Col. Benjamin Franklin (!)
Edmands, from an early hour of the day, in anticipation of
the Commissioner's decision. These troops, which had been
called out by the Mayor, Jerome V.C. Smith, were marched to
the scene of the kidnapping, and so placed as to guard every
street, lane, and other avenue leading to State Street, &c.,
the route through which the slave procession was to pass. No
individual was suffered to pass within these guards; but acts
of violence were committed by them on several individuals.
Court Square was occupied by two companies of United States
troops, (chiefly Irishmen,) and a large field-piece was drawn
into the centre. All preparations being made, Watson Freeman
(United States Marshal) issued forth from the court-house
with his prisoner, who walked with a firm step, surrounded by
the body-guard of criminals before mentioned, with drawn
United States sabres in their hands, and followed by United
States troops with the aforesaid piece of artillery. Preceded
by a company of Massachusetts mounted troops, under command
of Colonel Isaac H. Wright, this infamous procession took its
way down Court Street, State Street and Commerce Street, (for
the proprietors of Long Wharf refused to allow them to march
upon their premises, through a public highway in all ordinary
cases,) to the T Wharf, where the prisoner was taken on board
a steam tow-boat, and conveyed down the harbor to the United
States Revenue Cutter Morris; in which he was transported to
Virginia.

It may not be amiss to have given, in a single instance, this
somewhat detailed account of the process of seizing, trying,
and delivering up a man into slavery, whose only crime was
that he had fled from a bondage "one hour of which is fraught
with more misery than ages of that which our fathers rose in
rebellion to throw off," Thomas Jefferson, the Virginian
slaveholder, himself being witness.

Anthony Burns, having been sold into North Carolina, was
afterwards purchased with money subscribed in Boston and
vicinity, for the purpose, and returned to Boston.

The _illegality_ of the Mayor's conduct in ordering out the
military, and giving to the Colonel of the regiment the
entire control of the same, was fully shown by different and
highly competent writers, am