Books and Manuscripts

The Fugitive Slave Bill. Enacted by the United States Congress, and Approved by the President, Millard Fillmore, September 18, 1850
Boston: Printed and for sale at 145 Hanover Street (George C. Jenks & Co.), 1854. First edition. 8vo. (iii), 4-7, (1) pp. Illustrated with a woodcut mourning border on each text page, and with a wood-engraving on final page. Original printed self-wrappers; wear along extremities; binding glue residue visible on front and rear wrapper, and in some gutters; loss in bottom corner of final leaf, affecting some text; spotting in bottom edge recto and verso of final leaf. Sabin 26124; not in Blockson; not in Library Company Afro-Americana

A rare first edition of this pamphlet printing of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Bill. Sponsored by Boston anti-slavery groups in opposition to the controversial law, it was likely published to galvanize protests following the arrest and trial of freedom seeker Anthony Burns. Burns escaped from a Virginia plantation in March 1854, and made his way to Boston to live as a free man. His freedom was short lived, as he was arrested there after his former enslaver, Charles Suttle, sought to reclaim him under the law, which required local and state authorities around the nation to assist slave owners retrieving their slaves. This applied even to free states like Massachusetts where slavery had been abolished by the state government and where Free Blacks and freedom seekers were protected by personal liberty laws. 

Upon the law’s enactment, it was denounced and resisted by anti-slavery groups across Massachusetts, especially in Boston, where confrontations between anti-slavery activists and enslavers, federal agents, and others, led to open violence and riots. Since the law’s inception, Boston anti-slavery groups had some success in helping freedom seekers skirt the new law, for instance, when aiding in the rescue of Shadrach Minkins. Other times they were less successful, as in the case of Thomas Sims, who was prosecuted under the law in 1851, and was returned to slavery. Sims's prosecution is considered the first real test of the validity of enforcing the act, and his enslaver's success encouraged other slaveholders to use the new law to retrieve their slaves. The final page of this pamphlet shows an engraving of Sims's arrest and delivery “into the hands of the oppressor”—likely used to stir the reader's emotions and illustrate the stakes of Burns’s then current situation. 

Shortly after Burns's arrival in Boston, in March 1854, he sent his brother (also enslaved under Suttle) a letter updating him on his status. Even after going to great lengths to obscure the letter's place of origin, it was eventually intercepted by Suttle, and Burns's location was identified. With the new law on Suttle's side he traveled to Boston, and under the pretext of robbery, Burns was arrested by Boston authorities. His case attracted national publicity and generated wide-scale public outrage in the North, leading to increased support for abolition. After a failed attempt by thousands of Burns's supporters to free him from jail, President Franklin Pierce--determined to see the new law enforced--sent in federal troops to help keep guard over Burns. In June, Burns was convicted of being a fugitive slave and returned to Suttle. In less than a year, Burns’s supporters raised the necessary amount of money to purchase his freedom, and he soon returned to city. He later attended school in Ohio and lectured on his experiences, and then took up residence in Canada, until his death in 1862. His case led to new personal liberty laws in Massachusetts which made enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Bill nearly impossible. 

According to the Boston Directory of 1854, printers George C. Jenks & Co., operated out of 145 Hanover Street, where this pamphlet was published. 

Rare. We can find only one other copy ever having sold at auction according to RBH, and we have located only four institutional copies: New York Historical Society, American Antiquarian Society, Brown University, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.