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As a slave owned by Charles Suttle of Alexandria, Virginia, Anthony Burns had many privileges. He was allowed to hire himself out. He supervised the hiring out of four other slaves owned by Suttle. He had the freedom to take on additional jobs, as long as he paid his master a fee. He joined a church, where he became a preacher. He learned to read and write. Still, Anthony Burns was not content. At an early age he had learned that "there [was] a Christ who came to make us free" and felt "the necessity for freedom of soul and body." In 1854, he took steps to find freedom. While working in Richmond, Burns boarded a ship heading north, to the city of Boston.
Burns arrived in Boston in March -- a fugitive, but free. This new-found freedom, however, would be short-lived. Soon after his arrival he sent a letter to his brother, who was also a slave of Charles Suttle. Even though the letter was sent by way of Canada, it found its way into the hands of their master.
A few years earlier, Suttle could have expected little help from a northern state in recovering a fugitive slave. Nine states had personal liberty laws declaring that they would not cooperate with the federal government in the recapturing of slaves. But with the recent passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, a component of the Compromise of 1850, the law was on Suttle's side.
Suttle travelled to Boston to claim his "property," and on May 24, under the pretext of being charged for robbery, Burns was arrested. Boston abolitionists, vehemently opposed to the Slave Act, rallied to aid Burns, who was being held on the third floor of the federal courthouse. Two separate groups met at the same time to discuss Burn's recapture: a large group, consisting mainly of white abolitionists, met at Fanueil Hall; a smaller group, mostly blacks, met in the basement of the Tremont Temple.
The meeting at the Tremont Temple was quickly over. Those present decided to march to the courthouse and release Burns, using force if necessary. The meeting at Fanueil Hall lasted much longer. The group there debated the course of action. When the intentions of the Tremont Temple gathering were announced, however, the meeting abruptly ended. About two hundred citizens left Fanueil Hall and headed to the courthouse.
The crowd outside the courthouse quickly grew from several hundred to about two thousand. A small group of blacks, led by white minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson, charged the building with a beam they used as a battering ram. They succeeded in creating a small opening, but only for a moment. A shot was fired. A deputy shouted out that he had been stabbed, then died several minutes later. Higginson and a black man gained entry, but were beaten back outside by six to eight deputies.
Boston inhabitants had successfully aided re-captured slaves in the past. In 1851, a group of black men snatched a fugitive slave from a courtroom and sent her to Canada. Anthony Burns would not share the same fate. Determined to see the Fugitive Slave Act enforced, President Franklin Pierce ordered marines and artillery to assist the guards watching over Burns. Pierce also ordered a federal ship to return Burns to Virginia after the trial.
Burns was convicted of being a fugitive slave on June 2, 1854. That same day, an estimated 50,000 lined the streets of Boston, watching Anthony Burns walk in shackles toward the waterfront and the waiting ship.
"We have not the slightest doubt that there are hundreds of Portuguese -merchants and others in this City, who are constantly and largely engaged in this traffic; - who carry it on as their regular business, - who grow rich by it, and live in splendid style and claim and hold high rank in the rich circles of our metropolis by virtue of the wealth thus acquired. We believe this fact is very generally known, - and that not a month passes in which vessels are not cleared at the Customs House, of whose destination and employment in the Slave-trade, the houses who ship crew for them, and even the officials who prepare and sign their papers are morally certain. This City and Baltimore are now, and have been for years, the great head-quarters of the African Slave-trade. In the face of all our laws, - in defiance of our treaty stipulations and in contempt of armed cruisers and men-of-war, that piratical traffic is largely carried on by ships fitted out in American ports, and under the protection of the American flag. If the authorities plead that they cannot stop this, they simply confess their own imbecility. If they will not do it, the moral guilt they incur is scarcely less than that of the Slave-traders themselves. http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/al...Slave%20Tr.pdf
Some of the earliest "abolitionists" in Massachussetts seem to have been the members of that State's Supreme Judicial Court:
"[W]hatever usages formerly prevailed or slid in upon us by the example of others, on this subject [slavery] they can no longer exist. Sentiments more favourable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that innate desire of liberty, which heaven, without regard to complexion or shape, has planted in the human breast -- have prevailed since the glorious struggle for our rights began. And these sentiments led the framers of our Constitution of Government -- by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves to each other -- to declare -- that all men are born free and equal; and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws as well as his life and property. In short, without resorting to implication in construing the Constitution, slavery is as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence.
"The Court are therefore fully of the opinion that perpetual servitude can no longer be tolerated in our government."
Commonwealth v. Jennison (1783) (emphasis in original).
"...The meeting [of Abolitionists] at the Tremont Temple was quickly over. Those present decided to march to the courthouse and release Burns, using force if necessary. The meeting at Fanueil Hall lasted much longer. The group there debated the course of action. When the intentions of the Tremont Temple gathering were announced, however, the meeting abruptly ended. About two hundred citizens left Fanueil Hall and headed to the courthouse.
The crowd outside the courthouse quickly grew from several hundred to about two thousand. A small group of blacks, led by white minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson, charged the building with a beam they used as a battering ram. They succeeded in creating a small opening, but only for a moment. A shot was fired. A deputy shouted out that he had been stabbed, then died several minutes later. Higginson and a black man gained entry, but were beaten back outside by six to eight deputies...."
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Indifference to the Slave Trade operating right in their own back yard-
"....merchants and others in this City, who are constantly and largely engaged in this traffic; - who carry it on as their regular business....who grow rich by it, and live in splendid style and claim and hold high rank in the rich circles of our metropolis by virtue of the wealth thus acquired. We believe this fact is very generally known,- and that not a month passes in which vessels are not cleared at the Customs House, of whose destination and employment in the Slave-trade, the houses who ship crew for them, and even the officials who prepare and sign their papers are morally certain...."
........Where is a riot of 2,000 over this? "The crowd outside the courthouse quickly grew from several hundred to about two thousand."
........Where is a captain/owner of a slave ship stabbed? "A deputy shouted out that he had been stabbed, then died several minutes later."
........Where is a ship fitted out for the slave trade destroyed/burned? "charged the building with a beam they used as a battering ram."
The Fugitive's Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts.By Kathryn Grover.
(reviews-)
"Why did the small New England city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, become the leading refuge for runaway slaves in the immediate pre–Civil War decades? Kathryn Grover contends that New Bedford attracted fugitive slaves because it had a history of racial diversity, welcomed black workers into its primarily maritime economy, and retained strong vestiges of its Quaker founders' antislavery traditions.
Grover writes that Native Americans, Cape Verdeans, and Polynesians, as well as African Americans, were well represented in New Bedford from the start of the nineteenth century. This diverse population of color offered welcomed anonymity to escaping slaves. Grover estimates that by the 1840s as many as 40 percent of New Bedford's blacks were runaway slaves. She concludes that southern suspicions were correct that trading ships from New Bedford often spirited runaways from their ports to freedom. Through painstaking research in public records, contemporary newspapers, and correspondence archives, Grover constructs fascinating biographical sketches of over one hundred refugees from slavery." http://www.historycooperative.org/cg...9.3/br_19.html
"American historians need not puzzle any longer about why New Bedford, Massachusetts, proved a hotbed of antislavery sentiment before the Civil War. In her remarkably rich study, Kathryn Grover carefully explains that this leading whaling center took its political cues from a large and often militant community of African Americans befriended by groups of white abolitionists and antislavery advocates typically affiliated with unusually large concentrations of Baptists and Quakers. She draws particular attention to the city's African Americans, using a wide variety of sources to depict scores of them in loving detail; if an African-American man lived in New Bedford, lingered there, or simply passed through, he is likely to be in this book, and not just as a name. Grover shows how they got to New Bedford; where they lived, worshipped, and earned a living; what they did for their people; whether they were slaves, fugitives from slavery, or fellow citizens of Massachusetts." http://www.historycooperative.org/cg...7.3/br_35.html
Captured and punished....but no problem in shipping out from New Bedford-
Brutus ...Destination Cuba. Captured 1861.
"...in the New Bedford Shipping List of December 3, 1861, the following item appears:
"....the bark Brutus of New Bedford fitted out for a slave voyage and succeeded in landing a cargo of 650 blacks in Cuba, but one of her owners was convicted and served several years in the penitentiary while others were heavily fined...." http://www.du.edu/~ttyler/ploughboy/verrill.htm
(Chapter IX)
Spirit of the Times (Batavia, NY)
September 21 1861
"Developments of the Slave Trade.
The New Bedford, (Mass.) papers give full reports of the examination of A.S. BIGELOW and A.H. POTTER, of that city, on the charge of complicity in the slave trade. The ship Burbus [Brutus], which was subsequently engaged in the traffic, was fitted out and cleared from New Bedford. One of the crew, Milo R. ROBBINS, was called as a witness. He testified that he shipped for a whaling voyage, but on arriving off the African coast the real object of the voyage was announced and the shipment of slaves commenced. ROBBINS testified to the horrors of the middle passage as follows:
"On the 14th February last, we came to anchor off a place called Devil's Point, off Congo river, and the next morning we up anchor, ran in near the shore and took our cargo on board--about 600 negroes. There were 700 negroes in all, but about fifty of them were drowned, in getting them off the boats, and the balance we left. We commenced taking in cargo about 8 o'clock a.m., and finished at 5 p.m.--then slipped anchor, leaving both chain and anchor, and steered for the coast of Cuba. Before leaving the African coast we took on board beans, corn, beef, hogs and some goats. The first land we saw was the islands of Martinique and Charlotte, between which we steered.
About a week afterwards we came in sight of land and took on board a Spaniard, a pilot. In about a week we landed at Cuba, running the ship aground.
Three small boats came on with a Spaniard in each, and with these boats and the ship's two whale boats, we landed the negroes. We landed about five hundred, and they were taken in covered carts about six miles into the country on to a plantation. Many were suffocated in the passage to Cuba, so that out of the seven hundred slaves, we landed somewhere in the vicinity of five hundred--men, women and children. The crew left the vessel as soon as the cargo was landed, leaving on board four or five Spaniards. I saw no more of the vessel, but supposed she was burned, as I saw fire and smoke.
They put us in a sugar house, in the upper story, the negroes being confined below, and kept us there eighteen days, until some arrangements were made for sending us in a fishing smack to Key West. All left except JACKSON, the meat, and Thomas JEFFREY, who remained behind, and Frank STANDISH, who died in Cuba. The foremast men and boy were paid $500 each. The mate and steward were left on the coast of Africa, and two men came on board there, both Spaniards, one acting as captain, the other as surgeon." http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/link.php?id=12832
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Aboltionists And The New England Slave Trade 
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