The Abolition Riot of 1836 took place in
Boston, Massachusetts (U.S.) in the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the court of last resort, highest court in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the di ...
. In August 1836, Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates, two
enslaved women from Baltimore who had
run away
Runaway, Runaways or Run Away may refer to:
Engineering
* Runaway reaction, a chemical reaction releasing more heat than what can be removed and becoming uncontrollable
* Thermal runaway, self-increase of the reaction rate of an exothermic proce ...
, were arrested in Boston and brought before Chief Justice
Lemuel Shaw
Lemuel Shaw (January 9, 1781 – March 30, 1861) was an American jurist who served as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1830–1860). Prior to his appointment he also served for several years in the Massachusetts House ...
. The judge ordered them freed because of a problem with the arrest warrant. When the agent for their enslaver requested a new warrant, the spectators—mostly
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
women—rioted in the courtroom and rescued Small and Bates.
The incident was one of several slave rescue efforts that took place in Boston. Controversy over the fate of
George Latimer led to the passage of the
1843 Liberty Act, which prohibited the arrest of fugitive slaves in Massachusetts. Abolitionists rose to the defense of
Ellen and William Craft in 1850,
Shadrach Minkins
Shadrach Minkins (c. 1814 – December 13, 1875) was an African-American fugitive slave from Virginia who escaped in 1850 and reached Boston. He also used the pseudonyms Frederick Wilkins and Frederick Jenkins.Collison (1998), p. 1. He is known fo ...
in 1851, and
Anthony Burns
Anthony Burns (May 31, 1834 – July 17, 1862) was an African-American man who escaped from slavery in Virginia in 1854. His capture and trial in Boston, and transport back to Virginia, generated wide-scale public outrage in the North and ...
in 1854. An attempt to rescue
Thomas Sims
Thomas Sims was an African American who escaped from slavery in Georgia and fled to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1851. He was arrested the same year under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, had a court hearing, and was forced to return to enslavement. ...
in 1852 was unsuccessful.
Background
In 1836, Boston was home to about 1,875 free African Americans, some of whom were refugees from
slave states
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were not. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states ...
. The vast majority were committed to
abolitionism
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The Britis ...
; among the more outspoken activists were
William Cooper Nell
William Cooper Nell (December 16, 1816 – May 25, 1874) was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, publisher, author, and civil servant of Boston, Massachusetts, who worked for the integration of schools and public facilities in the st ...
,
Maria Stewart
Maria W. Stewart ( Miller) (1803 – December 17, 1879) was a free-born African American who became a teacher, journalist, lecturer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. The first known American woman ...
, and
David Walker. Some, such as
Lewis Hayden
Lewis Hayden (December 2, 1811 – April 7, 1889) escaped slavery in Kentucky with his family and escaped to Canada. He established a school for African Americans before moving to Boston, Massachusetts to aid in the abolition movement. There h ...
and
John T. Hilton
John Telemachus Hilton (April 1801 – March 5, 1864) was an African-American abolitionist, author, and businessman, who established barber, furniture dealer, and employment agency businesses. He was a Prince Hall Mason and established the Pr ...
, devoted their lives to assisting fugitive slaves.
On Saturday, July 30, Captain Henry Eldridge sailed into Boston Harbor on the ''Chickasaw''. Among his passengers were two African-American women, Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates, both of whom carried legal documents declaring them free women. Before the ship docked it was boarded by Matthew Turner, the agent of a wealthy Baltimore slaveholder named John B. Morris. Turner claimed that Small and Bates were fugitive slaves belonging to Morris. Eldridge agreed to detain the women on his ship until Turner returned with a warrant for their arrest.
As news of the incident circulated, a large group of black Bostonians gathered on the wharf. One of them sought out attorney
Samuel Edmund Sewall
Samuel Edmund Sewall (1799–1888) was an American lawyer, abolitionist, and suffragist. He co-founded the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, lent his legal expertise to the Underground Railroad, and served a term in the Massachusetts Senate as ...
,
[Levy refers to Sewall as "Samuel Eliot Sewall," but the memoir of Samuel Edmund Sewall (1799–1888) includes a firsthand account of the incident. See Tiffany (1898), pp. 62–66.] who obtained a writ of ''
habeas corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
'' from Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw. The captain was forced to release the women pending a hearing on his authority to detain them. When Deputy Sheriff Huggerford served the writ, accompanied by Sewall, they found Small and Bates locked in their cabin in a state of distress. Upon being apprised of the situation, one of the women—whom Sewall later described as "a very pretty and intelligent mulatto"—burst into tears and said she had known the Lord would not forsake her.
[Both women were probably ]multiracial
Mixed race people are people of more than one race or ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed race people in a variety of contexts, including ''multiethnic'', ''polyethnic'', occasionally ''bi-ethn ...
; in a letter to Sewall, Nathan Winslow refers to them as "the Yellow Girls." See Tiffany (1898), p. 64.
Shaw happened to be unavailable for the rest of the day. Rather than hear the case himself, Justice Wilde postponed the hearing until the following Monday, on the technical grounds that it was Shaw who had signed the writ. At 9:00 on the morning of August 1, as Chief Justice Shaw took the bench, the courtroom filled with spectators. Most were black women; a few white abolitionists joined them, including five women from the
Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society.
[Levy (1952), p. 87; Beshara (2009), p. 49.]
Court hearing
The purpose of the hearing, as defined by the writ, was to determine whether Eldridge had the right to detain Small and Bates. Counsel on both sides, however, addressed the more general question of slavery itself. Attorney A. H. Fiske, representing Eldridge, read an affidavit by Turner declaring that the women were the property of his employer, and cited the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. He then moved for a postponement of the hearing to give him time to bring evidence from Baltimore that the women were slaves. Sewall argued that Eldridge had no right to hold the women, and moreover, that all human beings were born free and had a
natural right
Some philosophers distinguish two types of rights, natural rights and legal rights.
* Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are ''universal'', ''fundamental'' and ...
to remain so. When he finished, the audience burst into applause.
Chief Justice Shaw rose to give his opinion. The question before the Court, he said, was simply: "Has the captain of the brig ''Chickasaw'' a right to convert his vessel into a prison?" Shaw determined that Eldridge had no such right and had detained the women unlawfully. He concluded by declaring that "the prisoners must therefore be discharged from all further detention."
Turner, the slaveholder's agent, rose and asked the judge if he would need a warrant to arrest the women again under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law. At the same time, a constable was sent to lock the door that led downstairs. It appeared to the spectators that Turner was about to detain the women a second time, despite their having just been discharged by Judge Shaw.
[Levy (1952), p. 88.]
Riot
Before the judge could answer Turner's question, Sewall advised the women to leave at once. Someone shouted, "Go! Go!" and the crowd spontaneously erupted. People rushed over the seats and down the aisle toward Small and Bates.
Outside, several hundred others pressed on the doors, trying to force their way in. Shaw protested, but the crowd ignored him, shouting, "Don't stop!" The only officer in the room, Deputy Sheriff Huggerford, was grabbed by "an old colored woman, of great size," who threw her arms around his neck and stopped him from interfering. Swarming around the two women, the crowd made its way down a private passageway of the judiciary and down the courthouse stairs. Once outside, the women were hustled into a carriage, which sped out of the city at a gallop.
Huggerford and several others pursued the fleeing women, but they were too late. As the carriage crossed over
Mill Dam
Mill Dam is a wetland in western Shapinsay, in Orkney, Scotland.
This water body was not shown on the 1840 survey map of the island, since it is a man-made creation from a damming in the 1880s.G.T, Masters, ''Orkney, Approaches to Kirkwall'', HMS ...
, money was thrown from the carriage to pay the toll.
[Levy (1952), p. 89.]
Aftermath
Although Boston was an important center of the abolitionist movement, its residents were by no means unanimously opposed to slavery or the Fugitive Slave Law. On the contrary, the local press excoriated Huggerford and Sheriff C. P. Sumner (father of abolitionist
Charles Sumner) for not having placed more officers at the courthouse. The riot was seen as a shocking affront to law and order. Several journalists were particularly offended by the "indecent conduct" of the female abolitionists, and one called on the women's husbands to chastise them. Another accused Sewall of disgracing the legal profession and called for his censure by the bar for "instigating a mob of negroes to perpetrate an act at which every good member of society shudders." Even the ''
Liberator'', the anti-slavery newspaper founded by
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was a prominent American Christian, abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read antislavery newspaper '' The Liberator'', which he found ...
, expressed mild disapproval, calling the incident "unjustifiable" but "not unpardonable."
[Levy (1952), pp. 89–90.]
Small and Bates were never recaptured;
they eventually made it to Canada, where slavery had been abolished three years before. None of the rioters were ever brought to trial. The editor of the ''
Columbian Centinel
__NOTOC__
The ''Columbian Centinel'' (1790–1840) was a Boston, Massachusetts, newspaper established by Benjamin Russell. It continued its predecessor, the ''Massachusetts Centinel and the Republican Journal'', which Russell and partner Wil ...
'' fulminated:
The outrage was committed by a mob of several hundreds, and after three days search, neither the prisoners nor one of the rioters have been arrested. Is there no person who was present who can identify one of the offenders? Could such a scene be enacted, and the Chief Justice be assailed ''vi et armis
Trespass ''vi et armis'' was a kind of lawsuit at common law called a tort. The form of action alleged a trespass upon person or property ''vi et armis'', Latin for "by force and arms." The plaintiff would allege in a pleading that the act commit ...
'' in the face of day, and in open court, and no person be able to detect one of a hundred? The case has not its parallel in the annals of crime.
Sewall received many threatening and abusive letters, warning him never to set foot in Baltimore and alluding to
Judge Lynch
Colonel Charles Lynch (1736 – 1796) was an American planter, politician, military officer and judge who headed a kangaroo court in Virginia to punish Loyalists during the Revolutionary War. The terms "lynching" and "lynch law" are believed to ...
. Four weeks after the riot, a U.S. naval officer from Baltimore confronted Sewall in his office. After announcing that he was related to Morris, he insulted Sewall and struck him "a number of blows with the butt end of a horsewhip." Undeterred, Sewall volunteered his services in a number of other cases defending fugitive slaves.
Writing in the ''Liberator'' sixteen years later, William Cooper Nell recalled the rescue as a testament to "the prowess of a few coloured women; the memory of which deed is sacredly cherished and transmitted to posterity."
[''The Liberator'' (December 10, 1852).]
Notes
References
Citations
Bibliography
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{{Riots in the United States (1607–1865)
1836 riots
History of Boston
1836 in Massachusetts
19th century in Boston
Riots and civil disorder in Massachusetts
History of women in the United States
Abolitionism in the United States
African-American history in Boston
August 1836 events
Slave rebellions in the United States
Pro-fugitive slave riots and civil disorder in the United States
Political riots in the United States
History of women in Massachusetts