Virginia Hamilton (17 page)

Richard Dana paled. Loring had accepted Burns's alleged admissions to Suttle as evidence, though to do so was
wrong
and unconstitutional. A man was protected from being a witness against himself. He was protected from giving testimony against himself by the Fugitive Slave Act.

Judge Loring gathered his notes and quickly left.

There was a shocked stillness in the courtroom. The spectators were stunned; for a moment nobody moved. Then the court was ordered cleared,
except for Marshal Freeman's guard and the prisoner. Reporters rushed away.

Anthony shrank back into himself. He became once again that picture of despair that Richard Dana had first seen. After he was taken back to his cell, Dana visited Anthony with Reverend Grimes. They stayed with him for an hour, trying to lift his spirits.

“It will be all right, Mr. Burns,” Reverend Grimes told him. “The slave owner and the government only want to take you back to Virginia to prove their point. Then we will get you back.”

Anthony smiled suddenly. “You would do that for me?” he whispered.

“Of course, and it shall be done,” Richard Dana said.

“I was afraid you all would forget about me,” Anthony said.

“No,” said Dana, “never for a moment. Let me say I am so sorry that it has turned out as it has.”

“You did all you could,” Anthony said. “And I am grateful to you both. God bless you!” He lifted his mangled hand. “I was afraid they'd sell me to the deep South. With this hand—they'd ill-treat me.”

The Marshal's guard stayed close by the whole time Anthony's visitors were there. Asa Butman sidled importantly over to Dana. “Marshal Freeman says yer talks with the prisoner must be in hearing of a guard.” He was quite pleased with himself for not having said “Sir” to this learned gentleman.

“Is the order that I must be overheard by this man, and this man, and this man?” Dana asked, pointing to three of the guards. “These are the orders,” Butman said.

“I shall hold no conversation in
such company,” Dana said. “I shall not consent to hold any conversation with the prisoner on such terms.”

Dana shook with anger. He managed to control himself and spoke one last time to Anthony. “Good-bye, Mr. Burns,” he said as calmly as he could. “You can be assured, your condition will change for the better, and quite soon.”

For the moment, however, Dana felt shaken by all that had happened, and utterly helpless.

“Mr. Burns, here is my address,” said Reverend Grimes. “I have also given you the address of Deacon Pitts. Perhaps you will be allowed to write us.”

“Yes, I surely will if I am able,” Anthony said. He looked earnestly at both Dana and Reverend Grimes. “You did all you could,” he said. “I'm well satisfied at that. I thank you with my heart and soul. Thank you!”

They left and walked back and forth for an hour in front of the Court House.

The square was filled with troops. The crowd, thousands strong, had been cleared behind police lines. At Court Street it was a huge, angry mass. If there were those who sided with the Southerners, they were outnumbered by those against slavery and slave capture. When the troops moved at all, the crowd heaved itself forward, hissing and screaming. When it saw Richard Dana and Reverend Grimes leave Court Square, it gave twelve cheers.

The business shops of Court and State Streets were closed. Many were draped in the black cloth of mourning. A coffin had been hung high above State Street with
The Funeral of Liberty
written on its side.
Flags were flown with the union (the section of white stars on a field of blue) pointed down in the universal symbol of a vessel—in this case the Ship of State—in distress. The cannon had been moved from the Square to the very door of the Court House. Now the word spread through the crowd that Anthony would be led away on foot. He would pass down State Street to Long Wharf, where the steamer
John Taylor
waited to take him out to another vessel, the cutter
Morris
. The
Morris
, some distance offshore in the deep channel, would carry Anthony back to Virginia.

20
June 2, 1854

AT NOON ON
June 2, 1854, not a cloud marred the
blue sky. The sun was bright and warm. Eighteen hundred men of the volunteer militia stood in the sunshine, carrying loaded guns. They were stationed in the streets and lanes all the way from the Court House to Long Wharf. More troops took up positions on either side of State Street, so that in all there were more than two thousand men armed against Anthony Burns. Fifty thousand citizens lined the streets also, hissing and booing every time there was a troop movement.

Inside the Court House the guards tried to cheer Anthony. Deputy Riley gave him four dollars for his journey. “We intend to buy you ourselves, Tony,” he said proudly. “We've already collected four hundred dollars, more than you've ever seen, I'll wager. And we mean for every penny to go toward your purchase.”

Anthony said not a word.

“All right, boys, it's time,” Asa Butman said.

At two o'clock a detachment of United States Artillery gathered in Court Square. Next came a platoon of United States Marines. Those were followed by the
armed posse of Marshal Freeman, and two more platoons of Marines. The cannon that had guarded the entrance to the Court House came up last, with another platoon of Marines in the rear.

When these were ready, Anthony was led from his room flanked by two officers, whose arms were interlocked behind him. He was taken through a corridor lined with soldiers straight to the center of Marshal Freeman's armed posse of 124 men.

Anthony was dressed in his new dark suit. Fine suit for a funeral, he thought, and bowed his head. The long procession started out. The vast throng watching fell silent at the sight of Anthony Burns surrounded. Then it moaned and hissed as he passed them by.

Anthony could barely see the multitude, but he could hear it. It amazed him. He could see clutches of people at every window of the buildings lining the route.

Sure are lots of folks to see a colored man walk down the street, he thought. At the intersection of Washington Street he passed under the coffin labeled
The Funeral of Liberty
. Yea, Lord! he thought.

He and his procession passed the Old State House site, where in 1646 the founding fathers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had condemned human slavery.

He walked over the ground where black Crispus Attucks had fallen, the first person to die in the American Revolution.

Up and down the lines, the thousands began to chant “Shame! Shame!” in rhythm with the soldiers' marching. It was a vast, echoing cry
that seemed to come from everywhere, the sky and the ground at once.

“Shame! Shame!”

A captain became so angry that he wheeled his horse into the crowd and cut a man with his saber. Another bystander had his head laid open. Soldiers broke the line, assaulting men and women and beating them to the ground.

At Commercial Street the crowd surged forward. Suddenly Lancers attacked, riding their horses straight into the crowd and hacking left and right with their blades. Screams and cries echoed up and down the street as people were trampled under horses' hooves.

All at once, some soldiers began singing “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” They kept on singing all the way to the Wharf. There Anthony, Asa Butman, Deputy Riley, and many others who had marched from Court Square were put aboard the
John Taylor
.

It reminded many of '51 and Thomas Sims, and hundreds were brought to tears.

Church bells in the vicinity began a sad tolling, and soon bells chimed all over Boston. The mournful toll rang out from town to town, from Plymouth to Salem, to Haverhill and on. Throughout the coast of New England, it was as if the hills chimed:

Anthony Burns is taken back to slavery. We toll for him and thee. And for shame, and shame again.

Anthony was led into a cabin of the
Morris
, and there was Colonel Suttle waiting for him. Suttle and Brent had left their hotel at dawn on the day of the trial and been taken to the Navy Yard at
Charlestown. There they had been transported in secret to the cutter. It would seem they had known Commissioner Loring's decision before Loring had told it to the court.

The Colonel nodded curtly to Anthony and at once got down to business.

“I want the name of the ship's captain who brought you to Boston,” he said. “I'll give you your freedom if you tell me his name.”

“But I don't know,” Anthony said. “I never seen the captain at all on the ship.”

“Well, if I knew the scoundrel, he wouldn't ever want to carry off another Negro,” said Suttle. “I would put him in the penitentiary for life.”

Suttle and Brent soon left the ship.

Anthony remained under guard for eight days until his arrival in Norfolk.

Once on land in Norfolk, Anthony was put in jail for two days. He had no bed or chair in his cell and was given only one meal in that time. From this beginning, Anthony knew he would be made an example of. He steadied and strengthened himself with prayer as best he could.

The ship voyage continued, and then he was again thrown in jail on reaching Richmond, Virginia. There he stayed for ten days, until William Brent came to see him. With Brent was Robert Lumpkin, a well-known trader of slaves. He kept a trader's jail, where he boarded slaves until they were sold. He also kept slaves for owners who wished to have them punished. Brent handed Anthony over to Robert Lumpkin for a four-month stay. Thus began Anthony's sentence for committing the
crime of running away.

Lumpkin's jail was a three-story brick building on an acre of land at the edge of Richmond. The property was surrounded by a high fence with iron spikes at the top. The jail was quite solid and secure. There was no chance of escape.

Anthony was handcuffed with his hands behind him and taken to the very top of the jail. There he was put into a tiny room that could be reached only through a trapdoor. The room had a bench, with a thin blanket lying on it, against the wall. Anthony's feet and hands were chained. And that was the way he lived for most of the next four months.

The iron shackles were tight and painful. The room was stiflingly hot. The skin covering Anthony's feet and ankles slowly began to feel tight. He watched, amazed, as his feet swelled to such a huge size that they were hardly recognizable as feet. They itched so, he feared his skin would burst. And his wrists were bloody now from the handcuffs biting into his flesh. The pain was unbearable.

The cell was soon a revolting place to be, foul smelling from his excrement. Rats and insects scurried through the filth.

“Oh, God. God, save me,” moaned Anthony. “Let me die.”

He was given one meal a day—a chunk of cornbread, a little bacon or half-rotted meat. He was forced to gobble the mess like an animal off the floor. Once a week a guard brought him a bucket of water.

Anthony became so seriously ill that his handcuffs and foot irons were removed for a
short time. To keep him alive, he was fed rich broth. Every day when he was well enough, he was brought down to the grounds of the jail and put on display. Thirty or so people came each time to look at him, kneeling in his cage.

He was the zoo animal, the “Boston Lion.” Folks cursed him and laughed at him. After an hour or two of this daily humiliation, he was returned to his cell and the irons were placed on his hands and feet again.

One day, after Anthony had lost all track of time, the torture abruptly ended. Now, suddenly, he had enough to eat—good meat and bread. The swelling in his feet went down, but it remained somewhat difficult for him to walk. He never felt entirely well. But he tried as best he could to stand tall and appear healthy. It was not long before he was taken to the Richmond auction block for sale.

Anthony saw Colonel Suttle there, watching. Suttle started yelling in a loud voice, “My nigguh won't be sold to no damn Yankee! No, suh!”

Other Southern gentlemen made angry speeches against Anthony, the disgusting slave who had run away from his kind owner. And the bidding for him went slowly. There were not many slavers who wanted a runaway slave.

Finally, Anthony was sold for $905 to David McDaniel of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Fearing that his newly purchased slave might be lynched, McDaniel took Anthony and left Richmond under cover of darkness.

McDaniel had a large plantation. He was a cotton planter, a horse dealer, and a slave trader combined. He gave Anthony the job of coachman and stable keeper for the carriage horses and for McDaniel's own riding filly. Anthony did not stay with the
hundreds of slaves in the slave quarters, but slept in the plantation office in a room he shared with the white overseer. He was permitted to take what food he needed from a store owned by McDaniel, and he ate his meals in McDaniel's house.

So it was that his fortunes had changed again. Least I'm not whipped, I'm not starved half to death, Anthony thought. He did his job and kept to himself for many months. No one will ever find me, he thought. His Northern friends had no idea what had become of him; all their efforts to trace his whereabouts had been futile.

One day Anthony drove Mrs. McDaniel in her carriage to the home of a neighbor. He was pointed out as the runaway slave who had excited the whole country. A young woman wrote her sister in Massachusetts about the “Boston Lion.” The sister in turn told the story to her circle of friends, where a Reverend G. S. Stockwell overheard the tale. He at once addressed a letter to the slave owner, McDaniel, asking to buy Anthony. Immediately McDaniel wrote back stating that Anthony Burns could be purchased for thirteen hundred dollars. Reverend Stockwell informed Reverend Grimes of Anthony's whereabouts. Quickly, the two men went about raising the money for Anthony's release.

“I'm going to tell you a secret,” McDaniel said to Anthony one day. “You must tell no one, not even my wife.” He told Anthony to be ready on Monday, for they were going to Baltimore.