Boston Slave Riot, and Trial of Anthony Burns. Containing the Report of the Faneuil Hall Meeting; the Murder of Batchelder

(Burns, Anthony)

Published by Fetridge and Company, Boston, 1854

About this Item

First edition. 86pp. With the original upper pictorial wrapper bound in. [BOUND WITH:] Contemporary partly-printed document accomplished in manuscript being the Return of Death certificate for James Batchelder, ". stabed [sic] in the bowels in the Burns Riot.". 8vo. Anthony Burns escaped from slavery in Virginia in 1854 stowing away on a ship bound for Boston. Finding work in a clothing store, his former owner tracked him down and had issued an arrest warrant under the Fugitive Slave Act. "The excitement in Boston during the following week was said to have been without parallel since the days of the Revolution" (DAB). On May 26, a faction of the Boston Committee of Vigilance, founded to peacefully assist escaped slaves, attacked the courthouse attempting to free Burns and a riot ensued in which a deputy marshal was killed (see below). Burns was unsuccessfully defended by Richard Henry Dana (whose argument occupies more than nine pages of this work), among others, and Burns was sent back to Virginia amid staunch protest from the public. This pamphlet covers all aspects of the fugitive's plight and the proceedings of his trial. Burns's freedom would later be purchased and would be brought back to Boston a free man. This example with a contemporary death certificate for Batchelder, the deputy marshal killed in the riot. In his autobiography Cheerful Yesterdays, antislavery activist (and one of the leaders of the committee attempting to free Burns) Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote: "There had been other fugitive slave rescues in different parts of the country, but this was the first drop of blood actually shed. In all the long procession of events which led the nation through the Kansas struggle, past the John Brown foray and up to the Emancipation Proclamation, the killing of Batchelder was the first act of violence. It was like the firing on Fort Sumter, a proof that war had begun." Expertly bound in half navy morocco and marbled paper covered boards, marbled endpapers. Ex-library with perforated and inked stamps to the title 86pp. With the original upper pictorial wrapper bound in. [BOUND WITH:] Contemporary partly-printed document accomplished in manuscript being the Return of Death certificate for James Batchelder, ". stabed [sic] in the bowels in the Burns Riot.". 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 346111

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Boston Slave Riot, and Trial of Anthony Burns. Containing the Report of the Faneuil Hall Meeting; the Murder of Batchelder
• Publisher: Fetridge and Company, Boston
• Publication Date: 1854
• Edition: First edition.
• Seller catalogs:
  • Americana