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For other people named Burns, see Burns (disambiguation).

Also see Anthony Burns (politician).

A portrait of the fugitive slave Anthony Burns, whose arrest and trial under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 touched off riots and protests by abolitionists and citizens of Boston in the spring of 1854. A bust portrait of the twenty-four-year-old Burns, "Drawn by Barry from a daguereotype [sic] by Whipple and Black," is surrounded by scenes from his life.

Anthony Burns (31 May 1834 to 17 July 1862) was an African American who escaped from slavery in Virginia and was captured by slave-hunters in Boston in 1854. His arrest, and Judge Edward G. Loring's decision to order him back into slavery in Virginia, outraged Boston abolitionists and many ordinary Bostonians, who were increasingly hostile towards the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Abolitionist plans to free Burns from prison and spirit him to safety were frustrated when President Franklin Pierce deployed federal artillery and United States Marines to take Burns to the ship back to Virginia. Abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson was injured in the struggle at the court house and later indicted for his role in the attempted rescue of Burns. While resisting the rescue, James Batchelder became the second United States Marshal to be killed in the line of duty. It has been estimated that the cost of capturing Burns was upwards of $40,000. (About $880,000 in 2005 equivalent dollars)

The African-American community and abolitionists in Boston raised $1,200 in order to try to ransom Burns' freedom from his master, Charles F. Suttle, but Suttle refused to deal with anyone seeking Burns's emancipation. After Burns was forced back to Virginia, Suttle sold him for $905 to David McDaniel, a slaver, cotton planter, and horse-dealer from Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Leonard A. Grimes eventually managed to ransom Burns's freedom from McDaniel, with financial aid from Boston, for $1,300. Burns, once freed, returned to live in Boston.

Anthony Burns died in St. Catharines on July 17, 1862.

• Tuttleton, James W., Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Twayne Publishers. pp. 34-36
• Charles Emery Stevens (1855), Anthony Burns: A History.

• “Slavery in Massachusetts” (Henry David Thoreau’s reaction to the Burns trial)

• PBS Resource Bank: People and Events: Anthony Burns captured, 1854
• Ronica Roth (2003): The Trial of Anthony Burns, from Humanities, May/June 2003, Volume 24/Number 3.
• Henry David Thoreau (July 4, 1854): "Slavery in Massachusetts"