Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class The Rendition of Anthony Burns, Part 2 About this episode Our second episode on the life of Anthony Burns begins with his detention in Boston, which outraged Massachusetts abolitionists. Even after Burns was returned to Virginia to be enslaved once again, his supporters in Boston continued to work for his freedom.
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2:09 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:23 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:25 Tracy V. Wilson? This is the second part of our two-parter about Anthony Burns, inspired by how frequently I have seen a quote about him on social media over the last several months. In part one, we talked about his life in Virginia up until about the age of 20, during which he was enslaved. Then in 1854, Burns escaped aboard a ship bound for Boston. Where we left off, his enslaver, Charles F. Suttle, had learned where Burns was and had filed the necessary paperwork to have him pursued as a fugitive. Slave catcher and deputy marshal Asa O. Butman had arrested Burns under false pretenses on the evening of Wednesday, May 24, 1854,
3:11 Tracy V. Wilson? saying that Burns had been accused of robbing a jewelry store. Burns was taken to the courthouse and held in the jury room where he was kept under guard.
3:21 Holly Frey? While Anthony Burns was being held in the jury room at the courthouse, Charles F. Suttle and William Brent arrived, and they were led in to see him. As we talked about in part one, Burns had previously worked for Brent for a couple of years, and Brent was managing his hiring out in Richmond. So Brent knew Burns and could identify him. Suttle asked Burns why he had run away, and Burns told him he had fallen asleep onboard the vessel where he had been working, and when he woke up, the ship had set sail and carried him off. This, of course, had some elements of the truth, but without an admission that he had been trying to escape.
4:02 Tracy V. Wilson? Then Suttle asked Burns whether he had always been good to him, whether Suttle had given Burns money when he needed it, and Burns answered, quote, "You have always given me 12 and 1/2 cents once a year." This statement would later be used as evidence that Burns knew Settle and that he was the fugitive that Settle was seeking.
4:25 Holly Frey? Since it was late, Burns was held in the jury room overnight to appear before the commissioner on the morning of May 25th. Butman and several of his men stayed in the room to guard him. They had dinner delivered, which they did not share with him. They amused themselves by playing cards and by telling Burns about Thomas Sims, who had been held in the same room after being arrested on April 4th, 1851, about six months after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was signed into law.
4:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Thomas Sims had been enslaved in Georgia, and he was about 17 when he escaped to Boston by stowing away on a ship. Asa Butman had been one of the men involved in his capture. Commissioner George Tichner Curtis had presided over the hearing and had ruled in favor of Sims's enslaver. About 300 armed police and members of the City Watch had escorted Sims to Long Wharf. He was placed aboard a brig called the Acorn, which set sail for Savannah with him aboard on April 12th, returning him to slavery.
5:33 Holly Frey? Abolitionists had made a plan to try to liberate Sims from the courthouse, which they had successfully done in the case of Shadrack Minkins just a couple of months before. In Minkins's case, a group of black men led by Lewis Hayden had burst into the courtroom during his hearing and rescued him. Afterward, Minkins had been moved from one hiding place to another in and around Boston before being successfully taken to Quebec.
6:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Burns's jailers did not tell him about Minkins's successful escape, but that escape is probably why the plan to rescue Thomas Sims had failed. After the liberation of Shadrack Minkins, authorities had prepared for Sims's hearing by draping chains around the courthouse, placing the courthouse under guard, barring all the windows and doors, and garrisoning a militia nearby at Faneuil Hall.
6:28 Holly Frey? Hearing about someone whose story was so similar to his own, who was so close to his own age, who had been held in the same room and then returned to slavery even after people tried to free him, was, as intended, demoralizing for Anthony Burns. When his guards were brought breakfast in the morning, they offered to share it with him, but after all of that, he had no appetite. He was placed in shackles before being taken to the courtroom, where US Marshal Watson Freeman posted guards around him.
7:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Authorities had managed to keep Burns's arrest pretty quiet. That was one of the reasons that Butman had told Burns he was being arrested for robbing a jewelry store. They thought that if they told him the real reason he was being arrested, that he would probably fight back. He might make a much bigger spectacle. He might even be killed in the process. So by the morning of May 25th, Burns's arrest had not really raised much of an outcry.
7:30 Holly Frey? But attorney Richard H. Dana Jr. was passing by the courthouse that morning and heard people talking about what was going on. Dana was a prominent abolitionist. He had helped establish the Free Soil Party and was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee. Dana had previously helped to defend both Thomas Sims and Shadrach Minkins. He did other anti-slavery legal work as well, and he refused to take payment for any of it. He was also well-known because of his 1850 memoir, Two Years Before the Mast, detailing his time on a merchant ship.
8:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Dana made his way into the courtroom, and he offered to represent Anthony Burns. At first, Burns refused, saying, quote, "It will be of no use. They have got me."
8:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Burns also thought that if he did anything other than just comply with what he was told to do, that things would be much harder for him when he was inevitably returned to Virginia.
8:31 Holly Frey? As word of Burns's arrest started to spread around Boston, more people started arriving at the courthouse, including other prominent abolitionists. A minister named Theodore Parker approached Burns, told him who he was, and again, asked if he wanted representation. Burns answered, quote, "I shall have to go back. Mr. Suttle knows me. Brent knows me. If I must go back, I want to go back as easy as I can."
8:59 Tracy V. Wilson? United States Commissioner Edward G. Loring was presiding over this hearing, and his participation in this was complicated. He was acting as a federal commissioner, but he was also a Massachusetts probate judge. Massachusetts had passed a personal liberty law in 1843, after efforts to return a man named George Latimer to slavery. This law prohibited state officials from arresting and detaining, quote, "fugitives from service." So Loring's interpretation was that he was acting in his federal capacity for this hearing, not in his state capacity, which would have prohibited him from being involved.
9:42 Tracy V. Wilson? This same argument was also being made for the Suffolk County courthouse, where Burns was being held and where this hearing was taking place. It was a county courthouse, but it was being used also for federal cases.
9:56 Holly Frey? Although Burns had virtually no rights guaranteed to him under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Loring had some leeway in how he conducted the proceedings. When he entered the courtroom, Dana approached him regarding his offer to represent Burns. Dana said that he thought Burns was terrified, truly paralyzed with fear, and, quote, "in a condition wholly unfit to act for himself." He suggested that Loring call Burns to the bench and try to figure out what his actual wishes were, rather than questioning him while he was sitting right next to Suttle, whose presence was obviously intimidating.
10:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Loring started the hearing. Suttles attorneys were Seth J. Thomas and Edward G. Parker. One of them read the warrant for Burns's arrest, along with a document that had been issued in Virginia, finding that Burns was Suttles's property. William Brent was called to the stand as a witness that Burns was the man who was named in these documents.
10:57 Holly Frey? There was really no legal requirement for a more thorough proceeding than this, or for Burns to have any kind of legal representation. But at this point, Dana stood up. He had no authority to represent Burns in any official capacity, so he addressed Loring as a friend of the court and made a motion that Burns be allowed to have counsel. Suttles's attorneys objected to this, but then another attorney, Charles M. Ellis, made a similar motion to Dana's.
11:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Commissioner Loring asked Burns to be brought to the bench and for his shackles to be removed. He asked whether Burns wanted to make a defense. When Burns did not answer, Loring asked if he would like a delay for a day or two to make a decision. Burns ultimately said that he did, and Loring postponed the proceedings until May 27.
11:48 Holly Frey? Burns continued to be held in the courthouse, in the jury room, manacled and guarded by four men. In the words of his biographer, Charles Emory Stevens, quote, "The interval was industriously employed by these tools of the slaveholder in the livery of the federal government in attempts to lead Burns into making admissions fatal to himself." For example, quote, "They plied him with questions which, quietly assuming the fact that he was Suttles's slave, looked toward information on unimportant points. Thus, they inquired whether Suttles raised or bought him. In this instance, Burns proved too shrewd for them and told them to find out some other way."
12:30 Tracy V. Wilson? He wasn't always shrewd, though. At one point, one of the guards told him that word around town was that Suttles had mistreated him. The state of his hand from when he had been injured working at a sawmill in his early teens was seen as proof of this alleged mistreatment.
12:49 Tracy V. Wilson? The guards said that Settle was very annoyed by this and that it might help things go better for Burns if he wrote a letter setting the record straight. So Burns did this, and then a minister who came to visit him immediately realized what was going on, that this letter was going to be incriminating evidence and demanded that it be destroyed. The guards, of course, refused to destroy the letter, but then Burns said that he had something to add to it. They gave it back to him. He destroyed it himself. We will talk about what was happening outside the courthouse during this delay after we pause for a sponsor break.
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17:11 Tracy V. Wilson? While Anthony Burns was being held in the courthouse, Boston's Committee of Vigilance was working on a plan to free him. This racially-integrated committee had been formed after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to fight back against the act and to try to protect people who were affected by it. The committee monitored southerners who arrived in Boston to figure out if they were there to apprehend somebody or for some other reason. If they heard somebody had escaped and boarded a ship to Boston, they would try to send a smaller vessel to intercept that ship before it got to the harbor. Sometimes they would make up a purportedly legal reason that they needed to get aboard.
17:52 Tracy V. Wilson? They would then try to get that person to shore outside of town rather than in Boston Harbor so that they had a better chance of getting away. The committee also tried to shelter and protect people who arrived in Massachusetts as fugitives, so they had a lot of connections to the Underground Railroad. They had been involved in the efforts to rescue Thomas Sims and Shadrach Minkins in 1851.
18:17 Holly Frey? The committee and other activists in Boston started working on a plan as soon as they heard Burns was being held at the courthouse. They also set a round-the-clock watch on the courthouse in case authorities tried to move Burns somewhere else, or to hold his hearing in the middle of the night to try to avoid spectators.
18:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Members of the committee held secret meetings at Faneuil Hall and Tremont Temple, and two prevailing thoughts emerged. One group thought that they should break into the courthouse and remove Burns by force as soon as possible, as had been done with Shadrach Minkins. Others thought that they should wait until the commissioner announced his decision, and if Burns was going to be returned to slavery, then they should rally support from all over Boston. Fill the streets when he was being taken to the harbor. They would make themselves into a physical human barrier so they could get him to safety in the ensuing chaos. Ultimately, the committee voted in favor of trying to rescue Burns after the hearing
19:22 Tracy V. Wilson? when he was being taken to the harbor, not trying to get him out of the courthouse itself.
19:29 Holly Frey? A public meeting was also planned with announcements in newspapers and notices posted all over the city that read, "A man kidnapped. Public meetings at Faneuil Hall will be held this Friday evening, May 26th at 7 o'clock, to secure justice for a man claimed as a slave by a Virginia kidnapper and now imprisoned in Boston courthouse in defiance of the laws of Massachusetts. Shall he be plunged into the hell of Virginia slavery by a Massachusetts judge of probate?"
20:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 people attended this public meeting. I saw both of those numbers. One of the speakers was George R. Russell, former mayor of Roxbury, who said in part, "The boast of the slaveholder is that he will catch his slaves under the shadow of Bunker Hill. We have made compromises until we find that compromise is concession and concession is degradation." Samuel Gridley Howe also presented a set of resolutions that were adopted by the meeting, including "No man's freedom is safe unless all men are free."
20:41 Holly Frey? Even though the vigilance committee voted to rescue Burns after the hearing, some of the advocates for breaking him out of the courthouse went ahead with that plan, including getting some axes to try to break down the doors. After the public meeting at Faneuil Hall, word spread that people were attacking the courthouse and thousands of people arrived on the scene. Someone grabbed a beam from a nearby construction site to use as a battering ram. As all of this was happening, Burns was placed in the corner of the jury room, farthest away from what was taking place outside.
21:19 Tracy V. Wilson? The people who were attacking the courthouse doors did manage, very briefly, to get through one of them. And Unitarian Minister Thomas Wentworth-Higginson and another man both wound up inside the building. Not for very long, though. They were quickly forced outside again. But during this struggle, several people were injured and 24-year-old Deputy Marshal James Batchelder was fatally wounded. He was either shot or stabbed and he bled to death within minutes.
21:49 Holly Frey? It is not clear exactly what happened. Different physicians who examined the body came to different conclusions, and multiple people believed that they had either fired the fatal shot or had accidentally stabbed him. It is not even clear whether Bachelder was struck by one of the attackers trying to get into the building or one of the people trying to defend the building.
22:13 Tracy V. Wilson? The U.S. Marshal called for federal troops to restore order. This included Marines from Fort Warren and the Charlestown Navy Yard. Multiple people were arrested, and over the next couple of days, nine people were charged with murder, including Higginson, although none of these charges ever came to trial.
22:33 Holly Frey? On May 27th, Burns's hearing resumed, and President Franklin Pierce ordered federal troops to guard the courthouse. Dana and Ellis had been joined by Robert Morris, who we talked about in our episode on Charles Sumner. Morris was one of the first Black attorneys in the United States. They were trying to find a way to shift the legal proceedings from the administrative hearing that was outlined under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to an actual trial with a jury. This would not only give Burns rights and protections he was not entitled to under the Fugitive Slave Act, but it could also potentially lead to a case that could challenge the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act.
23:15 Tracy V. Wilson? One of the things they tried to do was to file a writ of personal replevin, which is somewhat similar to a writ of habeas corpus. With a writ of habeas corpus, authorities who are keeping someone in custody have to produce that person in court. In Massachusetts in 1854, a writ of habeas corpus did not necessarily result in a jury trial, but a writ of personal replevin did. At that trial, under the way this writ worked, it was up to the defendant, meaning in this case, the authorities that were detaining someone, to prove that detention was valid. So the hope was to use a writ of personal replevin
24:00 Tracy V. Wilson? to force Suttle and his attorneys to prove their case in front of a jury.
24:07 Holly Frey? This process took days during which they got another postponement of the hearing. The coroner had been tasked with serving the writ and the first time he tried to do so, the US marshal simply refused, saying that Burns was being held under the legal process outlined in the Fugitive Slave Act. The federal troops who were stationed around the courthouse were also trying to prohibit access to the building. A number of Boston officials, including some of the Board of Aldermen, met with the chief of police to figure out how to serve the writ without the interference of federal troops.
24:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Burns's attorneys were also trying to gather evidence that could raise reasonable doubts if this did get in front of a jury. Like Burns had been identified based on a scar on his face and the one on his hand from when he was injured as a teen. But when William Brent testified about Burns's identity, he said that he had seen Burns in Richmond at the end of March. That was impossible. At the end of March, Burns was already in Boston and there were multiple witnesses from Boston who could attest to that.
25:16 Holly Frey? As the public furor over Burns's detention increased around Boston, the troops who were guarding him started saying that they were fearing for their lives. Some reported taking indirect routes to and from the courthouse with the hope of avoiding demonstrators. Suttle moved from the ground floor of his lodgings to the attic and went around with a bodyguard made up of Harvard students from the South.
25:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Negotiations to secure Burns's freedom were also going on outside the courtroom and on Saturday, May 27th, Suttle agreed to sell him for $1,200. Even though the ultimate purpose of this sale would be to free him, it would have been illegal in Massachusetts. Even so, the Reverend Leonard A. Grimes, pastor at 12th Baptist Church, started working on raising that money. He got subscriptions from wealthy people around Boston, including one that was basically a $400 loan to just enable this transaction to happen, but they would need to raise that money to return it to the donor after the sale was over.
26:25 Holly Frey? Everything seemed to be lining up for Burns to be freed and Suttle signed paperwork agreeing to this sale. But as they were in the US Marshals Office finishing the negotiations, District Attorney Benjamin Hallett arrived and refused to honor that sale. He argued that if Suttle sold Burns to abolitionists, the US government would have no opportunity to recoup the expenses that had already gone into these proceedings. And there would also be no opportunity for restitution in James Batchelder's deaths.
26:58 Tracy V. Wilson? Arguing over this stretched past midnight, at which point it was Sunday, being the Sabbath, and Commissioner Loring told everyone they would have to leave and reconvene on Monday morning, May 29. When they did reconvene that Monday, Suttle said his offer to sell Burns had only been good for May 27, and it had expired when that matter was not settled before midnight. Suttle said he would still sell Burns, but only after the hearing was over and had been found in his favor, and he had returned to Virginia.
27:32 Holly Frey? Although Burns' attorneys were not successful in their efforts to get him a jury trial, he did have a longer hearing than the simple administrative hearing that the law required. Over the next two days, attorneys on both sides submitted their evidence for and against Anthony Burns. Richard Dana also delivered a four-hour closing argument in which he pointed out various contradictions in the testimonies of Suttle and Brent and their legal documents from Virginia, and spelled out arguments Loring could use to justify freeing Burns. This included arguing that since Brent was the one responsible for Burns when he left Virginia, Suttle didn't even have standing to initiate the proceedings
28:17 Holly Frey? to have him returned.
28:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, this whole argument was very explicit. It was like, you can say these things. That is a compelling legal argument to find in Burns' favor. As all of this was happening, on May 30, 1854, President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law.
28:40 Tracy V. Wilson? We talked about this act in our episode on Charles Sumner last year as well. Under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, a dividing line had been established with slavery outlawed in new states and territories north of that line. But the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed that compromise, leaving the question of whether slavery would be allowed in the newly formed territories of Kansas and Nebraska up to popular sovereignty or voting.
29:09 Holly Frey? Abolitionists in Massachusetts and elsewhere were outraged over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which had the potential to allow slavery in places where it had previously been illegal. And it made a lot of the people who were opposed to Anthony Burns being returned to slavery even angrier. The following day, June 1st, Amos Adams Lawrence wrote a letter to his father-in-law Giles Richards that said in part, quote, "We went to bed one night, old-fashioned, conservative, compromise union wigs and waked up stark mad abolitionists."
29:43 Tracy V. Wilson? We'll get to what happened next after a sponsor break.
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30:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life. Love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only
31:03 Tracy V. Wilson? gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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33:28 Tracy V. Wilson? On June 1st, 1854, Commissioner Edward Loring ordered Anthony Burns to be returned to slavery in Virginia. And while there were, of course, pro-slavery people in Boston, a significant part of the population was outraged. This was a shift from the public sentiment in 1851, when Shadrach Minkins had been freed from the courthouse and taken to Canada, and when Thomas Sims had been returned to enslavement. In 1851, the Fugitive Slave Act had been controversial, but more people had supported it or thought it was necessary to keep the Union intact. This shift is something Burns's attorney, Richard H. Dana Jr.,
34:12 Tracy V. Wilson? remarked on, saying, quote, "Men who were hostile or unpleasant in 1851 now are cordial and complimentary. And the prevailing talk among merchants and lawyers is that of hostility to slavery and the slave power."
34:29 Holly Frey? Amos Adams Lawrence, for example, was from a family whose wealth had come from the textile industry, and that meant it was reliant on Southern cotton. He had written a letter in 1851 expressing a willingness to lynch the people who had freed Shadrach Minkins. In addition to the sentiments expressed in the letter we've quoted in these episodes, in 1854, he offered to pay all of Dana's legal expenses. Not long after this, he would also pour huge amounts of money into anti-slavery efforts in Kansas. The city of Lawrence, Kansas, is named for him.
35:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, I read a couple of articles that kind of characterized him as being radicalized by the case of Anthony Burns.
35:13 Tracy V. Wilson? The federal government, of course, wanted to ensure that the Fugitive Slave Act was upheld and that Burns was successfully put on a ship and sent back to slavery in Virginia. Once again, federal troops were tasked with doing this. On June 2nd, more than 2,000 federal soldiers and Marines were stationed around Boston. City police and Boston militia also lined the streets. A 1925 piece by Canadian historian Fred Landon described the law enforcement and military presence that day this way, quote, "In the guard that marched that day through the streets of Boston surrounding Burns, there was a regiment of artillery, a platoon of US Marines,
35:57 Tracy V. Wilson? the marshal's civic posse of 125 men close in about the prisoner, two further platoons of Marines immediately behind with a field piece, and yet another platoon of Marines to guard it."
36:11 Holly Frey? The city of Boston had a population of about 137,000 people in 1854, and an estimated 50,000 of those people took to the streets on June 2nd to protest the rendition of Anthony Burns. People yelled things like "shame" and "kidnappers" at the federal troops who escorted him to the harbor. Some threw bricks and rocks, and there were a number of skirmishes along the route, some of them resulting in injuries. Businesses and homes draped their windows with funeral bunting. A coffin draped in black cloth was suspended over the street in front of the old state house, emblazoned with the words "The Funeral of Liberty."
36:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, rendition, if you're not familiar with that use of that term, is sort of the legal term for an interstate extradition in the United States.
37:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Richard Dana and the Reverend Leonard Grimes asked for permission to accompany Burns to the harbor, but that permission was refused. So he walked alone, flanked by soldiers, through cordon's established by law enforcement, wearing a new suit that had been given to him by some of the militia. When he got to the wharf, he was put aboard a federal ship, which had a naval escort out of Boston Harbor. The cost of Burns's transportation to the harbor and back to Virginia, which was paid for by the federal government, was about $40,000, which is very roughly equivalent to $1.5 million today.
37:43 Holly Frey? This was one of the most infamous fugitive slave trials in the years leading up to the US Civil War. And it was also the topic of a lot of Sunday sermons that week in Boston and elsewhere in Massachusetts. In the words of Burns's biographer, Charles Emory Stevens, quote, "The extradition of Anthony Burns as a fugitive slave was the most memorable case of the kind that has occurred since the adoption of the federal constitution. It was memorable for the place and for the time of its occurrence, the place being the ancient and chief seat of liberty in America, and the time being just the moment when the cause of liberty had received a most wicked and crushing blow from the hand of the federal
38:24 Holly Frey? government. It was memorable also for the difficulty with which it was accomplished, for the intense popular excitement which it caused, for the unexampled expense which it entailed, for the grave questions of law which it involved, for the punishment which it brought down upon the head of the chief actor, and for the political revolution which it drew on."
38:46 Tracy V. Wilson? After arriving in Norfolk, Virginia, Burns was kept in jail for two days before boarding another ship bound for Richmond. There, he was incarcerated at a slave trading complex run by Robert Lumpkin, which was known as Lumpkin's Jail. While most of the other people there were being held before being sold, they were kept in cells together. Burns was shackled in an attic room that was accessible only through a trapdoor alone.
39:15 Tracy V. Wilson? He had a bench rather than a bed and was only given a thin blanket and one meal a day.
39:21 Holly Frey? This was an attic room in Virginia in the summer, so it was very hot. And since he was chained by the hands and feet, Burns had no way to try to make himself more comfortable. This permanently affected his health, and he said that it felt like revenge.
39:39 Tracy V. Wilson? At the beginning of his incarceration, his chains were periodically removed so that he could be taken downstairs and shown to visitors. Most of them wanted not just to gawk at him, but to tell them how they thought he had damaged the state of Virginia, and that his life should have been sacrificed for the good of the slaveholding class. These visits eventually tapered off, at which point his only contact with other people was through a hole that he enlarged through the floor with a spoon in the area that was covered up by the trapdoor when it was open. He would talk to the people who were in the cell beneath him through that hole.
40:21 Holly Frey? He had managed to conceal a pen and some paper in his clothes while still in Boston, and someone in the cell below had managed to smuggle him some ink. He worked pieces of brick out of the wall and he wrapped letters around them, written to friends in Boston and elsewhere. He would wait until he saw a black person pass by on the street below before dropping them out of the window. And he knew that this was a risk because a black person finding that letter probably wouldn't be able to read and would need to find someone who could. One of these notes ended up being delivered to Suttle, who had his jailers confiscate his paper and pen.
41:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, I think he determined that none of the letters that he tried to send this way actually wound up getting to their intended recipient. Abolitionists in Boston were still trying to get Suttle to sell Burns to them, but at this point, he refused. He said that his friends in Virginia were opposed to it. They said it might encourage more people to try to escape, knowing that doing so might lead to their being purchased by somebody in the North. But eventually, some members of the militia got in touch with him about it, and since they were militia and not abolitionists, he seemed more willing to entertain their offer. At this point, though, he wanted $1,500, which they were unable to raise.
41:45 Holly Frey? Finally, Suttle sold Burns at auction, telling the auctioneer to make sure that he did not go to anyone in the North. Burns was sold to David McDaniel of Rocky Mount, North Carolina for $905. McDaniel left Richmond with Burns at night to try to avoid the possibility of an angry mob harassing them on their way out of town.
42:09 Tracy V. Wilson? He was really notorious in the South at this point. He was getting a comparable level of attention to what he had gotten in Boston. But like, from the absolute opposite angle, people were ready to tell him that he had harmed the whole state of Virginia, that he deserved everything that he was getting, all kinds of stuff like that. Once he was sold to McDaniel, the people of Boston basically lost track of Anthony Burns. But eventually, one of McDaniel's neighbors realized who he was, and word made its way back to a minister named George Stockwell contacted the Reverend Leonard Grimes, who worked with black abolitionists in Boston to raise $1,300 to purchase Burns from McDaniel.
42:54 Tracy V. Wilson? They traveled to Baltimore to make this transaction, which was carried out with some difficulty on February 27th of 1855. And after that, Burns was free. A reception was held in his honor at Tremont Temple in Boston on March 7th, 1855.
43:12 Holly Frey? After returning to Boston, Burns told his life story to Charles Emory Stevens, who had also witnessed a lot of the events surrounding his case in Boston firsthand. Stevens wrote Anthony Burns: A History Based on This and Other Research, and he published that book in 1856. Burns sold copies of the book and also did speaking engagements to help pay for his education. He reportedly refused an offer of $500 to speak at P.T. Barnum's museum, saying that Barnum wanted to, quote, "show him like a monkey."
43:47 Tracy V. Wilson? He didn't want to earn a living off of this book and speaking, though. He sort of thought that it was making money off of something evil. What he wanted was to become an ordained minister. A Boston donor funded a scholarship for him to study at Oberlin College in Ohio. It's possible that he also spent some time at Fairmount Theological Seminary in Cincinnati.
44:11 Holly Frey? In 1855, Burns wrote to a church that he had attended in Virginia, asking for a letter of dismission, ending his membership there so that he could join another church. This church published its response in the Fort Royal Gazette on November 8, 1855, saying, quote, "Anthony Burns absconded from the service of his master and refused to return voluntarily, thereby disobeying both the laws of God and man. Although he subsequently obtained his freedom by purchase, yet we have now to consider him only as a fugitive from labor as he was before his arrest and restoration to his master."
44:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Burns's response to this was printed as an appendix to his biography. He told Stevens that he had some assistance in preparing it, but that the substance was all his own. It said in part, quote, "I admit that I left my master, so-called, and refused to return. But I deny that in this I disobeyed either the law of God or any real law of men. Look at my case. I was stolen and made a slave as soon as I was born. No man had any right to steal me. That man-stealer who stole me trampled on my dearest rights. He committed an outrage on the law of God. Therefore, his man-stealing gave him no right in me
45:35 Tracy V. Wilson? and laid me under no obligation to be his slave. God made me a man, not a slave, and gave me the same right to myself that he gave the man who stole me to himself. The great wrongs he has done me in stealing me and making me a slave, in compelling me to work for him many years without wages, and in holding me as merchandise, these wrongs could never put me under obligation to stay with him or return voluntarily when once escaped."
46:05 Holly Frey? He went on to say, quote, "You charge me that in escaping I disobeyed God's law. No, indeed. That law which God wrote on the table of my heart, inspiring the love of freedom and impelling me to seek it at every hazard, I obeyed. And by the good hand of my God upon me, I walked out of the house of bondage. You charge me with disobeying the laws of men. I utterly deny that those things which outrage all right are laws. To be real laws, they must be founded in equity. You have thrust me out of your church fellowship. So be it. You can do no more. You cannot exclude me from heaven. You cannot hinder my daily fellowship with God."
46:49 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1860, Burns was offered a position as a preacher at a church in Indianapolis, Indiana. But he wasn't able to accept that position since Indiana's 1851 Constitution banned black people from entering, passing through, or settling in the state. Not long after he was hired at Zion Baptist Church in St. Catherine's, Canada West, which was later known as Ontario, he moved there and took up his position. But he died of tuberculosis a couple of years later, on July 27, 1862, at the age of 28. He was buried at St. Catherine's Cemetery, and his grave there was restored in the year 2000.
47:29 Holly Frey? In the words of an obituary in a St. Catherine's newspaper, quote, "Mr. Burns's memory will be cherished long by not a few in this town. His gentle, unassuming, and yet manly bearing secured him many friends. His removal is felt to be a great loss, and his place will not soon be filled."
47:49 Tracy V. Wilson? The trial and rendition of Anthony Burns had impacts on a number of other people who were connected to it, and on Massachusetts more broadly. In particular, although Commissioner Edward G. Loring had given Burns a more thorough legal proceeding than he was legally entitled to under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, people were outraged that he had found for Burns an enslaver. There were also people who were angry because they thought Loring's role as a state probate judge should have prevented him from being involved in the first place. The Harvard Board of Overseers voted not to reappoint him for his position at Harvard Law. He was also removed from
48:32 Tracy V. Wilson? his position as a probate judge. However, President James Buchanan later appointed him to the Federal Court of Claims.
48:39 Holly Frey? In 1855, in response to the Burns case and the events surrounding it, Massachusetts also passed one of the strictest personal liberty laws in the United States. The legislature had to override the veto of Governor Henry Gardner to pass this law, which was written specifically to limit the power of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. It explicitly applied the terms of the earlier 1843 personal liberty law to the Fugitive Slave Act. It declared that, quote, "every person imprisoned or restrained of his liberty is entitled, as of right and of course, to the writ of habeas corpus, except in the cases mentioned in the second section of the chapter."
49:23 Tracy V. Wilson? A wide array of legal bodies and legal officials were authorized to issue these writs. A court would then have to order a trial by jury, at which the confessions, admissions, and declarations of the alleged fugitive against themselves would not be admissible as evidence. So you could not, for example, go ask somebody a bunch of leading questions to then introduce the answers to those questions as evidence. The burden of proof was explicitly on the claimant, meaning the enslaver, not on the alleged fugitive. This law is a big reason why Anthony Burns was the last person to face a rendition
50:08 Tracy V. Wilson? hearing after escaping from enslavement and fleeing to Massachusetts.
50:13 Holly Frey? Where are we at on listener mail, Tracy?
50:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Well, we are at Iguanodon, Ben, Iguanodon dinner.
50:20 Holly Frey? Hooray!
50:22 Tracy V. Wilson? This is from Grace. It's a short email, but Grace said hello. "When I started the episode on the New Year's Eve Iguanodon dinner, I could have sworn that y'all had already done an episode on it, until I remembered I was thinking of tasting history. Max Miller did an episode about the dinner and making salme de perdre." I'm saying that real bad. It's French. It's sort of French, which was on the menu that night. Love hearing about something from two different angles. Thanks for joining me on so many car rides and household chores with a smile. Grace. Thank you so much, Grace, for this email. I did not watch or really look at this episode of Tasting History when I was working on this,
51:04 Tracy V. Wilson? but they did make this dish. I'm always fascinated with the historical recipes. There is a recipe on their website that is from Beaton's Book of Household Management by Isabella Beaton from 1861 that has this whole recipe. And so it is partridge, and then salme is a French cooking method.
51:30 Holly Frey? Yeah, it's like roasting.
51:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, and then in a sauce.
51:34 Holly Frey? Yeah.
51:35 Tracy V. Wilson? I did not look too deeply into what any of the individual dishes that were served in the Iguanodon that I had never heard of were actually like. And now I kind of want to maybe try to recreate as many of them as possible in the cold winter where there's currently so much snow that I definitely do not want to go out to buy ingredients. But anyway, thank you so much for that email, Grace, and for reminding me about tasting history because I have not really partaken in any tasting history stuff in a while, and it's really cool. If you would like to send us a note, we're at [email protected] .
52:19 Tracy V. Wilson? If you want to look at the source list for our episodes, that is on our website at mistinhistory.com. Also, you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.
52:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
52:51 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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