there is no Boston to-day. There was a Boston once ; now there is a north suburb to the city of Alexandria. . . . Now, I want to ask you what you are going to do? [Here a voice cried, " Shoot ! shoot ! "] There are ways of managing this matter without shooting any- body, ... if we stand up there resolutely, and declare that this man shall not go out of Bos- ton, without shooting a gun [this was received with great applause and cries of " That's it ! "] then he won't go back. Now, I am going to i6 propose that when you adjourn, it be to meet at Court Square, to-morrow morning, at nine o'clock." A few in the audience shouted, " Let's go to-night!" Wendell Phillips, springing to his feet again, bade them "wait until the day-time," saying, " The zeal that won't keep till to-mor- row will never free a slave ! " *' The Court House is now being attacked ! " called a voice from the door-way. " To Court Square," shouted others, in reply. To Court Square the audience streamed, the greater part to look on ; a few, probably, to lend a hand. They were too late. The attempt was tliwarted before they arrived. Had Faneuil Hall been arranged as it now is, with a separate access to the platform, it is very likely that the whole attack would have turned out differently. Then there was no separate entrance ; so that the people on and around the platform, who were the most zeal- ous, had to wait while the whole crowded audi- ^7 ence of more indifferent people left the hall and partly blocked Court Square. One who was at the Square during the attack saw a dozen or fourteen men wrench a heavy beam from the staircase of the Muse- um Building, opposite the Court House, and charge it, end foremost, against the Court House door. Again and again they drew off and charged, hoping to break through the door. The sound of the blows echoed through the night, and the bell of the Court House rang out a loud alarm. Suddenly the heavy folding doors gave way. The men, dropping the beam, rushed up the steps to the threshold. Upon the threshold they were met by the Marshal and his assistants, who were guarding the entrance from within. Shots were heard ; then the attacking party fell back, only two having got inside.^ One of the Marshal's men had been killed ; by whom or how is not yet fully known. The 1 These two were T. W. Higginson and a colored man. i8 open doorway seemed inviting the rescuers to enter, but no aid came from the hall, or from those in the square, and those who had made the breach were too few to do anything more. They gathered, waiting and doubtful, below the steps, while the Marshal and his men with- drew to the inner stairway of the Court House and covered all approach with their cutlasses and revolvers. There was a pause, a hush. Then came the quick tread of a squad of police. Laying about them with their clubs, the officers scattered the crowd, marched up the Court House steps, closed the door anew, and the affair was ended. All chance of rescue was gone, for now Marshal Freeman called United States troops to his aid. " That very night a force of ma- rines was marched over from the Charlestown Navy Yard. In the morning a detachment of troops arrived from Fort Independence. . . . The Mayor of Boston applied for the aid of the State Militia. . . . The militia held the 19 streets while the United States troops held the Court House." ' Again was the Court House barred with chains as when Sims was imprisoned there. The court-room, on the days of the trial was packed with armed men. Soldiers guarded the door. The trial was to have been held on Satur- day, but was postponed once more to the fol- lowing w^eek. It lasted through Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Friday, Judge Loring's decision was pronounced. 1 Frothingham's " Life of Theodore Parker." 20 III. ■ In the early days of the excitement a sum- mons had been sent to the people of the country towns, urging their presence in the city that they might show by their numbers the strength of the feeling against a law which could condemn a fellow-being to so cruel a fate. The summons read : "... Come down then, Sons of the Puritans ! For even if the poor victim is to be carried off by the brute force of arms, and delivered over to slavery, you should at least be present to witness the sacrifice, . . . and then go home and take such action as your manhood and your patriot- ism may suggest. . . . Come with courage in your hearts, but this time with only such arms as God gave you ! " In answer to the summons thousands had thronged the streets during the days of the trial ; on Friday, the crowd was denser than 21 ever. They could only stand as silent pro- testing witnesses; for armed guards met them at every turn ; any attempt at violence would have been wholly useless. At half past seven a cannon was brought into the Square, and planted a little south of the eastern entrance. It was to subdue the crowd. Burns, waiting in the Court House to be taken for the last time before the judge, could not tell how^ the day would end. It might give him freedom, it might send him back to slavery. His counsel, Mr. Dana, and many other people thought that, as the case stood, the judge might decide either way. A few hours would show. Nine o' clock came. Burns w^as taken into the court-room and the judge began his ad- dress. Burns gave heed now to every word. The judge carefully retold the facts of the case as they had come out in the course of the trial. He repeated the words that had passed between Burns and Colonel Suttle on the night of Burns's arrest. When he came to 22 Colonel Suttle's question, "Are you willing to go back ? " and Burns's answer, " Yes, sir," Burns, from the prisoner's stand, shook his head earnestly in denial. It was a long address : at last the decision came. It was against the prisoner. The Fugitive Slave Law had won. Burns heard himself declared to be the slave of Colonel Suttle, to be rendered into Colonel Suttle's hands and withdrawn from the city whensoever Colonel Suttle willed. Then the officers again took him in charge ; hurried him back to his room and kept him there while the streets were made ready for his removal. Soldiers marched down Court Street, cleared Court Square, posted guards at every entrance, and stretched a close row of armed men along each side of the entire route. With their backs to the thronged sidewalks and their faces toward the middle of the street, these soldiers formed a guarded lane through which an unhindered passage could be secured. 23 While the authorities were thus faithful in carrying out the law, other men were lamenting their city's shame. Stores near the Court House were closed ; no business could be at- tended to, and when the decision was made known, one building after another on Court Street and Court Square hung out signs of mourning/ Flags draped with black floated from the office of the " Commonwealth, " lines of crape were stretched across the street. A bell pealed in slow and solemn strokes ; it was the bell of the Brattle Street Church, rung by a man who had been let into the church in secret, and locked in for safety. It tolled as for a public grief. Other church towers took up the knell ; the faces in the streets were sorrowful and stern.^ Those who had pressed near enough saw^ the Court House doors thrown open, and the United States troops file out. Following the troops came twenty special officers, heavily 1 J. A. Andrews's office among the rest. 2 The Mayor, it is said, when asked if the bells might be tolled, refused with a stamp of the foot. They were tolled, notwithstanding 24 armed : they formed a hollow square before the eastern entrance. Burns was then brought forward by Marshal Freeman and placed within the hollow square. Surrounded, first by the Marshal and his aids, then by the twenty officers, with soldiers before and behind. Burns was carried through the streets. Groans and hisses came from the crowds that lined the way. It must be recorded that there were cheers as well. As a last means of creating confusion and effecting a rescue, the new fire alarm was struck just as the procession was about to move. The engine tore down State Street, through the lines of soldiers and the crowds of citi- zens, . . . but the sudden irruption passed, the lines closed up, and the iron phalanx was unbroken.' The procession reached Long Wharf. At the side of Long Wharf was T Wharf, where lay the steamer" John Taylor "and the revenue cutter " Morris." Burns, still guarded by the 1 Frothingham's " Life of Theodore Parker." 25 troops, was put on board the steamer, then secretly placed in the cutter, his captors fearing to let the people know which vessel he was in. It was three o'clock when the ships moved off. The cutter carried Burns to months of cruel suffering in southern prisons ; the steamer went a short distance down the har- bor, and then returned to Castle Island with the troops. The struggle was over. Burns was gone. The crowd in the streets grew gradually less. Quiet settled over the city. It was a defeat for the Abolitionists : an unjust law had been maintained; but the enforcing of the law in the rendition of An- thony Burns w^as one step toward the down- fall of slavery. Judge Shaw said, " No law can stand another such strain." He was right ; the sturdy will of the people had made itself felt, and the test was not applied again. Burns was the last man sent back into slavery by a Boston court. LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 012 026 198 8 \ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 026 198 8