him to be delivered up to the claimant.  Some four hours were consumed in getting Court Street, State Street, &c., in a state of readiness for the removal of the prisoner.  A regiment of Massachusetts Infantry had been posted on Boston Common, under command of 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, among whom was P.W.  Chandler, Esq., whose two articles, in the Boston Advertiser, deserve to be remembered with respect.  The Mayor’s excuse was that he desired to keep the peace.  But these Massachusetts troops received pay for their day’s work from the United States Government.  Judge HOAR, in a charge to the Grand Jury, declared the act of the Mayor, in calling out the militia, to be