A FEW HOURS LATER, at seven that evening, Faneuil Hall was filled to overflowing. The call to duty and honor had gone out, and freedom lovers from all over New England had responded. The audience, more than 2,000 strong, was demanding and confident, ready for action if not outright riot. Newspapers that day stated that the interest in the fugitive slave was “only general.” But the huge size of the crowd proved otherwise.
The evening had been organized as a public meeting. Presiding was George R. Russell, from the neighboring city of Roxbury and formerly that city’s mayor. He delivered his opening remarks in a voice dripping with sarcasm: “I once thought that a fugitive could never be taken from Boston. I was mistaken! The time will come when slavery will pass away, and our children shall have only its hideous memory to make them wonder at the deeds of their fathers. For one I hope to die in a land of liberty—in a land which no slave hunter shall dare pollute with his presence.”
Wild applause splintered the air. It died only when the next speaker took center stage.
Dr. Samuel C. Howe was a philanthropist and historian whose abolitionist/suffragette wife, Julia Ward Howe, was to write “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” He next presented a series of resolutions that expressed the opinions of nearly all who were present:
“The time has come to declare and demonstrate that no slave hunter can carry his prey from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. That which is not just is not law, and that which is not law ought not to be obeyed. Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. No man’s freedom is safe unless all men are free.”
Then John Swift, a young lawyer, addressed the applauding assembly. “Burns is in the Court House,” he said. “Is there any law to keep him there? It has been said that Americans and sons of Americans are cowards. If we allow Marshal Freeman to carry away that man, then the word cowards should be stamped on our foreheads.” The crowd roared. “Tomorrow Burns will have remained [in jail] three days, and I hope tomorrow to witness in his release the resurrection of liberty. This is a contest between slavery and liberty, and for one I am now and forever on the side of liberty!”
The audience shouted, “Yes! Yes! Liberty! We, too!”
Wendell Phillips, lawyer, abolitionist crusader, and orator, rose to speak next. Many said he had the most sparkling blue eyes they’d ever seen. They gleamed brightly at the audience now. Phillips began quietly: “I have been talking seventeen years about slavery …”
“Hear! Hear!” hollered someone in the crowd. There were cries of “Shhh! Quiet, there—Wendell Phillips has much to say.”
“… and it seems to me,” Phillips continued, “I have talked to little purpose, for within three years two slaves can be carried away from Boston. Nebraska [the Kansas-Nebraska Bill] I call knocking a man down, and this spitting in his face after he is down.”
A hush settled over the great hall.
“When I heard of this case and that Burns was locked up in that Court House, my heart sunk within me.” Wendell Phillips bowed his head. He next raised it and let his gaze travel around him, fixing on an intense face here and another there.
“See to it, every one of you, as you love the honor of Boston, that you watch this case so closely that you can look into that man’s eyes.” His deep voice rang out through the hall. “When he [Burns] comes up for trial get a sight at him—and don’t lose sight of him.”
The audience broke in, “We won’t! We won’t lose him! Never!”
“If Boston streets are to be so often desecrated by the sight of returning fugitives,” Phillips continued, “let us be there, that we may tell our children that we saw it done. Fellow citizens, I will not detain you here any longer.”
There were cries of “Go on! Go on!”
“Faneuil Hall is but our way to the Court House where, tomorrow …”
Cheers rose and swelled, rolling in waves from the back of the hall forward.
“… where the children of Adams and [John] Hancock are to prove that they are not bastards. Let us prove that we are worthy of liberty,” Wendell Phillips finished.
Feverish shouts of praise rang out, and long applause followed.
Reverend Theodore Parker next stood to speak. Parker was as ungraceful as Phillips was elegant. Often, his admirers watched affectionately as he walked and stumbled, preoccupied, along the city streets. Short of stature, with a massive head of dark hair, he had a dark complexion, and his large, dark eyes stared out with deadly calm behind his spectacles. Occasionally he coughed hard, as though ill with a serious congestion. But now he pursed his lips, then smiled sardonically at the assembly. “Fellow-subjects of Virginia!” he said.
Instantly, there were loud cries of “No! No! You must take that back!”
“Fellow-citizens of Boston, then—”
“Yes! Yes!” the crowd answered.
“I come to condole with you at this second disgrace which is heaped on the city… .” Parker thrust his hands into his pockets and looked heavenward. “There was a Boston once. Now there is a North suburb to the city of Alexandria, Virginia—that is what Boston is.”
There were hoots and laughter at those words.
“And you and I, fellow subjects of the State of Virginia—”
“No! No!”
“I will take it back when you show me the fact is not so,” Parker said, and went on: “I am an old man. I have heard hurrahs and cheers for liberty many times; I have not seen a great many deeds done for liberty. I ask you, are we to have deeds as well as words?”
The tumultuous crowd answered, “Yes! Yes!”
Reverend Parker then proposed that the meeting be adjourned and that they all gather at Court Square in the morning at nine o’clock. “Those in favor of the motion will raise their hands.” There were numbers of hands raised, but a hundred voices yelled, “No, tonight!”
“Let us take him out!”
“Let us go now.”
“Come on!”
One man rushed frantically about, crying, “Come on!” but none seemed ready to follow him.
Someone else shouted weakly, “Let’s pay a visit to the Revere House—where the slavers stay!”
Reverend Parker then called, “If you propose to go to the Revere House tonight, then show your hands.”
Some hands shot up.
“It is not a vote,” Reverend Parker said. He realized he was shouting and becoming hoarse. He coughed. His chest ached him now, but he continued.
“We shall meet at Court Square, at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
The audience shouted cheers and slogans so loudly that few could hear him. A voice rose on the air. “The slave shall not go out, but the men that came here to get him shall not stay in. Let us visit the slavecatchers at the Revere House tonight!”
The crowd gave riotous approval, and those on the platform did not know how to control the excitement. The noise rose to a frantic pitch.
Thomas Higginson and Martin Stowell had planned to give a signal that would turn the crowd toward the Court House at the height of the meeting; the crowd could then free Burns, they hoped. But now it seemed too late. Neither Higginson nor Stowell had dreamed the gathering would be so turbulent. Chances were that a signal would not even be heard by those who were to lead the crowd to Court Square to free Anthony Burns.
Amid the uproar, Wendell Phillips took charge. Standing straight and tall, he uttered only a few words and the seething noise dissolved into complete stillness.
“Let us remember where we are,” Phillips said quietly, “and what we are going to do. You have said, tonight, that you are going to vindicate the fair fame of Boston. Let me tell you, you won’t do it by groaning at the slavecatchers at the Revere House—by attempting the impossible act of insulting a slavecatcher. If there is any man here who has an arm and a heart ready to sacrifice anything for the freedom of an oppressed man, let him do it tomorrow. If I thought it would be done tonight, I would go first.” He struck the air with his fist.
“I don’t profess courage,” Phillips continued, “but I do profess this: when there is a possibility of saving a slave from the hands of those who are called officers of the law, I am ready to trample any statute. But wait until the daytime. You that are ready to do the real work, be not carried away by indiscretion which may make shipwreck of our hopes. The zeal that will not keep till tomorrow will never free a slave.”
The crowd cheered and applauded long and hard at such perfect opinion. Swayed by Phillips’s judgment, it began to calm down.
Suddenly, a man at the entrance of the hall frantically waved his arms, trying to get the attention of the stage. He shouted: “Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman! I am just informed that a mob of Negroes is in Court Square, attempting to rescue Burns. I move we adjourn to the Court House.”
That was the signal Higginson and Stowell had planned—and all had heard! But how were those who had been party to the plan ever to get to the front of the crowd, to lead them? As it was, they were at the back on and around the speaker’s platform as the crowd surged away from them.
Faneuil Hall became the scene of wild disorder. The mass of people on the first floor ran head-on into the mass streaming down from the galleries. The hall emptied and the crowd burst forth in waves to overflow in the streets. There axes, axe handles, clubs, and guns were provided by a few of Higginson and Stowell’s party in the street. Shouts of “To the Court House! To the rescue, come on!” resounded as the crowd advanced to Court Square. There it broke up into smaller packs. Without leaders to make order of them, they seethed and roiled. And turned into an angry mob.
The room in which Anthony was confined, high up in the court building, was on the very side where the mob hoped to gain entrance. But Anthony as yet had no inkling it was coming, nor did his captors. In fact, he had been so miserable this evening, thinking on his friends Reverend Grimes and Coffin Pitts, that, close to tears, he had gone deep within himself again, seeking solace. He found it, on the road with Whittom and the other Jims in the time far back in his childhood. Even the bad parts of that trip to the Hiring Ground were of some comfort. At least they belonged just to him, and no one could buy them or sell them away from him.