Virginia Hamilton (18 page)

“Suh, you are going to sell me South?” Anthony cried. “Didn't I do my job good? I'll make it right, suh, I surely will, just give me another chance.”

“No, now listen to me
,” McDaniel said. “There's a Reverend Stockwell with a Reverend Grimes …”

“Reverend Grimes!” Anthony interrupted. His heart leaped.

“Yes. We're to meet them on the twenty-seventh of February in Baltimore. They have your freedom!”

“Oh, Lord of mercy!” whispered Anthony. It was another year then, 1855. And another attempt at freedom.

Again McDaniel swore him to secrecy, for he risked jail and perhaps his life in sending Anthony North; any aid in the rescue of a slave was a crime under the Fugitive Slave Act. Monday morning came and the two men boarded a train. Anthony slumped his shoulders so he wouldn't appear so tall. He hid his maimed hand as best he could. Still, people noticed him. They had not gone ten miles before it was known that the fugitive slave the “Boston Lion” was on the train.

“I demand this nigguh be stopped and put off,” a gentleman exclaimed to the conductor. “He's got the runaway disease; I don't want my slaves to catch it.”

Coolly, McDaniel pulled out his pistol. “I will put a bullet in the first person who lays a hand on my property,” he said.

Nobody moved. The protesting Southern gentleman backed away. The conductor went on about his business. And in this way, McDaniel kept the passengers in check all the way to Norfolk.

On arrival there they boarded a steamer that was leaving for Baltimore later in the day. But meanwhile, the train passengers had spread the word that Anthony was in Baltimore and heading North. In no time the ship was swarming with angry citizens.
McDaniel sent Anthony below deck, and for three hours he staved off the mob with his pistol pointed at them.

“I offer you fifteen hundred dollars for him,” a man said. “Please, don't sell your slave No'th. They will free him there and make a hero out of him. He needs to be disciplined for his crime.”

“If my purchasers fail to keep their appointment in Baltimore, why then I will sell him to you,” McDaniel said.

Finally, the steamer left Norfolk. Anthony and David McDaniel went on without further trouble.

In Baltimore they stayed at Barnum's Hotel, which was owned by the great showman P. T. Barnum. There Anthony was greeted by Reverend Grimes. He and the reverend embraced, for the moment speechless with happiness. The money was paid to McDaniel out of Anthony's sight, and the slaver went on his way.

“I knew one day you'd find me,” Anthony said to Reverend Grimes.

“I knew I would find you too, for I could not rest until I did,” said the good reverend.

The rumor that Anthony was in the city had spread all over town. “We have to get you out of here right away,” Reverend Stockwell said. He and Mr. Grimes and Anthony headed at once for the railway station. There they found that a bond of one thousand dollars had to be posted for a black leaving the state. The bond was necessary so that the company could not be sued for “carrying Negroes.”

P. T. Barnum signed the bond. And with this last obstacle out of the way, Anthony left the land of
slavery forever. When he arrived North, he was famous. People everywhere wanted to hear his story and to shake his hand. He was asked to speak in lecture halls in New York, in Boston, and throughout the state of Massachusetts. Wherever he appeared, the public came out to hear him and to give him their sympathy.

Anthony would delicately hold his wrists and say, “I was kept for months with bracelets on these. Not such as you wear, ladies, of gold and silver, but iron and steel that wore into the bone.” The newspapers printed all he said with generally favorable comments—so much so that Mr. Barnum offered Anthony five hundred dollars if he would stand in the Museum of New York and tell his story to visitors for a period of five weeks.

Anthony was horrified. “He wants to show me like a monkey!” he said, and refused the offer. Not wanting to spend his life as a traveling lecturer, he wished to attend college and become a proper minister. When a Boston woman generously offered him a scholarship to Oberlin College in Ohio, Tony gratefully accepted. Meantime, a writer called Charles Emery Stevens decided to write Anthony's biography, which he did, with Anthony's aid. The book, entitled
Anthony Burns, A History
, was published in 1856, and a large portion of the sales went to further Anthony's education.

During his two years at Oberlin Anthony was often ill, and he so wrote the Reverend Grimes, who still kept in touch with him. For a short time later, he was in charge of a “colored” Baptist church in Indianapolis, Indiana. But he was forced to leave by the threat of enforcement of the state's Black Laws, which restricted
the lives of blacks and even their settlement in the state.

I will go to Canada! Anthony decided. Knowing that he would be safe there, for that was the final run for many fugitives, he left the “free-dom” of the American North. He moved at last to the small settlement of St. Catharines, Canada, on the south shore of Lake Ontario, and became the pastor of Zion Baptist Church.

Tall and well mannered, Anthony became quite a good speaker. He was much loved by his parishioners. He never loved another, as he said he wouldn't. He never married, but he was happy, preaching the gospel and seeing to the needs of his flock. Yet it was not long before his health broke completely. The great hardship he had suffered over many years, ending with the final assault in the Lumpkin jail, took its final toll. He fell ill, was confined to bed for a month, and then died on July 27, 1862.

“He was a fine-looking man,” said another minister, Reverend R. A. Ball. “He was tall and broad-shouldered, but with a slight stoop. His color was light brown. He was a fine speaker and was considered to be well educated, and very popular with both white people and the people of his own race.”

A St. Catharines newspaper gave this report:

The best medical aid was procured, but that most uncompromising and wasting disease, consumption, had taken a fast hold of Anthony Burns and all that human skill could do failed to wrest the sufferer from its grasp.

Reverend Burns had been here only a short time. When he came, he saw that there was much for him to do and he set himself to do it with all
his heart, and he was prospering in his work, he was getting the affairs of the church into good shape. His memory will be cherished long by not a few in this town. His gentle, unassuming and yet manly bearing secured him many friends. His removal is felt to be a great loss and his place will not soon be filled.

On his grave is this stone with the inscription:

In Memoriam
R
EV.
A
NTHONY
B
URNS
The fugitive slave of the Boston riots, 1854.
Pastor of Zion Baptist Church
Died in the Triumph of Faith in St. Catharines,
July 27th
A.D.
1862

Anthony died only twenty-eight years old. And yet he had lived a life that would have overwhelmed most men. He hated human slavery. But through it all, he never lost his faith in people and his belief in God. He cherished free-dom to the last.

Epilogue

IN THE AUTUMN OF
1854 Reverend Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
Martin Stowell, and others were indicted by a grand jury for “knowingly and willfully obstructing, resisting and opposing” a United States Marshal in “the discharge of his lawful duties.”

On April 3, 1855, the Court pronounced all the indictments lacking. The U.S. District Attorney, Benjamin Hallett, was then unwilling to prosecute further, and the suit against the accused individuals was dropped.

The extradition of Anthony Burns was the immediate cause for legislation called the Personal Liberty Law, passed in Massachusetts on May 21, 1855. The Law guaranteed that no individual could be arrested and thrown into jail without first going before a judge or a court to determine whether his arrest had been justified. This right of
habeas corpus
is a safeguard against illegal detention or imprisonment.

The slave struggle continued in the North and South. But Anthony Burns was the last fugitive ever seized on Massachusetts soil.

Afterword

MORE THAN TEN YEARS
ago I began putting together source
material on an ordinary slave. He escaped from bondage only to be recaptured, and thus galvanized and unified the antislavery movement. This fugitive slave became famous in the process and now is dutifully mentioned in most of our history books.

Once I involved myself in researching the man's life, I felt that he somehow deserved more than a paragraph or a mere mention in the historical references on Slavery, Abolitionist Causes, and Famous Fugitives.

It was not until 1985, though, that I had the opportunity to reconstruct the fugitive's life and times as an in-depth biography.
Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave
is the result.

Anthony Burns
is a narrative history of events surrounding Anthony's life as well as a biography. In the research material, however, there existed no day-to-day calendar of events to outline Burns's activities and movement as an ordinary slave child and youth. His life only became well documented from approximately his twentieth year, when he was hired out to Richmond, Virginia, and carefully began to plan his escape. Therefore it became necessary to invent
and “backfill” from this later material.

Various documents place Anthony Burns at the Hiring Ground over several years in his youth and state that he was in charge of other slaves. Anthony was actually hired out to the individual slave owners as described here. It is also true that his hand was horribly mangled while he was employed by a Mr. Foote. As a result of the torture and pain of his wound, he had several religious experiences and became quite devout.

However, the slave owner who hired Whittom and Simon is an invention, as are the slave owners Archibald Davenport and Ebenezer Caldwell and the four slaves in Anthony's charge— Whittom, Efrum, Luther, and Simon.

There are five shadowy but actual people who were in some way important in Anthony's development but who are only mentioned occasionally in the documentation of his life. These people are referred to in the documentary material as Anthony's “mother,” who tried to keep him safe with her and wanted him to grow up to be a preacher; “a sailor,” who helped Anthony escape to the North; Anthony's “older sister,” whose baby was in Anthony's care; “a seer and fortuneteller,” who predicted Anthony would go free; and Anthony's “father,” who died when he was quite young. In the absence of documents citing the real names of these individuals, I have given them names: Mamaw for Anthony's “mother,” Cal Cross for “a sailor,” Sister Janety for Anthony's “older sister,” Maude Maw for “a seer and fortuneteller,” and Big Walker for Anthony's “father.” I have also given them active roles in his life, drawing from whatever supporting factual material was available.

The remaining individuals in the list of characters are real people who were known in Burns's time. Some were famous then and are still historically significant: P. T. Barnum, Richard Dana, Cyrus Gould, Samuel G. Howe, Thomas Higginson, Theodore Parker, President Franklin Pierce, Wendell Phillips, Shadrach, and Thomas Sims. Some are generally
unknown now but we should take note of their courage: Charles Mayo Ellis, Leonard Grimes, William Jones, Coffin Pitts, and Martin Stowell. Others were relatively unknown at the time but will be infamous always: Asa Butman, Mr. and Mrs. Foote, Charles Suttle, John and Mistress Suttle, Ben Hallett, and Robert Lumpkin. Still others, such as Edward Loring, David McDaniel, George Drew, and John Favor, were in many ways captured by events. Whatever marks of character they possessed—strengths or weaknesses—were revealed under the pressure of circumstance.

You might ask, What does the life of a slave born a hundred and fifty years ago have to do with us? Here was a poor fugitive who lived but nine years of his total life of twenty-eight years in freedom. Yet he did become free, and he died a free man, so why not let it go at that? What does a single slave out of millions like him, long gone and best forgotten, have to do with us—you, me—in this last decade before the year 2000?

Today readers of
Anthony Burns
enjoy an inalienable right to freedom and the pursuit of happiness given to them by the Constitution and its amendments. Such an assumption of liberty was unknown to those captured by a tragically cruel system of human servitude. Ultimately Anthony Burns did know freedom, but at a regrettable cost to himself, mentally and physically.

As the author of this life of Anthony Burns, I have experienced an enormous sense of relief and satisfaction at having at last set free through the word one man's struggle for liberty. All these years Anthony Burns has lived in my thoughts: this man, born a slave, whose painstaking and burning desire to “get gone” from crippling bondage was all but forgotten
by history. By writing about him I found that he not only came to life for me but that he lives again for all of us. In gaining a sense of who he was we learn about ourselves. As long as we know he is free, we too are liberated.

One last word should be given with regard to those abolitionist advocates, witnesses, and lawyers in the cause of freedom for slaves, and particularly in the cause of Anthony Burns. If I emphasize Anthony Burns and the work of such humble souls as Reverend Grimes and Coffin Pitts more than the abolitionists and their efforts, it is because most of the famed among the abolitionists have long since written about their lives: Thomas Higginson, Wendell Phillips, Richard Dana, Theodore Parker, and others have all produced monographs or autobiographies that, somewhat incidentally, tell us what they did on behalf of Anthony Burns. In their own works these men are justifiably the center of events. In their accounts of the great abolitionist cause, the swirling intrigues surrounding Burns, and the battle between freedom and slavery, Burns seems to recede into the shadows.