“God Made Me a Man—Not a Slave”: How Anthony Burns Was Arrested, Returned and Freed

A cartoon of about 1855 with a portrait of Anthony Burns and scenes of his life around him. Credit: Library of Congress.

Anthony Burns escaped slavery in Virginia on a ship to Boston, and in May 1854 he was arrested there. His arrest set off major protests, a failed courthouse rescue and a military takeover of downtown Boston, and the federal government returned him to slavery. Boston's abolitionists then freed him. The National Park Service tells his story, from 1834 to his death in 1862, in a story map for Boston African American National Historic Site.

Boston as a refuge

Boston was a destination for many people escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad, and its tightly knit free Black community gave freedom seekers support and sanctuary as they began new lives. The arrest of Anthony Burns became a flash point for many Bostonians who had stayed silent on slavery and the abolitionist movement.

From Virginia to Boston

Burns was born enslaved in 1834 at Stafford Courthouse, Virginia. His owner, John Suttle, and Suttle's wife died soon after, and their son Charles Suttle became his owner. Charles hired Burns out and collected his wages. Burns turned that to his advantage: some of his new mistresses taught him to read.

While hired out, Burns was hurt when the machinery in the mill where he worked started unexpectedly and crushed his hand, which kept him out of work for months. During his recovery he had a religious awakening and began preaching to other enslaved people. His study of scripture convinced him he should run away from Charles Suttle. Hired out to a Richmond druggist named Millspaugh, he planned his escape in early February 1854 and, with the help of a sympathetic dockhand, slipped onto a ship bound for Boston.

Passenger and cargo boats on the James River and Kanawha Canal in Richmond, Virginia, where Burns secretly boarded a ship to escape. Credit: Library of Congress.

After a three-week journey Burns reached Boston in February 1854 and found work in the shop of Coffin Pitts on Brattle Street.

A painting of Boston and Boston Harbor, with the Massachusetts State House and the Bunker Hill Monument in view. Credit: Library of Congress.

Arrest and a failed rescue

Burns wrote to his brother, still enslaved in Virginia. He had the letter postmarked from Canada, but its contents gave away that he was in Boston. Charles Suttle obtained a warrant under the Fugitive Slave Law, and on the evening of May 24, 1854, a federal marshal arrested the 20-year-old Burns on a false charge of robbery.

Word spread quickly among Boston's abolitionists. Anti-slavery activists called a mass meeting at Faneuil Hall on May 26, while a smaller group of White and Black militant abolitionists met at Tremont Temple. During the Faneuil Hall meeting word arrived that the Tremont group had begun an assault on the courthouse. Using a makeshift battering ram, abolitionists broke down the courthouse door and fought hand to hand with the marshals. The rescue failed, and during the attack an abolitionist fired a pistol and killed one of the federal marshals.

Returned to slavery

Marshal Watson Freeman, with the approval of President Franklin Pierce, called in federal troops to guard the courthouse and prevent another rescue. Commissioner Edward G. Loring ruled in favor of Charles Suttle, and on June 2 the federal government returned Burns to enslavement. Hundreds of soldiers marched Burns down State Street to Long Wharf, which prevented any rescue attempt, while more than 50,000 people lined the streets to protest. Black drapes hung on buildings, and abolitionists strung a coffin marked "Liberty" across the street, as at a funeral procession. One prominent businessman remarked that conservative, compromise-minded Union Whigs had gone to bed and woken up "stark mad abolitionists." By 1855 Massachusetts had passed one of the strictest Personal Liberty Laws in the United States, making it nearly impossible to return another freedom seeker from the state.

After a journey of eight days Burns reached Richmond, where Charles Suttle had him locked up for four months in the infamous Lumpkins slave jail, in shackles, with no bed or chair, only a rough bench fixed to the wall and a single coarse blanket. Suttle then sold Burns to David McDaniel of North Carolina.

Freedom bought

At McDaniel's plantation in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Burns worked as a coachman and stable keeper. Boston's anti-slavery leaders had lost track of him, and but for a stroke of luck he might have stayed enslaved there for the rest of his life. One afternoon McDaniel's wife took Burns to a neighbor's home and identified him there as the slave whose case had excited such commotion across the country. Another neighbor wrote about it to her sister in Massachusetts, who told a minister, George S. Stockwell. Stockwell told Reverend Leonard Grimes, a prominent Black abolitionist in Boston and the minister of the Twelfth Baptist Church, where Burns had worshipped before his arrest.

Reverend Leonard Grimes, minister of the Twelfth Baptist Church in Boston. Credit: Library of Congress.

Grimes called on people who had pledged money toward Burns's freedom and by February 1855 had gathered $1,300. On February 27, 1855, Grimes met McDaniel at the Barnum Hotel in Baltimore and completed the exchange, and Burns was free again.

After freedom

In Boston in early March 1855, abolitionists planned a reception, and on March 7 an estimated 1,000 people filled Tremont Temple, where militant abolitionists had met ten months earlier to plan his rescue. Burns then toured Massachusetts and New York to speak and raise money for his education. P.T. Barnum offered him $500 to speak at his museum for five weeks, and Burns turned it down, saying Barnum wanted to show him like a monkey.

By the summer of 1855, with a scholarship from an anonymous Boston donor and money from selling his book Anthony Burns: A History at his speaking engagements, Burns could enroll at Oberlin College in Ohio to study for the ministry. When he asked his former church in Virginia for a letter of dismission so he could join a local Baptist congregation, it answered with a newspaper notice excommunicating him for "disobeying the laws of God and men" by escaping. Burns wrote back: "That manstealer who stole me trampled on my dearest rights. He committed an outrage on the law of God…God made me a man- not a slave."

In the summer of 1859 he answered a call to pastor an African American Baptist church in Indianapolis, but his stay was short because of threats to enforce Indiana's "Black Laws," which prohibited African Americans from immigrating to the state. He then became pastor of a Baptist church in St. Catharines, Ontario. According to A History of Oberlin College from its Foundation Through the Civil War, he did not graduate. In St. Catharines he won over the congregation by working to repair the meetinghouse and stabilize the church's finances.

Burns died of tuberculosis on July 27, 1862, at the age of 28. A local newspaper wrote that his memory would be cherished by many in the town and that his place would not soon be filled. His grave in Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines was restored in 2000 after nearly deteriorating, and, the Park Service says, it still stands.

Sources

• National Park Service, Boston African American National Historic Site, “God made me a man- not a slave”: The Arrest of Anthony Burns, story map; rewritten in hubnx's own words. A map credited to a named creator and the story map's footnote numbers are left out; the source's “nearly five years of study at Oberlin” is not repeated because it does not fit its own 1855–1859 dates.