Free Virginia Hamilton by Anthony Burns: The Defeat, Triumph of a Fugitive Slave

the letter, my son?” he said.
    â€œOh, surely, I will get it,” Anthony said. “I will.”
    Anthony did get it back. Later that morning, after Reverend Grimes had gone, he got the letter back under the pretext of wanting to add something to it. Once he had the letter in his hands, Anthonytore it to shreds instantly. Asa Butman looked like he could have shot Anthony on the spot. But he did nothing.
    After the guards left him to himself, Anthony stood a long time at one of the windows. He gripped the bars, pressing his head up against the iron stripes. Get it over, he thought. Lord? Good Lord. I can’t take much more.
    Few men ever had felt so alone as Anthony did at that moment. But he was not alone. Some members of the secret Vigilance Committee stayed with him, watching over the Court House exits as long as he was there. Others kept a sharp eye on the slave owners at the Revere House. Night and day Colonel Suttle and William Brent’s steps were dogged by black men who moved like shadows. When the slaveholders had been followed by one dark, silent figure for a certain length of time, they were passed along to another and still another. At no time were the two Virginians ever left alone in public. It was no wonder then that Colonel Suttle and William Brent kept to their attic rooms as much as possible.
    The Vigilance Committee had at its command lawyers, scholars, doctors, suffragettes, and ship captains as well as working men and women both black and white. All were dedicated to the cause of freedom for slaves.
    The leaders of the Committee met secretly late Friday afternoon, May 26, in Theodore Parker’s church, Tremont Temple. They had already obtained permission to hold a protest meeting at Faneuil Hall that evening. Posters announcing the evening meeting were up all over Boston. A notice appeared in all the papers Friday morning:
    A MAN KIDNAPPED — A Public Meeting will be held at Faneuil Hall this evening, May 26, at 7 o’clock, to secure justice for a man claimed as a slave by a Virginia kidnapper, and imprisoned in Boston Court House, in defiance of the laws of Massachusetts. Shall he be plunged into the hell of a Virginia slavery by a Massachusetts Judge of Probate?
    Letters to important abolitionists andVigilance Committee members in western and southern Massachusetts were carried out of the city by teamsters, men who drove their wagons of vegetables and fish to market Thursday night.
    That Friday afternoon at Parker’s church, the Committee decided that Anthony Burns would never be taken back to Virginia, no matter what Judge Loring’s decision might be. It decided that if any attempt was made to remove the prisoner back to the South, a wall of men would bar the way. In the confusion that would then result, the Committee men would hustle Anthony into a waiting carriage and on to safety.
    There were other ideas about how to proceed. Some members wanted to attack the Court House and rescue Anthony by the use of force, just as the slave Shadrach had been liberated in 1851. Others felt that they should wait for Loring’s decision. If the decision went against Anthony, then they proposed to take to the streets. If Burns was escorted out of the Court House to be taken to Virginia, they would start a riot. And as with the first plan, in the confusion, they would grab Anthony Burns and escape. But after long hours of discussion, no definite course of action was decided at the meeting,and it adjourned with only vague notions of resistance.
    Reverend Thomas W. Higginson of Worcester, Massachusetts, had attended the Parker church meeting after receiving a call-to-meeting letter from a Boston teamster the day before. Higginson’s own church was a strong force in Worcester; he had also been involved in the Sims case of 1851. Eager to help, he took a train to Boston on Friday with more than two hundred Worcester citizens. Displeased with the outcome of the meeting at