Jeffs+Historical+Event


 * Historical Event**

The fictional event in the novel was a critique of many similar non-fiction events. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Laws in 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850 that balanced the admission of new slave and free states to the Union. The Fugitive Slave Law said that United States citizens were required to help return escaped slaves, who sought freedom in a free state, to their owners."Nine states had personal liberty laws declaring that they would not cooperate with the federal government in the recapturing of slaves"(Anthony Burns Captured).

There was a slave by the name of Anthony Burns who was born a slave. At the age of twenty one he was hired out by his owner to man living in Richmond, Virginia. He was ordered to do many brutal tasks at his new home and he eventually gained the trust of his new owner. With the owners trust came more freedom. He was beginning to receive tasks that took him into the free world and away from the reigns of his owner. He often completed tasks that took him to the city docks where the freighters busily filled their holds with cargo for delivery to distant ports providing him with a chance of escape. He contemplated escape many times. He finally made acquaintances with an anonymous sailor who offered to aid him in his escape. "In 1854, he took steps to find freedom. While working in Richmond, Burns boarded a ship heading north, to the city of Boston" (Anthony Burns Captured). He hid in the bowels of the ship for four weeks moving down river. This was his journey toward a new life. When he stepped off the ship onto a dock in the Boston Harbor he was ready to begin his life as a free man, or so he thought.

The slave’s owner caught wind of the escape of his slave and headed to Boston, accompanied by several bounty hunters who had been promised a reward for the capture of the slave. In the three months that Anthony was free, the bounty hunters had become frustrated and began to try to capture free blacks and turn them in for the reward. Some of these captives were actually introduced to slavery.

On May 24, 1854, three months after his escape, Anthony was sighted by a slave hunter, immediately imprisoned and taken before a court where his fate would be decided. Much like the reaction of Huck and Tom when their friend Jim was captured, the people of Massachusetts were angered and determined to change the future of the escaped slave. Like in the novel, a very radical and unconventional plan was revised. The people of Boston formed a mob and raided the court house were Anthony, the slave, was being held in an effort to free him, much like Huck and Tom’s raid that freed Jim.

Mark Twain must have been trying to symbolize actual occurrences of the mid 1800’s when citizens of free states fought to prevent the capture and enslavement of free blacks, whether they were born free or were fugitive slaves. Home