Fugitive slave, the rendition of whom cost the state of Massachusetts much money, and did more to intensify the bitterness between the antislavery party and the South than any event before the war, other than John Brown’s execution. Born in Virginia about 1830, Burns fled from slavery, to be arrested in Boston, May 25, 1854, under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. Intense excitement was provoked; Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips and a score of prominent citizens raised their voices against any recognition in free Boston of “the peculiar institution” of the South. A mob bent on rescue attacked the courthouse, and when Burns passed through the city under heavy guard to the revenue cutter ordered to take him back to Virginia, the tolling of church bells and exhibition of crape might have been for a national funeral. Burns afterward regained his liberty, studied at Oberlin University, and became a Baptist minister of a colored congregation at St. Catharines, Canada, where he died on the 27th of July 1862.
