“The federal government soon got a chance to flex it’s muscles in Boston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A seventeen-year-old slave named Thomas Sims escaped from Georgia<\/p>\n\n\n\n
in February 1851 and stowed away on a ship to Boston, where he too<\/p>\n\n\n\n
found work as a waiter. When his owner traced him, the mayor of<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Boston decided to allow the police to be deputized by federal marshals<\/p>\n\n\n\n
to cooperate in Sim’s arrest. This time officials sealed the courthouse with <\/p>\n\n\n\n
a heavy chain[which abolitionists publicized as a symbol of the slave<\/p>\n\n\n\n
power’s reach into the North] and guarded it with police and soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For nine days in April 1851 vigilance committee lawyers vainly sought<\/p>\n\n\n\n
writs of habeas corpus and tried other legal maneuvers to free Sims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the federal commissioner found for his owner, 300 armed<\/p>\n\n\n\n
deputies and soldiers removed him from the courthouse at 4:oo a.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and marched him to the navy yard where 250 U.S. soldiers waited to<\/p>\n\n\n\n
place him on a ship going south to slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sim’s owner subsequently sold him at the slave auction in Charleston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was taken to New Orleans and sold to a brickmason in Vicksburg,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mississippi, where Sims was living when Union troops besieged the<\/p>\n\n\n\n
city in 1863. He escaped into federal lines and obtained a special pass<\/p>\n\n\n\n
from General Ulysses S Grant to return to Boston, where he arrived in<\/p>\n\n\n\n
time to watch the presentation of colors to the 54th Massachusetts<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Infantry, the first black regiment recruited in the North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A dozen years after the Civil War, Sims became a clerk and messenger<\/p>\n\n\n\n
in the office of the U.S attorney general, under whose auspices he had<\/p>\n\n\n\n
been remanded a generation earlier.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Excerpted from “The Battle Cry of Freedom[The Civil War Era]”,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
author James M. McPherson. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The above account illustrates how merciless the government could be<\/p>\n\n\n\n
back then and in some ways still is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Islander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PS. The beginning chapters of “Battle Cry of Freedom” contain a<\/p>\n\n\n\n
comprehensive description of slavery and the events that led to the<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Civil War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“The federal government soon got a chance to flex it’s muscles in Boston. A seventeen-year-old slave named Thomas Sims escaped from Georgia in February 1851 and stowed away on a ship to Boston, where he too found work as a waiter. When his owner traced him, the mayor of Boston decided to allow the police … Continue reading “On Slavery”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1525","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1525\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewalrussaid.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}