The Rendition of Anthony Burns, Part 1

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

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Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

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Speaker 2: Over the past several months, I have seen this quote repeatedly on social media. Quote we went to bed one night, old fashioned conservative compromise, union whigs and waked up stark mad abolitionists. Some of that's because I follow historians on social media, but it's mostly because this quote has been really resonating with people in the face of what is happening with ICE in the United States. If you're not up to speed on your US government acronyms, ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Other federal agencies are also involved with this, including border patrol, and this all rolls up under the Department of Homeland Security or DHS. This quote is partly in response to the horror of what these federal officers and agencies are doing, things like pepper sprang people directly in the face when they are already on the ground, detaining US citizens and legal residents, including pulling them out of their homes into freezing weather still in their pajamas, detaining preschoolers, deporting US citizens, including at least two children who were in cancer treatment at the time. An ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good and then casually walked away. A Border patrol agent shot and killed Alex Pretty. They shot him at least ten times while he was already on the ground. In both of these cases.

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Speaker 1: Afterward, multiple federal.

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Speaker 2: Officials told transparently obvious lies about what happened. We are recording this on January twenty seventh, twenty twenty sixth, then who knows what else might happen before it comes out. So that's been that those kinds of things have been the kinds of things that I have seen people talk about alongside this quote. But it's not just about ice. Ice is only part of it. People are also sharing this quote after seeing neighbors who had never seemed overtly very political suddenly taking a stand in the face of all of this, or going through that experience themselves, like not being very political themselves, and they're suddenly like I have to do something, or maybe not being local to major ice operations, but seeing, for example, what feels like the entire state of Minnesota all coming together to protect each other in this massive effort to do things like stand guard around daycares and schools, delivering food to families who are terrified to leave their homes. So this quote about becoming stark mad abbelatists. That's from a letter written by Amos Adams Lawrence to Giles Richards on June first, eighteen fifty four, during a furor over the fate of Anthony Burns, who had liberated himself from enslavement in Virginia and was captured in Boston and then returned to enslavement. It would be reductive to suggest that what is happening now is identical to what happened in eighteen fifty four, or that this is like a one to one comparison. Also, we like, we don't have to go all the way back to slavery to find things that have similarities. We don't even have to leave this century to do that. But I do think Anthony Burns's story resonates right now in much the same way that Amos Adams Lawrence quote does. So we are going to talk about this over two episodes.

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Speaker 1: Anthony Burns was born in Stafford County, Virginia, on May thirty first, eighteen thirty four. His mother was a cook. Who was enslaved by John F. Scas Subtle. His father was her third husband and was also enslaved, although there were rumors that he had once been a freeman in the North. Their names are not specified in accounts of Anthony Burns's life, at least in no places that Tracy could find them. The I did look and did not find what their names were. Anthony's father was seen as particularly intelligent. He supervised other enslaved people at a quarry that Subtle owned. Anthony didn't know his father very well, though, because he died when Anthony was still very young, apparently as a result of continually breathing in the stone dust at the quarry. Slavery in the United States was hereditary. Since Anthony's mother was enslaved, he was enslaved from birth as well. So were his twelve older siblings and half siblings, and after John Suttle died, his widow, Susannah Suttle, started selling them off to try to cover her expenses. She sold at least five of Anthony's immediate family members when he was still very young. Susannah Suttle also threatened to sell Anthony's mother, but instead hired her out to work in another city, so Anthony's mother was still considered Subtle's property, but somebody else was paying Subtle for her labor. Anthony's mother begged to take him with her when she was sent away for work, but Subtle refused and they were separated for two years. Susannah Suttle died when Anthony was about six years old, and her son, Charles F. Suttle, inherited the estate. By that point, Anthony had been put to work on things that were considered light tasks, which included watching his baby niece so that his older sister could work. About a year after inheriting the property, Charles Suttle started hiring Anthony out so that he could bring in more income as well. Over the next decade, Anthony learned to read. That started when he was hired out to somebody whose sister named Miss Horton ran a school out of her home nearby. Anthony started making friends with some of the students as he went about his work and ran errands that took him over there, and some of them shared their school books with him. Later on, he was hired out to another man whose wife ran a school from their house, and she seemed like she left books around for him to find on purpose. As Anthony got a little older, he also taught himself how to write. He said he was inspired to do this after being tasked with picking up the mail from the post office and realizing he could learn to write letters of his own. He started out by copying things onto scraps of paper that he found. Eventually he showed this work to a young woman he had met when they were both children when she was a student at Miss Horton's school, and then she helped him to improve his handwriting. When Anthony was twelve or thirteen, he was hired out to tend a steam engine that belonged to him. Man named Foot Foot ran a sawmill. This was one of the more difficult times than Anthony's early life. It wasn't a kind of work he had ever done before. He wasn't used to it, and then the Foots were also particularly cruel. They beat people, including young children, using a strip of board that had been perforated and roughened with tar and sand. They also did not give them very much to eat. One day, when Anthony had been there for a few months, Foot started the machinery without warning and Anthony's hand was caught in a wheel and it was mangled. This was a very serious injury and he went back to live with Subtle for a couple of months until he recovered, and then he was returned to the sawmill. His hand was noticeably scarred after this, with what was described as a visibly protruding piece of bone in his wrist. While he was recovering from this injury, Anthony had a religious awakening. He asked Suttle's permission to be baptized and to join a church. At first, Subtle refused, which Anthony attributed to his being irritated about the injury to his hand, but eventually, after Anthony had gone back to work for Foot, Subtle gave his permission. Anthony was baptized at a Baptist church in Foulmouth. A couple of years later, Anthony started preaching to other enslaved people, and this included sermons and teaching about the Bible, as well as conducting marriage and funeral services. These marriages, of course, were not legally recognized, even if he had been formally ordained through a church. There was no legal recognition of marriage between enslaved people. When Charles Suttle started essentially leasing Anthony to other people. Anthony was still a child, so people weren't paying very much for him to do things like run errands or make weekly trips to pick up corn meal, but the amount Subtle could charge grew over time. His foot had agreed to pay Settle seventy five dollars a year for the work at the sawmill, for example. Eventually, Subtle hired a man named William Brent to manage the placement of the people he was hiring out. Anthony had worked for Brent before, and he was tasked with supervising other enslaved people as they traveled to Richmond for their placements. At first, Anthony worked for Brent's brother in law, and after about a year in Richmond, when he was about twenty, he was placed with a druggist named Millspaw at a rate of one hundred and twenty five dollars a year. It did not take long for Millspaugh to realize he didn't have enough work for Anthony Burns to do, and he did not think it would be financially worth it to keep him on, So after about a week, Millspaw took Burns aside and proposed a different arrangement. Burns would be allowed to go out and look for work on his own. He would use the money that he earned to repay Millspaw one hundred and twenty five dollars that he was paying for Burns's labor, and then Burns could keep what he earned beyond that, minus a portion that would go to Millspaw. Millspaugh told Burns that this arrangement was illegal and had to be kept secret. By this point, Burns had started forming a plan to liberate himself from enslavement, which had influenced some of the choices that he had made prior to being hired out to Millspaw. For example, after his first two years of working for William Brent in Falmouth, Burns had asked to be placed somewhere else. Even though he and Brent got along and Brent's wife was kind to him, Burns thought the longer he stayed in one place, the more people would get to know him, and the harder it would be for him to get away unnoticed. Suttle, who of course did not know Burns's reasoning for this request, had agreed this wasn't the only time Burns spoke up for himself with Subtle, and whether Suttle was willing to do what he asked seemed to depend on whether he thought it would make Anthony more willing and obedient in the long run. Burns also negotiated with Millspaw over this work arrangement. Millspaugh wanted him to deliver the money that he earned every day, but Burns thought this would be inconvenient, maybe even impossible. There might be days when he couldn't find work and had no money to turn over. So Burns convinced Millspaugh to let him hand over his money every two weeks. This fortnightly money delivery would also help Burns with his plan to liberate himself from enslavement, which we will get to after we pause for a sponsor break. Unlike other places Anthony Burns had lived, Richmond, Virginia was a major port. In the words of Charles Emory Stevens, who published a biography of Burns in eighteen fifty six, quote, he was in daily sight of those northern keels that seemed to him a part of the very soil of freedom. He was in daily converse with men whose birthright was in a free land, and whose language to the slave had no smack of the whip. Kind hearted sailors, having no vessels to forfeit and no trade to compromise, did not hesitate to urge him.

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Speaker 2: On to flight. Plainly, the tide was at hand when, if ever, he was to achieve his freedom. At the same time, Burns had some potential reasons to stay. He had set up a secret school to teach enslaved people how to read, like his work arrangement with Millspa. This was illegal, but leaving would mean that he was leaving his students. He had also been preaching for years, and he wrestled with the question of whether it was morally right to escape. Supporters of slavery used passages from the Bible to justify its existence, but beyond that, slavery was fully legal under the law and escaping was not. After thinking about it and studying the Bible again, in the words of Charles Emery Stevens quote, he found that the Bible set forth only one God for the black and white races, that he had made of one blood all the nations of the earth, that there was no divine ordinance requiring one part of the human family to be in bondage to another, and that there was no passage of holy writ by virtue of which Colonel Suttle could claim a right of property in him any more than he could in Colonel Suttle.

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Speaker 1: According to his biography, Burns had also fallen in love with a woman, and it is possible that he was trying to figure out how he could take her with him. But when he handed over his earnings after his first fortnight of finding his own work, he hit an unexpected snag. As we said earlier, he was supposed to repay the one hundred and twenty five dollars that Millspaw was paying for a year of his labor. But if you must applied that first two weeks of earnings over a whole year, he was on track to earn almost three times that. Millspaugh realized he could recoup his expenses much faster than he thought, and he again told Burns to bring him the money he had earned every day, and to earn that one hundred and twenty five dollars as fast as possible. Burns did not want to do either of those things. He wanted to be able to keep some of what he earned as long as he was not jeopardizing being able to pay back that one hundred and twenty five dollars I say payback.

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Speaker 2: He wasn't paying it back. This was money that someone else wanted from him. He had not taken out a loan or something like that. And as although he was living in Millspaugh's house, in a room that he shared with another border, it was feasible that he and Millspaugh might not see each.

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Speaker 1: Other every day.

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Speaker 2: If Burns was leaving early to find work and then getting back late, that meant that his absence might not be he noticed right away if he left, and that would not be the case if he was required to physically meet with Millspaw every day to hand him his money. Burns and Millspaw negotiated over this for a while, and Burns finally left the room without agreeing to this daily schedule.

00:15:19
Speaker 1: During his time in Richmond, Burns had met sailors and other workers from around the port, and during the two weeks he had been working on his own, he had mostly worked around the docks, loading and unloading cargo. He had figured out who seemed sympathetic and who did not so. Over the next couple of days, he found a ship headed north that was getting ready to set sail and had crew members who were willing to hide him. He did not hand his money over to Millspaw, and he used it instead to make arrangements, pay expenses, and provision himself. This did mean, though, that he was not able to take the woman that he had fallen in love with.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just one. Not time to make those kinds of arrangements, since he had to tighten up his schedule to make his escape. One night in February of eighteen fifty four, three days or so after his conversation with Millspaw, Burns put on four layers of clothing, with his work clothes as the outermost layer, and he got into bed in the very early hours of the morning. He gathered up his possessions in a bundle, and he slipped out of the room and out of the house without waking up the other border or Millspaw. He got to the dock and the crew for the ship hit him on board. The ship was delayed leaving port, and it did not set sail that day as expected. Burns eventually fell asleep when he awoke, they were sailing down the James River toward the ocean.

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Speaker 1: This voyage was miserable.

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Speaker 2: The ship's captain and officers did not know he was aboard, and it needed to stay that way. That meant that he could not leave his hiding spot. Bad weather and unfavorable winds meant that the journey was a lot longer and rougher than normal. He felt seasick a lot of the time. He had to rely on the crew to sneak food to him, and when they managed to do that, it did not always line up with whether he was feeling well enough to actually eat it because of how seasick he was. But at the end of February or the start of March eighteen fifty four, Burns arrived in Boston. He found a room in a boarding house and he recovered from the journey, and that recovery took about a week. Then he found work as a cook on a mud scal That was a barge, and the term was used both for barges that could travel over mudflats and barges that carried the mud that was hauled up by dredgers. This job did not last long, though he didn't really have any experience as a cook, and for whatever reason, he could not get the bread to rise. Listen, I feel you even people that cook a lot can't always get their bread to rise. So he was fired though after about a week. As we've talked about been a number of previous episodes. Now, Boston had about two thousand black residents in the eighteen fifties. Some had been born free to black parents and some had been legally manumitted, but those who had liberated themselves from slavery, like Burns, were all considered to be fugitives. After he was fired from his position on the Mudscow, Burns was hired by a black merchant named Coffin Pitts, who had a shop on Brattle Street. This street is not there anymore, but at the time it was home to a number of black owned businesses. It was also home to Brattle Street Church, which had been struck by cannon fire in the Siege of Boston during the Revolutionary War, and it still had a cannon ball lodged in the facade. In addition to owning this shop, Pitts was an abolitionist, and he was a deacon at twelfth Baptist Church. This church was nicknamed the Fugitive Slaves Church, both because the number of self emancipated people among its membership and because of its organizing against a Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, which we are going to talk more about in a bit. Burns attended this church as well. Over the next couple of months, Burns started building a life for himself in Boston. He wrote a letter to his brother back in Virginia, telling him where he was and about his job. He did not mail this letter directly to his brother, though, he sent it to somebody in Canada so it could be postmarked from there. But when the letter arrived in Virginia, the postmaster saw the Canadian postmark and the fact that it was addressed to a slave, so he delivered it to Burns's brothers Enslaver, to read it, and then informed either Charles Sutton or William Brent of its contents. Sutton started the legal process for having his property returned to him.

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Speaker 1: We'll get to that after a sponsor break.

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Speaker 2: Article four, Section two, clause three of the US Constitution reads, quote, no person held to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor maybe do. Although that doesn't have the word slavery in it, that is known as the fugitive slave clause. Today, this has been superseded by the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery except in punishment for a crime, but the text itself is still part of the document. The Fugitive Slave Act of seventeen ninety three, which was signed into law by George Washington, was written to legally enforce this clause of the Constitution. Under this law, the process of reclaiming a fugitive started with an indictment or an affidavit made before a magistrate. Authorities were then required to capture and return people who had escaped from slavery, including if they had escaped to other states or territories. Anyone who harbored someone who had escaped, or obstructed this process, or rescued people as they were being transported could be fined up to five hundred dollars or imprisoned.

00:21:30
Speaker 1: For a year.

00:21:32
Speaker 2: The Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty revised the seventeen ninety three Act and was signed into law by President Millard Fillmore. This is part of a series of bills that are collectively described as the Compromise of eighteen fifty. We've talked about this a number of times on the podcast before, including fairly recently in our Charles Sumner episodes, but it is a central part of what happened to Anthony Burns, so we're going to go through it again. When the US Constitution was ratified in seventeen eighty nine, it left the question of whether to allow slavery up to the states. By the start of the nineteenth century, slavery had been abolished in most of the northern states and territories, but not in the Southern states. The slave states outnumbered the free states, which meant slave states had slightly more power in the Senate, where each state gets two senators regardless of the size of that state's population. As new states were admitted, the United States took steps to maintain a balance between the slave states and the free states. States were generally admitted in pairs one slave and one free. In eighteen twenty, the question of whether Missouri should be admitted as a slave state led to the Missouri Compromise, in which Missouri was admitted as a slave state. Maine was created as a free state from what had been part of Massachusetts, and the Missouri Compromise also drew up boundary line through Louisiana Territory, with slavery outlawed in territories and newly created states north of that line but legal south of it.

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Speaker 1: Thirty years later, the Compromise of eighteen fifty came after California requested to join the Union as a free state and there was no slave state ready to be admitted to keep the balance in the Senate. Slave states were also losing power in the House of Representatives as more people moved to northern cities. This set of five laws included one that admitted California as a free state, one that abolished the slave trade in Washington, d c. And the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, more formally titled an Act Respecting Fugitives from Justice and Persons Escaping from the service of their Masters.

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Speaker 2: This law was meant to help appease the slave states that were losing power in the Senate through the admission of California to the Union. It did not includ the words slavery, and the actual text it said, if someone quote held to service or labor escaped to another state or territory, the quote person or persons to whom such service or labor may be do, or his her or their agent or attorney duly authorized could pursue and reclaim quote such fugitive person.

00:24:24
Speaker 1: Doing so required them to procure a warrant from the courts, judges, or commissioners of the state or territory the person fled to. If a commissioner was overseeing these proceedings, he would be paid for his services. If the commissioner found that the proof provided was sufficient to issue the warrant, he would be paid ten dollars. If he found that the proof was not sufficient to provide the warrant, he would be paid five dollars. In other words, it was in the financial interests of the commissioners to find in favor of the person who was claiming that another person was their property. The people who were empowered to arrest the fugitives were also paid five dollars for each person they arrested.

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Speaker 2: This law also increased the monetary penalties that had been established under the previous fugitive slave law, and it established new ones. Marshals or deputy marshals who refused to execute these warrants could be fined one thousand dollars. Anyone who obstructed the process or harbored someone who had escaped or rescued them, or aided them in any way directly or indirectly could be fined up to one thousand dollars and imprisoned for up to six months. They could also have to pay civil damages to quote the party injured by such illegal conduct, up to one thousand dollars for each fugitive.

00:25:48
Speaker 1: This was a stronger law with harsher penalties than the seventeen ninety three version. The proceedings involved were basically administrative hearings, not trials. It was explicitly illegal for the testimony of a so called fugitive to be entered into evidence.

00:26:07
Speaker 2: This law put all black people in the United States at risk, regardless of whether they were or ever had been enslaved. After it was passed, black people in the Northern States started emigrating from the United States, primarily to Canada to try to protect themselves. An estimated five thousand black people fled from the Free States to Canada after this law was passed. We have already talked about several things Anthony Burns had done or been involved with during his lifetime that were considered illegal. It was illegal for white people in Virginia to teach black people to read and write. Also, in the words of the eighteen forty nine Legal Code of Virginia, quote every assemblage of Negroes for the purpose of religious worship, when such worship is conducted by a Negro, And every assemblage of Negroes for the purposes of instruction in reading or writing, or in the night time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly. So Burns's work as a preacher and the secret school he established were both illegal. As we said earlier, His arrangement with Millspa to earn his own money also illegal. It was also illegal for Anthony Burns to leave Virginia without his enslaver's knowledge or approval. It was illegal for him to escape to Massachusetts. It was illegal for the sailors aboard the ship to hide him there and to bring him food. It was illegal for the ship's captain and officers to transport him, even though they did not know he was a board It was illegal for the boarding house owner in Boston to rent him a room. It was illegal for the mudscow captain to hire him as a cook. It was illegal for coffin Pits to give him a job and a place to live. It was illegal for the congregation of twelfth Baptist Church to welcome him into their number and to offer him aid and comfort. After learning about the letter Birds had written to his brother that revealed that he had gone to Boston, Charles Suttle went to the authorities in the State Circuit Court for Alexandria County, Virginia. On May sixteenth, eighteen fifty four, the court determined that he had provided satisfactory proof that Burns owed subtle his service. Suttle and William Brent both traveled to Boston to pursue him. On May twenty fourth, in Boston, United States Commissioner Edward G. Loring issued a warrant for Burns's arrest. Watson Freeman, United States Marshal of Massachusetts, was empowered with arresting Burns, but the actual arrest was carried out by slave catcher Asa O. Buttman, who had been deputized. Buttman arrested Burns that evening. Buttman had been in coffin Pitts's store that day, but he hadn't aroused their suspicions. Burns and Pitts usually walked to and from work together, but that night Burns decided to take a brief walk first. Once the two men had separated, Buttman confronted Burns. At first, Burns thought he was being mugged, but then Buttman said he was being charged with robbing a jewelry store. Burns knew that he had not robbed anyone, and he thought this was just some kind of mistake, so he willingly went with Buttman. He didn't even call out the Pits, who was still within earshot, about what was happening. Even though Burns was not trying to resist arrest, six or seven other men who had been waiting nearby rushed out, and they grabbed him, lifting him up off of his feet and carrying him to the courthouse.

00:29:39
Speaker 1: Once they arrived, they were met by Marshall Freeman. Freeman told Burns he was being taken upstairs to the jury room to meet his accuser. And Burns again went willingly, only to find that there was no accuser in that room, because there was no such person. It was at that point that he realized what had to be happening, That he had been captured as a fugitive slave. In the words of his biographer, Charles Emery Stevens quote as in a dissolving view, the land of freedom faded out and the dark land of slavery usurped its place. He saw himself again a slave far worse than that, a slave, disgraced, pointed at as a runaway, punished, perhaps punished unto death. Overpowered by the prospect, he and his own simple but expressive phrase, gave all up. We are going to talk about what happened next next time. But right now, Tracy, do you have listener mail for us? I do have listener mail for us. This listener mail is actually from an old friend of the podcast who we have not seen in many years, Jess, who works for the National Park Service and who we worked with when we did a live show at Adams National Historic Park some years ago. Jess wrote and said, Hi, Holly and Tracy, your friendly Massachusetts park ranger here one of two, one of my colleagues was able to brag to me that you read her letter on the show. I've made it up to September twenty twenty four in the podcast The forty three government shut down put me behind, but I will catch up and just listened to the episode on Ettienkeabe and Ikaria Boy. I was not expecting Navu, Illinois to make an appearance. Your episode talks about Navu being the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. There is an Adams National Historic Park connection. In eighteen forty four, Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams, visited Navu. He and his cousin were traveling and wanted to check it out. They met with Joseph Smith and were given a tour of the city by Smith. Before he left, Smith gifted Charles Francis Adams assigned copy of the Book of Mormon. Just six weeks later and his brother were murdered. Rangers would casually mention this on a tour, and news of the book made its way back to a historian of Latter day Saints. History.

00:32:11
Speaker 2: Turns out this book was Emma Smith's personal copy, which had been listed as missing. Not only that, it's one of, if I recall correctly, from a few years ago, only three known existing signatures of Joseph Smith that still survives until today. This ended up being one of my favorite objects in the collection at Adam's National Historic Park. It's amazing how far and wide the interests and reach of this family was. Again, thanks for all you do and making my ninety minute commute feel shorter. Jess ps pet Tax attempting to get Miss summer Ray to look at the camera for a Christmas photo. We have a kind of shaggyish brown puppy dog looking very very cute in front of a Christmas tree with the trees.

00:32:57
Speaker 1: All lit up. Thank you so much.

00:32:59
Speaker 2: Jess just has written us a few times since we did that live show. Did we do two live shows at Adam's Nationalist Doric Park or did the second one get canceled because of COVID? I don't remember, all bored together. Yeah, but we did for sure do a live show there that we really enjoyed, and we enjoyed meeting all the folks who.

00:33:23
Speaker 1: Worked there and working with them.

00:33:24
Speaker 2: And I always love hearing from folks at the National Park Service, especially folks who have been able to weather everything that has gone on with the National Park Service, and honestly folks who didn't. We have also heard from some folks who lost their jobs and the various waves of reductions in force with the Park Service and other government agencies. So thank you so much for this email. It was such a cute picture and about this copy of the Book of Mormon. I had not heard that story at all, and it is super interesting. So if you would like to send us a note, we're a history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Also, we publish source lists for all of our episodes. You can find them on our website at Mistonhistory dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts. Stuffy Miston History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.