High School Unit I

Activity 3: Anthony Burns—Slave-Catchers Come to Boston for the Last Time

Have students read the Mass Moment on Anthony Burns and examine Documents HS I-18, HS I-19, and HS I-20.

Discuss as a class or in a writing assignment:

How had the situation changed since slave catchers came to Boston to find the Crafts in 1850 and to arrest Shadrach Minkins in 1851?
What might account for these changes?
Based on what students have learned so far in this lesson, list the ways abolitionists spread their message. Compare this list with how information is spread today.
Refer back to the question posed early in the lesson that asked students how they thought people might respond to the 1850 Act. How well did students anticipate what actually happened?
What are some examples from the recent past of people engaging in acts of civil disobedience?

Document HS I-20: "Worthy of Liberty": Excerpts from Speeches at Faneuil Hall, May 26, 1854.

A crowd of 5,000 gathered at Faneuil Hall the evening after Anthony Burns was arrested and taken to the federal courthouse. One of Boston's leading abolitionists, Wendell Phillips, spoke first:

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. When he comes up for trial get a sight of him – and don't lose sight of him. There is nothing like the mute eloquence of a suffering man to urge to duty; be there, and I will trust the result. If Boston streets are to be so often desecrated by the sight of returning fugitives, let us be there, that we may tell our children that we saw it done.... Let us prove that we are worthy of liberty.

Reverend Theodore Parker followed:

A deed which Virginia commands has been done in the city of John Hancock and the '"brace of Adamses." It was done by a Boston hand. It was a Boston man who issued the [arrest] warrant; it was a Boston Marshal who put it in execution; they are Boston men who are seeking to kidnap a citizen of Massachusetts, and send him into slavery for ever and ever. It is our fault that it is so... 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?

Quoted in The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson's Boston, by Albert J. von Frank (Harvard University Press, 1998).