Virginia Hamilton (5 page)

The prisoner was definitely the slave Anthony Burns. He had admitted as much when he had first faced the colonel. It was a simple matter, then, of going through the proceeding according to law. Colonel Suttle had provided an affidavit of ownership, and Commissioner Loring had issued a warrant for Burns's arrest. There would be a hearing as soon as possible, it was hoped—all strictly according to provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act. The Commissioner would then issue the Colonel a certificate allowing him to take the prisoner back to Virginia. But unknown to the Colonel or anyone else in the courtroom, the Boston abolitionists were already informed.

Coffin Pitts, Anthony's employer and landlord, had been looking for him all the previous night.

“Anthony? Anthony!” Coffin Pitts called. When he couldn't find him anywhere in his house, he went out at once in search of him. He looked everywhere in the fugitives' quarter he could think of, but Anthony seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Fearing the worst, he went straight to Exeter Place, the home of
the abolitionist Reverend Theodore Parker.

Reverend Parker was the minister of the 28th Congregational Society. He believed, he always said, in an Almighty God and the equality and dignity of all who were God's children. He had gained national attention for the sermons he preached to thousands each Sunday in the enormous music hall called Tremont Temple.

“I know that men urge in argument,” Theodore Parker preached, “that the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, and that it sanctions slavery. There is no supreme law but that made by God; if our laws contradict that, the sooner they end or the sooner they are broken, why, the better.”

Almost every word that Parker uttered made Coffin Pitts smile in agreement. Yet he couldn't bring himself to awaken Reverend Parker when he got to his home. He waited, nodding and dozing, on Theodore Parker's front steps all night long.

Reverend Parker found him there Thursday morning when he opened the door to let in the morning air. “Good Lord, man, come in, come in!” he said, and ushered Deacon Pitts inside. “You must be chilled through. Here, let us have coffee.” Parker proceeded to the kitchen and prepared coffee while Deacon Pitts told him of the missing Anthony Burns.

“I am sorry to have to tell you this,” said Parker, “but there are Virginia slavers in town.”

“Oh, no!” Deacon Pitts said.

“Yes, I'm afraid so,” Parker answered. “Tuesday morning another colored man, a waiter from
the Revere House, came to see me. Said he had waited on two Virginia slave hunters at breakfast.

“He gave me useful information,” Parker continued, “The slavers are a Colonel Suttle and William Brent. But the man didn't know which slave it was they were after. So for two days I asked everyone I could think of, and nobody knew! Not even Reverend Grimes of your church—and he dared not question his congregation, lest they panic and run away north toward Canada.”

Reverend Leonard Grimes had been born in Virginia of free parents who had bought their freedom from a sympathetic owner. As an adult there he ran a livery stable, and he used his horse-drawn carriages to transport fugitives farther north under cover of darkness. Once he went deep into Virginia and carried out an entire slave family; three months later he was caught and sent to prison for two years for the crime of aiding runaways. After his release Reverend Grimes moved to Boston, where he continued his work as a minister and friend to all escaped slaves.

“The slavers have been among us, hunting, and we had no wind of it for two days!” exclaimed Deacon Pitts. They caught us unawares.”

“Yes, and I daresay the slavers are here after your Anthony,” replied Reverend Parker. “Well. You may stay as long as you like, Deacon Pitts, but I must be off. Have yourself another of my brew. Get yourself warmed! I'm going to the Court House.”

With that, Parker hurried out. He had not let Deacon Pitts see it, but he was seething
with anger. That some men would even think to enslave other men made his blood boil. That was why, when the Fugitive Slave Act had become law in 1850, he had slapped a revolver down on his desk and left it there as clear warning to all slave hunters.

He knew that for the South, passage of the Fugitive Slave Act was a signal for an intensive manhunt in the North. And it was not long before Southern authorities sent people North to bring back fugitives and to spy on abolitionist groups. In response to this, Northern blacks and whites took direct action to head off compliance with the law. Theodore Parker found the rising tension and possibility of violence quite unpleasant. He was not a violent man himself. But if forced to, he would without question defend a fugitive with his life.

As he neared the Court House, Parker happened to meet Charles Mayo Ellis, a lawyer and member of the Boston Vigilance Committee. The Vigilance Committee was a large, secret body of abolitionists organized to operate on a moment's notice. Its main purpose was “to secure the fugitives and colored inhabitants of Boston and vicinity from any invasion of their rights.”

Parker quickly explained the situation to Ellis. He then asked Ellis to go to the Court House to observe what was taking place and to keep watch over the fugitive. “I'll go find Richard Dana,” Reverend Parker said. Richard Henry Dana was another member of the Vigilance Committee, a well-known novelist as well as an attorney.

But it was Reverend Leonard Grimes of the 12th Baptist Church who was the first
of the Vigilance Committee to see Anthony Burns handcuffed in the prisoner's box. Passing by the Court House, he had noticed unusual activity and had gone inside, only to see Anthony surrounded by armed guards. Alarmed, Reverend Grimes approached Anthony.

“My son, are you all right?” he asked. “Please, tell me what I may do for you now.”

Anthony made no reply, and looked through space at nothing. Sadness and fear, poor soul! the reverend thought. Anthony appeared to be in a trance, unmindful or unknowing of his situation. I can't leave him alone in his condition, the reverend decided.

One of the guards at Anthony's side stood up, menacing the reverend. He put his hand on his gun butt, and Reverend Grimes backed away from the prisoner's dock. He knew it was best to act timidly before such petty officials. Quickly, bowing his head slightly, he took a seat in the rear of the court to wait and see what would happen next.

The slave catchers watched him sit down. So did District Attorney Ben Hallett. Asa Butman whispered to Hallett, “Sir, might I throw that preacher out? He ain't got any business at all bein' in here.”

“No, leave him alone,” Hallett said. He knew Reverend Grimes to be a respected colored minister, able enough at fund-raising to have raised ten thousand dollars and built himself a church. “Better to have him in here where we can keep an eye on him than outside where he might make trouble,” he explained.

“Yassir, as you wish, then,” Asa said. “But give the word and he's out as quick as you please.” He winked at Hallett as if they were
conspirators.

Ben Hallett looked pained. To think he must depend on the lowest life, such as Butman, to see that the Federal law was enforced! He turned away in distaste and busied himself with his court papers as Asa hurried back to his post beside Anthony.

6
May 25, 1854

RICHARD HENRY DANA
was not in his office when Theodore Parker went there looking for
him. He had learned early that morning, as had Reverend Grimes, that a fugitive was about to appear in court before Commissioner Edward G. Loring. While passing the Court House on his way to work, Dana had been approached by a stranger and told the bad news.

“Good God!” he had said. “I need a runner!” He soon found a Negro youth he knew well, one of the many among the growing community of free persons and fugitives who lived in Boston.

Without further delay Dana sent the youth to find members of the Boston Vigilance Committee. For it was the Committee's sworn duty to defend, without fee, all black inhabitants of Boston and vicinity against slavers and bounty hunters.

Dana, one of the Committee's most illustrious members, had helped defend the fugitive slave Thomas Sims in court in 1851. As a young man he had withdrawn from Harvard when measles had weakened
his eyesight, and had, in 1834, shipped out to California as a sailor to regain his health. After calling at California's ports loading cargo, his ship sailed around Cape Horn and returned home to Boston in 1835.

Dana's travel experiences cured him physically and also taught him sympathy for the less fortunate. He reentered Harvard and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1840. That same year he published
Two Years Before the Mast
, a novel written from diaries he'd kept at sea about “the life of a common sailor as it really is.” In it he revealed the awful abuses endured by his fellow seamen at the hands of their superiors. The book made him famous.

When the slavery question moved North with the fugitives, Dana put novel writing aside. His political party was Free Soil, which meant he did not oppose slavery in the South. But he vowed to fight against its spread into the western land tracts, such as Kansas and Nebraska. He lost many of his wealthy, proslavery clients because of this “moderate” view, but he didn't care.

“I am against slavery in the North,” he said again and again.

By 1854 Dana no longer put much faith in justice. He had defended two slaves already, Sims and another popularly known as Shadrach, and neither case had ended well. Sims had lost his case and was returned to Georgia, where he died. Shadrach had been “stolen,” from the very Court House that now held Anthony Burns, by black abolitionists who managed to get him away to freedom.

Justice and law both had come out scarred and battered, Dana observed grimly at the time.
But he believed that gentlemen must behave with justice. And if slave hunters wished to take back a slave, then they would have to proceed at every turn strictly according to the law.

Let them make a single wrong explanation, and I will have them! Richard Dana thought.

Now he braced himself and entered the courtroom.

Dana swiftly took in the scene, observing the armed guards around the prisoner. So that's Burns, he thought. And as pitiful-looking a fugitive as I've ever seen. Not the man Sims was, surely. This one looks lost witted.

The slave had a small scar on his cheek—a brand of some kind, Dana supposed. One hand, his right, was hideously deformed, and Dana assumed at once that Burns had been awfully mistreated by his owner. He glanced over at the man within the bar—the railing that separated the public from the rest of the courtroom—who he rightly guessed was Colonel Charles Suttle, slave owner of Virginia, surrounded by his agent and lawyers.

So then, Dana thought, they mean to have it all their way, and quickly. But not so fast!

He walked over to Anthony, ignoring the guards and Marshal Freeman. “I'm a lawyer,” he said to Anthony. “Richard Dana is my name. Let me help you. And there will be no fee.”

Anthony was shocked to hear the learned voice of a white man speaking to him. Who? … A buckra again. Seems to care … kind voice. But the Colonel, he standing up. Glaring so at me.

Colonel Suttle, hearing what Dana had said, had risen to his feet. His face was red with fury.

Anthony dared not answer
Richard Dana.

“Anthony,” Dana persisted, “there are certain papers from Virginia that an owner must have in order. These might have mistakes. And you might get off if you have a lawyer.”

There was a long silence. Anthony was thinking, Oh, I feel so ashamed. I should have said something to Reverend Grimes first, when Mr. Grimes come to talk to me. Should have said how sorry I was to have got myself captured. How I should've gone to the dedication of Reverend Grimes' church. Then maybe none of this would have happened.

Oh, so many shoulds!

The white man still stood there before him.

“I … I …” Anthony began.

“Yes?” Dana said quickly.

“I … don't know,” Anthony finished, murmuring so low that Dana had to come even closer to hear.

Anthony didn't know what to do. He did know that Mars Charles would make his life miserable if it cost him extra time and money to get Anthony back down South.

“Anthony? Tell me what you want,” Dana said.

“It's of no use,” Anthony responded, finally. “They know me. Mars Charles, the Colonel, knows me. I will fare worse if I resist.”

Dana straightened up. He reasoned that Anthony was frightened out of his wits by the numbers of hostile white men in the room—a dozen guards, all armed, the Marshal, the District Attorney, his owner, and the others. Clearly, Anthony was threatened by them.

I can't defend him unless he wants me to, Dana kept thinking. The fugitive must ask
to be represented. Dana could not otherwise take his case. I need time! he was thinking.

At that instant four other abolitionist lawyers, members of the Vigilance Committee, entered the court: Charles Mayo Ellis, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and a black lawyer, Robert Morriss.

Not two minutes later the Commissioner, Judge Edward Loring, walked briskly in.

Immediately, Marshal Freeman spoke loudly, “The court. All rise.”

Anthony was made to stand, as everyone in the courtroom got to his feet. After the judge sat down, Anthony and the rest sat.

Judge Loring looked askance at all the guards in the room. He asked Marshal Freeman why there were so many and was told how difficult were the circumstances surrounding the capture of Burns. Judge Loring then asked whether the defendant was in the prisoner's dock.

“Yes, Your Honor,” the Marshal answered.

“Is the claimant here, or his agent?” Loring asked.

“Both of them are here, Judge,” Marshal Freeman answered.

“Then we may begin,” Judge Loring said.

At that point Richard Dana asked to speak to Loring privately.