The Anthony Burns Riot

The Anthony Burns Riot broke out on the night of 26 May 1854 at the Suffolk County Court House, a granite building by Solomon Willard that opened in Court Square in December 1836, on the footprint now occupied by the City Hall Annex at 26 Court Street. Burns had escaped slavery in Virginia and was working in Coffin Pitts's shop on Brattle Street when federal marshals seized him on 24 May under the Fugitive Slave Act and held him in the building. On 26 May, while a protest meeting filled Faneuil Hall, militants who had chosen the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson as their leader charged the Court House and broke a doorway with a battering ram. In the fighting that followed James Batchelder, a 24-year-old temporary deputy marshal, was killed. The rescue failed and Burns stayed in federal custody. On the morning of 2 June Commissioner Edward G. Loring ruled that Burns must be returned to Charles Suttle, who claimed him, and that afternoon marshals, soldiers and marines, reinforced by Massachusetts militia, marched him from the Court House down State Street to the waterfront past crowds estimated at 50,000, buildings hung with black and a coffin marked "Liberty". The revenue cutter Morris carried him to Norfolk. The same building had seen a successful rescue on 15 February 1851, when about twenty Black men burst into a courtroom and carried off Shadrach Minkins, who was in Canada within days. In February 1855 the Reverend Leonard Grimes of Boston raised $1,300 and bought Burns his freedom.