THE WEIGHT OF the past and the darkness of its night enclosed Anthony until slowly, with the growing light of day, he returned to the present.
The windows of the jury room where he was kept under guard were covered with iron bars that seemed to break the day into welts of pain. If he could somehow keep his eyes from those bright stripes, he might keep his suffering at bay. But it was no use.
Here I be! he despaired. Caught, I am, and no longer a man. Father, protect me!
He tried retreating again into the past, but all that would come to him was the time of sadness in Mamaw’s cabin. With him these many years was the same question, born out of that night. “Who am I?” For the thousandth time he asked himself, “Be I the slave owner’s own boy or the slave driver’s son? He Mars John’s or Big Walker’s?”
Again, he lifted his good hand, as he had so many times before. Held it close to his eyes to see it better. There was no denying his skin was light brown. Big Walker had been a dark man, his mamaw a very black woman.
It had been whispered about the plantation that Big Walker Burns was once a freeman. That he had been tricked, caught, and brought down South. But Anthony never knew for certain if this was true, nor did any other of Mars John’s black folks. Big Walker never said anything about it directly.
What matter any of it now? Anthony thought. Here I be, like a starved dog in his pen.
Anthony’s stomach ached him, he was so hungry. He hadn’t eaten since sometime in the dayclean before this. The room stank from the odor of stale ale and sweat. Anthony felt dizzy, then sick to his stomach from the stench. He would have to have something to eat and soon, or he would faint dead away.
Presently the heavy door to the jury room swung open. A man entered. He went over to Asa Butman. “Get him ready,” he said. “We have to take him down now.”
He came over to Anthony. “Deputy Marshal Riley,” he said, introducing himself. “You are going to court now, Anthony. Go with Asa here. He will see that you fix yourself up a bit.”
Anthony did as he was told. In a small room off to the side he washed his face and smoothed his hair. There was no comb or brush for him. He straightened his clothing. He took a tin cup of cold water that Asa offered him, but that was all he was given. When he and Butman came out again, Deputy Riley ordered irons closed around his wrists.
Anthony went numb into himself. He moved down the steps like a sleepwalker. When he entered the room set aside in this state Court House as a Federal courtroom, he made no response to seeing Colonel Suttle and William Brent there flanked by men he had never seen before— their lawyers. Also present was the one called Marshal Freeman. Some ten of his men, deputies, were with him.
Anthony took the prisoner’s seat across from the judge’s bench as he was directed by Asa.
“I’m makin’ no promises, Tony,” Colonel Suttle said to him calmly as he seated himself, “and I’m makin’ no threats.”
Anthony heard what Suttle said but could give no answer. He was aware of all that went on around him, but it was hard now for him to keep his mind on any one thing for long. His head felt light. He wanted so much just to lie down. The wrist irons and the chain that connected them grew heavier by the minute. Anthony couldn’t find the strength or will to lift a finger even to scratch his nose, which itched him. The itching became a dull aching. It in turn spread into a throbbing loneliness throughout his body. He felt miserably hot in his shoulders and deathly cold in his legs.
Anthony bowed his head. For the rest of the time he sat as if hypnotized.
Asa Butman and one of his men took their seats on either side of Anthony. Also present and seated was the U.S. Attorney for the Federal Government, District of Massachusetts, Benjamin Hallett. Hallett was a politician who believed his position as U.S. District Attorney gave him the right to oversee the government’s policy of rigidly executing the Fugitive Slave Act. He agreed with that policy, in fact. He and the other officials present hoped that the examination would be completed as soon as possible. There had been no inkling of a fugitive arrest in the morning papers. Reporters knew nothing yet about what was going on. Colonel Suttle and Mr. Brent intended to take the prisoner out of Boston and down South before the dreaded Boston “radicals” knew about his capture. Ben Hallett hoped they would, too. For if the abolitionists found out, they had a hundred ways in which they might come to Burns’s defense. They might try to mob Colonel Suttle or even have him prosecuted for kidnapping.
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.