THE DECISION.

        "The issue between the parties arises under the United States statute of 1850, and for the respondent it is urged that the statute is unconstitutional. Whenever this objection is made, it becomes necessary to recur to the purpose of the statute. It purports to carry into execution the provision of the Constitution, which provides for the extradition of persons held to service or labor in one state, and escaping to another. It is applicable, and it is applied alike to bond and free, to the apprentice and the slave; and in reference to both, its purpose, provisions, and processes are the same.

        "The arrest of the fugitive is a ministerial and not a judicial act, and the nature of the act is not

altered by the means employed for its accomplishment. When an officer arrests a fugitive from justice, or a party accused, the officer must determine the identity, and use his discretion and information for the purpose. When an arrest is made under this statute, the means of determining the identity are prescribed by the statute; but when the means are used and the act is done, it is still a ministerial act. The statute only substitutes the means it provides, for the discretion of an arresting officer, and thus gives to the fugitive from service a much better protection than a fugitive from justice can claim under any law.

        "If extradition is the only purpose of the statute, and the determination of the identity is the only purpose of these proceedings under it, it seems to me that the objection of unconstitutionality to the statute, because it does not furnish a jury trial to the fugitive, is answered; there is no provision in the Constitution requiring that the identity of the person to be arrested should be determined by a jury. It has never been claimed for apprentices or fugitives from justice, and if it does not belong to them, it does not belong to the respondent.

        "And if extradition is a ministerial act, to substitute, in its performance, for the discretion of an arresting officer, the discretion of a Commissioner instructed by testimony under oath, seems scarcely to reach to a grant of judicial power, within the meaning of the United States Constitution. And it is certain that if the power given to, and used

by, the Commissioner of United States Courts under the statute is unconstitutional, then so was the power given to, and used by, magistrates of counties, cities and towns, and used by the act of 1793. These all were Commissioners of the United States; the powers they used under the statute, were not derived from the laws of their respective states, but from the statute of the United States. They were commissioned by that, and that alone. They were commissioned by the class instead of individually and by name, and in this respect the only difference that I can see between the acts of 1793 and 1850, is, that the latter reduced the number of appointees, and confined the appointment to those who, by their professional standing, should be competent to the performance of their duties, and who bring to them the certificates of the highest judicial tribunals of the land.

        "It is said the statute is unconstitutional, because it gives to the record of the court of Virginia an effect beyond its constitutional effect. The first section of the fourth article of the Constitution is directory only on the State power, and as to the State courts, and does not seek to limit the control of Congress over the tribunals of the United States or the proceedings therein. Then in that article the term, 'records and judicial proceedings,' refers to such inter partes, and of necessity can have no application to proceedings avowedly ex parte. Then if the first section includes this record, it expressly declares as to

'records and judicial proceedings' that Congress shall prescribe 'the effect thereof,' and this express power would seem to be precisely the power that Congress has used in the statute of 1850.

        "Other constitutional objections have been urged here, which have been adjudged and re-adjudged by the Courts of the United States, and of many of the states; and the decisions of these tribunals absolve me from considering the same questions further than to apply to them the determination of the Supreme Court of this state in Sims' case, 7 Cushing 309, that they 'are settled by a course of legal decisions which we are bound to respect, and which we regard as binding and conclusive on this Court.'

        "But a special objection has been raised to the record that it describes the escape as from the State of Virginia, and omits to describe it as into another State, in the words and substance of the Constitution. But in this the record follows the tenth section of the statute of 1850, and the context of the section confines its action to cases of escape from one state, &c., into another, and is therefore in practical action and extent strictly conformable to the Constitution.

        "This statute has been decided to be constitutional by the unanimous opinion of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts on the fullest argument and maturest deliberation, and to be the law of Massachusetts, as well as, and because it is a constitutional law of the United States; and

the wise words of our revered Chief Justice in that case, 7 Cushing, 318, may well be repeated now, and remembered always. The Chief Justice says:

        " 'Slavery was not created, established, or perpetuated, by the Constitution; it existed before; it would have existed if the Constitution had not been made. The framers of the Constitution could not abrogate slavery, or the rights claimed under it. They took it as they found it, and regulated it to a limited extent. The Constitution, therefore, is not responsible for the origin or continuance of slavery; the provision it contains was the best adjustment which could be made of conflicting rights and claims, and was absolutely necessary to effect what may now be considered as the general pacification, by which harmony and peace should take the place of violence and war. These were the circumstances, and this the spirit, in which the Constitution was made; the regulation of slavery, so far as to prohibit States by law from harboring fugitive slaves, was an essential element in its formation, and the Union intended to be established by it was essentially necessary to the peace, happiness, and highest prosperity of all the States. In this spirit, and with these views steadily in prospect, it seems to be the duty of all judges and magistrates to expound and apply these provisions in the Constitution and laws of the United States, and in this spirit it behoves all persons bound to obey the laws of the United States, to consider and regard them.'

        "It is said that the statute, if constitutional, is wicked and cruel. The like charges were brought against the act of 1793; and Chief Justice Parker, of Massachusetts, made the answer which Chief Justice Shaw cites and approves, viz :--'Whether the statute is a harsh one or not, it is not for us to determine.'

        "It is said that the statute is so cruel and wicked that it should not be executed by good men. Then into what hands shall its administration fall, and in its administration, what is to be the protection of the unfortunate men who are brought within its operation? Will those who call the statute merciless, commit it to a merciless judge?

        "If the statute involves that right, which for us makes life sweet, and the want of which makes life a misfortune, shall its administration be confined to those who are reckless of that right to others, or ignorant or careless of the means given for its legal defence, or dishonest in their use? If any men wish this, they are more cruel and wicked than the statute, for they would strip from the fugitive the best security and every alleviation the statute leaves him.¹
1 The reasoning in these two paragraphs presents one of the most remarkable instances of moral obliquity on record. The assertion is, that a certain statute is so wicked that good men ought not to execute it. Judge Loring, on the other hand, says that good men are the very persons to execute it. Of course they are so to execute it as either to promote or to defeat its true intent. Judge Loring will certainly say that they should execute it after the former method. That is, good men are to engage deliberately, and under oath, in promoting a wicked design!

        "I think the statute constitutional, and it remains for me now to apply it to the facts of the case. The facts to be proved by the claimant are three:

        "First, That Anthony Burns owed him service in Virginia. Second, That Anthony Burns escaped from that service. These facts he has proved by the record which the statute, section tenth, declares 'shall be held and taken to be full and conclusive evidence of the fact of escape, and that the service or labor of the person escaping is due to the party in such record mentioned.' Thus these two facts are removed entirely and absolutely from my jurisdiction, and I am entirely and absolutely precluded from applying evidence to them. If, therefore, there is in the case evidence capable of such application, I cannot make it.

        "The third fact is, the identity of the party before me with the Anthony Burns mentioned in the record.

        "This identity is the only question I have a right to consider. To this, and to this alone, I am to apply the evidence; and the question whether the respondent was in Virginia or Massachusetts at a certain time, is material only as it is evidence on the point of identity. So the parties have used it, and the testimony of the complainant being that the Anthony Burns of the record was in Virginia on the nineteenth of March last, the evidence of the respondent has been offered to show that he was in Massachusetts on or about the first of March last, and thereafter till now.

        "The testimony of the claimant is from a single Witness, and he standing in circumstances that would necessarily bias the fairest mind; but other imputation than this has not been offered against him, and, from anything that has appeared before me, cannot be. His means of knowledge are personal, direct, and qualify him to testify confidently, and he has done so.

        "The testimony on the part of the respondent is from many witnesses whose integrity is admitted, and to whom no imputation of bias can be attached by the evidence in the case, and whose means of knowledge are personal and direct, but in my opinion less full and complete than that of Mr. Brent.

        "Then, between the testimony of the claimant and respondent there is a conflict, complete and irreconcilable. The question of identity on such a conflict of testimony is not unprecedented nor uncommon in judicial proceedings, and the trial of Dr. Webster furnished a memorable instance of it.

        "The question now is, whether there is other evidence in this case which will determine this conflict. In every case of disputed identity there is one person, always, whose knowledge is perfect and positive, and whose evidence is not within the reach of error; and that is the person whose identity is questioned, and such evidence this case affords. The evidence is of the conversation which took place between Burns and the claimant on the night of the arrest.

        "When the claimant entered the room where Burns was, Burns saluted him, and by his Christian name:-- 'How do you do, Master Charles?' He saluted Mr. Brent also, and by his Christian name:--'How do you do, Master William?' (To the appellation 'Master' I give no weight.)

        "Colonel Suttle said,--'How came you here?' Burns said an accident had happened to him; that he was working down at Roberts', on board a vessel, got tired and went to sleep, and was carried off in the vessel. 'Anthony, did I ever whip you?'--'No, sir.'--'Did I ever hire you out where you did not wish to go?'--'No, sir.'--'Have you ever asked me for money when I did not give it to you?'--'No, sir.'--'When you were sick, did I not prepare you a bed in my own house and put you upon it and nurse you?'--'Yes, sir.' Something was said about going back. He was asked if he was willing to go back, and he said, 'Yes, he was.'

        "This was the testimony of Mr. Brent. That a conversation took place, was confirmed by the testimony of Caleb Page, who was present, and added the remark, that Burns said he did not come in Capt. Snow's vessel. The cross-examination of Brent showed that Col. Suttle said, 'I make you no promises and I make you no threats.'

        "To me this evidence, when applied to the question of identity, confirms and establishes the testimony of Mr. Brent in its conflict with that offered on the part of the respondent; and then, on the whole testimony, my mind is satisfied beyond a

reasonable doubt of the identity of the respondent with the Anthony Burns named in the record.

        "It was objected that this conversation was in the nature of admissions, and that too of a man stupefied by circumstances and fear, and these considerations would have weight had the admissions been used to establish the truth of the matters to which they referred, i. e., the usage, the giving of money, nursing, &c.; but they were used for no such purpose, but only as evidence in reference to identity. Had they been procured by hope or fear they would have been inadmissible; but of that I considered there was no evidence.

        "On the law and facts of the case, I consider the claimant entitled to the certificate from me which he claims."¹
1 Shortly after the rendition of Burns, an article was published in the Boston Atlas, entitled, "The Decision which Judge Loring might have given." It has since been acknowledged by Richard H. Dana, Jr., to be his production. The reader will find it worth while to compare it with Judge Loring's actual decision. See Appendix D.

        The Commissioner folded his manuscript and prepared to take his departure. But the auditors remained in their places, and for some moments the dead silence continued unbroken. Then, as at a funeral, one and another went quietly to Burns, whispered a word of sympathy, and bade him farewell; and gradually, the court-room was vacated by all but the Marshal, his aids, and the prisoner.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SURRENDER.

        BEFORE ten o'clock the decision had been pronounced. The act of rendition alone remained to be accomplished. It was the most momentous part of the whole transaction. In a community proverbially devoted to law and order, it had become perilous to attempt the execution of such a judicial sentence. The fact that a similar sentence had once before been executed in the same community, so far from making a repetition of the act more easy, only made it more difficult. But the difficulties had been immeasurably increased by the passage of the Nebraska Bill. All through the winter and spring, the people of Massachusetts had been kept at fever heat by the debates in Congress upon that daring and Union-shattering measure. While the trial of Burns was going on, came the news of its passage through both Houses. On the day before his extradition, the telegraph announced that the bill had received the President's signature, and had become the supreme law of the land. At such a juncture, the thrice and four times odious fugitive slave law had demanded another victim. It seemed like adding insult to

injury. At the moment, many regarded the arrest of Burns as a thing arranged by the Federal Government for the express purpose of showing to the country that not even the passage of the Nebraska Bill would prevent the execution of the slave law.

        Excited by this state of things, the people had thronged to the trial of Burns in an unexampled manner. They came, not from Boston only, nor from suburban towns only, but from distant cities and villages of Massachusetts.¹
1 Six or seven hundred went down in a body from the city of Worcester, distant forty-four miles from Boston. Many of them were men from the machine-shops and factories, whom no ordinary motive would have led to forsake their business.
Day after day, during the week of the trial, the Square around the Court House had been filled by the throng; but on the last day, and when it became known that the prisoner was to be sent back, the mass of spectators was swollen to such an extent that the previous multitude seemed as nothing in comparison. Of this countless number, an overwhelming majority were bitterly hostile to the execution of the law; many had sworn that it should not be executed on that day. In the face of such a formidable popular demonstration, it now became the duty of the federal officers to remove the prisoner, a third of a mile, from the Court House to the vessel lying at the wharf.

        There were two distinct objects to be accomplished,--the removal of the prisoner, and the preservation

of the peace of the city. The charge of the former devolved upon the United States Marshal, that of the latter upon the Mayor of Boston. But there was danger of confounding the two objects; special care was needed to provide that, under the guise of protecting the city, the Mayor's force should not be implicated in the act of rendition. The crisis called for a magistrate who fully understood the limits of his official duty and possessed firmness enough to maintain his position. Unfortunately, the Mayor's chair was at this time occupied by one whose qualifications, natural and acquired, but ill prepared him to cope with the difficulties of his situation. Bred a physician, and transferred at once from the routine of a practitioner to the chief magistracy of the city, Mayor Smith had neither that intimate knowledge of his legal responsibilities which the crisis demanded, nor that firmness of character which would enable him to maintain a consistent course. In the outset, he had committed himself to the Faneuil Hall meeting. When the time for holding that meeting arrived, he excused himself from personally attending it, but authorized assurances to be given of his hearty sympathy. When consulted by his policemen, on the morning after the riot, he informed them that they were to render no aid to the Marshal in the rendition of Burns. Beginning thus on the side of the people, he yet ended by involving himself, the police of Boston, and the military of

the Commonwealth, in the task of carrying into execution the fugitive slave act.

        The arrangements were concerted and dictated by Benjamin F. Hallett, Watson Freeman, and Benjamin F. Edmands. Mr. Hallett, the leading spirit of the trio, was a politician in whom a strong desire for popularity among the masses, was constantly overmastered by a stronger desire for the patronage of the Federal Government. Accordingly, while he had made an occasional venture to secure the former, his heartiest and most persevering activity was expended in pursuit of the latter.¹
1 At an earlier period of his life, Mr. Hallett was, for three or four years, associated with William Lloyd Garrison in the promulgation of the latter's anti-slavery views, and was as much entitled to be called a Garrisonian as any other person of that party. He assembled with them, had a conspicuous place on their platform, made speeches for them, reported their doings (being a stenographer), and in other ways signalized his zeal in the cause. Viewing him in that stage of his development by the reflected light of his after career, one must have been tempted to exclaim, "Is Saul also among the prophets?"
As the reward of his devotion, not to say servility, the Government had beneficed him with the office of United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. This position, he seemed to imagine, gave him the right on the present occasion to direct the conduct, not only of other officers of the Federal Government, but also of the officers of the Commonwealth. Mr. Freeman, the Marshal, was a person in whom animal courage, decision, and resoluteness of purpose, were marked

characteristics. Upon him devolved the sole responsibility of every step taken in the executive act of rendition. But he naturally deferred to the law officer of the Government, and his name was used to give sanction to the plans of the Attorney. Mr. Edmands was a major-general, commanding the first division of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. Leading the useful but inglorious life of a druggist in State Street for the most part of the time, he enjoyed the distinction of going into camp once a year, and there receiving the homage of his troops. But holiday shows of soldiery are apt to pall, and Mr. Edmands, not improbably, was ready to make the most of an occasion that promised him the novel experience of being engaged in real service. Whatever his motive, it led him into the grave indecorum of stepping out of his subordinate position as a military officer, and assuming the character of dictator to his civil superior.

        Having decided upon the course to be pursued, these persons threw themselves upon the Mayor, for the purpose of coercing him into the adoption of their measures. They commenced their efforts for this end at an early stage of the trial. They sought and obtained personal interviews with him at the City Hall. They addressed to him repeated letters of remonstrance and advice. The result was, that the Mayor abandoned his first purpose, surrendered his own judgment, and conformed his official conduct to the programme which they had

marked out. The correspondence which passed between the several parties clearly developed this change, and the influences by which it was effected.

        From the night of the riot until the Tuesday following, two companies of the city soldiery had been under arms for the preservation of the peace. On that day, the Marshal and the Attorney addressed a formal communication to the Mayor, declaring that force to be insufficient for the purpose, and expressing the opinion that the entire command of Gen. Edmands within the city would be requisite. The Mayor's view of the case was the reverse of this.

        "After a full examination of the condition of the city this morning," said he, in a note to Gen. Edmands, dated May 31st, "I feel justified in saying that one military company will be amply sufficient, from this date till further orders , to maintain order and suppress any riotous proceedings."

        He therefore directed Gen. Edmands to discharge one of the two companies at nine o'clock on that morning. This order was followed by another, bearing the same date, and directed to the same officer, in which, after declaring that it had been made to appear to him that a mob was threatened, the Mayor commanded Gen. Edmands to cause an entire Brigade, together with an additional corps of Cadets, to be paraded on the morning of June second, for the purpose of repressing

the anticipated tumult.¹
1 See Appendix F.
This sudden and extraordinary change of opinion and conduct was caused by no popular outbreak unexpectedly arising after the first order for discharging the company had been issued. The cause was suggested by Mayor Smith himself in his answers to certain interrogatories subsequently made under oath.²
2 In the case of Ela vs. Smith and others, growing out of the assault of the soldiers upon the plaintiff.
"Mr. Hallett and Mr. Freeman called upon me," said he, "some two or three days before the second of June, and expressed an opinion that the military force then on duty was inadequate to the maintenance of the peace of the city. I was soon convinced that more force was necessary, and at once took measures accordingly." In addition to this personal interview, the Marshal and Attorney addressed to him, under date of May 31st, a joint communication in which the same views were urged upon his consideration.³
3 A curious proof of the District Attorney's usurping disposition was disclosed by the communications which were addressed to the Mayor, by the Marshal and himself. The first was signed by the Marshal alone, and was simply endorsed "approved" by Mr. Hallett. The second was signed by both; but the name of the Marshal, who was the chief and only really responsible officer, was placed beneath that of the Attorney. See Appendix G.
The interview and the despatch of the letter manifestly occurred in the interval between the issuing of the Mayor's two contradictory orders of that day. It thus appeared that while the Mayor's own careful observation of the condition

of the city had convinced him that but one company of military was necessary, the representations of the United States officers convinced him, an hour or two after, that a whole Brigade was necessary.

        The ostensible object of the extraordinary interference by the United States officers with the Mayor's functions, was the preservation of the peace of the city. "The Marshal does not ask any aid to execute the fugitive law as such," said that officer in his communication of May 30th; "nothing is required but the preservation of the peace of the city." "We repeat what we have before said, that the United States officers do not desire you to execute the process under the fugitive law of the United States, which devolves on them alone in the discharge of their duties; but they call upon you as the conservator of the peace of the city;"--so wrote both the District Attorney and the Marshal in their communication of May 31st. "They distinctly and explicitly declare that the United States Government neither wished nor asked any assistance from the city of Boston;"--so said the Mayor in his sworn answers at a subsequent date.

        Unfortunately for this pretence, the same correspondence showed that the design was to enlist the troops of Massachusetts, in effect, though not in form, in the service of the United States. In their first communication, the two functionaries of the

Federal Government, while disclaiming any authority, declared their belief that the expenses incurred by mustering the large military force which they called on the Mayor for, would be met by the President. The Mayor hesitated; their "belief" was not a sufficient guarantee. He addressed to them a note of inquiry touching that point. In the interval, Mr. Hallett, still taking the lead in another man's business, had sought and obtained from the President full authority for incurring the proposed expense.¹
1 Throughout the whole affair, a frequent correspondence by telegraph was kept up between the United States officers at Boston and the President at Washington. The zeal and vigor which the Federal Executive displayed in enforcing an odious statute on this occasion, stands in striking contrast to his indifference, not to say connivance, on a later occasion, at the most high-handed violation of the Constitution and the laws. See Appendix H.
In the next communication, accordingly, the assurance of this authority, confirmed by a copy of the President's despatch, was given to the Mayor. Then immediately followed the order for mustering the Brigade. It seemed clear, therefore, on the one hand, that if, In the Mayor's judgment, there had been a real necessity for calling out a Brigade to preserve the peace of Boston, he would not have waited for an assurance that the expense would be met by a foreign government; and on the other hand, that the President would not have felt authorized to draw money from the national treasury for the purpose of preserving the peace of a municipal corporation.¹
1 The sum of fourteen thousand dollars, or thereabouts, was paid out of the United States treasury to Mayor Smith, for services rendered on this occasion by the Massachusetts militia. This money was paid by him directly to the several companies, without passing into the city treasury or in any way coming under the control of the city government. No record exists at the City Hall that any such transaction ever took place. In disbursing the money, therefore, Dr. Smith acted, not in his capacity as Mayor, or as magistrate, but as an agent of the Federal Government. He supported two distinct characters in the tragedy--that of a Massachusetts magistrate in calling out the troops, and that of a Federal disbursing agent in paying them.

The tenor of his note to Mr. Hallett, singularly at variance with the latter's pretences, placed the matter beyond a doubt. "Incur," said he, "any expense deemed necessary by the Marshal and yourself for city military or otherwise, to insure the execution of the law." Yielding to a requisition based upon such a document, the Mayor did, in effect, constitute the Massachusetts troops a part of the Marshal's armed posse comitatus.

        The order for mustering the Brigade, which was signed by the Mayor and directed to Gen. Edmands, was drawn up by the latter officer. Distrusting his superior's knowledge of the military statutes, and confident of his own, he had assumed the task of preparing the formula that was to govern his own action. A police captain, upon entering the City Hall on the morning of June first, met Gen. Edmands descending from the Mayor's private room. As they entered the Police Office together, the military chief displayed the order with the Mayor's signature fresh upon it. "There,"

said he, "is the only order ever yet drawn up under which the military could legally act;" and, with some disparaging remarks on the ignorance of civilians in such matters, he proceeded to claim it as the triumph of his own genius. Then, as if for the purpose of justifying such a formidable military demonstration as that which the order contemplated, he turned and demanded of the police captain what those men were hid away for in Tremont Temple. "There are a thousand armed men there," said he. The policeman doubted the extraordinary statement. "Yes, there are," reiterated the general in a heat; "a gentleman who saw them told me; d--n them," continued he, with a profane zeal worthy of his cause, "we 'll fix 'em." The thousand men were "men in buckram."

        Armed with the authority conveyed by this precept, Gen. Edmands proceeded to issue his orders for assembling the troops. At half-past eight o'clock on the morning of June second, the whole force paraded on Boston Common. It consisted of the First Battalion of Light Dragoons, the Fifth Regiment of Artillery, the Fifth Regiment of Light Infantry the Third Battalion of Light Infantry, and the corps of Cadets. In all, there were twenty-two companies, including two of cavalry, and not less than a thousand soldiers. These troops were as fine specimens of the citizen soldiery of the Union as could anywhere be found. Often had they, on parade days, attracted the admiration of their fellow-citizens by their martial bearing,

the tasteful splendor of their uniforms, and the perfection of their drill. As the product of free institutions, they were held in just pride by the whole community, and never had an occasion arisen to interrupt the sympathy between the two classes. Now, for the first time, were these troops drawn up in hostile array against the people, to assist in executing the most odious statute that ever found a place in the archives of a free republic. The spectacle turned the popular complacency in their favorites into indignation and disgust.

        A strong esprit du corps, together with the military maxim of unquestioning obedience, sufficed to bring out the companies with full ranks. But they were far from being unanimous in their approval of the object for which they were called forth. A keen sense of the ignominy to which they were subjected, filled the breasts of some, and caused them to hang their heads with shame. Some were indifferent to the moral character of the occasion, but were anxious to signalize their soldiership. Others sympathized with the slavehunter and rejoiced in the opportunity to render him aid with ball and bayonet. The general habits and conduct of these latter corresponded with their disposition. As they stood in line on the Common, they compromised the character of the whole corps by their free use of intoxicating liquor and the singing of ribald songs. At a later period in the day, a company or detachment posted in State street, opposite the Exchange, quite bore off the

palm of infamy by conduct of this sort. Filled with liquor, even to intoxication, they became lost to all sense of decorum, and, reeling upon their gunstocks, sang the chorus, "Oh, carry me back to Old Virginny."

        The character and conduct of the officers were as diverse as those of the men. Some went to the discharge of their duty, cursing the authorities who had imposed it upon them. Some pressed forward with alacrity as to congenial business. Conspicuous among the subalterns, was the commander of the Light Dragoons. His intemperate zeal for the maintenance of law on this occasion, was in striking contrast with the disposition which he manifested at a later period, when, at a convivial entertainment of the soldiery, he bade open defiance to a recently enacted statute that was intended to deprive him, and such as him, of their favorite beverages. The day did not pass without his giving in his own person a humiliating proof of the necessity of such a law. While endeavoring to ride down a nimble bystander whose sole offence was the expression of an opinion, he reeled from his saddle and fell prostrate upon the pavement.

        The part to be performed by the police in the act of rendition, as well as that of the military, was prescribed by the United States officers. On the morning of Friday, June second, the Chief of the Police summoned his deputy and the captains of the several stations into his office, and locked the door. He then produced a diagram of Court

Square, Court and State streets, and of the streets and avenues leading into them, together with certain written instructions, all of which he had received from the Mayor.¹
1 See Appendix I.
The diagram, he informed his subordinates, represented the section of the city which was to be entirely cleared of the people and to be taken possession of by the military and police. He then proceeded to impart to the assembled captains their instructions. Among the number was Joseph K. Hayes, captain of the South Station. This officer had already acted a significant part in the business. On the morning after the attack on the Court House, he had called at the Chief's office for orders; he was directed to bring up fifteen of his men and station them in the office of the Water Registrar, opening upon the Square. Having obeyed the order, he forthwith sought the Mayor, and inquired what his men were to do.

        "Are we to help the slave-catchers?" said he.

        "No", replied the Mayor, "protect the property and lives of the citizens--nothing more."

        Captain Hayes returned to his men and informed them of his interview with the Mayor, and of the instructions which he had received.

        "Now," continued he, "I wish you distinctly to understand how much I shall help the United States in this business. If there is an attempt at a rescue, and it is likely to fail, I shall help the rescuers." In accordance with his expectation and

wish, this speech was immediately reported to the Chief by some of the men under his command.

        Mr. Hayes was the first to receive his instructions. He was directed to take his men, pass down State street, and notify each occupant of the buildings on the right, that by the Mayor's command they were to close their places of business. Having reached Commercial street, he was to draw up his men in a line across that street, cause them to join hands, and in that manner force back the crowd to Milk street, where he was to hold them at all hazards. Immediately after, a detachment of military was to be posted across Commercial, at its junction with State street. The whole space in Commercial street, between Milk and State streets, would thus be kept vacant. He was further instructed that, if his police force should be unable to maintain their stand against the pressure of the crowd, they were to swing back right and left; this was to be a signal to the military at the other end, who had instructions instantly, without giving warning, to fire upon the crowd.

        The same instructions were repeated to the rest of the captains. Each was charged with the duty of clearing a particular street, each was to be followed by a military detachment, having orders to fire without warning.

        Mr. Hayes listened attentively to this programme. "Mr. Chief," said he, "does not this look like helping to carry off Burns?" The Chief, with some embarrassment, made an indistinct reply. Just

then a tap was made on the door. Upon its being opened, the Mayor entered, and bowing to those present said:

        "The Commissioner has just entered the courtroom to give his decision, and has required me to see that the Square and the various avenues are cleared." Then, instructing the Chief forthwith to attend to that duty, he withdrew. Mr. Hayes again spoke:

        "The Commissioner gives directions to the Mayor, the Mayor to the Chief of Police, the Chief to his captains, they to their men; this is a pretty strong chain binding us to the act of rendition."

        Without further words, he retired to another room, wrote a resignation of his office, and then, entering the Mayor's private apartment, placed it in his hands. Greatly agitated, the Mayor entreated him to revoke it, but Mr. Hayes had not acted hastily, and remained immovable. Taking a copy of his resignation, he carried it to the office of one of the newspaper presses, which, during this memorable occasion, were throwing off editions at all hours of the day, and within an hour's time it was scattered over the whole city.¹
1 This act, so rare in the history of official life, involved the sacrifice, not only of assured position, but also of the most flattering prospects. But it had its reward. See Appendix J.

        The resignation of Mr. Hayes seriously deranged the plans of the Mayor and his advisers. They had intended to disguise the employment of the military by pushing the police prominently forward.

        The police were to clear the streets, they only were to come in contact with the people and force them back beyond the outer barrier of the reserved section. When this was complete and the space clear, the military were to march in and take up the several positions assigned them. The failure of the police to accomplish their part of the task made it necessary to call in the aid of the military. The selection of the officer to whom the business was entrusted, was significant of the influences that controlled the proceedings. This was Isaac H. Wright. He was one of the very few men of Massachusetts who had set at naught the principles of their fathers by volunteering in the war with Mexico. The fellow-officer of Gen. Pierce in that wicked raid, his equal in military skill, not less his equal in moral character, scarcely his inferior as a claimant upon his party for promotion, of congenial habits, and like him often hazarding all upon a powerful flow of spirits, he was yet, unlike him, made to feel full sorely the caprice of Democracy in the distribution of political favors. For while Gen. Pierce, returning from the plains of Mexico, had been wafted into the Presidential Chair by prosperous winds blowing from all quarters, Col. Wright was left to exchange the sword for the hammer and to settle down into the humdrum life of an auctioneer. He was now, however, the captain of the Light Dragoons, and no officer in all the Massachusetts troops was more ready to assist in the execution of the fugitive slave act than himself. In committing

to him and his mounted Dragoons the duty of driving the citizens from their thoroughfares and places of business, the authorities could not expect that any tenderness would temper their zeal.

        In the midst of these preparations, the city was electrified by the following proclamation which was posted at the comers of the streets:

TO THE CITIZENS OF BOSTON.¹
1 This proclamation was printed before the Commissioner's decision had been pronounced.

        To secure order throughout the city this day, Major-General Edmands and the Chief of Police will make such disposition of the respective forces under their commands as will best promote that important object; and they are clothed with full discretionary power to sustain the laws of the land. All well-disposed citizens and other persons are urgently requested to leave those streets which it may be found necessary to clear temporarily, and under no circumstances to obstruct or molest any officer, civil or military, in the lawful discharge of his duty.

J. V. C. SMITH, Mayor.

        By this proclamation the whole city was in effect placed under martial law. It notified the citizens that the Mayor had, for the time, delegated his power to a military officer and abdicated his office. The legality of this step was afterward seriously called in question. Among others who took this

ground, was Peleg W. Chandler, then a member of the Executive Council of the Commonwealth, and previously, Solicitor for the city of Boston. In an argument that never was refuted, he examined the Mayor's whole course in relation to the military, and maintained that in several particulars he had acted without warrant of law.¹
1 See Boston Atlas of June 12th and 16th, 1854. I much regret that the length of this able argument precludes its insertion in this volume.

        About eleven o'clock, the troops on the Common received orders to move down into Court and State streets. Each man had been supplied with eleven rounds of powder and ball, and, before moving, they proceeded to load in the presence of the assembled spectators. Then, without music, they marched down through the above-named streets, dropping off detachments at the several side streets, until the whole were posted.

        Meanwhile, the Marshal had been making his own preparations. One hundred and twenty-five men were sworn in as specials. Some of these were tide-waiters, truckmen, and other dependents upon the Custom House; all were taken from the least reputable portion of the citizens of Boston. No better could be obtained. So great had been the change in public opinion since the extradition of Sims, when merchants, bankers, ship- owners, and others of repute had pressed forward with offers of personal service in forcing back that hapless negro into slavery and death. These specials

were assembled in the Court House, and armed with cutlasses, pistols, and billies. They were then placed under the command of one Peter T. Dunbar, a Custom House truckman, who led them into an upper hall of the building, and there drilled them in marching and other exercises before the door of Burns's cell. Besides these, the Marshal had assembled five companies of United States troops, numbering one hundred and forty men; and, to complete his array, a brass cannon had been transported from the Navy Yard in Charlestown, at early dawn, and planted in the Square.

        At eleven o'clock, Court Square presented a spectacle that became indelibly engraved upon the memories of men. The people had been swept out of the Square, and stood crowded together in Court street, presenting to the eye a solid rampart of living beings. At the eastern door of the Court House, stood the cannon, loaded, and with its mouth pointed full upon the compact mass. By its side stood the officer commanding the detachment of United States troops, gazing with steady composure in the same direction. It was the first time that the armed power of the United States had ever been arrayed against the people of Massachusetts. Men who witnessed the sight, and reflected upon its cause, were made painfully to recognize the fact, before unfelt, that they were the subjects of two governments.

        After the decision, Burns remained in the courtroom awaiting the hour of his departure. The

retainers of the Marshal crowded around him with attempts at consolation. His guards especially endeavored to cheer his spirits. They gave him four dollars; they assured him that it was their intention to purchase his freedom; they had made arrangements with his owner, they said, and had already obtained four hundred dollars toward the object. To all these professions and promises Burns paid little heed; they came from the same men who had captured him. At length, Deputy Marshal Riley entered the room and ordered him to be handcuffed. Burns earnestly remonstrated against the indignity; he gave assurances that he would pass through the streets quietly, if allowed to go unshackled, otherwise, he threatened to make every demonstration of violence in his power. Butman thereupon left the room, and sought the Marshal's permission to dispense with the instruments of disgrace; and, in spite of counsel to the contrary from some cowardly adviser who stood by, the request was granted. The slavery into which Burns was returning was an evil which he had borne from the cradle, but the iron fetters were symbols of disgrace which his unbroken spirit was not prepared to endure.

        One o'clock had arrived, and yet the movement of the cortege was delayed. Meanwhile, Gen. Edmands had from time to time dashed into the Square, and, dismounting, held hurried conferences with the Marshal in the building. A bystander who heard their conversation, learned that the

delay was caused by the General's inability to clear the streets, and his fear of being unable to accomplish the task he had undertaken.

        At length, about two o'clock, the column was formed in the Square. First came a detachment of United States Artillery, followed by a platoon of United States Marines. After these followed the armed civil posse of the Marshal, to which succeeded two platoons of Marines. The cannon, guarded by another platoon of Marines, brought up the rear. When this arrangement was completed, Burns, accompanied by a officer on each side with arms interlocked, was conducted from his prison through a passage lined with soldiers, and placed in the centre of the armed posse. Immediately after the decision, Mr. Dana and Mr. Grimes had asked permission to walk with Burn's arm in arm, from the Court House to the vessel at the wharf; and the Marshal had given them his consent. At the last moment, he sought them out and requested that they would not insist upon the performance of his promise, because, in the opinion of some of the military officers, such a spectacle would add to the excitement. Mr. Dana declined to release the Marshal from his promise. The latter persisted in urging the abandonment of the purpose.

        "Do I understand you," asked Mr. Dana, "to say distinctly that we shall not accompany Burns, after having given your promise that we might?"

        The Marshal winced under the pressure of this

pointed question, but after a momentary reluctance answered firmly, "Yes." Accordingly, without a single friend at his side, and hemmed in by a thickset hedge of gleaming blades, Burns took his departure.

        The route from the Court House to the wharf had by this time become thronged with a countless multitude. It seemed as if the whole population of the city had been concentrated upon this narrow space. In vain the military and police had attempted to clear the streets; the carriage-way alone was kept vacant. On the sidewalks in Court and State streets, every available spot was occupied; all the passages, windows, and balconies, from basement to attic, overflowed with gazers, while the roofs of the buildings were black with human beings. It was computed that not less than fifty thousand people had gathered to witness the spectacle.

        At different points along the route, were displayed symbols significant of the prevailing sentiment. A distinguished member of the Suffolk Bar, whose office was directly opposite the courtroom, and who was, at the time, commander of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery, draped his windows in mourning. The example was quickly followed by others. From a window opposite the Old State House, was suspended a black coffin, upon which was the legend, The Funeral of Liberty. At a point farther on toward the wharf,

a venerable merchant had caused a rope to be stretched from his own warehouse across State street to an opposite point, and the American flag, draped in mourning, to be suspended therefrom with the union down. On looking forth from his window some time after, he saw a man intent on casting a cord over the rope, for the purpose of tearing down the flag.

        "Rascal!" shouted the old man, as he sallied forth with his long white hair streaming behind, "desist, or I'll prosecute you."

        "I am an American," answered the other, "and am not going to see the flag of. my country disgraced."

        "I too am an American, and a native of this city," retorted the State street merchant, "and I declare that my country is eternally disgraced by this day's proceedings. That flag hangs there by my orders: touch it at your peril." The flag remained, until the transaction of which, in its dishonor, it was a fit emblem, was fully ended.

        Along this Via Dolorosa, with its cloud of witnesses, the column now began to move. No music enlivened its march; the dull tramp of the soldiers on the rocky pavements, and the groans and hisses of the bystanders, were the only sounds. As it proceeded, its numbers were swelled by unexpected additions. Unauthorized, the zealous commander of the mounted Dragoons joined it with his corps. The Lancers, jealous of their

rivals, hastened to follow the example: thus vanguard and rear-guard consisted of Massachusetts troops. In its progress, it went past the Old State House, where, in 1646, the founders of the Commonwealth enacted that solemn condemnation of human slavery, which stands at the beginning of this volume.¹
1 This remark applies not to the building, but to the spot on which it stands. The present structure was erected in 1748.
Just below, it passed over the ground where, in the Massacre of 1770, fell Attucks, the first negro martyr in the cause of American liberty.

        Opposite the Custom House, the column turned at a right angle into another street. This cross movement suddenly checked the long line of spectators which had been pressing down, State street, parallel with the other body; but the rear portion, not understanding the nature of the obstruction, continued to press forward, and forced the front from the sidewalk into the middle of the Street. To the chafed and watchful military, this movement wore the aspect of an assault on the cortege; instantly some Lancers, stationed near, rode their horses furiously at the surging crowd, and hacked with their sabres upon the defenceless heads within their reach. Immediately after, a detachment of infantry charged upon the dense mass, at a run, with fixed bayonets. Some were pitched headlong down the cellar-ways, some were forced into the passages, and up flights of stairs, and

others were overthrown upon the pavement, bruised and wounded.¹
1 The assaults of the soldiers on the bystanders resulted in serious injury to several persons. One, A. L. Haskell, was attacked by Capt. Evans with a drawn sword, and cut on the back of the hand, for hissing and crying "shame." Holding up to view his bleeding hand, Mr. Haskell asked the officer his name and business. Capt. Evans gave his name, and to the inquiry touching his business, replied, "to kill just such d--d rascals as you are." A man named John Milton had his head laid open by a sabre cut, and was borne off to the hospital, where he lay for several weeks. But the most aggravated case was that of William H. Ela. While attempting to proceed quietly about his own business, he was assaulted by soldiers; beaten on the head with muskets; cut and bruised in the face; knocked down upon the pavement; and finally carried off and placed in confinement. These injuries impaired his mind to such an extent, that he was unable to go on with the business in which he was previously engaged, and which was his chief dependence for a livelihood. He afterward brought an action against Mayor Smith and others, for the assault, which became important as testing a question of law, and also as bringing to light material facts relating to the extradition of Burns.

        While this was passing, the procession moved on and reached the wharf. A breach of trust had secured to the Federal authorities the use of this wharf for their present purpose. It was the property of a company, by whom it had been committed in charge to an agent. Without their knowledge and against their wishes, he had granted to the Marshal its use on this occasion. When arraigned afterward by his employers for such betrayal of trust, he replied that he had since been rewarded by an appointment to a place in the Custom House.

        At the end of the wharf lay a small steamer

which had been chartered by the United States Government. On board this vessel Burns was conducted by the Marshal, and immediately withdrawn from the sight of the gazing thousands into the cabin below. The United States troops followed and, after an hour's delay, the cannon was also shipped. At twenty minutes past three, o'clock, the steamer left the wharf, and went down the harbor.

CHAPTER IX.

THE EARLY LIFE OF BURNS.

        ANTHONY BURNS was born in Stafford county, Virginia. This county lies on the Potomac river, midway between the birth-place and the burial-place of Washington. Washed by one of the noblest rivers in the Union, for commercial purposes, and with an excellent soil and climate, it has not only failed to keep pace with the general prosperity of the country, but has even gone backward. In 1850, its population was nearly half a thousand less than at the close of the preceding decade; the whole number of persons, bond and free, then scattered over its surface of three hundred and thirty-five square miles, was only 8044. It has shared, perhaps, only proportionably in the decay which slavery has wrought in the whole eastern section of the Old Dominion.

         The seat of justice in this little county is a village of eighty or ninety houses clustered around the Court House. At this place, twenty-three years ago, resided a slaveholder named John Suttle. He was the owner of twelve or fifteen slaves, the male portion of whom he employed in quarrying stone for the city of Washington. Among the number was

the mother of Anthony, who was employed in the family as a cook. She had been married to three husbands, by whom she had borne thirteen children, thus proving herself to be a valuable piece of property for her owner. Her last husband was a man of more than ordinary intelligence, and had been entrusted by his owner with a sort of supervision over other laborers in the quarry. It was whispered about among his fellow-bondmen that he had once been a freeman and had come from the North, but nothing was known with certainty on this point.

        Anthony was this man's son and the youngest of his mother's children. Before he could remember, the death of his father, caused by inhaling the stone dust of the quarry, had occurred, and he remained as his mother's consolation. While he was yet a little child lying about the kitchen hearth, Mr. Suttle died, and his widow became the head of the family. Under her management, the estate did not prosper, and, to relieve herself from embarrassment, she sold a portion of the slaves, five of whom were the children of Burns's mother. Not long after, the family removed to Acquia, a small hamlet lying five or six miles north of Stafford Court House. This change of place did not brighten their prospects. The temper of the dame did not improve under continued adverse fortune, and in her fits of ill humor she was wont to vent her spleen upon Anthony's mother. Frequently she would threaten to sell the woman by the sale of whose children she had already been kept from

bankruptcy; and at length so far carried her threat into execution as to hire her out to labor in a distant city. The mother pleaded hard for leave to take her little boy Anthony with her, but this boon was denied; the youngster might be made a source of profit at home. For two years they were not permitted to see each other. At the end of that period, Mrs. Suttle made a journey to the city to receive the wages of her slave, and on this occasion was gracious enough to take Anthony with her.

        When he was about six years old, Mrs. Suttle suddenly died. The settlement of her affairs fell into the hands of her eldest son, Charles F. Suttle, who found it necessary, in order to save them from utter ruin, to mortgage the slaves and raise money for the payment of the debts. Mr. Suttle and his family held a respectable position in society, but a strict classification would not have assigned them a place among the First Families of Virginia. His business was that of a shopkeeper, to which he united that of a deputy sheriff; ultimately, he attained to the dignity of high sheriff for his county. At one time he was fortunate enough to be chosen as the representative of his district in the Virginia Assembly. To these civic distinctions were added military honors; he rose through lower grades to the post of colonel in the Virginia militia, under which designation he first became known to the great world. Of a powerful frame, well filled out, of commanding stature, and a heavy, Cass-like countenance, he was well fitted for situations

which did not require intellectual so much as physical superiority.

        Such was the man who now became the proprietor and master of Anthony. The boy was inured betimes to labor, but his earliest tasks were light. A wise slaveholder would as soon think of putting a six month's colt upon the race-course, as of overtaxing the tender and growing muscles of his young slaves. Anthony's juvenile contribution to his owner's annual income consisted in "nursing" his sister's baby, she being thereby left free to pursue her toil without interruption. In this capacity he accompanied her to the house of one Horton, to whom she had been hired. It was while there that he acquired the first rudiments of learning. A sister of Horton kept a school in her house hard by, and with the children attending it Anthony was frequently brought in contact. He rendered them little personal services, and in true juvenile sodality and in defiance of Virginia law, they, at his request, taught him the alphabet from a primer which one had given him.

        At the age of seven, he was set to work directly to earn money for his owner, being then hired out to three maiden ladies for fifteen dollars a year. His principal duties in this new situation were to wait in the house, to run of errands, and to ride to the distant mill for a weekly supply of the indispensable corn meal. His mistresses were not unkind, and being religiously disposed, they even attempted once or twice to impart to him some

knowledge of the Bible; but their efforts were too, slight to produce any impression. When the year of his engagement had elapsed, he was hired to another person, living some miles distant, for twenty-five dollars a year. Another opportunity for picking up some scraps of learning was here afforded, which Anthony did not fail to improve. The wife of his new master kept a school in her house, bringing spelling-books and other educational apparatus directly before the eyes of the young slave. His thirst for knowledge was thus whetted, and by performing antics and drolleries for the amusement of the children, he induced them to teach him how to spell. What to them was an irksome task, was to him a chosen reward. In this situation he remained two years, and so well satisfied was his master with his good conduct that he made arrangements to hire him for a third year. Anthony, however, was of a different mind; he had been in some respects shabbily treated, and consequently refused to remain. In this conclusion his owner, after bearing his story, acquiesced.

        He now went to live with William Brent, at Falmouth on the Rappahannock river. This man, who afterward rescued his name from obscurity by becoming a swift witness against Burns, was not at that time a person of much renown in his native region. The husband of a young lady of some fortune, he lived in her mansion, was served by her slaves, and made himself merry with eating and drinking at her expense. The chase and other

social and spendthrift pastimes constituted at that time the business of his life. His wife was a woman of superior endowments, and, what was more to her credit, she treated her slaves with great kindness. To Anthony she was especially indulgent, and he always spoke of her afterward in terms of affection and respect. With these people he remained two years, earning for his owner fifty dollars each year; and so well pleased was Brent with the bright, active young slave, that he proceeded to make a verbal agreement to hire him for a third year. To this arrangement, however, Anthony refused his assent, agreeable as the prospect was when measured by a slave's standard. A more powerful motive than love of personal ease had already begun to operate in his bosom. While a very young boy, he had overheard the "elders" of his people discoursing among themselves about the good land far away to the north where no slaves were, and where all of the negro race were as free as their white brethren. Such conversations had kindled a fire in his young breast that never went out. He longed for the freedom of that faraway land, which his untutored imagination invested with exaggerated glories. As he grew in years, his passion for freedom also grew, and gradually, it took on the form of a definite purpose. Then he began to cast about for the method of its accomplishment, and his natural love of learning received an additional stimulus from the reflection that the more he knew of letters the better fitted

he would be to execute his cherished design. With the same end in view, he formed the resolution never to abide long with the same master, so that when he should at length flee from bondage, there might be less chance of identifying him. It was this that now led him to refuse any longer to remain with the easy and indulgent Brents.

        On meeting his owner, Suttle, near the close of the year, the latter greeted him with compliments.

        "Well, 'Tony, Mr. Brent speaks very well of you. He likes you so well that he has hired you for another year."

        "But, Mas'r Charles, I have n't hired him," said Anthony, with the confident tone of a slave conscious of standing well with his master.

        "What's the matter? Has n't he treated you well?"

        "Yes, mas'r, but--" Some reason, though of course not the real one, was assigned.

        "Well, it can't be helped now, for I've agreed to let you stop with Mr. Brent; and besides, he pays more for you than he did last year."

        "Jes' you say, mas'r. The woods is big enough to hold me."

        The argumentum a sylva is a prevailing one with the slaveholder. Col. Suttle yielded, and the bargain was broken up. He knew that it was better for his own interest to humor his slave in the choice of his field of labor, than to run the risk of trouble and loss by thwarting his inclinations. Long and sore experience has taught the enlightened slaveholders

of the south, that one willing slave is worth half-a-dozen refractory ones. Having defeated his owner's arrangement, Anthony was now ordered to present himself on the "hiring-ground" and find a new master.

        The impoverished condition of Virginia has engendered a peculiar custom, not found,--certainly not to the same extent,--in the less exhausted states of the south. Many slaveholders, having upon their hands more slaves than employment for them, make a practice of hiring them out to other persons needing their services. For this purpose, they are often sent long distances from their owner's estate, and members of the same family are scattered wide asunder. The contracts are made for only a single year. The time for hiring is during the Christmas holidays. Some convenient point is selected--at the Court House or some large village-- where the owners and their slaves assemble to arrange the matter. This is called the hiring-ground, and, as it remains the same from year to year, it becomes familiarly known to the slaves in the region round about. An owner living ten, twenty, or even thirty miles distant, has, it may be, come to the conclusion to hire out a number of his slaves. He summons the whole body before him, designates several by name, and orders them to meet him on the hiring-ground, at a specified hour of perhaps the next day. He then directs them to procure passes at the office and dismisses them. They are now left to find their

way to the hiring-ground on foot, whatever the distance; and it is at their peril if they fail to appear at the appointed time. While there--sometimes for several days,--they are left to shift for themselves. The owner provides them with neither food nor shelter at night; a small piece of silver, bestowed upon each, is the extent of the means which he places at their disposal. If they are not fortunate enough to find shelter in the cabin of some friendly slave in the neighborhood, they build a fire in the street or in the field, and, gathering around, pass the night in the open air.

        During the season of negotiation, the hiring-ground exhibits a busy spectacle. Hundreds are present, all intent upon one common business. The slave plays an important part in the transaction. He must be as active as his owner in finding some one to hire him. He is expected to praise himself without stint, and to give assurance to all inquirers that he is able to perform any sort of labor. Often it happens that a person comes in search of a slave qualified for some particular service, perchance that of coachman. His eye lights upon one looking more than usually trim, and he accosts him:

        "Whose boy are you?"

        The slave informs him.

        "What can you do?"

        The slave enumerates several kinds of employment with which he may have been familiar.

        "Can you drive a coach and take the management and care of horses?"

        The slave is, it may be, totally ignorant of such business; but, if he fears his owner's displeasure, he will promptly answer that, he can. If he fears God (as some do) and speaks the truth, he knows well that stripes are likely to be his reward. Sometimes the owner stands by and answers for him,--falsely, it may be. When a bargain is made, the parties retire to execute it in writing. Besides the sum of money agreed upon, the contract usually stipulates that the person hiring shall provide the slave with a hat or cap, a pair of shoes, and two suits of clothes during the year. Of all these stipulations the slave is always well informed. When the transaction is completed, he is turned over to his new master, who orders him to appear at his house on a specified day. He may be indulged with a day or two more on the hiring- ground, but from thence, without returning home, he goes directly to his new field of service.

        Most of the slaves belonging to Col. Suttle were subjected to this system of hiring, and thus it happened that Anthony, from his earliest years, was never much under his owner's eye. After the conversation relating to service with Brent, he repaired to the hiring-ground and soon fell in with a person named Foote, who was attracted by his appearance. The attraction was not mutual, and Anthony did not manifest much alacrity in satisfying Foote's inquiries. Col. Suttle stood by; and when

Foote asked Anthony what he could do, replied for him with some sternness:

        "He can do anything."

        It happened that Foote was in search of a boy to tend a steam engine in his saw-mill, and to this new and strange business the young and inexperienced slave felt a natural aversion. But his owner was not disposed to humor him a second time, and a bargain was concluded by which seventy-five dollars were to be paid for his services. Foote dwelt in the edge of Culpepper, bordering on Stafford county, and thither Anthony now went. He was at this time twelve or thirteen years of age.

        The new home did not prove to be very agreeable. Foote and his wife were Yankees, and they presented no exception to the classification which assigns to apostates from northern principles of freedom a place among the severest taskmasters of the south. Young slaves scarcely three feet high were beaten by the mistress without mercy. Strapped upon a plank with their faces downward, they were belabored with an instrument of torture peculiar to slave-land, consisting of a strip of board perforated with holes and roughened with tar and sand. The air, drawn through the holes as the board smote upon the skin, would raise blisters, while the sand increased the smart without deeply cutting up the flesh and thereby diminishing the market value of the slave. Besides cruelties of this sort, the most niggardly fare was doled out, and occasionally, in a fit of gloomy merriment,

Anthony would hold up to the sun his thin shaving of meat to show what a transparent humbug it was. His lot, however, was not one of unmixed evil, for, through the friendly teaching of a young daughter of his employer, he was enabled to make some further progress in his cherished pursuit of knowledge.

        When he had been two or three months in the service of Foote, an accident of a serious nature befell him. He was busy about the discharge of his duties in the mill, when Foote, without giving him warning, set the machinery in motion, and Anthony's hand was caught by a wheel and shockingly mangled.¹
1 The scar, or rather protruding broken bone, which disfigured his hand after the wound had healed, was commonly, but of course erroneously supposed, during his examination, to have resulted from abusive treatment by his master.
This accident laid him aside from work for two months. He returned to Falmouth, where Col. Suttle then had a sheriff's office, and in this was provided with a lodging until he was able to resume his toil. On meeting his owner, he pointed to his broken hand, and significantly remarked, "That's 'anything.' " Col. Suttle did not relish this taunting allusion to his former recommendation of Burns on the hiring-ground.

        During this period of suffering and exemption from labor, occurred the crisis in Anthony's religious history. He had been the subject of strong religious impressions from early childhood. His mother, who was a devout woman, had tried to

tell him something about God. He had been excited by the fervors of the camp-meeting. About the same time, the doctrines of Millerism had penetrated the little obscure Virginia county, and filled all hearts with alarm. It became the universal topic; white and black shared alike in the excitement. The barriers of class and caste were, for the time, thrown down, and never before had there been such unreserved communication between master and slave. To this was added a real cause of alarm; the scarlet fever swept over the district, leaving fearful ravages in its path. The young mind of Anthony shared in the general excitement produced by these unwonted causes, and he earnestly set about a preparation for the future life. He would retire into the recesses of the forest to pray, but there no light shone in upon him. Extravagant hopes and terrors alternately possessed him. At one time he looked momently to see Jesus appear in bodily shape before him; at another, believing that he actually saw the Fiend in the form of a serpent, he would spring from the ground, and with frantic outcries rush from the forest. Gradually, his extreme religious excitement subsided, but he never lost the sense of spiritual need. In this condition he remained until the accident occurred which has been already recorded.

        Impelled by bodily anguish, and fearing that his injury might terminate fatally, he applied himself with renewed earnestness to the Friend of the afflicted. All at once a thought flashed through his

mind:--"Here have I been praying to Jesus, whom I have never served, and have never thought of praying to the Devil, whom I have always served." This was a new revelation. He saw it was unreasonable to expect help from a Being whose service he had not entered. He saw that repentance and reformation of life were the first steps for him to take. Thus put upon the right path by the Infinite Spirit working with his spirit, he soon found the help and peace that he sought.

        After a suitable lapse of time, he applied to Col. Suttle, according to custom, for leave to be baptized; no slave being suffered to comply with that command of the Saviour or admitted to the church without a written permission from his owner. To Anthony's request, Col. Suttle, irritated by the prospect of loss from the maimed hand, returned a rough refusal, and even added words to wound the spirit of the young convert. If he joined the church, Suttle said, he would soon be drinking or following the women, like others. Anthony turned away with a heavy heart, but still with a silent resolve to pray that God would yet incline his owner to grant his request. The prayer was answered. Returning some time after from Foote's, where he had again resumed his labor in the mill, he unexpectedly met his owner in a carriage, on his way to the Springs. The latter kindly saluted him, and now of his own accord gave the requisite permission for baptism. Emboldened by such rare favor, Anthony petitioned for money to buy clothes in

which to appear with decency on the occasion of taking his baptismal vows, and received two dollars,--sixteen- fold more than Col. Suttle ever gave him at any one time, before or after.

        At the proper time he was baptized and received into the Baptist church at Falmouth. The church consisted of white freemen and black slaves. All assembled within the same walls for worship on the Sabbath, but a partition of boards separated the bond from the free. When the Holy Supper was administered, the cup was first carefully served to all of the privileged class, and afterward to their sable brethren. Those distinctions were not maintained in anticipation of heaven, but in deference to the prejudices of Virginia society. In the social religious meetings there was a somewhat nearer approach to the New Testament model, and the prayers and exhortations of the slaves were graciously suffered to intermingle with those proceeding from the master's lips.

        Among the Christian slaves at the south there is a class of persons that bear the character of quasi-pastors or preachers. Without being formally set apart to the sacred office by any rite of ordination, they yet receive a sort of recognition from the church with which they may happen to be connected. Piety, a gift at exhortation, and a desire for the work of a preacher, are the requisite qualifications. All these were found in Anthony when, at the end of two years from the period of his baptism, he applied to his brethren for their recognition

of him as a preacher. A day was appointed when he should exhibit his gifts to the assembled members of the church. Sitting around with ears more than usually critical, yet not without sympathy, they listened while Anthony addressed to them an exhortation from the desk. His effort proved satisfactory, and, at the close, pastor and brethren, taking him by the hand, bade him God speed. Thenceforth he exercised his now office as he had opportunity. Gathering a little congregation of slaves, sometimes in the kitchen of a friendly white person, sometimes in the rude cabin of a slave, he would lead them in their devotions and speak to them of the Gospel. These meetings, however, as well as all other assemblies consisting exclusively of slaves, were violations of Virginia law. Every such assembly, unless sanctioned by the presence of a white, was exposed to rude interruption, and the slaves that might be caught, to severe punishment. The patrols and guards that nightly walked their rounds were constantly on the watch to detect these secret meetings, and, in spite of all caution, they would occasionally succeed. Perhaps while the assembly were in the act of prayer, the door would be suddenly burst open by a throng of profane officials, each with cord in hand, bent on securing as many victims as possible. When such surprisals occurred, the first movement would be to extinguish the lights; then, through door, window, and even chimney, the affrighted worshippers hurried their escape. Those who were

unlucky enough to be caught, were taken to the cage,¹
1 A place provided everywhere in towns at the South, for the temporary confinement of delinquent slaves.
and the next day rewarded with nine-and-thirty lashes at the whipping post for having peacefully, but unlawfully, assembled to worship God. Anthony was not without experience of this sort, though he was always so fortunate as to escape from the clutches of the officers.

        In his new capacity, it sometimes fell to his lot to perform the marriage rite for slaves, or what among them was called such; and sometimes to conduct the burial service for the dead. If a slave died during the week, no funeral was allowed to interrupt the daily toil of the plantation. The body, encased perchance in an orange-box, was deposited in the ground without ceremony or delay, and a few shovelfulls of earth were thrown in, while the bereaved kindred went about their toil as usual. But on the following Sabbath, the whole body of the slaves, attended by the master or the overseer, assembled to "sod the grave." With prayers, exhortations, and much singing of hymns, in the sad, wild negro airs, this final ceremony was completed.

        In death as in life, the social distinctions of slavery are carefully maintained. Laid to rest in a "potter's field," the dead bodies of the slaves .never mingle their dust with that of the sovereign race. No monument, inscribed with the name of the deceased, ever marks the spot where he lies, as

no legal sanction was ever given to his name while he lived. A rough stone, gathered from the wayside, or a branch of cedar, soon to die, is his only monument. So perish, an undistinguishable throng, the enslaved race of the South. For two centuries the long and ever swelling procession has been moving on in its weary path to the grave, but no name of them all survive, save where, here and there, one has escaped out of the American Egypt, or, Spartacus-like, has risen to take bloody vengeance on his oppressors. A race of many millions has mingled in the very thick of American civilization reaching even into the nineteenth century, and yet their place in human history is a blank.

         When Anthony had ended his year of service with Foote, he found a new master in Falmouth. This man, not having employment enough for him, re-let him at the end of six months to a wholesale merchant. The latter proved to be a harsh master, and Anthony refused to remain beyond the expiration of his time, much to the merchant's disappointment. With the new year, he entered the service of a tavern-keeper in Fredericksburg. The annual income which his owner derived from his services had now risen to one hundred dollars, notwithstanding the drawback caused by his lame hand. At the end of the year, true to his secret purpose of frequently changing his place, he sought and obtained a new situation in the establishment of an apothecary in Fredericksburg. While there, an incident occurred that made all his hopes of

freedom to bud and blossom afresh. Going into the kitchen of his employer one day, he found there a fortune- teller who at once beset him to cross her palm with his shilling. With some reluctance Anthony consented, and the woman proceeded to flatter him with the usual nonsense about love. But Anthony waited with secret anxiety to hear if she would prophesy to him of freedom; and when at length she did promise him that long dreamed of bliss, he almost fainted with the rush of emotion. Not content with uttering an indefinite prediction, she even fixed the period when he should become a freeman, and fixed it only a few months forward. Was it strange that a slave, panting to breathe the air of liberty, should catch at such a straw? With increasing restlessness he looked forward to the predicted time. When it had passed and he still remained in slavery as before, his faith in fortune-telling was naturally staggered. But a change in his circumstances occurred about this time that contributed to keep alive, and even to strengthen, his hopes.

        Col. Suttle had hitherto managed the hiring of his own slaves; he now appointed William Brent his agent for that purpose. The latter having at length discovered that work and not sport is the law of life, had removed from Falmouth to Richmond and entered the service of his brother-in-law as a clerk. He now sent for Anthony for the purpose of hiring him out in the latter city. This was welcome intelligence, for, besides placing him in a

community where he was unknown, the change would bring him to the very side of the ships that might help him wing his way to the North. Accordingly, at the close of the year, he set out for the metropolis of Virginia, having under his charge four other slaves belonging to Col. Suttle, also bound for the hiring-ground.

        The trust committed to him on this occasion was but one proof of the high place which Anthony held in his owner's esteem. As he had grown up, his superiority, natural and acquired, to the other slaves of Col. Suttle, had become more and more manifest, and in the end he was made a supervisor over the whole. He found them new masters at the end of the year; if anything went amiss with them, it was to him that the owner or his agent looked for an account. Once a year, there was a re-union of Col. Suttle and all his slaves. The scene was a little cabin in Stafford where Anthony's mother, now verging upon fourscore, and his sister, a breeding-woman, had their quarters. To this centre, the hired slaves, under the superintendence of Anthony, were required to repair at the close of the year, however distant they might be. The owner met them, saw for himself their personal condition, and received reports of what had transpired in respect to themselves. If any had been sick, or had fallen into difficulties with their employers, or had been punished by the authorities, this was the time for explanation. The interview ended with a dotation from Col. Suttle

of a dime, or some other small coin, to each. Usually, this was the only time in the year when he and his slaves met each other face to face.

        On arriving in Richmond, Anthony found that a master had already been provided for himself in the person of Brent's brother-in-law. A day's acquaintance satisfied him that they would never get on harmoniously together, and he refused his assent to the arrangement. In the mean time, he busied himself with providing situations for the slaves that had been placed in his charge. Having accomplished this, he then found a place for himself with the proprietor of a large flouring establishment where an elder brother was already employed. All being thus happily provided for by the enterprise and address of Anthony, nothing remained for the agent Brent but to execute the contracts in writing.

        Meanwhile he had continued to make progress in his education. At Acquia, in Culpepper, in Falmouth, and in Fredericksburg, he had found one and another to assist him in the struggle. The spelling-book had been mastered, and the New Testament had begun to yield up its meaning to his patient application. At length he essayed a bolder flight. A part of his business had usually been to fetch his master's letters from the post-office. One day the thought struck him that if he were able to write, he too might send letters to his friends, and no one be the wiser. He resolved, if it were possible, to learn the precious art. He gathered from the street some torn scraps of paper

with writing upon them, and carefully imitated the characters. These rude copies he ventured to show to a young lady whom he had known as a child at Miss Horton's school. His confidence was not misplaced; although contrary to Virginia law, she kindly explained their meaning and lent him further aid. Thus, by the time he arrived in Richmond, he was already able to read and to write with a considerable degree of correctness. Such unusual attainments gave him a position in that city which he did not fail to improve to his own advantage, as well as that of others. He set up a school for the instruction of slaves--old as well as young--in reading. When the labors of the day were over, he was wont to meet twelve or fifteen in the house of a free negro woman for that purpose. This practice he continued for several months, and while it directly promoted his mental improvement, it was also a source of pecuniary profit.

        At the end of his first year in Richmond, he changed his masters for the last time. His new employer was a druggist named Millspaugh. In about a week after Anthony had entered upon his new engagement, Millspaugh took him aside, and proposed a different arrangement. He had expected, he said, to have had employment enough to keep Anthony constantly busy, but found that such was not the case, and that he was likely to lose money by retaining him. He proposed, therefore, that Anthony should take the matter into his

own hands on these conditions: That he should pay to Millspaugh the sum ($125), which Col. Suttle was to receive, that he should clothe himself, and, finally, that he should pay Millspaugh a bonus, the amount of which was left to Anthony's generosity. He was to seek jobs here and there in the city, and every evening pay to his master a certain sum from his earnings. This arrangement, Millspaugh informed him, was in violation of law, and must of course be kept secret; nor, as Anthony understood, was it ever made known to Suttle or to Brent. He joyfully accepted the proposal, and with new springs of life went forth to seek work, which had thus suddenly become his best friend. It soon appeared, however, that the arrangement to pay Millspaugh every night would be inconvenient, and even impossible, since his daily earnings were variable, and on some days he had failed of a job altogether. It was therefore arranged that he should make a payment to his master at the end of every fortnight.

        All this while, the great purpose of his life had had been fast ripening for action. He had now dwelt a year in the midst of circumstances that strongly fostered its developement. 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. Kindhearted sailors, having no vessels to forfeit, and no trade to compromise,

did not hesitate to urge him on to flight. Plainly, the time was at hand, when, if ever, he was to achieve his freedom.

        One very serious obstacle lay in his path, and must be overcome. As already narrated, he had become a member of the church, and more than that, a preacher of the gospel. Was it right for him to run away from his owner? The question troubled him. He could not bring reproach upon the sacred cause he had espoused; if he fled from slavery, it must be with a clear conscience. To resolve his doubts, he searched the Scriptures. He fell upon the Epistle to Philemon, which has furnished so much comfort to pious slaveholders, and, strangely enough, it relieved and comforted Anthony also. For he read that though Paul had sent back a runaway slave, it was that he should be no longer a slave, but a brother beloved unto his former master. Still pursuing his investigations, he met with the case of the bond-woman Hagar, whom, when she had fled from hard usage, the angel of the Lord had commanded to return and become submissive to her mistress. This seemed to contradict the principle inculcated by Paul, and in his perplexity Anthony applied to others for light. They summarily expounded the passage as a divine sanction to the slave code of the Old Dominion. Not satisfied--as how could he be with what would wither his now brightly blooming hopes--Anthony searched further, and reflected with deeper earnestness. As the result of

his inquiries, he found that the Bible set forth only one God for the black and the 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 of Holy Writ by virtue of which Col. Suttle could claim a right of property in him, any more than he could in Col. Suttle. These considerations ended his doubts. Paul was on his side, the whole spirit of the Gospel sanctioned his desires, and he deliberately dismissed Hagar from his thoughts. From that moment, with a clear conscience and full integrity of Christian character, he applied himself to the recovery of his inalienable right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

        The new arrangement for paying Millspaugh was highly favorable to the success of his plans. So long as he was required to reckon every night, there was little chance of making good his escape. His failure to appear would have been remarked by his expectant master, and continued absence would have been followed by speedy search. But now, he was not expected until the end of a fortnight; nor would suspicion be excited if he were not seen during that interval. A fortnight's start in the race for freedom was, under ordinary circumstances, more than enough to place him upon the soil of New England, and it was his. This fair prospect was suddenly obscured. At the end of the first month, Anthony paid to his master twenty-five

dollars, showing that he was earning at the rate of three hundred dollars a year. This fact seemed to put a new thought into Millspaugh's head. He revoked his permission for settlements once a fortnight, and not only required them to be made daily, as at first, but also required that the whole sum of one hundred and twenty-five dollars should be paid as fast as possible. Did he design, when that was paid, to ignore the unlawful bargain with his slave, and appropriate his earnings for the remainder of the year? Whatever his secret purpose, it was effectually baulked. Anthony strenuously objected to the arrangement, and finally left Millspaugh's presence without giving his consent. But he saw that the crisis had come, and he proceeded to act accordingly.

        On becoming master of his own time, according to the arrangement with Millspaugh, he had sought and obtained employment on the vessels lying at the wharves. Much of the time, he was on board assisting to discharge cargoes of coals, guano, and other lading. He was thus brought into familiar intercourse with the sailors, and with one in particular he was soon on the most confidential terms. The subject of his bondage was broached, and his aspirations for freedom were disclosed. The sympathetic sailor entered heartily into his views, and a plan for his escape had already been concerted, when Millspaugh's change of purpose suddenly precipitated its execution. Although Anthony had refused his assent to the new arrangement, yet he

had every reason to fear that it would be enforced notwithstanding his remonstrances. He would thus be required to appear daily in his master's presence. But he imagined that for the first few days his failure to do so would naturally be attributed to his reluctance on this point, and so suspicion would be disarmed. This precious interval he now resolved should witness his departure from slave-land.

        At the very last, a sharp struggle awaited him. Love, which does not discriminate between black and white, bond and free, had made a conquest of Anthony. He had formed an attachment to a bond-woman of his own race, and there was before him a bright prospect of soon enjoying the highest solace which slave life affords. To sunder this tender tie was hard, but to forego the prospect of liberty was harder still. Besides, his desire for freedom had by this time assumed a high moral character; as a Christian man, his soul was fettered; as one seeking to benefit his fellow-men, he found himself under restraints too great to be borne. The higher motive triumphed, love was sacrificed on the altar of liberty.

        The third night after his last interview with Millspaugh was fixed upon for putting his purpose into execution; it was one of the early days in February, 1854. His lodging-place was in Millspaugh's house, directly over that person's chamber. Gathering some few effects into a small bundle, he encased himself in four suits of clothes--the

outer suit being the coarse garb in which he performed his daily toil--and lay down to pass a sleepless night. In the same room, a roguish young negro boy was accustomed to sleep, by whom there was danger that his strange plight would be discovered. Fortunately, no detection took place. An hour before daylight, he rose and took his way about a mile to the wharves. Had he found any persons around, it was his purpose to have gone to work as usual. Finding the coast clear, he rapidly passed on board the vessel to which his sailor-friend belonged, and was quickly stowed away in a place of concealment previously prepared by the latter.

        The vessel did not sail that day, as had been expected, and, while she still lay at the wharf, sleep fell upon Anthony, already exhausted by watching. When he again awoke, she was ten or fifteen miles down the river, under full sail. Contrary winds retarded the voyage, and the roughened waters caused the vessel to pitch and toss at an unusual rate. The effect produced upon Anthony's physical system was too much for his endurance. Shut up in a dark hole, where he was compelled to lie constantly in one position, and left for several days without a morsel of food, he had to undergo, in addition, the pangs of sea-sickness, redoubled by the other miseries of his situation, and by their very strangeness. In his extreme misery, he entreated his friend to put him on shore and leave him to his fate; but this was impossible. At the

end of two days the vessel reached Norfolk, where she lay to for a short time, and then resumed her voyage for Boston. The ordinary time for the passage was from ten to fourteen days, but for three weeks Anthony was tossed upon the ocean before he again set foot on land. During all that time he never once left his narrow hiding- place, nor was he able to change his position in the least degree. Lying constantly on one side, he for a time entirely lost the use of his right arm. Bread and water were his only nourishment, and these he received only at intervals of three or four days, as his friend found opportunity to convey them to him by stealth. For, from first to last, neither the captain nor any officer was aware of his being on board. As the vessel passed into the more northern latitudes, he was assailed by a degree of cold such as his southern life had ill fitted him to endure, and, before the voyage was ended, his feet were frozen stiff in his boots.

        At length, somewhere in the last days of February or first of March, the vessel touched her wharf at Boston. Seizing a favorable opportunity, Anthony succeeded in getting on shore unobserved. It was in the gray of the morning, and few people were moving. Assuming the air of a seaman, he inquired his way to a boarding-house, and was soon provided for. A week elapsed before he was sufficiently recovered of his bruises to move about with any comfort. He then sought for employment, and at length secured the situation of a cook

on board a mud-scow. In the discharge of his new duties everything succeeded satisfactorily but one--he was unable to make his bread rise. This was a fatal defect, and at the end of a week he was discharged. His next permanent employment was that in which he was found by the slave-hunter.¹
1 The discovery of his place of refuge was made by means of a letter which he wrote to his brother in Richmond, and which he had incautiously dated at Boston, while taking care to have it postmarked in Canada. It of course first fell into the hands of his brother's master, who communicated the contents to Brent or Suttle.
I now resume the narrative of his extradition.

CHAPTER X.

THE TRADER'S JAIL.

        A SHORT distance down the harbor, the United States revenue cutter was lying to, in readiness to receive its prey. Col. Suttle and his witness Brent were already on board. Their absence from the court-room, at the rendering of the decision, had been remarked; the more, as it was in striking contrast with their sedulous attendance on all the previous days of the trial. It was afterward ascertained that they had quietly left their hotel at early dawn on the same morning, passed over to the Navy Yard at Charlestown, and from thence had been transported with their baggage to the revenue cutter. That the claimant of Burns should thus calmly turn his back upon the court in the very crisis of his cause, that the commander of a national vessel should thus place it at the service of a private citizen without any ostensible warrant, were significant facts. The public placed but one construction upon the proceeding; they saw in it conclusive proof that the Commissioner had privately made known his decision to one of the interested parties before he declared it in open court.

        The steamer was soon placed alongside the cutter,

to which Burns was immediately transferred, together with Deputy Marshal Riley, Butman, and four others, who had been detailed to escort the slave back to Virginia. The cutter was then taken in tow by the steamer, and together they passed down the harbor. At the end of a few miles, the two vessels cast loose from each other, a parting salute was fired, and the steamer returned to disembark the soldiers and cannon, while the cutter pursued its solitary course for Virginia.

        On entering the cabin of the cutter, Anthony found himself once more face to face with Col. Suttle. "How do you do, 'Tony?" was the latter's salutation. A private conference between Col. Suttle and the Marshal ensued, during which Butman and others were banished from the cabin. After the departure of the Marshal, Col. Suttle proceeded to interrogate Burns respecting his escape. He offered to give him his freedom, if he would divulge the name of the captain who brought him off from Virginia. To disarm and conciliate Burns, he prefaced his question with a testimony to the truthfulness of the latter.

        "This boy," said he to the bystanders, "has always been an honest, upright servant, and I have never known him to tell a lie."

        To the demand for the captain's name, Burns replied, simply and truthfully, "I do not know it."

        Thereupon Col. Suttle, in the face of his previous testimony, expressed a doubt of his truthfulness. But Burns persisted then, and ever afterward,

in asserting his ignorance of the captain's name. It had never been a matter of curiosity with him; he had never seen the captain while on board his ship, and probably not at any other time. Failing to obtain any light from Anthony, Col. Suttle gave vent to his vindictive feelings toward the unknown and really innocent captain.

        "If I knew the scoundrel," said he, "he would n't want to bring off another negro. I would put him in the Penitentiary for life."

        "He ought to be," responded the zealous Butman; and he added that on arriving at Richmond he thought he should be able to find him out.

        A slight incident showed that those by whom Burns was surrounded regarded him with no friendly spirit. On taking up his hat, which he had laid aside, he found in it a letter. He forthwith took it to Col. Suttle, explaining to him the circumstances under which it had been found. It proved to contain a written speech purporting to have been delivered by Burns against Col. Suttle and the laws of the land. The author was never discovered; his object plainly was to prejudice Col. Suttle against the friendless fugitive.

        During the voyage, Anthony had abundant leisure for reflection. Uncertainty respecting the fate that awaited him weighed down his spirits and filled him with fears. Would he be whipped? Would he be imprisoned? Would he be sold and sent to the far South? Would his life be sacrificed?

        Once, when Col. Suttle was sitting upon deck, he approached and said:

        "Master Charles, what are you going to do with me?"

        "What do you think I ought to do, 'Tony?"

        "I expect you will sell me."

        Col. Suttle replied that Anthony had caused him great expense, that his lawyers' fees alone had been four hundred dollars; but he left unanswered the slave's anxious inquiry.

        On arriving at a point off New York Bay, the cutter fell in with a steamer bound for that city. By this time, Suttle and Brent had become thoroughly seasick, and they improved the opportunity to leave the cutter, intending to make the remainder of their journey overland. After their departure, the situation of Anthony became less agreeable. He had hitherto enjoyed the freedom of the vessel; now he was restricted to a certain part of it. He was required to take his meals by himself. No one looked kindly upon him but the sailors that manned the vessel. The departure of Col. Suttle was also the signal for Butman and his coadjutors to beset Anthony afresh. They importuned him to tell them the whole matter, now that it was ended; and they were especially curious to ascertain if the witnesses in behalf of Burns had told the truth. Again they renewed their protestations of friendship; in proof of it, they reminded Anthony that it was they who had procured for him new clothes and supplied him with money. They at length

proceeded to tempt him with a proposition in full keeping with the infamy of their own course. They assured him that they would procure his immediate freedom, provided he would return and assist them in catching fugitive slaves. To strengthen the lure, they informed him that one negro in Boston had engaged in the business, and grown rich by so doing. But Burns understood his men, and was fully proof against their machinations.

        "You wish," said he, "to get out of me all that you can, for the purpose of injuring my friends in Massachusetts, and then you will leave me to die in Virginia. I know I am green; but, mark me, I am ripe enough for you in this matter."

        On Saturday, after a voyage of eight days, the vessel arrived at Norfolk. Informed by telegraph of Burns's departure from Boston, the Virginia city was already awaiting his appearance. Although Richmond was the destination of the fugitive, yet Norfolk was determined to share in the triumph of her sister city. On two former occasions she had been baulked in her attempts to recover fugitives from Massachusetts on her own account, and the failure had only increased her eagerness.¹
1 Latimer, whom Gov. Davis declined to surrender to the Governor of Virginia in 1843, when requisition was made on the false pretence that he was a fugitive from justice, and Shadrach, who was the first fugitive slave arrested in Massachusetts after the passage of the Act of 1850, and who made good his escape from the officer,--were both Norfolk slaves.
Accordingly, as the vessel drew to land, the officers of the city went on board and taking possession of Anthony, carried

him off to the jail. A crowd followed them through the streets, anxious to catch a glimpse of the "Boston Lion," as their excited imaginations led them to style him. He was thrown into the common jail, where he was kept in solitude for two days, without bed or seat, and with only a single meal during the whole period. It was the first greeting which slave-land gave to its recovered slave-- starvation in prison. On Monday, the voyage was resumed, and the same day Burns was landed on the wharf at the capital of Virginia.

        It was expected that Brent would meet the party on their arrival in Richmond, but he failed to make his appearance. They therefore took a carriage and were driven immediately to the principal hotel of the city. There the deputy marshal and his aids took lodgings, but Burns was delivered into the custody of an officer, by whom he was forthwith lodged in the common jail for safe keeping.

        The Federal Government had at length performed the task which it had undertaken. A vast amount of money had been expended; time, human life, the national reputation, and the law of nature had been sacrificed in order to restore a single slave to his master: but it was thought that the political well-being of the nation required it all. The result demonstrated that the fugitive slave act was the most costly, as it was the most infamous, upon the statute-book; and it produced the certain conviction that the next attempt to execute it in the

Commonwealth of Massachusetts would prove more costly still.

        In the jail, Anthony remained uncared for during ten days. He was indulged with the freedom of the jail-yard and no task was assigned him. A moderate allowance of coarse food, twice a day, was all that he had to satisfy his hunger. On being incarcerated, his person was searched and his knife and some money were taken from him. These were never restored, southern jailers not disdaining to rob even slaves of their small possessions. At the end of ten days, Brent presented himself at the jail. He was in no gracious mood. Incidentally, he had been informed that Anthony had denied to some persons having any acquaintance with him. To be ignored by a slave under his own charge was too much for the equanimity of Mr. Brent, and, on first meeting Anthony, he compromised his dignity by betraying the cause of his spleen. The ruffled feathers were smoothed by a quiet denial of the absurd accusation on the part of Burns.

        Brent was accompanied to the jail by one Robert Lumpkin, a noted trader in slaves. This man belonged to a class of persons by whose society the slaveholders of the South profess to feel disgraced, but with whose services, nevertheless, they cannot dispense. He had formerly been engaged exclusively in the traffic in slaves. Roaming over the country, and picking up a husband here, a wife there, a mother in one place, and an alluring

maiden in another, he banded them with iron links into a coffle and sent them to the far southern market. By his ability and success in this remorseless business, he had greatly distinguished himself, and had come to be known as a "bully trader." At this time, however, he had abandoned the business of an itinerant trader, and was established in Richmond as the proprietor of a Trader's Jail. In this he kept and furnished with board such slaves as were brought into the city for sale, and, generally, all such as their owners wished to punish or to provide with temporary safe keeping. He also kept a boarding-house for the owners themselves. Lumpkin's Jail was one of the prominent and characteristic features of the capital of Virginia. It was a large brick structure, three stories in height, situated in the outskirts of Richmond, and surrounded by an acre of ground. The whole was enclosed by a high, close fence, the top of which was thickly set with iron spikes.

        To the proprietor of this prison, Burns was now delivered up by Brent. He was ordered by Lumpkin to put his hands behind him; this done, the jail-keeper proceeded to fasten them together in that position with a pair of iron handcuffs. Then, directing Anthony to move on before, he followed him closely behind until they arrived at his jail.

        Here he was destined to suffer, for four months, such revolting treatment as the vilest felons never undergo, and such as only revengeful slaveholders can inflict. The place of his confinement was a

room only six or eight feet square, in the upper story of the jail, which was accessible only through a trap-door. He was allowed neither bed nor air; a rude bench fastened against the wall and a single, coarse blanket were the only means of repose. After entering his cell, the handcuffs were not removed, but, in addition, fetters were placed upon his feet. In this manacled condition he was kept during the greater part of his confinement. The torture which he suffered, in consequence, was excruciating. The gripe of the irons impeded the circulation of his blood, made hot and rapid by the stifling atmosphere, and caused his feet to swell enormously. The flesh was worn from his wrists, and when the wounds had healed, there remained broad scars as perpetual witnesses against his owner. The fetters also prevented him from removing his clothing by day or night, and no one came to help him; the indecency resulting from such a condition is too revolting for description, or even thought. His room became more foul and noisome than the hovel of a brute; loathsome creeping things multiplied and rioted in the filth. His food consisted of a piece of coarse corn-bread and the parings of bacon or putrid meat. This fare, supplied to him once a day, he was compelled to devour without Plate, knife, or fork. Immured, as he was, in a narrow, unventilated room, beneath the heated roof of the jail, a constant supply of fresh water would have been a heavenly boon; but the only means of quenching his thirst was the nauseating contents

of a pail that was replenished only once or twice a week. Living under such an accumulation of atrocities, he at length fell seriously ill. This brought about some mitigation of his treatment; his fetters were removed for a time, and he was supplied with broth, which, compared with his previous food, was luxury itself.

        When first confined in the jail, he became an object of curiosity to all who had heard of his case, and twenty or thirty persons in a day would call to gaze upon him. On these occasions, his fetters were taken off and he was conducted down to the piazza in front of the jail. His visitors improved the opportunity to express their opinion of his deserts; having no pecuniary interest in his life, they were anxious that it should be sacrificed for the general good of slaveholders. When curiosity was satisfied, he would be led back to his cell, and again placed in irons. These exhibitions occurred ordinarily once a day during the first two or three weeks, and, though humiliating, furnished a relief to the solitude of his confinement. There were other slaves in the jail, who were allowed more or less intercourse with each other; but between them and Burns all communication was strictly prohibited. The taint of freedom was upon him, and infection was dreaded.

        His residence in the jail gave him an opportunity of gaining new views of the system of slavery. One day his attention was attracted by a noise in the room beneath him. There was a sound as of

a woman entreating and sobbing, and of a man addressing to her commands mingled with oaths. Looking down through a crevice in the floor, Burns beheld a slave woman stark naked in the presence of two men. One of them was an overseer, and the other a person who had come to purchase a slave. The overseer had compelled the woman to disrobe in order that the purchaser might see for himself whether she was well formed and sound in body. Burns was horror-stricken; all his previous experience had not made him aware of such an outrage. This, however, was not an exceptional case; he found it was the ordinary custom in Lumpkin's jail thus to expose the naked person of the slave, both male and female, to the inspection of the purchaser. A wider range of observation would have enabled him to see that it was the universal custom in the slave states.

        In spite of the interdict under which he was laid, Burns found a method of communicating with other slaves in the jail. It has been stated that during his illness he was released from his fetters and supplied with broth. The spoon given him to eat with, on that occasion, he contrived to secrete, and when alone, he used it in enlarging a small hole in the floor. It was just behind the trap-door, by which, when thrown open, it was entirely hidden from view, and thus escaped discovery. Through this hole Burns made known his situation to some slaves in a room below, and at once enlisted their sympathies. The intercourse thus established was

afterward regularly maintained. To avoid detection, it was carried on only at dead of night; then, throwing himself prostrate upon the floor and applying his mouth to the aperture, Burns whiled away hour after hour in converse with his more fortunate fellow bondmen. He filled their eager and wondering ears with the story of his escape from bondage, his free and happy life at the North, his capture, and the mighty effort that it cost the Government to restore him to Virginia. He was their Columbus, telling them of the land, to them unknown, which he had visited; inspiring them with longings to follow in his track; and warning them, out of his own experience, of the perils to be avoided. On their part, they communicated to him such information as their less restricted condition had enabled them to obtain. Conversation was not the only advantage that he derived from this quarter. His new friends furnished him with tobacco and matches, so that, during the long night watches, he was able to solace himself by smoking.

        After a while, he found a friend in the family of Lumpkin. The wife of this man was a "yellow woman" whom he had married as much from necessity as from choice, the white women of the South refusing to connect themselves with professed slave traders. This woman manifested her compassion for Burns by giving him a testament and a hymn-book. Upon most slaves these gifts would have been thrown away; fortunately for Burns, he had learned to read, and the books proved a very

treasure. Besides the yellow wife, Lumpkin had a black concubine, and she also manifested a friendly spirit toward the prisoner. The house of Lumpkin was separated from the jail only by the yard, and from one of the upper windows the girl contrived to hold conversations with Anthony, whose apartment was directly opposite. Her compassion, it is not unlikely, changed into a warmer feeling; she was discovered one day by her lord and master; what he overheard roused his jealousy, and he took effectual means to break off the intercourse.

        In the search of Anthony's person at the common jail, some things had escaped discovery. He had concealed between the parts of his clothing a little money, some writing paper, and a pen, and these he still retained. Ink only was wanting, and this, through the aid of his prison friends, he also secured. Thus furnished, he wrote several letters to his friends at a distance; in all there were six, two of which were addressed to persons in Boston. To secure their transmission to the post-office, he adopted the following method: The letter was fastened to a piece of brick dug from the wall; then watching at his window until he saw some negro passing outside the jail fence, he contrived by signs to attract his attention and throw to him the letter. The passer-by was in all probability an entire stranger, as well as a person unable to read, yet Burns trusted, not unreasonably, that his wishes would be rightly interpreted, and that his

letters would reach the post-office. No answers were expected in return, none would have reached him had they been written. The postmaster at the South, albeit an officer of the Federal Government, is not the less an obsequious servant of the slaveholder. If a letter addressed to a slave bears a southern post-mark, it is delivered to its claimant without question; but when the post-mark indicates a northern origin, the postmaster withholds it from the claimant, inquires his master's name, and then deposits it in the latter's box. If the letter is found to be objectionable, it is destroyed and nothing is said about it; if otherwise, the master reads to his slave such portions as he sees fit. One of the letters written by Burns was addressed to Col. Suttle, giving an account of his illness. Suttle immediately wrote to Brent upon the subject, and the confounded agent hastened to the jail for an explanation. Burns frankly told him of the manner in which he had despatched his letters to the post-office, and enjoyed not a little his visitor's astonishment at the revelation. The consequence was that Brent deprived him of his pen in the vain hope of putting an end to his letter- writing.

        After lying in the jail four months, his imprisonment came to an end. It had been determined to sell him, and the occurrence of a fair in Richmond presented a favorable opportunity. Accordingly, his manacles were knocked off, his person was put in decent trim, and he was led forth to the auction room. A large crowd of persons was already assembled.

        As he stepped upon the auction block, he saw standing a few feet off, Col. Suttle, who at once saluted him with the old, "How d'ye do, 'Tony?" This was the first interview between master and slave that had taken place since Col. Suttle left the revenue cutter for New York. Presently the auctioneer ordered him to face round, and Col. Suttle, was lost to his view. While thus standing, the voice of Col. Suttle fell upon his ear, saying to the auctioneer, "Don't sell him to a Yankee trader." Glancing his eyes one side, Burns caught another sight of his master; it proved to be the last, as the words addressed to the auctioneer were the last words that Burns ever heard him speak. Vindictiveness toward the offending slave, and bad faith toward the North, marked the spirit in which Col. Suttle finally severed the relation between himself and Anthony Burns.

        The elevation of Burns upon the block, in full view, was the signal for an explosion of wrathful feeling. Angry speeches were made about him and he was personally insulted. The violence of one encouraged that of another, and the tumult, momently increasing, threatened to burst over all bounds. For awhile, Burns stood in imminent peril of his life. With much ado, the more rational portion succeeded at length in calming the fury of the rest, and the auction was allowed to proceed. It was commenced by a bid of ten dollars from the auctioneer. No one offered more, and for a

long time the sale hung on that bid. At length the auctioneer bethought him to mention that Burns was a preacher. This caused the bidding to move on, and, in the end, he was knocked down for $905, to David McDaniel, of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Four months before, Col. Suttle had refused to accept twelve hundred dollars from the northern friends of Burns. Meanwhile he had lost the interest on that amount, had lost the services of his slave for that length of time, and for that length of time had been compelled to pay his board. The whole transaction, while it revealed the true character of Col. Suttle, furnished an impressive illustration of slaveholding thrift.

        The sale was no sooner over, than Burns was hurried back to his old quarters in the jail. Thither his new owner shortly followed, and in a personal interview made known his wishes.

        "I understand," said he to Burns, "that you are a preacher. Now, I have a great many other slaves, and you are not to preach to them. If you want to preach to anybody, preach to me."

        He demanded of his new slave a pledge that he would conform to this requirement. Anthony refused to give it, but at the same time promised to be a faithful servant so long as he should remain with McDaniel, provided he was well used. Otherwise, he distinctly avowed his determination to run away on the first opportunity. This frankness pleased the slaveholder. His countenance relaxed, and telling Anthony that he liked his pluck, he declared

that he had no fears of his running away. The interview resulted in establishing between them a good understanding that was never afterward seriously interrupted.

        To avoid the hazards of a mob, McDaniel found it prudent to remove his obnoxious slave from the city by night. About three o'clock in the morning, the two stole forth from the jail and made their way to the railroad station. Taking passage in the next train, they were soon set down at Rocky Mount in the northeastern part of North Carolina. McDaniel's plantation lay at a distance of three or four miles, and thither they were conveyed in a private vehicle.

CHAPTER XI.

THE RANSOMED FREEDMAN.

        AT Rocky Mount, Burns entered on the last stage of his life as a slave. He was there introduced to new scenes and subjected to new influences. His new master was a different person from Col. Suttle. He possessed a more marked character, and a far greater capacity for business. In person he was short but stout, with a large head, and a countenance indicative of firmness, courage, and decision. He had an iron will that was made the law for all within his sphere; but he could appreciate and honor manly qualities in others. While his sharp, stern style of address would cause most persons to shrink away, he was not displeased when any one had the courage to stand up and confront him with manly self-assertion. Though he practically manifested but little respect for the decalogue, he made it a point of honor to fulfill his engagements.

        The business of Mr. McDaniel was that of a planter, slave-trader, and horse-dealer combined. He possessed an extensive plantation, which was chiefly devoted to the culture of cotton. For the management of this, he kept constantly in his service

a large body of slaves. The number of these was constantly changing. Sometimes there would be as many as one hundred and fifty on the plantation at once; sometimes not more than seventy-five. This fluctuation was owing to the purchase and sale that was constantly going on. The plantation was made subservient to the slave-trading, The slaves were always for sale, but, while waiting for customers, they were kept at work instead of lying idle in barracoons. When a customer offered, he was accommodated, and when the stock ran low, it was replenished.

        The domestic relations of McDaniel were in keeping with his character and pursuits. His wife stood in great fear of him. She presided over his household, but neither inspired nor enjoyed his respect. The tender bond of children was also wanting between them. He kept a harem of black girls, and took no pains to conceal the fact from his wife. By some of these, children were born to him, but, true to his instincts as a slave-trader, he made merchandise of them and their mothers without compunction.

        The post which was assigned to Burns by his new owner was that of coachman and stable-keeper. As a horse-dealer, McDaniel kept on hand a large stock of horses and mules, often as many as a hundred at once. The stables of these animals were placed under the charge of Burns, and he held the keys. But he was required to groom and serve only the carriage-horses and his master's

filly; the rest of the animals were cared for by other slaves. Whenever his mistress was inclined to take an airing, or visit a neighbor, or ride to church, it devolved on him to drive her carriage. The whole service which he was thus required to perform was light and pleasant.

        His personal accommodations were better than they had ever been before. Instead of being compelled to turn in with the slaves at their quarters, he had a lodging assigned him in an office, and partook of his meals in the master's house. He was allowed to obtain what he wanted at a store of which McDaniel was the proprietor. His religious privileges were less attended to. Twice only, during his four months' servitude, was he able to attend church on Sunday. Whenever he drove his mistress to church, which was not often, he was required to wait with the horses outside while she worshipped within. It has been seen that he refused to give his owner a pledge to refrain from preaching among the slaves. In this he was governed by a sense of duty. He had been regularly invested with the office of a slave-preacher, and it was his purpose to exercise it as he had opportunity. Accordingly, during his period of service with McDaniel, he succeeded in holding, at various times, six or eight preaching-meetings among the slaves on the plantation. Once he was discovered, but his master chose to take no notice of the offence. The manliness and general good disposition of Burns so won his regard,

that he tolerated in him what he would have punished in another. On his part, Burns was deeply impressed by the liberal treatment of his master, and he subsequently declared that he could not, in conscience, have run away so long as it continued. It was a matter of special favor that he was not placed under the control of an overseer, but was held accountable only to his master. The office in which he lodged was shared with him by one of the overseers. This equality of their condition, or some other cause, impelled the overseer to pick a quarrel with Burns, and he carried it so far as once to draw a pistol upon him. Burns made complaint of the assault to McDaniel, from whom, in consequence, the overseer received a stern rebuke.

        His relations with his mistress were less agreeable. In striving to please his master he displeased her. McDaniel had given him express instructions to pay no heed to her commands, if they conflicted with his own. Once, in his absence, she demanded of Burns his master's favorite saddle-horse for her own use. On his refusing, she took the animal and rode off. In the mean time, McDaniel returned, and, finding what had happened, gave his wife a severe reprimand and justified Burns.

        Buried thus in the obscurities of slavery, Anthony remained for some months wholly lost to the knowledge of his northern friends. All efforts on their part to discover his retreat were fruitless. On the other hand, several letters which he had

written to them, and which would have imparted the desired information, never reached their destination; probably they were never suffered to leave the post-office in which he had deposited them. At length, an accident revealed the place of his abode. He had one day driven his mistress in her carriage to the house of a neighbor, and, while sitting on the box, was pointed out to the family as the slave whose case had excited such commotion throughout the country. It chanced that a young lady residing in the family heard the statement, and by her it was repeated in a letter to her sister in Massachusetts. By the latter the story was related in a social circle where the Rev. G. S. Stockwell, one of the clergymen of the place, happened to be present. This person immediately addressed a letter to Anthony's owner, inquiring if the slave could be purchased. An answer was promptly returned that he might be purchased for thirteen hundred dollars. This information was communicated to Mr. Grimes, accompanied by a declaration that it was the purpose of the clergyman to free Anthony, and also by an inquiry as to the amount of money which could be obtained in Boston for the purpose. Mr. Grimes returned answer, after making some inquiry of former subscribers, that he thought one half of the sum might be obtained in Boston. It was accordingly agreed that the labor of obtaining the whole amount should be equally divided between the two. A fortnight after, however, Mr. Stockwell wrote Mr. Grimes

that he should try to secure seventy-five dollars for expenses, and urged Mr. Grimes to get the thirteen hundred dollars as soon as possible. Thus the whole responsibility of the affair was once more thrown upon Mr. Grimes.

        It was not by accident that this man became a chief actor in the transactions narrated in this volume. His life had been consecrated to this sort of service, and he was now only continuing what he had long before begun. An outline of his previous history will be a proper introduction to the account of his further, and, as the event proved, successful, efforts for the liberation of Anthony Burns.

        Born in Virginia in the midst of slavery, though of free parents, Leonard A. Grimes was yet slightly connected by blood with the oppressed race. Left an orphan at the age of ten years, he was placed in the charge of an uncle, but the new home did not prove to be a pleasant one. Being taken to his native place on a visit, he refused again to become an inmate of his uncle's family, and soon after went to reside in Washington. There he passed several years of his life, first in the capacity of a butcher's boy standing in the public market, and subsequently as an apothecary's clerk. At length he attracted the favorable regards of a slaveholder, into whose service he was persuaded to enter upon hire. He became the confidential agent of his employer, and a deserved favorite with all the members of his family. But neither

gratitude for kindness, nor love of gain, could induce him to become a participator in the great wrong of slavery. Offered the post of overseer, which had become vacant, with a salary tenfold his pay, he did not hesitate to refuse it. Far enough from any taint of abolitionism at the time, a sort of unconscious abhorrence of slavery preserved him from the contamination.

        The business of his employer often led him on long journeys through the southern States, when he was accompanied by young Grimes. On one of these occasions, as they were riding through a patch of forest in North Carolina, the screams of a woman pierced their ears. On gaining the open country, they beheld near the road-side a female slave naked to the waist, and by her side an overseer lashing her with his heavy thong. The dark surface of her back was already barred with broad red stripes, while the blood poured down her limbs and stood in little pools at her feet. The employer of Grimes was a humane man, though a slaveholder, and his blood boiled at the sight. Drawing a pistol, and riding up to the miscreant, he ordered him to desist or he would instantly shoot him through. The overseer sullenly replied that he was punishing the woman because she had come late to her work. "My baby was dying, and will be dead before I see it again," interposed the wretched mother by way of excuse. She was roughly ordered off to her work, and the slaveholder,

still keeping a vigilant eye on the movements of the overseer, rode on his way.

        This scene wrought a revolution in young Grimes. It was his first vision of the bloody horrors of slavery, and it made him the uncompromising and life-long foe of that atrocious institution. Until now he had never been led to reflect upon the true character of the institution of slavery in the midst of which he had been born and nurtured. The sight of the bleeding mother, in her double agony of separation from her dying child and of ignominious torture in her own person, produced a shock that threw wide open his eyes and forever dispelled his indifference. His physical system became disordered; "I grew sick," said he, "and felt a sensation as of water running off my bowels. I longed for permission from my employer to shoot the man dead."

        Returning home, he soon had an opportunity to put in practice the new purpose of his heart. A female slave on a neighboring plantation had received from an overseer thirty lashes for attending a religious meeting, and had fled to the estate of Grimes's employer, one of whose slaves was her husband. The case was brought to the knowledge of Grimes, and by him she was soon put upon the road to Canada, whither her husband shortly followed her. This was his induction into an office in which he afterward made full proof of his ministry to those in bondage.

        Leaving his employer's service, he purchased,

with his carefully saved earnings, one or two carriages and horses, and set himself up in business as a hackman in the city of Washington. Prosperity attended him; carriage was added to carriage, and horse to horse, until he became one of the foremost in his line of business. Thus he went on for twelve years, and while his coaches were in constant requisition by the gentry of the capital, they were not seldom placed at the service of the fugitive from southern bondage. The slaveholder oftentimes pressed the seat that perhaps the day before had been occupied by the flying slave.

        At length a crisis came. The wife and seven children of a free negro were about to be sold by their master to a southern slave trader, and sent to the far south. In his distress, the husband and father applied to the man who kept coaches and horses for the use of fugitive slaves. Mr. Grimes was not backward to listen to his cry. Under the cover of a single night's darkness, he penetrated thirty miles into Virginia, brought off the whole imperilled family, and while the owner's posse, in hot pursuit, were, five hours later, blindly groping after them in Washington, they passed in disguise almost before the hunters' faces on their way to the northern land of freedom. Three months after, Mr. Grimes was arrested, taken into Virginia, and tried for his offence. The jury found him guilty, not however in accordance with the evidence, which totally failed, but to save their own lives and the life of the prisoner from an infuriated mob

that had surrounded the Court House during the whole trial, and had only been kept from invading the hall of justice and committing murder by the presence of a strong military force. Sentenced to hard labor for two years in the State prison at Richmond, he there, through the instrumentality of a godly slave, (temporarily placed there for safe keeping and not for crime), experienced that great spiritual change which makes all things new for the soul. Like Paul, he straightway preached Jesus, and within two months, five of the prisoners were made partakers with him of that freedom wherewith Christ maketh free. Returning to Washington at the expiration of his sentence, he prudently abandoned the now, for him, suspicious business of a hackman, and contented himself with the humbler employment of jobbing about the city with a "furniture car." Having been admitted into the visible church, he ere long felt a divine impulse to preach the gospel. After due examination by a council of which the President of Columbian College was moderator, he received license to preach. Without abandoning the business of jobbing, he exercised his gift of preaching as opportunity offered. But the atmosphere of Washington did not permit him to breathe freely, and he sought a home in a free State.

        Coming to Boston, he found there many fugitive slaves, wandering as sheep without a shepherd. He gathered them into a large upper room and preached to them the gospel. They entreated him

to remain and minister to them. He consented; attendants on his ministry multiplied., and soon a church of fugitive slaves was organized in the metropolis of New England. The upper room became too strait for them, and, through the zeal and energy of Mr. Grimes, a commodious and handsome structure began to rise from its foundations. Then came the fugitive slave act, pouring ruin on this thriving exotic from the south. The church was arrested midway toward its completion, and the members were scattered in wild dismay. More than forty fled to Canada. One of their number, Shadrach, was seized, but, more fortunate than the hapless Sims, who had no fellowship with them, he succeeded in making good his escape. When the first fury of the storm had blown over, Mr. Grimes set himself with redoubled energy to repair the wastes that had been made. He collected money from the charitable, and purchased the members of his church out of slavery that they might return without fear to the fold. He made friends among the rich, who advanced funds for the completion of his church. At length it was finished, and, as if for an omen of good, was dedicated on the first day when Burns stood for trial before Mr. Commissioner Loring.¹
1 The church is a neat and commodious brick structure, two stories in height, and handsomely finished in the interior. It will seat five or six hundred people. The whole cost, including the land, was $13,000, of which, through the exertions of Mr. Grimes, $10,000 have already been paid. The engraving is an accurate representation of its appearance.
In

CHURCH OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVES IN BOSTON.

now devoting himself to the ransom of this last victim of the oppressor, he but added one more to the long list of acts that had given character to his whole life.

        Finding the business on his hands, Mr. Grimes proceeded to prompt and energetic action. His first care was to have Mr. McDaniel informed that his terms were accepted; and an appointment was made to meet him with Anthony in Baltimore on the twenty-seventh of February, and there complete the negotiation. He then laid the subject before the Baptist clergy of Boston at their weekly meeting. Most of them entered warmly into his plan and engaged to take up collections in their several churches. The same course was pursued toward the clergy of other denominations with various degrees of success. From these sources, about three hundred dollars were obtained. Three of the old subscribers redeemed their pledges by the payment of one hundred dollars each; and smaller sums were obtained from other persons of less means. When the day for his departure for Baltimore arrived, Mr. Grimes had succeeded in collecting only six hundred and seventy-six dollars. At the last moment, it seemed likely that the plan would fall through. The whole sum must be taken to Baltimore, and Mr. Grimes had no means of his own to make good the deficiency. The time bad been fixed, McDaniel would be on the spot, and finding no purchaser, would depart in a state of irritation and sell Anthony to go south, as he

had already threatened in one of his letters. In this emergency, the friendly cashier of a Boston bank stepped in to Mr. Grimes's relief. He received the amount already collected, accepted the note of Mr. Grimes for the balance, and placed in his hands a cheque on a Baltimore bank for thirteen hundred dollars. Thus furnished, Mr. Grimes took his departure for the Monumental city. it had been agreed that he should be accompanied by Mr. Stockwell, but, through some misunderstanding, the latter failed to appear at the place and time appointed. Mr. Grimes proceeded alone, and at eleven o'clock on the twenty-seventh of February arrived at Barnum's Hotel in Baltimore.

        Meanwhile, McDaniel had broken the subject to Anthony. On receiving the first letter from Mr. Stockwell, he asked the slave if he had been writing letters to the North. Anthony evaded the question. McDaniel then informed him of Mr. Stockwell's proposition to purchase him, and inquired if he would like to have his freedom. Burns hesitated to answer, fearing that he should be entrapped. He asked permission to look at the letter, which was readily granted. Finding that McDaniel had truthfully represented the matter, he then frankly avowed his desire to be free and go to the North. Nothing more passed until the letter was received which announced the acceptance of McDaniel's terms and fixed the day of meeting in Baltimore. Soon after, Anthony drove his master to the railroad station for the purpose of taking the train to Richmond.

        On alighting, Mr. McDaniel paced the ground to and fro, absorbed in thought. At length he addressed Anthony:

        "I am going to tell you a secret; you must communicate it to no one, not even to my wife; what do you think it is?" continued he, after a pause.

        Anthony professed that he could not imagine, unless it was that some news had come from the North. McDaniel then informed him of the happy prospect before him, and, directing him to be in readiness to depart for Baltimore on the following Monday, once more repeated his injunction of secrecy. It was at no small risk to himself that he was about to set at defiance the public sentiment of the South by sending Anthony back to the North.

        Monday morning found master and slave on their journey northward by rail. Before they had proceeded ten miles, McDaniel's apprehensions were realized. Through the carelessness or treachery of a friend whom McDaniel had made a confidant, it became known that the obnoxious fugitive was on board. The passengers were quickly in a tumult, and it was proposed to stop the train and put the "boy" out. The conductor protested that had he known in the outset who Anthony was he would not have permitted him to enter the cars at all. The firmness of McDaniel, however, held the mob spirit in check, and Anthony was at length suffered to proceed without further molestation.

        On arriving at Norfolk, they immediately went on board the steamer bound for Baltimore. Leaving

Burns in the vessel, McDaniel went back into the city to transact some business. Meantime, the mischievous passengers of the railroad train had circulated the news of Anthony's presence. The waspish little city was at once thrown into angry commotion and forthwith swarmed in a body on board the vessel. There, on returning soon after, McDaniel found his man Anthony surrounded by the chivalry of Norfolk, and half dead through fear of their threatened violence. Sending him below deck, McDaniel faced the excited throng. They demanded that he should forego his purpose, and offered him fifteen hundred dollars for his slave. He declined the offer. They then pressed him to name his own price. His reply was that he had agreed to take Burns to Baltimore, and he intended to keep his word if it cost him his life. They then attempted to move him by intimidation, but this only roused his spirit. For an hour and a half, with pistol in hand, he kept them at bay. At last, he was allowed to depart on giving assurance that if the Massachusetts purchasers failed to keep their appointment, he would immediately return and dispose of Burns at Norfolk.

        Without further molestation they pursued their way to Baltimore, and arrived at Barnum's Hotel about two hours after Mr. Grimes. The latter was absent at the moment, but, returning shortly after, was immediately ushered into the private apartment where the two travellers were secluded. Anthony greeted him with a face all radiant with

happiness, and then, turning to his owner, exclaimed, "I told you it must be Mr. Grimes." In explanation of this, McDaniel said that Burns had constantly maintained, notwithstanding the correspondence had been conducted by Mr. Stockwell, that Mr. Grimes would be found at the bottom of the efforts for his liberation.

        Negotiations were at once commenced. Mr. Grimes produced his cheque on the Baltimore bank, but the cautious slave trader required the cash. Accordingly, Mr. Grimes went to the bank to get the cheque cashed, but found to his annoyance that, by a rule of the institution, some citizen of Baltimore was required to certify that he was the person named in the cheque. He was unknown to a single individual in the city. From this dilemma he was relieved by the kindly aid of the landlord, Barnum. The cheque was indorsed to McDaniel, Barnum made the necessary certification in his behalf, and the cash was obtained. Before signing the bill of sale, the thrifty slave trader required an additional sum of twenty-five dollars to defray his expenses. Remonstrance was unavailing, and it was paid. The transaction being completed, Mr. Grimes pleaded with McDaniel to make Anthony a present of a hundred dollars with which to begin his new life; but the plea was met by the reply that twice that amount had already been sacrificed in keeping the engagement.

        By this time a rumor of Burns's presence had got into circulation, and some feeling began to be displayed

among the people in the hotel. Mr. Grimes, in consequence, decided at once to leave the city. As he and Burns passed out of the hotel, they met, upon the threshhold, Mr. Stockwell, who had that moment arrived. Finding the business completed, he turned and accompanied them back to the railway station. There they encountered another of the thousand safeguards erected by slavery, for its protection, at the expense of perpetual vexation to freemen. This was a regulation of the railroad company requiring a bond of one thousand dollars to hold the company harmless for carrying negroes. Through the friendly offices of Mr. Barnum, who signed the instrument, this obstacle was surmounted; the train then whirled off, the land of bondage was forever left behind, and that night Anthony Bums slept in Philadelphia, a free man upon free soil.

        From this period he entered upon his career as a citizen of the United States, equal in the eye of the law to his former owners, and entitled to all the immunities and privileges which they could claim. But, though invested with this high title, it was practically of little or no avail to him throughout one half of the Union. It was true that the Constitution more unequivocally guarantied his protection as a freeman than his restoration as a slave; but all experience had shown it to be also true that this guaranty was for him, and such as him, worth absolutely nothing. With a solemn constitutional pledge that he should be protected in the enjoyment

of all rights of citizenship while sojourning anywhere within the domain of the Union, he yet could not venture to set foot again upon the soil of his native state. Henceforth the only home for him was in the North.

        On the day following his manumission he proceeded to New York, and, in a public assembly which was gathered to welcome him, narrated his story. Early in March he repaired to Boston, where preparations had been made to give him a public reception and congratulate him on the recovery of his freedom. A large meeting was held in Tremont Temple, and there, surrounded by many clergymen, and others of note, Burns stood forth upon the platform and repeated his tale of outrage and suffering. His manly address, the sobriety of his speech, and the degree of intelligence which he manifested, took his audience by surprise and won for him increased respect. "Burns is more of a man than I had supposed," said the Rev. Mr. Kirk in his address on the occasion; "he has spoken to my heart to-night like a man. He has the true oratorical ring in him, like that of some of the Indian orators."

        This meeting was followed by others of a like character in various parts of the Commonwealth. The people were eager to see the man whose enforced return to slavery had so convulsed the State. Nor did they fail to accompany the gratification of their curiosity with substantial tokens of their sympathy. It was far from Anthony's wish or intention,

however, to gain a livelihood by making merchandize of his wrongs.¹
1 Immediately after Burns recovered his freedom, the great showman, Barnum, addressed a letter to one of his friends offering him $500 if he would take his stand in the Museum at New York, and repeat his story to visitors for five weeks. When Burns was made to comprehend the nature of this proposal, he rejected it with indignation. "He wants to show me like a monkey!" said Burns.
The calling to which he had devoted himself while a slave, he was more than ever bent on pursuing now that he had become a freeman. He still felt it to be his duty and desire to preach the gospel. This decision received the approval of his friends, and they took measures to promote his design. To qualify him for the sacred office, it was necessary that he should pass through a complete course of study. A lady of Boston, who held a scholarship in the Institution at Oberlin, offered to place him on that foundation. This offer was gratefully accepted, and early in the summer of 1855, he entered upon his studies in that Institution.

        Soon after taking up his residence at Oberlin, he addressed a note to his old pastor in Virginia, requesting a letter of dismission and general recommendation from the church of which he had been a member while in bondage. To this request no direct answer was ever returned. But it served, apparently, to remind pastor and church of the great neglect of duty toward the institution of slavery of which they had been guilty; and they proceeded to repair that neglect by excommunicating Burns, for "disobeying both the laws of God

and man by absconding from the service of his master and refusing to return voluntarily." Four months after, he received a copy of a newspaper containing a communication signed by the pastor and addressed to himself. It included the sentence of excommunication, and a defence of slavery drawn from the New Testament by the pastor, together with a rebuke of all christian anti- slavery men. To this communication Burns published an answer, which showed not only his ability to cope with the Virginia pastor in argument, but also his progress in a sound interpretation of the Bible.¹
1 See Appendix K.

        Thus by the hand of unchristian rudenesss was severed the last tie that connected Anthony Burns with the land of bondage.

CHAPTER XII.

THE TRIAL OF THE COMMISSIONER.

        WHILE Burns was rehearsing the story of his great wrong in the cities and villages of Massachusetts, the Commissioner, by whose act he had suffered, was himself put on trial at the bar of the People. The part which he had played in the tragedy of June had drawn upon himself the hostile attention of large masses of his fellow-citizens, while the tragedy itself had precipitated a political revolution of which he was destined to be a conspicuous victim. A glance at the posture of affairs in the Commonwealth, during the period immediately preceding that event, will reveal more fully the causes of that revolution.

        In the beginning of the year 1853, the whigs of Massachusetts recovered the control of the government which they had held for nearly a quarter of a century, but of which, for the two years previous, they had been deprived. Their new hold of power was, however, by no means secure. Their opponents, powerful in numbers and personal influence, regarded their success as an accident, and confidently looked forward to a speedy reversal of the popular decision. A Convention

for revising the Constitution had been ordered; and, at the elections in the spring, the Opposition secured a large majority of its members. The summer saw the Convention in full operation, and the majority, exulting in their strength, proceeded to make the most radical changes in the Constitution. In the autumn, they appealed to the people for a ratification of their work. It was decisively refused. The blow was doubly fatal, for it crushed not only the new Constitution, but also the party which had devised it. Again the whigs returned to power, and with vastly augmented strength. A wise improvement of past experience was all which they now needed to secure them firmly in their ancient seats. They had lost power in the first instance by crossing the anti-slavery sentiments of the people; they were sure to retain and increase it by reforming their policy on that subject. An opportunity to test their disposition was almost immediately presented by the proposal to repeal the Missouri Compromise. As the party in power, as the party to whom had been entrusted the privilege of uttering authoritatively the voice of Massachusetts in such a crisis, it was their duty to have led off in an instant, energetic, and indignant rebuke of the premeditated wrong. But they hung back until their defeated foes led the way, and then feebly followed with cautiously-worded protests. That was not all. Of the two Massachusetts members of the United States Senate, Edward Everett and

Charles Sumner, the former was a representative of the whig party, and the latter a representative of their opponents. Most unfortunate for the whig party was the contrast presented by the conduct of the two in the strife about the Missouri Compromise. While Mr. Sumner extorted admiration, even from his opponents, as the gallant and courageous champion of Massachusetts, the whig Senator compelled his friends to hang their heads in shame by tamely apologizing for having presented to the Senate the noblest remonstrance ever made in behalf of the imperilled cause of human freedom.¹
1 Remonstrance of three thousand ministers of New England against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
Having begun by thus damaging the antislavery character of his party, he finished by resigning his place at a moment when the Legislature had put it out of their power, by a final adjournment, to provide a permanent successor. The prize of the vacant senatorship at once became a powerful incentive to revolution. It stimulated alike the aspiring and the patriotic among the Opposition to indefatigable efforts to replace the retiring, not to say retreating, Senator with one who would stand shoulder to shoulder with the remaining Senator. Then followed that embattled assault by the Federal Government in behalf of Virginia slavery, upon the peace, and dignity, and cherished faith of Massachusetts, the like of which had not been witnessed within her borders since the Boston Massacre of 1770. Again was a great

opportunity presented to the whig party. The insulted Commonwealth demanded a demonstration against the unpardonable outrage, and a fit demonstration could only come from the party in power. They were the State; in their keeping was its honor; they only could utter its voice with authority. But they did nothing;--and again they did nothing. Then, and from that hour, the whig party rushed swiftly downward to its ruin. A movement in another direction concurred to hasten the catastrophe. Some months before, a secret political association had been organized in the State. Its growth had been small, and, down to the period of Burns's arrest, it continued small. But its organization was thorough, and its machinery the most controlling and effective ever devised. It invited recruits, and, to all political wanderers and malcontents, held out the alluring prospect of a new home and new means of power. And now, on the one hand, the discomfited and scattered members of the Opposition, and on the other, the discontented portion of the party in power, together plunged headlong into the recesses of this invisible party. All through the summer and early autumn the exodus from the old parties went steadily on; as the day of election approached, it went on with accelerated velocity. At length, the thirteenth of November revealed to the world the astounding result. The whig party had vanished away. Of the sixty thousand that had borne it into power the year before, but twenty- seven thousand remained. In

its place had come up, eighty thousand strong, a party which at the previous election had no existence. City and country had alike yielded to their power. The great metropolitan stronghold had been stormed, and the remotest village, whether of Berkshire or Cape Cod, had been penetrated and revolutionized. Everything was theirs. Theirs was the Governor, for the first time in a decade of years by the popular vote; theirs was the entire Senate; theirs, with three or four exceptions, was the multitudinous House of Representatives. The revolution was complete and universal.

        The party thus puissantly inaugurated, now turned their attention to the outrage which had so signally contributed to their success. Representing the State by a more indisputable title than any party which had ever before been entrusted with power, they proceeded to pronounce the judgment of the State upon that transaction. Two methods of procedure were possible. They might enact a general law, or they might deal with the particular actors in the tragedy, if any were found to be properly within their purview. Both methods were adopted, but with the latter only is this history concerned.

        Of the obnoxious actors in the tragedy of Burns, no one was within reach of the power of the State but the Commissioner, Edward Greeley Loring. This person was one of that class of men who never, except by accident, appear on the page of history. A lawyer of moderate abilities, he had

passed the middle period of life without having made any figure at the bar, and was content to solicit from his professional brethren that class of business technically called office-practice. Unambitious and reserved, he had never mingled with the people nor courted their favor in the political arena; and, until his obnoxious conduct elevated him into notice, he was probably unknown to the greater part of his fellow-citizens. But he had powerful friends, through whose influence, direct or indirect, his fortunes were essentially advanced. Among them was that family already mentioned in this history as distinguished for its devotion to the fugitive slave law, one of whose members then occupied a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. Connected with this family by the ties of blood, Mr. Loring was in a position, on the one hand, to claim the benefit of their influence for himself, and on the other, to be infected by their peculiar views on the subject of fugitive slaves. But however this may be, he succeeded in gaining places of public trust and emolument. In 1839, he was appointed a Commissioner of the United States for taking bail and affidavits, to which duty was added, by the statute of 1850, that of sending back fugitives into slavery. In 1847, he was appointed Judge of Probate for the county of Suffolk. This office he exercised to the general satisfaction of the county. In 1854, he was chosen by the Corporation of Harvard College, a Lecturer in the Law School of that institution;

but, though he at once entered on the discharge of his duties, the choice awaited the sanction of the Overseers. All of these places he held at the time of the rendition of Burns, and onward. With the office in which he had offended, the state authorities had no power to interfere, and in those over which they had control, he bad done nothing amiss. Notwithstanding, it was resolved to manifest their sense of his offensive conduct in the former, by depriving him of the latter.

        The willing disposition of the Legislature to proceed against Mr. Loring was sustained and stimulated by the action of the people. Hardly had the two Houses been organized, when from all quarters petitions for his removal from the office of Judge of Probate began to pour in. Every day witnessed fresh accessions to the number, and in no long time it had swelled to more than twelve thousand. On the other hand, but more tardily, remonstrances against the removal were presented. The whole number of these was less than fifteen hundred. Between remonstrants and petitioners there was a marked contrast. All of the former were men, and generally were men belonging to the circle in which Mr. Loring more immediately moved. But the petitioners were from among the broad mass of the people; and many of them were women, who, as being a class of persons deeply interested in the character of Probate Judges, very properly exercised their right of petition on this occasion.

        Roused by the signs of impending danger, Mr. Loring at last himself presented to the Legislature a remonstrance against his removal. This paper was clumsily constructed and its argument was obscurely set forth. Reduced to a logical form it seemed to be this: That Mr. Loring ought not to be removed from the office of Judge of Probate; first, because his action in the case of Burns had been only that of a good citizen and a sworn magistrate both of Massachusetts and of the United States; second, because that action was not incompatible with his duty as a Judge of Probate. The fugitive slave law had found him holding the office of a Commissioner, and had imposed upon him the additional duty of sending back fugitive slaves. That law was an amelioration of the old Jaw of 1793. It had been pronounced by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts to be constitutional; and he had been required by the people of Massachusetts to swear as Judge of Probate to support all constitutional laws. Thus, although he had sent Anthony Burns back into slavery, he had done it humanely, constitutionally, and in obedience to his oath. Nor was the act inconsistent with the faithful discharge of his Probate functions. The office of United States Commissioner had been held by state magistrates, and, therefore, might be held by a Judge of Probate. He had received the appointment of a Probate Judge while holding the office of Commissioner, and no objection had been made from any authoritative quarter

against his continuing to discharge all its duties. Nor, when by the act of 1850, the duty of returning fugitives to slavery had been added to his other duties as Commissioner, had he received any notice from the state authorities that the two offices were thereby rendered incompatible. Long custom, and expressive silence twice repeated, thus sanctioned the position that a Judge of Probate might properly act as a United States Commissioner, and, so acting, might without blame send back a fugitive into slavery.

        The conclusion of the remonstrance was in no suppliant tone. "I claim as facts," said the remonstrant, "that the extradition of fugitives from service or labor is within the provisions of the Constitution of the United States; that the U. S. act of 1850 was and is the law of the land; and, by the Supreme Judicial Court of this commonwealth, obligatory on all its magistrates and people; that action under the said act was lawful and not prohibited by any State law to the judicial officers of the State, and was in conformity with the official oath of all officers of the State to support the Constitution of the United States. And I respectfully submit to your honorable bodies, that when your petitioners ask you to punish a judicial officer for an act not prohibited by any statute of Massachusetts, but lawful under those statutes, and imposed by that law of the land which is the law of Massachusetts, they ask of you an abuse of power for

which the legislative history of Massachusetts furnishes no precedent."

        The petitions and remonstrances were referred to the Joint Committee on Federal Relations, consisting of two Senators and five Representatives. Before this Committee had taken any action a heavy blow from another quarter fell upon the Commissioner. It has already been stated that his appointment as Lecturer in the Law School of Harvard College awaited the sanction of the Board of Overseers. This body was composed of the Governor, the Lieutenant-Governor, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, the Secretary of the Board of Education, the President and Treasurer of Harvard College, and thirty other persons elected for a term of years. Its meetings were usually held only during the session of the Legislature. Whatever action had been taken by the Corporation during the legislative recess was then presented for confirmation. At the first meeting this year, held on the twenty-sixth of January, the President of the College laid before the Board Mr. Loring's appointment. The Board took time to deliberate. At the end of three weeks a second meeting was held, when the question again came up. A ballot was taken, and it was found that two thirds had voted against confirming the appointment. Among those who thus put the seal of their condemnation on the Commissioner, were the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of the Commonwealth, and two

ex-Governors--a whig and a democrat--both of whom had enjoyed in a rare degree the favor of their respective parties.¹
1 Governor Briggs and Governor Boutwell.
No debate was held, and no reasons were assigned by the majority for their adverse action. There was no need, for no one doubted that the Board had taken this method to express their disapprobation of Mr. Loring's conduct as Commissioner. By this stroke he was deprived of an honorable office and a salary of fifteen hundred dollars.

        Four days after, the Committee held their first meeting to consider the question of his removal from the office of Judge of Probate. The grave character of the proposed step invested their proceedings with unwonted interest. Only thrice since the adoption of the Constitution had a Massachusetts Judge been removed from office by the method of Address; never had one been removed for such a cause. Ample powers had been granted to the Committee. Witnesses were to be examined and arguments to be heard; the proceedings assumed the breadth and importance of a great public trial. To accommodate the people, the committee-room was abandoned, and the sessions were held in the Hall of the Representatives. Long before the appointed hour, the spacious apartment was filled to its utmost capacity; crowds besieged the doors outside, and hundreds more, unable to get within ear-shot, reluctantly went away. This extraordinary exhibition of popular

interest was repeated at the second hearing, a week later, and was not diminished when, on the sixth of March, the final hearing was had.

        Testimony was taken respecting the Commissioner's conduct, both in and out of the court-room, during the trial of Burns. But the time was chiefly consumed by arguments from various persons in favor of the removal. Among these, the most distinguished were Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, and the historian, Richard Hildreth. They spoke for the twelve thousand petitioners, and for the vast multitude beside, whom those petitioners represented. Much of what was in the public mind, much of what had appeared in the public journals, was now brought to bear upon the Committee with all the force which rare eloquence and keen dialectic skill could exert.

        The reasons urged in favor of the removal were various, but they were all reducible into two classes; those which had respect to the character and conduct of Mr. Loring, and those which had respect to the character and conduct of Massachusetts. The Commissioner, it was said, had not conducted the examination of Burns fairly and uprightly. He had pushed it on with indecent haste. He had manifested a purpose to send back the prisoner without giving him a chance for defence. A stickler for law, he yet had wrested the law to the prejudice of the prisoner's rights. He had received the admissions of the prisoner so far as they told

against him, and excluded them so far as they told in his favor. He had suffered the worst part of the community to be admitted into his court-room, and the better part to be debarred therefrom. He had refused to secure for the prisoner's counsel free access to his court. He had prejudged the prisoner's cause. Before the examination was fairly begun, he had on two different occasions more than hinted that Burns would have to be sent back to Virginia.¹
1 See letters of Charles Grafton and Edward Avery to the Committee on Federal Relations, printed in House Document, No. 93.
He had also, in effect, prejudged the cause by preparing a bill of sale of the prisoner. All these things were so many disclosures of character; they showed Mr. Loring's unfitness for the office of a Massachusetts Judge. He ought, therefore, to be removed.

        But there was another view. Some, not stopping to inquire whether as Commissioner he had acted well or ill, held it to be the head and front of his offence that he had acted at all. He should not have sat in judgment on the case. He should not have issued his warrant. He should have resigned his place as Commissioner if he could not otherwise have honorably retained it. Whatever might be his private views, as Judge of Probate he was bound to keep himself free from the contamination of slave-catching. Moreover, he had violated the spirit of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights. By that charter, Massachusetts

magistrates were required to "observe justice, piety, and moderation;" to countenance the principles of humanity and benevolence. But slave-catching was opposed to all these. Nor was that all; he had violated an express statute of the Commonwealth. By the law of 1843, all Massachusetts officers and. magistrates were forbidden to assist in the business of returning fugitive slaves, and the terms of this law were held to include Judges of Probate. Finally, whatever view might be taken of the past, Mr. Loring had manifested a purpose to continue in the business of a slave-catching Commissioner; he had even insisted that it was a solemn duty which he could not evade. If, therefore, he were longer suffered to retain his judicial office, Massachusetts would proclaim to the world that her Judges of Probate might properly, and without offence, act a chief part in sending back into perpetual slavery persons as much entitled to compassion as widows and orphans.

        These reasons were of a punitive character; they had respect mainly to Mr. Loring. But the removal was placed upon higher and broader ground. It was necessary to vindicate the character and to enforce the behest of the Commonwealth. From the earliest days, Massachusetts had taken up a position on the subject of slavery in advance of every other nation in Christendom. During the period of her colonial independence, she had adopted the Mosaic code for her guide, and, while not daring to prohibit what God had permitted,

had yet reduced slavery to its minimum of evil.¹
1 A small volume has recently been presented to the Massachusetts Historical Society, entitled, "Abstract of the Lawes of New England as they are now Established," and printed in London in 1641. By the code there given, manstealing was punished with death. In the same year the following statute was enacted: "It is ordered by this Court and the authority thereof, That there shall never be any bond slavery, villenege, or captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just warrs, as willingly sell themselves, or are sold to us, and such shall have the liberties and Christian usage which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons, doth morally require, provided this exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority." [i. e. as a punishment for crime.] I have traced this statute in the edition of the Laws of 1660, and in that of 1672. There is no doubt that it continued in force till the abrogation of the Charter in 1684. Among the "liberties and Christian usage" secured by other enactments, were these: A servant flying from the tyranny and cruelty of his master to the house of a freeman, was to be protected and sustained there till due order was taken for his relief. No servant was to be put off to another person for above a year, neither in the lifetime of his master nor after his death, by an executor, except by the authority of Court, or of two Assistants. [An "Assistant" in those days exercised the functions both of a Senator and of a member of the Governor's Council.] A servant whose tooth was smitten out by his master, was to go free from service and have such further recompense as the Court should adjudge. (Mass. Laws, 1660.) There was also this important statute in which the bondman is placed on an equality with the freeman: "Every man, whether inhabitant or foreigner, free or not free, shall have libertie to come into any publique court, councel, or towne meeting, and either by speech or writing to move any lawful, seasonable, or material question, or to present any necessary motion, complaint, petition, bill, or information, whereof that meeting hath proper cognizance, so it be done in proper time, due order, and respective manner."
During the subsequent period of her provincial vassalage under royal governors, the power of the Crown was interposed to arrest her tendencies toward the entire abolition of the system, and

she was compelled to endure what she was unable to remedy.¹
1 There is abundant evidence that the people of Massachusetts were, during the provincial period, opposed to slavery, and would fain have got rid of it, but were prevented by their governors. In 1701, only nine years after the colony was transformed into a royal province, the representatives of Boston were requested by that town to take measures to put a stop to negro slavery. The preamble of an act passed in 1703, declares that "great charge and inconveniences have arisen to divers towns and places by the releasing and setting at liberty mulatto and negro slaves." In 1705, heavy duties were imposed by the General Court on imported slaves, with a view to discourage the business. In 1712, was passed "an act to prohibit the importation or bringing into this Province [Massachusetts] any Indian servants or slaves;" and one of the reasons assigned for the measure is, that such importation "is a discouragement to the importation of white Christian servants." About the year 1716, Samuel Sewall, Chief Justice of the Province, published a pamphlet in condemnation of slavery. In 1767, an attempt was made to pass a law "to prevent the unnatural and unwarrantable custom of enslaving mankind and the importation of slaves into the province." In 1769 one James, a negro, brought a suit in the county of Suffolk, against one Lechmere, to recover his freedom, and was successful. Other suits were brought in other counties, and they were uniformly decided in favor of the slaves. The ground of these decisions was said to be, that all persons in the Province were by the charter as free as the king's subjects in England, and there slavery was not recognized by law. In 1774, a bill to prevent the importation of slaves passed the two Houses, but Gov. Hutchinson refused to sign it because his instructions from the king forbade. Gov. Gage refused his signature to a similar bill for the same reason. In 1777, during the revolutionary war, a prize ship with a cargo of slaves was brought into Salem, and the slaves were advertised to be sold; but the Legislature then sitting in that town interposed, prevented the sale, and ordered the slaves to be set at liberty. For most of these facts, see a learned and instructive article on slavery, in the 41st volume of the North American Review, from the pen of the Hon. Emory Washburn, late Governor of the Commonwealth.
But from the hour when she recovered

her ancient independence, slavery was forever banished from her domain.¹

        1 Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts by virtue of the clause in her Constitution which declares that "all men are born free and equal." The great honor of having made that clause a part of the Constitution belongs to JOHN LOWELL. This distinguished man was born at Newburyport in 1743, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1760. He commenced the practice of the law in his native town, but in 1776 removed to Boston. He soon after became a representative in the General Court, and also a member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the State. In 1781 he was chosen a member of the Continental Congress. In 1782 he was appointed Judge of the Admiralty Court of Appeals. On the establishment of the Federal Government in 1789, he was appointed by Washington, District Judge of the United States for Massachusetts. This office he held till 1801, when, upon a reorganization of the courts, he was made Chief Justice of the new Circuit Court for the eastern district. His death took place in 1802. "He was," says Cushing in his history of Newburyport, "eminent for his judgment, integrity, and eloquence as an advocate and legislator; for his impartiality, acuteness, and decision as a judge; and for his zeal in the cause of scientific and other useful institutions.

        "Mr. Lowell was the bosom friend of the elder Adams, with whom he was associated on the sub-committee for drafting the plan of the Constitution. Respecting his agency in procuring the adoption of the clause which abolished slavery in Massachusetts, I am happy in being able to present the testimony of his son, now venerable for years and virtues, the Rev. Charles Lowell, D. D., of Cambridge. In a recent note addressed to me, he says: "My father introduced into the Bill of Rights the clause by which slavery was abolished in Massachusetts. You will find, by referring to the Proceedings of the Convention for framing the Constitution of our State, and to Elliot's N. E. Biographical Dictionary, that he was a member of the Convention and of the Committee for drafting the plan, &c., and that he suggested and urged on the Committee the introduction of the clause, taken from the Declaration of Independence a little varied, Which virtually put an end to slavery here, as our courts decided, as the one from which it war, taken ought to have put an end to slavery in the United States. This he repeatedly and fully stated to his family and friends. . . . . . In regard to the clause in the Bill of Rights, my father advocated its adoption in the Convention, and, when it was adopted, exclaimed: 'Now there is no longer slavery in Massachusetts; it is abolished, and I will render my services as a lawyer gratis to any slave sueing for his freedom, if it is withheld from him,' or words to that effect." Mr. Lowell's view of the effect which the clause would have, was speedily confirmed by a decision of the Supreme Court. See Appendix L.

of the Federal Union, she also became subject to the fugitive slave law of 1793. But she never ceased to detest it, and when, exactly half a century after, a fit occasion was furnished by a decision of the United States Supreme Court, she hastened to place upon her statute-book an act expressive of her detestation and of her ancient and unalterable convictions. In this attitude the fugitive slave law of 1850 met and confronted her. It soon became manifest that as the new law was far more stringent and oppressive than the old, so it was to be enforced with far greater activity. Almost immediately after its enactment, a negro was arrested, under its provisions, within the borders of Massachusetts. Fortunately for himself and for the peace of the Commonwealth, he escaped from custody before the law had taken its course. Soon, another was arrested and sent back into bondage at the South, there, as it turned out, to suffer imprisonment, scourging, and death. In no long time after, occurred the arrest and extradition of Anthony Burns. It seemed that the soil of Massachusetts was about to become a permanent hunting-ground

for Southern slave-catchers. What was she to do? She could not follow the example of South Carolina; she could not nullify a law of Congress; she could not arm her citizens and bid them resist by force the execution of the law. Nor did she need so to do; for she held in reserve a great constitutional resource. By the terms of the Federal Constitution, she had reserved to herself all the rights and attributes of sovereignty not expressly granted to the Federal Government. She had thus reserved to herself, as an individual in the family of States, the right of private judgment upon the constitutionality of federal laws. She had reserved the right of influencing her citizens, within the sphere of voluntary action, against assisting to execute an obnoxious law. She had reserved the right to say upon what conditions her citizens should enjoy the honors and emoluments of offices within her own gift, upon what conditions these should be forfeited. And if she chose to make the voluntary aiding to execute the fugitive slave law one of those conditions, such was her sovereign right. Nor was it more a sovereign, a constitutional, than it was a moral right. The citizen of Massachusetts, though he owed allegiance to the United States, owed a higher allegiance to his own State. For it was she, and not the former, that chiefly provided for his welfare. At her hand he obtained his elective franchise, his schools, his roads, his police. He touched the State at almost all points, the Federal Government at scarcely

more than one. If, therefore, a conflict of views arose between the two, the State rightfully claimed that her sentiments should be respected, rather than those of the more distant, less protective Power.

        The conduct of Mr. Loring furnished an occasion for the practical illustration of this doctrine. Massachusetts had passed resolves expressive of her disapprobation of the fugitive slave law. She had passed an act to discountenance its execution within her territory. But neither acts nor resolves had proved sufficient. An example was needed to enforce the precept. The removal of Mr. Loring would teach her citizens more impressively than a whole statute-book of resolves, that, if they desired to enjoy her favor, they must conform to her views respecting the execution of the fugitive slave law.

        The Commissioner was formally notified to appear before the Committee, if he chose, and make answer to what might be said against him. In a brief note he declined the privilege, and contented himself with referring the Committee to his remonstrance as containing all that he had to say. An unexpected champion, however, volunteered to maintain his cause. At the third and last hearing, Richard H. Dana, Jr., presented himself before the Committee, and asked to be heard in behalf of the remonstrants. No man in the whole Commonwealth occupied at that moment so commanding a position for influencing the Committee, the Legislature, and the public in favor of the Commissioner. As the defender of Burns, he had won

the applause and gratitude of those who were now pursuing the Commissioner. He had been in the best position to witness the Commissioner's demeanor during the examination. He was a most competent judge of his official conduct, and was not likely to judge it more favorably than facts would warrant. He had freely condemned the Commissioner's decision; and he protested that he now appeared before the Committee, not for Mr. Loring's sake, but for the sake of the principle involved.

        That principle was the independence of the Judiciary. Its preservation, Mr. Dana argued, was a thing of the highest moment to the welfare of the State and of every citizen. But, if Judge Loring were to be removed by the method proposed, and for the reason alleged, it would receive a shock of the most serious character. True, the Constitution gave to Government the power of removal by Address; but it was a power exceedingly liable to abuse, and this removal would be a most signal instance of its abuse. For it was not pretended that Mr. Loring had been guilty of any official misconduct; he was to be deprived of an office in which it was admitted he had borne himself well, because in another capacity he had offended the popular will. If by such an example the Judges of Massachusetts were taught to square their conduct by the views of the party in power, their independence would soon vanish away.

        To this argument the answer was short and conclusive.

        The independence of the Judiciary can never be threatened by a removal, it was said, unless the removal is made on account of some judicial act. But it was not proposed -to remove Judge Loring for any judicial act; his removal, therefore, could not possibly influence the judicial conduct of other judges. Their conduct in another respect it would indeed powerfully influence; for, with such a beacon in view, no Judge of Probate would afterward venture to lend his aid in executing the fugitive slave law. But this result was precisely what was aimed at, and it was entirely consistent with the independence of the Judiciary.

        Having concluded his argument on this point, Mr. Dana assumed the character of a witness, and, moved either by compassion or love of justice, delivered a generous testimony in the Commissioner's behalf. His conduct toward the prisoner Mr. Dana regarded as considerate and humane. He had encouraged Burns to resolve upon making a defence. He had postponed the examination from Thursday to Saturday, and again from Saturday to Monday, in order that counsel for the defence might have time to make preparation. He had commanded the Marshal, contrary to that officer's inclinations, to admit Mr. Phillips and others to the prisoner's cell for the purpose of arranging for a defence. He had zealously co-operated with others in the attempts to purchase the prisoner's freedom; and had even gone so far as to draw up an order, in view of the contemplated purchase,

for his release from custody. These were facts which Mr. Dana thought should have their just weight in determining the culpability of the Commissioner.

        But all arguments and representations, even when proceeding from such an influential source, failed of producing their intended effect. On the twenty-second of March, the Committee made their report. It was not a model state paper, but its substance was weighty and close to the point. It sharply dissected the Commissioner's remonstrance, largely vindicated the right of the Legislature to proceed by the sovereign method of Address, and recapitulated, under four heads, the objections against the Commissioner. It concluded with recommending that an Address should be presented to the Governor requesting him to remove Mr. Loring from his judicial office. This report was signed by four of the Committee. Of the remaining three members, two presented a statement of reasons for not signing the report of the majority, and the third presented a minority report. Both agreed with the majority in their premises, but dissented from their conclusion.

        The question of adopting the report came up in the House on the twenty-seventh of March. But before any action was taken, the reports were recommitted, at the instance of Mr. Dana, for the purpose of hearing further testimony on the question whether the Commissioner had prejudged the case of Burns. On the third of April, a meeting

of the Committee was held and much testimony was taken. Its effect was simply to strengthen the case against the Commissioner. On the fourth, the Committee reported back to the House the original report slightly altered, and it was made the special assignment for the tenth. During the forenoon and afternoon of that and the two following days, it was warmly debated. Various expedients were devised to avert the impending blow, but none of them availed. On the fourteenth, the House resolved, by a vote of two hundred and six against one hundred and eleven, to send an Address to the Governor.

        The action of the Senate was even more decisive. On the twenty-seventh of the same month that body, after mature deliberation, concurred with the House by a vote of twenty-seven against eleven.

        Within a few days after, a Committee of both Houses proceeded to the Council Chamber and presented the Address to the Governor. It was in these words:

        "The two branches of the Legislature, in General Court assembled, respectfully request that your Excellency would be pleased, by and with the advice of the Council, to remove Edward Greely Loring from the office of Judge of Probate for the county of Suffolk."

        The Governor of the Commonwealth at this time was Henry Joseph Gardner. Like his predecessor in office, John Hancock, of illustrious memory,

he was a Boston merchant; but there the parallel ended. Mr. Gardner had never, like him, rendered any service to the State which could possibly mark him out as a fit person to be crowned with the honors of the chief magistracy. Prior to his elevation, he had been placed by his fellow-citizens of Boston in various situations favorable for winning distinction--in municipal office, in the Legislature, in the Constitutional Convention--but in none of them had he risen above the level of respectable mediocrity. In the Constitutional Convention, which embraced the chief men of all parties in the state, his position was among the followers and not among the leaders; throughout its deliberations he acted no conspicuous part, nor did he leave the impress of his mind on any measure, whether of those that were adopted or of those that were rejected. The dissolution of that body left him in the position of a private citizen. While thus situated, a sudden freak of fortune elevated him to the chief place of honor in the Commonwealth. Early in the autumn following the extradition of Burns, a convention of the secret party already mentioned, assembled in secret to nominate a candidate for Governor. After a fierce contest among the partisans of several candidates whose names had been made familiar to the public, the choice of the convention, to the surprise of every one, fell upon Mr. Gardner, whose name had not even been mentioned. In the canvass which followed, he displayed qualities as a political tactician of which his previous career had

given no promise. He adopted a line of policy, the audacity of which confounded his foes and excited the admiration of his friends. His masterstroke was a proclamation by letter of his abhorrence of the fugitive slave law. To this public assurance, were added private assurances of a still stronger character. Thus pledged on the great grievance which Massachusetts had to redress, Mr. Gardner was borne triumphantly into power.

        The removal of Judge Loring became the first and chief test of his fidelity to his pledges. Had opportunity been presented for him to act on the case immediately after his election, there was no reason to doubt that he would have promptly made the removal. But in the interval of six months which elapsed, a change came over the complexion of public affairs that raised doubts about the course he would take. Opinion was divided. Those who desired the removal were confident that he would comply with their wishes, for he had privately informed some of their number that he longed for an opportunity to do the deed. Others, who drew their conclusions from different premises, predicted that he would court the favor of Virginia and risk that of Massachusetts.

        Speculation was speedily put to rest. On the tenth of May, Governor Gardner transmitted a message to the Legislature declining to comply with the prayer of their Address.

        Thus ended the trial of the Commissioner. Through the intervention of the Governor he was

suffered still to enjoy the emoluments of his office. But no Governor could deprive the judgment of the Legislature of its moral power. In the archives of the State is laid up, for perpetual remembrance, a record declaring it to be the will of Massachusetts that under no plea of duty to the Federal Government shall her Judges of Probate be suffered to compromise her character by sending back fugitives into slavery.

        LIBERTY and LAW are both precious to the People of Massachusetts. But Law is precious as the guardian of Liberty and in nowise as her oppressor. When Law turned against Liberty in the epoch of 1776, the People rose and put down Law. But after Liberty had been reinstated in her rightful supremacy, their next care was to re-establish Law also. The lesson contained in this History points to the same result. It represents Law in the attitude of striking Liberty with the military arm, and the People aroused and angered by the assault. Their passion rose not then to the height of overwhelming Law, but it rose to the height of warning against a repetition of the tragic act. The remedy of 1776 will be their reluctant last resort, but they are pledged by the Declaration to its use when every other fails. And meanwhile, they will be swift to punish, as the enemies of both, those who array Law against Liberty. The Crest of their escutcheon is not an unmeaning symbol.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX A.