Charlotte Forten

On May 24, 1854, a runaway slave named Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston. Having escaped from Virginia about two months before, Burns was apprehended on his way home from his job in a Boston clothing store. Almost instantly Burns's arrest galvanized the city's many fervent abolitionists, including attorney Richard Henry Dunn, Baptist minister Leonard Grimes, and writers John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry David Thoreau. Angry activists both black and white took to the streets of Boston. A group of black protestors stormed the courthouse in attempt to free the captive Burns, and the ensuing confrontation with federal marshals resulted in thirteen arrests and one officer's death. Soon Boston was teeming with outraged abolitionists and armed soldiers under orders to keep the protestors at bay during Burns's trial the week following his arrest. Despite the widespread furor...