BURNS, ANTHONY (e.1830-62). A celebrated fugitive slave. He escaped from slavery late in 185:3, but was arrested in Boston on May 24, 1834, under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and, pending a trial, was confined in the Boston Court house. News of his arrest spread rapidly and the people of Boston, already indignant over the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Bill (q.v.), were quickly aroused to a high pitch of excitement. On the evening of the 26th a great crowd met in mass meeting at Faneuil Hall and listened to fiery addresses by Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, but soon adjourned, amid scenes of great excitement, to help forward a premature effort at rescue then being made by a small party under Thomas W. Higginson (q.v.). The attempt completely failed, however, after one of the marshal's posse had been killed and a number of the rescuing party had been more or less severely injured, and on June 2 Burns was formally adjudged to his owner by the United States Commissioner. Un
der the escort of a strong guard, he was taken through the streets and placed on board a Unit ed States revenue cutter, the houses along the line of march being draped in deep mourning and flags being everywhere placed at half-mast. Burns's freedom was procured in the following year with money collected by a colored preacher of Boston. He subsequently studied at Oberlin, and for several years was pastor of a church in Saint Catharines, Canada. He was 'the last fugitive slave ever seized on the soil of Massa chusetts.' Consult: C. E. Stevens, Anthony Burns: A History (Boston, 1856), and interest ing accounts in T. W. Higginson, Cheerful Yester days (Boston, 1898), and C. F. Adams, Jr., Richard Henry Dana, A Biography (Boston, 1891).