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xi On a beautiful but cold, windy day in Boston in the spring of 2005, I found myself alone with the two historical interpreters on duty in the Visitor Information Center adjacent to Faneuil Hall. In that venerable building, known also as the “cradle of liberty,” Boston’s leading antislavery activists harangued a boisterous crowd in 1854 two days after the capture of Anthony Burns, soon to be Virginia’s most famous fugitive slave. Denouncing the South’s peculiar institution and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the abolitionists called for the rescue of Burns from the “iron house of bondage.”1 They asked Bostonians to remember their heritage of 1776 and demonstrate their commitment to the principles that had been so valiantly defended by their forefathers. Having just visited the Great Hall, imagining the excitement that must have filled the air as the likes of Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and Samuel Gridley Howecalled fortheextensionofAmericanlibertiesto Burns, I asked the first interpreter, an efficient-looking woman busily organizing pamphlets on the counter, “Could you tell me about Anthony Burns and what happened here in 1854?” She gave me a blank, how-dare-you stare; motioned toward her colleague; and said to me, “You will have to ask him. I don’t know anything about Anthony Burns.” Somewhat taken aback, I C h A P T e R 7 Prologue Remembering Anthony Burns Boston never before was so deeply moved [as during the Burns rendition]. . . . In all her revolutionary experience she never presented such a spectacle. —Boston Daily Evening Transcript, June 2, 1854 Faneuil Hall is the purlieus of the Court House . . . where the children of Adams and Hancock may prove that they are not bastards. Let us prove that we are worthy of liberty. —Wendell Phillips I may show the world that the work of 1854 is not in vain. —Anthony Burns xii prologue hesitantly turned to her serious-looking middle-aged colleague, also white, and said, “I would like information on Anthony Burns.” He responded curtly, “We have no printed material on Burns; the only information on him that we have here is in my head, and about all I know is that Burns was a fugitive slave returned from Boston.” Recognizing my disappointment and obviously seeing a need to put me on the right path, the interpreters immediately told me about the Freedom Trail. They politely advised me to forget about Burns. “The Freedom Trail,” they stressed, “was much more important.” They told me that Paul Revere was a particularly interesting figure and said that I should follow the trail of red bricks, which would lead me to the legendary night rider’s house in the North End. I knew about Paul Revere—his story was one that even my high school history teacher, a man who always spoke in a monotone, could not make dull. But I kept thinking about Anthony Burns. I left the Visitor Information Center with mixed emotions. I knew that in late May and early June of 1854, placards and handbills about Burns covered Boston. I also knew that day after day the Burns drama occupied the front pages of the city’s newspapers. The affair also made headlines in the newspapers of other cities throughout the North and the South. Burns’s fate engaged hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of Americans, black and white, rich and poor. President Franklin Pierce’s administration regarded the Burns crisis as a national priority and allocated substantial resources to deal with it. The name of Virginia’s suddenly famous fugitive slave was on the lips of all Bostonians—legislators,leadinglawyers,businessmen,women,shopkeepers, artisans, laborers, students, and the so-called lowlife about the wharves. That day in 2005, I had the uneasy feeling that this history was being forgotten, and that the national memory had become badly skewed. In the following pages, my first objective is to help ensure Anthony Burns his rightful place in both mainstream American history and our collective memory. As a drama in the American struggle for freedom, Anthony Burns’s story easily ranks with Paul Revere’s ride in April 1775. Like Revere, Burns was a remarkable man who demonstrated strength of character, ingenuity, and agency. He searched for his own “Freedom Trail”; tragically, he found it only very late in his short life. Despite being born a slave, separated early in life from his mother and other family members, mistreated—even disfigured— by cruel masters, and deprived of access to education...

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