February 9, 2026 • 34 mins
The story of Anthony Burns is one that resonates in our current times. Part one covers his early enslaved life, his escape from enslavement, and his arrest under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Research:
- Buehrens, John A. “Spiritual friendship and social justice.” UU World. Fall 2019. https://www.uuworld.org/articles/spiritual-friendship
- Sutton, Robert K. “’We waked up stark mad Abolitionists.’” From "Stark Mad Abolitionists.” Salon. 8/5/2017. https://www.salon.com/2017/08/05/we-waked-up-stark-mad-abolitionists/
- Sutton, Robert K. “The Wealthy Activist Who Helped Turn ‘Bleeding Kansas’ Free.” Smithsonian. 8/16/2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/wealthy-activist-who-helped-turn-bleeding-kansas-free-180964494/
- Delblanco, Andrew. “America’s Struggle for Moral Coherence.” The Atlantic. 12/12/2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/the-nation-has-been-this-dividedin-the-civil-war/575587/
- Finkelman, Paul & Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Anthony Burns (1834–1862). (2020, December 07). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/burns-anthony-1834-1862.
- “Anthony Burns Captured.” Africans in America. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2915.html
- Boston African American National Historic Site. “"God made me a man- not a slave": The Arrest of Anthony Burns.” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/-god-made-me-a-man-not-a-slave-the-arrest-of-anthony-burns.htm#_ftnref14
- Linder, Douglas O. “The (Fugitive Slave)Trials of Anthony Burns: An Account.” UMKC School of Law: Famous Trials. 2019. https://www.famous-trials.com/anthonyburns/2425-the-fugitive-slave-trials-of-anthony-burns-an-account
- Encyclopedia Virginia. “The Trial of Anthony Burns (1854).” https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/burns-anthony-the-trial-of-1854/
- Stevens, Charles Emery. “Anthony Burns: A History.” Boston : John P. Jewett and Co. 1856.
- Shapiro, Samuel. “The Rendition of Anthony Burns.” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Jan., 1959). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2716312
- Maginnes, David R. “The Case of the Court House Rioters in the Rendition of the Fugitive Slave Anthony Burns, 1854.” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Jan., 1971). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2716024
- Landon, Fred. “Anthony Burns in Canada.” Reprinted from the Ontario Historical Society’s “Papers and Records” volume XXII. 1925. https://archive.org/details/anthonyburnsinca00land/
- Potter, Joseph S. “The Boston Slave Riot, and Trial of Anthony Burns.” Boston: Fetridge and Company. 1854. https://archive.org/details/DKC0103/mode/1up
- Perlstein, Henry, “From the Ashes of the Common Law”: Personal Replevin in the 21st Century (February 05, 2024). Intercultural Human Rights Law Review, Volume 19, pp. 257-309, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5407082 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5407082
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Over the past several months, I have seen this quote
repeatedly on social media. Quote we went to bed one night,
old fashioned conservative compromise, union whigs and waked up stark
mad abolitionists. Some of that's because I follow historians on
social media, but it's mostly because this quote has been
(00:39):
really resonating with people in the face of what is
happening with ICE in the United States. If you're not
up to speed on your US government acronyms, ICE is
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Other federal agencies are also involved
with this, including border patrol, and this all rolls up
(01:00):
under the Department of Homeland Security or DHS. This quote
is partly in response to the horror of what these
federal officers and agencies are doing, things like pepper sprang
people directly in the face when they are already on
the ground, detaining US citizens and legal residents, including pulling
(01:21):
them out of their homes into freezing weather still in
their pajamas, detaining preschoolers, deporting US citizens, including at least
two children who were in cancer treatment at the time.
An ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good and then
casually walked away. A Border patrol agent shot and killed
(01:43):
Alex Pretty. They shot him at least ten times while
he was already on the ground. In both of these cases.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Afterward, multiple federal.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Officials told transparently obvious lies about what happened. We are
recording this on January twenty seventh, twenty twenty sixth, then
who knows what else might happen before it comes out.
So that's been that those kinds of things have been
the kinds of things that I have seen people talk
about alongside this quote. But it's not just about ice.
(02:16):
Ice is only part of it. People are also sharing
this quote after seeing neighbors who had never seemed overtly
very political suddenly taking a stand in the face of
all of this, or going through that experience themselves, like
not being very political themselves, and they're suddenly like I
have to do something, or maybe not being local to
(02:38):
major ice operations, but seeing, for example, what feels like
the entire state of Minnesota all coming together to protect
each other in this massive effort to do things like
stand guard around daycares and schools, delivering food to families
who are terrified to leave their homes. So this quote
about becoming stark mad abbelatists. That's from a letter written
(03:02):
by Amos Adams Lawrence to Giles Richards on June first,
eighteen fifty four, during a furor over the fate of
Anthony Burns, who had liberated himself from enslavement in Virginia
and was captured in Boston and then returned to enslavement.
It would be reductive to suggest that what is happening
now is identical to what happened in eighteen fifty four,
(03:25):
or that this is like a one to one comparison. Also,
we like, we don't have to go all the way
back to slavery to find things that have similarities. We
don't even have to leave this century to do that.
But I do think Anthony Burns's story resonates right now
in much the same way that Amos Adams Lawrence quote does.
(03:46):
So we are going to talk about this over two episodes.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Anthony Burns was born in Stafford County, Virginia, on May
thirty first, eighteen thirty four. His mother was a cook.
Who was enslaved by John F. Scas Subtle. His father
was her third husband and was also enslaved, although there
were rumors that he had once been a freeman in
the North. Their names are not specified in accounts of
(04:12):
Anthony Burns's life, at least in no places that Tracy
could find them. The I did look and did not
find what their names were. Anthony's father was seen as
particularly intelligent. He supervised other enslaved people at a quarry
that Subtle owned. Anthony didn't know his father very well, though,
because he died when Anthony was still very young, apparently
(04:35):
as a result of continually breathing in the stone dust
at the quarry. Slavery in the United States was hereditary.
Since Anthony's mother was enslaved, he was enslaved from birth
as well. So were his twelve older siblings and half siblings,
and after John Suttle died, his widow, Susannah Suttle, started
(04:57):
selling them off to try to cover her expenses. She
sold at least five of Anthony's immediate family members when
he was still very young. Susannah Suttle also threatened to
sell Anthony's mother, but instead hired her out to work
in another city, so Anthony's mother was still considered Subtle's property,
but somebody else was paying Subtle for her labor. Anthony's
(05:21):
mother begged to take him with her when she was
sent away for work, but Subtle refused and they were
separated for two years. Susannah Suttle died when Anthony was
about six years old, and her son, Charles F. Suttle,
inherited the estate. By that point, Anthony had been put
to work on things that were considered light tasks, which
(05:42):
included watching his baby niece so that his older sister
could work. About a year after inheriting the property, Charles
Suttle started hiring Anthony out so that he could bring
in more income as well. Over the next decade, Anthony
learned to read. That started when he was hired out
to somebody whose sister named Miss Horton ran a school
(06:04):
out of her home nearby. Anthony started making friends with
some of the students as he went about his work
and ran errands that took him over there, and some
of them shared their school books with him. Later on,
he was hired out to another man whose wife ran
a school from their house, and she seemed like she
left books around for him to find on purpose. As
(06:25):
Anthony got a little older, he also taught himself how
to write. He said he was inspired to do this
after being tasked with picking up the mail from the
post office and realizing he could learn to write letters
of his own. He started out by copying things onto
scraps of paper that he found. Eventually he showed this
work to a young woman he had met when they
(06:46):
were both children when she was a student at Miss
Horton's school, and then she helped him to improve his handwriting.
When Anthony was twelve or thirteen, he was hired out
to tend a steam engine that belonged to him. Man
named Foot Foot ran a sawmill. This was one of
the more difficult times than Anthony's early life. It wasn't
(07:08):
a kind of work he had ever done before. He
wasn't used to it, and then the Foots were also
particularly cruel. They beat people, including young children, using a
strip of board that had been perforated and roughened with
tar and sand. They also did not give them very
much to eat. One day, when Anthony had been there
(07:30):
for a few months, Foot started the machinery without warning
and Anthony's hand was caught in a wheel and it
was mangled. This was a very serious injury and he
went back to live with Subtle for a couple of
months until he recovered, and then he was returned to
the sawmill. His hand was noticeably scarred after this, with
what was described as a visibly protruding piece of bone
(07:53):
in his wrist. While he was recovering from this injury,
Anthony had a religious awakening. He asked Suttle's permission to
be baptized and to join a church. At first, Subtle refused,
which Anthony attributed to his being irritated about the injury
to his hand, but eventually, after Anthony had gone back
(08:14):
to work for Foot, Subtle gave his permission. Anthony was
baptized at a Baptist church in Foulmouth. A couple of
years later, Anthony started preaching to other enslaved people, and
this included sermons and teaching about the Bible, as well
as conducting marriage and funeral services. These marriages, of course,
were not legally recognized, even if he had been formally
(08:37):
ordained through a church. There was no legal recognition of
marriage between enslaved people. When Charles Suttle started essentially leasing
Anthony to other people. Anthony was still a child, so
people weren't paying very much for him to do things
like run errands or make weekly trips to pick up
corn meal, but the amount Subtle could charge grew over time.
(09:00):
His foot had agreed to pay Settle seventy five dollars
a year for the work at the sawmill, for example. Eventually,
Subtle hired a man named William Brent to manage the
placement of the people he was hiring out. Anthony had
worked for Brent before, and he was tasked with supervising
other enslaved people as they traveled to Richmond for their placements.
(09:22):
At first, Anthony worked for Brent's brother in law, and
after about a year in Richmond, when he was about twenty,
he was placed with a druggist named Millspaw at a
rate of one hundred and twenty five dollars a year.
It did not take long for Millspaugh to realize he
didn't have enough work for Anthony Burns to do, and
he did not think it would be financially worth it
(09:42):
to keep him on, So after about a week, Millspaw
took Burns aside and proposed a different arrangement. Burns would
be allowed to go out and look for work on
his own. He would use the money that he earned
to repay Millspaw one hundred and twenty five dollars that
he was paying for Burns's labor, and then Burns could
(10:02):
keep what he earned beyond that, minus a portion that
would go to Millspaw. Millspaugh told Burns that this arrangement
was illegal and had to be kept secret. By this point,
Burns had started forming a plan to liberate himself from enslavement,
which had influenced some of the choices that he had
made prior to being hired out to Millspaw. For example,
(10:24):
after his first two years of working for William Brent
in Falmouth, Burns had asked to be placed somewhere else.
Even though he and Brent got along and Brent's wife
was kind to him, Burns thought the longer he stayed
in one place, the more people would get to know him,
and the harder it would be for him to get
away unnoticed. Suttle, who of course did not know Burns's
(10:46):
reasoning for this request, had agreed this wasn't the only
time Burns spoke up for himself with Subtle, and whether
Suttle was willing to do what he asked seemed to
depend on whether he thought it would make Anthony more
willing and obedient in the long run. Burns also negotiated
with Millspaw over this work arrangement. Millspaugh wanted him to
(11:07):
deliver the money that he earned every day, but Burns
thought this would be inconvenient, maybe even impossible. There might
be days when he couldn't find work and had no
money to turn over. So Burns convinced Millspaugh to let
him hand over his money every two weeks. This fortnightly
money delivery would also help Burns with his plan to
(11:28):
liberate himself from enslavement, which we will get to after
we pause for a sponsor break. Unlike other places Anthony
Burns had lived, Richmond, Virginia was a major port. In
(11:50):
the words of Charles Emory Stevens, who published a biography
of Burns in eighteen fifty six, quote, he was in
daily sight of those northern keels that seemed to him
a part of the very soil of freedom. He was
in daily converse with men whose birthright was in a
free land, and whose language to the slave had no
smack of the whip. Kind hearted sailors, having no vessels
(12:13):
to forfeit and no trade to compromise, did not hesitate
to urge him.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
On to flight. Plainly, the tide was at hand when,
if ever, he was to achieve his freedom. At the
same time, Burns had some potential reasons to stay. He
had set up a secret school to teach enslaved people
how to read, like his work arrangement with Millspa. This
(12:38):
was illegal, but leaving would mean that he was leaving
his students. He had also been preaching for years, and
he wrestled with the question of whether it was morally
right to escape. Supporters of slavery used passages from the
Bible to justify its existence, but beyond that, slavery was
fully legal under the law and escaping was not. After
(13:02):
thinking about it and studying the Bible again, in the
words of Charles Emery Stevens quote, he found that the
Bible set forth only one God for the black and
white races, that he had made of one blood all
the nations of the earth, that there was no divine
ordinance requiring one part of the human family to be
in bondage to another, and that there was no passage
(13:25):
of holy writ by virtue of which Colonel Suttle could
claim a right of property in him any more than
he could in Colonel Suttle.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
According to his biography, Burns had also fallen in love
with a woman, and it is possible that he was
trying to figure out how he could take her with him.
But when he handed over his earnings after his first
fortnight of finding his own work, he hit an unexpected snag.
As we said earlier, he was supposed to repay the
one hundred and twenty five dollars that Millspaw was paying
(13:57):
for a year of his labor. But if you must
applied that first two weeks of earnings over a whole year,
he was on track to earn almost three times that.
Millspaugh realized he could recoup his expenses much faster than
he thought, and he again told Burns to bring him
the money he had earned every day, and to earn
that one hundred and twenty five dollars as fast as possible.
(14:20):
Burns did not want to do either of those things.
He wanted to be able to keep some of what
he earned as long as he was not jeopardizing being
able to pay back that one hundred and twenty five
dollars I say payback.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
He wasn't paying it back. This was money that someone
else wanted from him. He had not taken out a
loan or something like that. And as although he was
living in Millspaugh's house, in a room that he shared
with another border, it was feasible that he and Millspaugh
might not see each.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Other every day.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
If Burns was leaving early to find work and then
getting back late, that meant that his absence might not
be he noticed right away if he left, and that
would not be the case if he was required to
physically meet with Millspaw every day to hand him his money.
Burns and Millspaw negotiated over this for a while, and
(15:13):
Burns finally left the room without agreeing to this daily schedule.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
During his time in Richmond, Burns had met sailors and
other workers from around the port, and during the two
weeks he had been working on his own, he had
mostly worked around the docks, loading and unloading cargo. He
had figured out who seemed sympathetic and who did not so.
Over the next couple of days, he found a ship
headed north that was getting ready to set sail and
(15:41):
had crew members who were willing to hide him. He
did not hand his money over to Millspaw, and he
used it instead to make arrangements, pay expenses, and provision himself.
This did mean, though, that he was not able to
take the woman that he had fallen in love with.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, they're just one. Not time to make those kinds
of arrangements, since he had to tighten up his schedule
to make his escape. One night in February of eighteen
fifty four, three days or so after his conversation with Millspaw,
Burns put on four layers of clothing, with his work
clothes as the outermost layer, and he got into bed
(16:21):
in the very early hours of the morning. He gathered
up his possessions in a bundle, and he slipped out
of the room and out of the house without waking
up the other border or Millspaw. He got to the
dock and the crew for the ship hit him on board.
The ship was delayed leaving port, and it did not
set sail that day as expected. Burns eventually fell asleep
(16:43):
when he awoke, they were sailing down the James River
toward the ocean.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
This voyage was miserable.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
The ship's captain and officers did not know he was aboard,
and it needed to stay that way. That meant that
he could not leave his hiding spot. Bad weather and
unfavorable winds meant that the journey was a lot longer
and rougher than normal. He felt seasick a lot of
the time. He had to rely on the crew to
sneak food to him, and when they managed to do that,
(17:12):
it did not always line up with whether he was
feeling well enough to actually eat it because of how
seasick he was. But at the end of February or
the start of March eighteen fifty four, Burns arrived in Boston.
He found a room in a boarding house and he
recovered from the journey, and that recovery took about a week.
Then he found work as a cook on a mud
(17:34):
scal That was a barge, and the term was used
both for barges that could travel over mudflats and barges
that carried the mud that was hauled up by dredgers.
This job did not last long, though he didn't really
have any experience as a cook, and for whatever reason,
he could not get the bread to rise. Listen, I
feel you even people that cook a lot can't always
(17:55):
get their bread to rise. So he was fired though
after about a week. As we've talked about been a
number of previous episodes. Now, Boston had about two thousand
black residents in the eighteen fifties. Some had been born
free to black parents and some had been legally manumitted,
but those who had liberated themselves from slavery, like Burns,
(18:18):
were all considered to be fugitives. After he was fired
from his position on the Mudscow, Burns was hired by
a black merchant named Coffin Pitts, who had a shop
on Brattle Street. This street is not there anymore, but
at the time it was home to a number of
black owned businesses. It was also home to Brattle Street Church,
(18:40):
which had been struck by cannon fire in the Siege
of Boston during the Revolutionary War, and it still had
a cannon ball lodged in the facade. In addition to
owning this shop, Pitts was an abolitionist, and he was
a deacon at twelfth Baptist Church. This church was nicknamed
the Fugitive Slaves Church, both because the number of self
(19:00):
emancipated people among its membership and because of its organizing
against a Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, which we
are going to talk more about in a bit. Burns
attended this church as well. Over the next couple of months,
Burns started building a life for himself in Boston. He
wrote a letter to his brother back in Virginia, telling
(19:23):
him where he was and about his job. He did
not mail this letter directly to his brother, though, he
sent it to somebody in Canada so it could be
postmarked from there. But when the letter arrived in Virginia,
the postmaster saw the Canadian postmark and the fact that
it was addressed to a slave, so he delivered it
(19:43):
to Burns's brothers Enslaver, to read it, and then informed
either Charles Sutton or William Brent of its contents. Sutton
started the legal process for having his property returned to him.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
We'll get to that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Article four, Section two, clause three of the US Constitution reads, quote,
no person held to service or labor in one state
under the laws thereof escaping into another, shall, in consequence
of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such
service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim
(20:31):
of the party to whom such service or labor maybe do.
Although that doesn't have the word slavery in it, that
is known as the fugitive slave clause. Today, this has
been superseded by the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which
abolished slavery except in punishment for a crime, but the
text itself is still part of the document. The Fugitive
(20:53):
Slave Act of seventeen ninety three, which was signed into
law by George Washington, was written to legally enforce this
clause of the Constitution. Under this law, the process of
reclaiming a fugitive started with an indictment or an affidavit
made before a magistrate. Authorities were then required to capture
and return people who had escaped from slavery, including if
(21:16):
they had escaped to other states or territories. Anyone who
harbored someone who had escaped, or obstructed this process, or
rescued people as they were being transported could be fined
up to five hundred dollars or imprisoned.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
For a year.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
The Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty revised the seventeen
ninety three Act and was signed into law by President
Millard Fillmore. This is part of a series of bills
that are collectively described as the Compromise of eighteen fifty.
We've talked about this a number of times on the
podcast before, including fairly recently in our Charles Sumner episodes,
(21:54):
but it is a central part of what happened to
Anthony Burns, so we're going to go through it again.
When the US Constitution was ratified in seventeen eighty nine,
it left the question of whether to allow slavery up
to the states. By the start of the nineteenth century,
slavery had been abolished in most of the northern states
and territories, but not in the Southern states. The slave
(22:17):
states outnumbered the free states, which meant slave states had
slightly more power in the Senate, where each state gets
two senators regardless of the size of that state's population.
As new states were admitted, the United States took steps
to maintain a balance between the slave states and the
free states. States were generally admitted in pairs one slave
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and one free. In eighteen twenty, the question of whether
Missouri should be admitted as a slave state led to
the Missouri Compromise, in which Missouri was admitted as a
slave state. Maine was created as a free state from
what had been part of Massachusetts, and the Missouri Compromise
also drew up boundary line through Louisiana Territory, with slavery
(23:03):
outlawed in territories and newly created states north of that
line but legal south of it.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Thirty years later, the Compromise of eighteen fifty came after
California requested to join the Union as a free state
and there was no slave state ready to be admitted
to keep the balance in the Senate. Slave states were
also losing power in the House of Representatives as more
people moved to northern cities. This set of five laws
(23:31):
included one that admitted California as a free state, one
that abolished the slave trade in Washington, d c. And
the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, more formally titled
an Act Respecting Fugitives from Justice and Persons Escaping from
the service of their Masters.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
This law was meant to help appease the slave states
that were losing power in the Senate through the admission
of California to the Union. It did not includ the
words slavery, and the actual text it said, if someone
quote held to service or labor escaped to another state
or territory, the quote person or persons to whom such
(24:12):
service or labor may be do, or his her or
their agent or attorney duly authorized could pursue and reclaim
quote such fugitive person.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Doing so required them to procure a warrant from the courts, judges,
or commissioners of the state or territory the person fled to.
If a commissioner was overseeing these proceedings, he would be
paid for his services. If the commissioner found that the
proof provided was sufficient to issue the warrant, he would
be paid ten dollars. If he found that the proof
(24:46):
was not sufficient to provide the warrant, he would be
paid five dollars. In other words, it was in the
financial interests of the commissioners to find in favor of
the person who was claiming that another person was their property.
The people who were empowered to arrest the fugitives were
also paid five dollars for each person they arrested.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
This law also increased the monetary penalties that had been
established under the previous fugitive slave law, and it established
new ones. Marshals or deputy marshals who refused to execute
these warrants could be fined one thousand dollars. Anyone who
obstructed the process or harbored someone who had escaped or
(25:29):
rescued them, or aided them in any way directly or
indirectly could be fined up to one thousand dollars and
imprisoned for up to six months. They could also have
to pay civil damages to quote the party injured by
such illegal conduct, up to one thousand dollars for each fugitive.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
This was a stronger law with harsher penalties than the
seventeen ninety three version. The proceedings involved were basically administrative hearings,
not trials. It was explicitly illegal for the testimony of
a so called fugitive to be entered into evidence.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
This law put all black people in the United States
at risk, regardless of whether they were or ever had
been enslaved. After it was passed, black people in the
Northern States started emigrating from the United States, primarily to
Canada to try to protect themselves. An estimated five thousand
black people fled from the Free States to Canada after
(26:29):
this law was passed. We have already talked about several
things Anthony Burns had done or been involved with during
his lifetime that were considered illegal. It was illegal for
white people in Virginia to teach black people to read
and write. Also, in the words of the eighteen forty
nine Legal Code of Virginia, quote every assemblage of Negroes
(26:51):
for the purpose of religious worship, when such worship is
conducted by a Negro, And every assemblage of Negroes for
the purposes of instruction in reading or writing, or in
the night time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly.
So Burns's work as a preacher and the secret school
he established were both illegal. As we said earlier, His
(27:13):
arrangement with Millspa to earn his own money also illegal.
It was also illegal for Anthony Burns to leave Virginia
without his enslaver's knowledge or approval. It was illegal for
him to escape to Massachusetts. It was illegal for the
sailors aboard the ship to hide him there and to
bring him food. It was illegal for the ship's captain
(27:34):
and officers to transport him, even though they did not
know he was a board It was illegal for the
boarding house owner in Boston to rent him a room.
It was illegal for the mudscow captain to hire him
as a cook. It was illegal for coffin Pits to
give him a job and a place to live. It
was illegal for the congregation of twelfth Baptist Church to
welcome him into their number and to offer him aid
(27:56):
and comfort. After learning about the letter Birds had written
to his brother that revealed that he had gone to Boston,
Charles Suttle went to the authorities in the State Circuit
Court for Alexandria County, Virginia. On May sixteenth, eighteen fifty four,
the court determined that he had provided satisfactory proof that
Burns owed subtle his service. Suttle and William Brent both
(28:20):
traveled to Boston to pursue him. On May twenty fourth,
in Boston, United States Commissioner Edward G. Loring issued a
warrant for Burns's arrest. Watson Freeman, United States Marshal of Massachusetts,
was empowered with arresting Burns, but the actual arrest was
carried out by slave catcher Asa O. Buttman, who had
(28:41):
been deputized. Buttman arrested Burns that evening. Buttman had been
in coffin Pitts's store that day, but he hadn't aroused
their suspicions. Burns and Pitts usually walked to and from
work together, but that night Burns decided to take a
brief walk first. Once the two men had separated, Buttman
(29:04):
confronted Burns. At first, Burns thought he was being mugged,
but then Buttman said he was being charged with robbing
a jewelry store. Burns knew that he had not robbed anyone,
and he thought this was just some kind of mistake,
so he willingly went with Buttman. He didn't even call
out the Pits, who was still within earshot, about what
(29:24):
was happening. Even though Burns was not trying to resist arrest,
six or seven other men who had been waiting nearby
rushed out, and they grabbed him, lifting him up off
of his feet and carrying him to the courthouse.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Once they arrived, they were met by Marshall Freeman. Freeman
told Burns he was being taken upstairs to the jury
room to meet his accuser. And Burns again went willingly,
only to find that there was no accuser in that room,
because there was no such person. It was at that
point that he realized what had to be happening, That
(29:59):
he had been captured as a fugitive slave. In the
words of his biographer, Charles Emery Stevens quote as in
a dissolving view, the land of freedom faded out and
the dark land of slavery usurped its place. He saw
himself again a slave far worse than that, a slave, disgraced,
pointed at as a runaway, punished, perhaps punished unto death.
(30:24):
Overpowered by the prospect, he and his own simple but
expressive phrase, gave all up. We are going to talk
about what happened next next time. But right now, Tracy,
do you have listener mail for us? I do have
listener mail for us. This listener mail is actually from
(30:48):
an old friend of the podcast who we have not
seen in many years, Jess, who works for the National
Park Service and who we worked with when we did
a live show at Adams National Historic Park some years ago.
Jess wrote and said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, your friendly
Massachusetts park ranger here one of two, one of my
(31:09):
colleagues was able to brag to me that you read
her letter on the show. I've made it up to
September twenty twenty four in the podcast The forty three
government shut down put me behind, but I will catch
up and just listened to the episode on Ettienkeabe and
Ikaria Boy. I was not expecting Navu, Illinois to make
an appearance. Your episode talks about Navu being the headquarters
(31:33):
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
There is an Adams National Historic Park connection. In eighteen
forty four, Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams,
visited Navu. He and his cousin were traveling and wanted
to check it out. They met with Joseph Smith and
were given a tour of the city by Smith. Before
(31:53):
he left, Smith gifted Charles Francis Adams assigned copy of
the Book of Mormon. Just six weeks later and his
brother were murdered. Rangers would casually mention this on a tour,
and news of the book made its way back to
a historian of Latter day Saints. History.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Turns out this book was Emma Smith's personal copy, which
had been listed as missing. Not only that, it's one of,
if I recall correctly, from a few years ago, only
three known existing signatures of Joseph Smith that still survives
until today. This ended up being one of my favorite
objects in the collection at Adam's National Historic Park. It's
(32:33):
amazing how far and wide the interests and reach of
this family was. Again, thanks for all you do and
making my ninety minute commute feel shorter. Jess ps pet
Tax attempting to get Miss summer Ray to look at
the camera for a Christmas photo. We have a kind
of shaggyish brown puppy dog looking very very cute in
(32:54):
front of a Christmas tree with the trees.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
All lit up. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Jess just has written us a few times since we
did that live show. Did we do two live shows
at Adam's Nationalist Doric Park or did the second one
get canceled because of COVID? I don't remember, all bored together. Yeah,
but we did for sure do a live show there
that we really enjoyed, and we enjoyed meeting all the
(33:22):
folks who.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Worked there and working with them.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And I always love hearing from folks at the National
Park Service, especially folks who have been able to weather
everything that has gone on with the National Park Service,
and honestly folks who didn't. We have also heard from
some folks who lost their jobs and the various waves
of reductions in force with the Park Service and other
(33:48):
government agencies. So thank you so much for this email.
It was such a cute picture and about this copy
of the Book of Mormon. I had not heard that
story at all, and it is super interesting. So if
you would like to send us a note, we're a
history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Also, we publish source
(34:10):
lists for all of our episodes. You can find them
on our website at Mistonhistory dot com, and you can
subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere
else you like to get your podcasts. Stuffy Miston History
Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(34:32):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Over the past several months, I have seen this quote
repeatedly on social media. Quote we went to bed one night,
old fashioned conservative compromise, union whigs and waked up stark
mad abolitionists. Some of that's because I follow historians on
social media, but it's mostly because this quote has been
(00:39):
really resonating with people in the face of what is
happening with ICE in the United States. If you're not
up to speed on your US government acronyms, ICE is
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Other federal agencies are also involved
with this, including border patrol, and this all rolls up
(01:00):
under the Department of Homeland Security or DHS. This quote
is partly in response to the horror of what these
federal officers and agencies are doing, things like pepper sprang
people directly in the face when they are already on
the ground, detaining US citizens and legal residents, including pulling
(01:21):
them out of their homes into freezing weather still in
their pajamas, detaining preschoolers, deporting US citizens, including at least
two children who were in cancer treatment at the time.
An ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good and then
casually walked away. A Border patrol agent shot and killed
(01:43):
Alex Pretty. They shot him at least ten times while
he was already on the ground. In both of these cases.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Afterward, multiple federal.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Officials told transparently obvious lies about what happened. We are
recording this on January twenty seventh, twenty twenty sixth, then
who knows what else might happen before it comes out.
So that's been that those kinds of things have been
the kinds of things that I have seen people talk
about alongside this quote. But it's not just about ice.
(02:16):
Ice is only part of it. People are also sharing
this quote after seeing neighbors who had never seemed overtly
very political suddenly taking a stand in the face of
all of this, or going through that experience themselves, like
not being very political themselves, and they're suddenly like I
have to do something, or maybe not being local to
(02:38):
major ice operations, but seeing, for example, what feels like
the entire state of Minnesota all coming together to protect
each other in this massive effort to do things like
stand guard around daycares and schools, delivering food to families
who are terrified to leave their homes. So this quote
about becoming stark mad abbelatists. That's from a letter written
(03:02):
by Amos Adams Lawrence to Giles Richards on June first,
eighteen fifty four, during a furor over the fate of
Anthony Burns, who had liberated himself from enslavement in Virginia
and was captured in Boston and then returned to enslavement.
It would be reductive to suggest that what is happening
now is identical to what happened in eighteen fifty four,
(03:25):
or that this is like a one to one comparison. Also,
we like, we don't have to go all the way
back to slavery to find things that have similarities. We
don't even have to leave this century to do that.
But I do think Anthony Burns's story resonates right now
in much the same way that Amos Adams Lawrence quote does.
(03:46):
So we are going to talk about this over two episodes.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Anthony Burns was born in Stafford County, Virginia, on May
thirty first, eighteen thirty four. His mother was a cook.
Who was enslaved by John F. Scas Subtle. His father
was her third husband and was also enslaved, although there
were rumors that he had once been a freeman in
the North. Their names are not specified in accounts of
(04:12):
Anthony Burns's life, at least in no places that Tracy
could find them. The I did look and did not
find what their names were. Anthony's father was seen as
particularly intelligent. He supervised other enslaved people at a quarry
that Subtle owned. Anthony didn't know his father very well, though,
because he died when Anthony was still very young, apparently
(04:35):
as a result of continually breathing in the stone dust
at the quarry. Slavery in the United States was hereditary.
Since Anthony's mother was enslaved, he was enslaved from birth
as well. So were his twelve older siblings and half siblings,
and after John Suttle died, his widow, Susannah Suttle, started
(04:57):
selling them off to try to cover her expenses. She
sold at least five of Anthony's immediate family members when
he was still very young. Susannah Suttle also threatened to
sell Anthony's mother, but instead hired her out to work
in another city, so Anthony's mother was still considered Subtle's property,
but somebody else was paying Subtle for her labor. Anthony's
(05:21):
mother begged to take him with her when she was
sent away for work, but Subtle refused and they were
separated for two years. Susannah Suttle died when Anthony was
about six years old, and her son, Charles F. Suttle,
inherited the estate. By that point, Anthony had been put
to work on things that were considered light tasks, which
(05:42):
included watching his baby niece so that his older sister
could work. About a year after inheriting the property, Charles
Suttle started hiring Anthony out so that he could bring
in more income as well. Over the next decade, Anthony
learned to read. That started when he was hired out
to somebody whose sister named Miss Horton ran a school
(06:04):
out of her home nearby. Anthony started making friends with
some of the students as he went about his work
and ran errands that took him over there, and some
of them shared their school books with him. Later on,
he was hired out to another man whose wife ran
a school from their house, and she seemed like she
left books around for him to find on purpose. As
(06:25):
Anthony got a little older, he also taught himself how
to write. He said he was inspired to do this
after being tasked with picking up the mail from the
post office and realizing he could learn to write letters
of his own. He started out by copying things onto
scraps of paper that he found. Eventually he showed this
work to a young woman he had met when they
(06:46):
were both children when she was a student at Miss
Horton's school, and then she helped him to improve his handwriting.
When Anthony was twelve or thirteen, he was hired out
to tend a steam engine that belonged to him. Man
named Foot Foot ran a sawmill. This was one of
the more difficult times than Anthony's early life. It wasn't
(07:08):
a kind of work he had ever done before. He
wasn't used to it, and then the Foots were also
particularly cruel. They beat people, including young children, using a
strip of board that had been perforated and roughened with
tar and sand. They also did not give them very
much to eat. One day, when Anthony had been there
(07:30):
for a few months, Foot started the machinery without warning
and Anthony's hand was caught in a wheel and it
was mangled. This was a very serious injury and he
went back to live with Subtle for a couple of
months until he recovered, and then he was returned to
the sawmill. His hand was noticeably scarred after this, with
what was described as a visibly protruding piece of bone
(07:53):
in his wrist. While he was recovering from this injury,
Anthony had a religious awakening. He asked Suttle's permission to
be baptized and to join a church. At first, Subtle refused,
which Anthony attributed to his being irritated about the injury
to his hand, but eventually, after Anthony had gone back
(08:14):
to work for Foot, Subtle gave his permission. Anthony was
baptized at a Baptist church in Foulmouth. A couple of
years later, Anthony started preaching to other enslaved people, and
this included sermons and teaching about the Bible, as well
as conducting marriage and funeral services. These marriages, of course,
were not legally recognized, even if he had been formally
(08:37):
ordained through a church. There was no legal recognition of
marriage between enslaved people. When Charles Suttle started essentially leasing
Anthony to other people. Anthony was still a child, so
people weren't paying very much for him to do things
like run errands or make weekly trips to pick up
corn meal, but the amount Subtle could charge grew over time.
(09:00):
His foot had agreed to pay Settle seventy five dollars
a year for the work at the sawmill, for example. Eventually,
Subtle hired a man named William Brent to manage the
placement of the people he was hiring out. Anthony had
worked for Brent before, and he was tasked with supervising
other enslaved people as they traveled to Richmond for their placements.
(09:22):
At first, Anthony worked for Brent's brother in law, and
after about a year in Richmond, when he was about twenty,
he was placed with a druggist named Millspaw at a
rate of one hundred and twenty five dollars a year.
It did not take long for Millspaugh to realize he
didn't have enough work for Anthony Burns to do, and
he did not think it would be financially worth it
(09:42):
to keep him on, So after about a week, Millspaw
took Burns aside and proposed a different arrangement. Burns would
be allowed to go out and look for work on
his own. He would use the money that he earned
to repay Millspaw one hundred and twenty five dollars that
he was paying for Burns's labor, and then Burns could
(10:02):
keep what he earned beyond that, minus a portion that
would go to Millspaw. Millspaugh told Burns that this arrangement
was illegal and had to be kept secret. By this point,
Burns had started forming a plan to liberate himself from enslavement,
which had influenced some of the choices that he had
made prior to being hired out to Millspaw. For example,
(10:24):
after his first two years of working for William Brent
in Falmouth, Burns had asked to be placed somewhere else.
Even though he and Brent got along and Brent's wife
was kind to him, Burns thought the longer he stayed
in one place, the more people would get to know him,
and the harder it would be for him to get
away unnoticed. Suttle, who of course did not know Burns's
(10:46):
reasoning for this request, had agreed this wasn't the only
time Burns spoke up for himself with Subtle, and whether
Suttle was willing to do what he asked seemed to
depend on whether he thought it would make Anthony more
willing and obedient in the long run. Burns also negotiated
with Millspaw over this work arrangement. Millspaugh wanted him to
(11:07):
deliver the money that he earned every day, but Burns
thought this would be inconvenient, maybe even impossible. There might
be days when he couldn't find work and had no
money to turn over. So Burns convinced Millspaugh to let
him hand over his money every two weeks. This fortnightly
money delivery would also help Burns with his plan to
(11:28):
liberate himself from enslavement, which we will get to after
we pause for a sponsor break. Unlike other places Anthony
Burns had lived, Richmond, Virginia was a major port. In
(11:50):
the words of Charles Emory Stevens, who published a biography
of Burns in eighteen fifty six, quote, he was in
daily sight of those northern keels that seemed to him
a part of the very soil of freedom. He was
in daily converse with men whose birthright was in a
free land, and whose language to the slave had no
smack of the whip. Kind hearted sailors, having no vessels
(12:13):
to forfeit and no trade to compromise, did not hesitate
to urge him.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
On to flight. Plainly, the tide was at hand when,
if ever, he was to achieve his freedom. At the
same time, Burns had some potential reasons to stay. He
had set up a secret school to teach enslaved people
how to read, like his work arrangement with Millspa. This
(12:38):
was illegal, but leaving would mean that he was leaving
his students. He had also been preaching for years, and
he wrestled with the question of whether it was morally
right to escape. Supporters of slavery used passages from the
Bible to justify its existence, but beyond that, slavery was
fully legal under the law and escaping was not. After
(13:02):
thinking about it and studying the Bible again, in the
words of Charles Emery Stevens quote, he found that the
Bible set forth only one God for the black and
white races, that he had made of one blood all
the nations of the earth, that there was no divine
ordinance requiring one part of the human family to be
in bondage to another, and that there was no passage
(13:25):
of holy writ by virtue of which Colonel Suttle could
claim a right of property in him any more than
he could in Colonel Suttle.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
According to his biography, Burns had also fallen in love
with a woman, and it is possible that he was
trying to figure out how he could take her with him.
But when he handed over his earnings after his first
fortnight of finding his own work, he hit an unexpected snag.
As we said earlier, he was supposed to repay the
one hundred and twenty five dollars that Millspaw was paying
(13:57):
for a year of his labor. But if you must
applied that first two weeks of earnings over a whole year,
he was on track to earn almost three times that.
Millspaugh realized he could recoup his expenses much faster than
he thought, and he again told Burns to bring him
the money he had earned every day, and to earn
that one hundred and twenty five dollars as fast as possible.
(14:20):
Burns did not want to do either of those things.
He wanted to be able to keep some of what
he earned as long as he was not jeopardizing being
able to pay back that one hundred and twenty five
dollars I say payback.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
He wasn't paying it back. This was money that someone
else wanted from him. He had not taken out a
loan or something like that. And as although he was
living in Millspaugh's house, in a room that he shared
with another border, it was feasible that he and Millspaugh
might not see each.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Other every day.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
If Burns was leaving early to find work and then
getting back late, that meant that his absence might not
be he noticed right away if he left, and that
would not be the case if he was required to
physically meet with Millspaw every day to hand him his money.
Burns and Millspaw negotiated over this for a while, and
(15:13):
Burns finally left the room without agreeing to this daily schedule.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
During his time in Richmond, Burns had met sailors and
other workers from around the port, and during the two
weeks he had been working on his own, he had
mostly worked around the docks, loading and unloading cargo. He
had figured out who seemed sympathetic and who did not so.
Over the next couple of days, he found a ship
headed north that was getting ready to set sail and
(15:41):
had crew members who were willing to hide him. He
did not hand his money over to Millspaw, and he
used it instead to make arrangements, pay expenses, and provision himself.
This did mean, though, that he was not able to
take the woman that he had fallen in love with.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, they're just one. Not time to make those kinds
of arrangements, since he had to tighten up his schedule
to make his escape. One night in February of eighteen
fifty four, three days or so after his conversation with Millspaw,
Burns put on four layers of clothing, with his work
clothes as the outermost layer, and he got into bed
(16:21):
in the very early hours of the morning. He gathered
up his possessions in a bundle, and he slipped out
of the room and out of the house without waking
up the other border or Millspaw. He got to the
dock and the crew for the ship hit him on board.
The ship was delayed leaving port, and it did not
set sail that day as expected. Burns eventually fell asleep
(16:43):
when he awoke, they were sailing down the James River
toward the ocean.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
This voyage was miserable.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
The ship's captain and officers did not know he was aboard,
and it needed to stay that way. That meant that
he could not leave his hiding spot. Bad weather and
unfavorable winds meant that the journey was a lot longer
and rougher than normal. He felt seasick a lot of
the time. He had to rely on the crew to
sneak food to him, and when they managed to do that,
(17:12):
it did not always line up with whether he was
feeling well enough to actually eat it because of how
seasick he was. But at the end of February or
the start of March eighteen fifty four, Burns arrived in Boston.
He found a room in a boarding house and he
recovered from the journey, and that recovery took about a week.
Then he found work as a cook on a mud
(17:34):
scal That was a barge, and the term was used
both for barges that could travel over mudflats and barges
that carried the mud that was hauled up by dredgers.
This job did not last long, though he didn't really
have any experience as a cook, and for whatever reason,
he could not get the bread to rise. Listen, I
feel you even people that cook a lot can't always
(17:55):
get their bread to rise. So he was fired though
after about a week. As we've talked about been a
number of previous episodes. Now, Boston had about two thousand
black residents in the eighteen fifties. Some had been born
free to black parents and some had been legally manumitted,
but those who had liberated themselves from slavery, like Burns,
(18:18):
were all considered to be fugitives. After he was fired
from his position on the Mudscow, Burns was hired by
a black merchant named Coffin Pitts, who had a shop
on Brattle Street. This street is not there anymore, but
at the time it was home to a number of
black owned businesses. It was also home to Brattle Street Church,
(18:40):
which had been struck by cannon fire in the Siege
of Boston during the Revolutionary War, and it still had
a cannon ball lodged in the facade. In addition to
owning this shop, Pitts was an abolitionist, and he was
a deacon at twelfth Baptist Church. This church was nicknamed
the Fugitive Slaves Church, both because the number of self
(19:00):
emancipated people among its membership and because of its organizing
against a Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, which we
are going to talk more about in a bit. Burns
attended this church as well. Over the next couple of months,
Burns started building a life for himself in Boston. He
wrote a letter to his brother back in Virginia, telling
(19:23):
him where he was and about his job. He did
not mail this letter directly to his brother, though, he
sent it to somebody in Canada so it could be
postmarked from there. But when the letter arrived in Virginia,
the postmaster saw the Canadian postmark and the fact that
it was addressed to a slave, so he delivered it
(19:43):
to Burns's brothers Enslaver, to read it, and then informed
either Charles Sutton or William Brent of its contents. Sutton
started the legal process for having his property returned to him.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
We'll get to that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Article four, Section two, clause three of the US Constitution reads, quote,
no person held to service or labor in one state
under the laws thereof escaping into another, shall, in consequence
of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such
service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim
(20:31):
of the party to whom such service or labor maybe do.
Although that doesn't have the word slavery in it, that
is known as the fugitive slave clause. Today, this has
been superseded by the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which
abolished slavery except in punishment for a crime, but the
text itself is still part of the document. The Fugitive
(20:53):
Slave Act of seventeen ninety three, which was signed into
law by George Washington, was written to legally enforce this
clause of the Constitution. Under this law, the process of
reclaiming a fugitive started with an indictment or an affidavit
made before a magistrate. Authorities were then required to capture
and return people who had escaped from slavery, including if
(21:16):
they had escaped to other states or territories. Anyone who
harbored someone who had escaped, or obstructed this process, or
rescued people as they were being transported could be fined
up to five hundred dollars or imprisoned.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
For a year.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
The Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty revised the seventeen
ninety three Act and was signed into law by President
Millard Fillmore. This is part of a series of bills
that are collectively described as the Compromise of eighteen fifty.
We've talked about this a number of times on the
podcast before, including fairly recently in our Charles Sumner episodes,
(21:54):
but it is a central part of what happened to
Anthony Burns, so we're going to go through it again.
When the US Constitution was ratified in seventeen eighty nine,
it left the question of whether to allow slavery up
to the states. By the start of the nineteenth century,
slavery had been abolished in most of the northern states
and territories, but not in the Southern states. The slave
(22:17):
states outnumbered the free states, which meant slave states had
slightly more power in the Senate, where each state gets
two senators regardless of the size of that state's population.
As new states were admitted, the United States took steps
to maintain a balance between the slave states and the
free states. States were generally admitted in pairs one slave
(22:40):
and one free. In eighteen twenty, the question of whether
Missouri should be admitted as a slave state led to
the Missouri Compromise, in which Missouri was admitted as a
slave state. Maine was created as a free state from
what had been part of Massachusetts, and the Missouri Compromise
also drew up boundary line through Louisiana Territory, with slavery
(23:03):
outlawed in territories and newly created states north of that
line but legal south of it.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Thirty years later, the Compromise of eighteen fifty came after
California requested to join the Union as a free state
and there was no slave state ready to be admitted
to keep the balance in the Senate. Slave states were
also losing power in the House of Representatives as more
people moved to northern cities. This set of five laws
(23:31):
included one that admitted California as a free state, one
that abolished the slave trade in Washington, d c. And
the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, more formally titled
an Act Respecting Fugitives from Justice and Persons Escaping from
the service of their Masters.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
This law was meant to help appease the slave states
that were losing power in the Senate through the admission
of California to the Union. It did not includ the
words slavery, and the actual text it said, if someone
quote held to service or labor escaped to another state
or territory, the quote person or persons to whom such
(24:12):
service or labor may be do, or his her or
their agent or attorney duly authorized could pursue and reclaim
quote such fugitive person.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Doing so required them to procure a warrant from the courts, judges,
or commissioners of the state or territory the person fled to.
If a commissioner was overseeing these proceedings, he would be
paid for his services. If the commissioner found that the
proof provided was sufficient to issue the warrant, he would
be paid ten dollars. If he found that the proof
(24:46):
was not sufficient to provide the warrant, he would be
paid five dollars. In other words, it was in the
financial interests of the commissioners to find in favor of
the person who was claiming that another person was their property.
The people who were empowered to arrest the fugitives were
also paid five dollars for each person they arrested.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
This law also increased the monetary penalties that had been
established under the previous fugitive slave law, and it established
new ones. Marshals or deputy marshals who refused to execute
these warrants could be fined one thousand dollars. Anyone who
obstructed the process or harbored someone who had escaped or
(25:29):
rescued them, or aided them in any way directly or
indirectly could be fined up to one thousand dollars and
imprisoned for up to six months. They could also have
to pay civil damages to quote the party injured by
such illegal conduct, up to one thousand dollars for each fugitive.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
This was a stronger law with harsher penalties than the
seventeen ninety three version. The proceedings involved were basically administrative hearings,
not trials. It was explicitly illegal for the testimony of
a so called fugitive to be entered into evidence.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
This law put all black people in the United States
at risk, regardless of whether they were or ever had
been enslaved. After it was passed, black people in the
Northern States started emigrating from the United States, primarily to
Canada to try to protect themselves. An estimated five thousand
black people fled from the Free States to Canada after
(26:29):
this law was passed. We have already talked about several
things Anthony Burns had done or been involved with during
his lifetime that were considered illegal. It was illegal for
white people in Virginia to teach black people to read
and write. Also, in the words of the eighteen forty
nine Legal Code of Virginia, quote every assemblage of Negroes
(26:51):
for the purpose of religious worship, when such worship is
conducted by a Negro, And every assemblage of Negroes for
the purposes of instruction in reading or writing, or in
the night time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly.
So Burns's work as a preacher and the secret school
he established were both illegal. As we said earlier, His
(27:13):
arrangement with Millspa to earn his own money also illegal.
It was also illegal for Anthony Burns to leave Virginia
without his enslaver's knowledge or approval. It was illegal for
him to escape to Massachusetts. It was illegal for the
sailors aboard the ship to hide him there and to
bring him food. It was illegal for the ship's captain
(27:34):
and officers to transport him, even though they did not
know he was a board It was illegal for the
boarding house owner in Boston to rent him a room.
It was illegal for the mudscow captain to hire him
as a cook. It was illegal for coffin Pits to
give him a job and a place to live. It
was illegal for the congregation of twelfth Baptist Church to
welcome him into their number and to offer him aid
(27:56):
and comfort. After learning about the letter Birds had written
to his brother that revealed that he had gone to Boston,
Charles Suttle went to the authorities in the State Circuit
Court for Alexandria County, Virginia. On May sixteenth, eighteen fifty four,
the court determined that he had provided satisfactory proof that
Burns owed subtle his service. Suttle and William Brent both
(28:20):
traveled to Boston to pursue him. On May twenty fourth,
in Boston, United States Commissioner Edward G. Loring issued a
warrant for Burns's arrest. Watson Freeman, United States Marshal of Massachusetts,
was empowered with arresting Burns, but the actual arrest was
carried out by slave catcher Asa O. Buttman, who had
(28:41):
been deputized. Buttman arrested Burns that evening. Buttman had been
in coffin Pitts's store that day, but he hadn't aroused
their suspicions. Burns and Pitts usually walked to and from
work together, but that night Burns decided to take a
brief walk first. Once the two men had separated, Buttman
(29:04):
confronted Burns. At first, Burns thought he was being mugged,
but then Buttman said he was being charged with robbing
a jewelry store. Burns knew that he had not robbed anyone,
and he thought this was just some kind of mistake,
so he willingly went with Buttman. He didn't even call
out the Pits, who was still within earshot, about what
(29:24):
was happening. Even though Burns was not trying to resist arrest,
six or seven other men who had been waiting nearby
rushed out, and they grabbed him, lifting him up off
of his feet and carrying him to the courthouse.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Once they arrived, they were met by Marshall Freeman. Freeman
told Burns he was being taken upstairs to the jury
room to meet his accuser. And Burns again went willingly,
only to find that there was no accuser in that room,
because there was no such person. It was at that
point that he realized what had to be happening, That
(29:59):
he had been captured as a fugitive slave. In the
words of his biographer, Charles Emery Stevens quote as in
a dissolving view, the land of freedom faded out and
the dark land of slavery usurped its place. He saw
himself again a slave far worse than that, a slave, disgraced,
pointed at as a runaway, punished, perhaps punished unto death.
(30:24):
Overpowered by the prospect, he and his own simple but
expressive phrase, gave all up. We are going to talk
about what happened next next time. But right now, Tracy,
do you have listener mail for us? I do have
listener mail for us. This listener mail is actually from
(30:48):
an old friend of the podcast who we have not
seen in many years, Jess, who works for the National
Park Service and who we worked with when we did
a live show at Adams National Historic Park some years ago.
Jess wrote and said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, your friendly
Massachusetts park ranger here one of two, one of my
(31:09):
colleagues was able to brag to me that you read
her letter on the show. I've made it up to
September twenty twenty four in the podcast The forty three
government shut down put me behind, but I will catch
up and just listened to the episode on Ettienkeabe and
Ikaria Boy. I was not expecting Navu, Illinois to make
an appearance. Your episode talks about Navu being the headquarters
(31:33):
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
There is an Adams National Historic Park connection. In eighteen
forty four, Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams,
visited Navu. He and his cousin were traveling and wanted
to check it out. They met with Joseph Smith and
were given a tour of the city by Smith. Before
(31:53):
he left, Smith gifted Charles Francis Adams assigned copy of
the Book of Mormon. Just six weeks later and his
brother were murdered. Rangers would casually mention this on a tour,
and news of the book made its way back to
a historian of Latter day Saints. History.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Turns out this book was Emma Smith's personal copy, which
had been listed as missing. Not only that, it's one of,
if I recall correctly, from a few years ago, only
three known existing signatures of Joseph Smith that still survives
until today. This ended up being one of my favorite
objects in the collection at Adam's National Historic Park. It's
(32:33):
amazing how far and wide the interests and reach of
this family was. Again, thanks for all you do and
making my ninety minute commute feel shorter. Jess ps pet
Tax attempting to get Miss summer Ray to look at
the camera for a Christmas photo. We have a kind
of shaggyish brown puppy dog looking very very cute in
(32:54):
front of a Christmas tree with the trees.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
All lit up. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Jess just has written us a few times since we
did that live show. Did we do two live shows
at Adam's Nationalist Doric Park or did the second one
get canceled because of COVID? I don't remember, all bored together. Yeah,
but we did for sure do a live show there
that we really enjoyed, and we enjoyed meeting all the
(33:22):
folks who.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Worked there and working with them.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And I always love hearing from folks at the National
Park Service, especially folks who have been able to weather
everything that has gone on with the National Park Service,
and honestly folks who didn't. We have also heard from
some folks who lost their jobs and the various waves
of reductions in force with the Park Service and other
(33:48):
government agencies. So thank you so much for this email.
It was such a cute picture and about this copy
of the Book of Mormon. I had not heard that
story at all, and it is super interesting. So if
you would like to send us a note, we're a
history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Also, we publish source
(34:10):
lists for all of our episodes. You can find them
on our website at Mistonhistory dot com, and you can
subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere
else you like to get your podcasts. Stuffy Miston History
Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(34:32):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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