Abolition Riot of 1836 - study

This study written by Shelly Mendoza

The Abolition Riot of 1836 took place in Boston, Massachusetts in the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court. In August 1836, Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates, two enslaved women from
Baltimore who had run away, were arrested in Boston and brought before Chief Justice Lemuel
Shaw. The judge ordered them freed because of a problem with the arrest warrant. When the
agent for the slaveholder requested a new warrant, the spectators—mostly 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 in 1851, and Anthony Burns in 1854. An attempt to rescue
Thomas Sims 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. The vast majority were committed to abolitionism; among the more
outspoken activists were William Cooper Nell, Maria Stewart, and David Walker. Some, such as
Lewis Hayden and John T. Hilton, 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, who obtained a writ of habeas corpus 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.
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.
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 to
remain so. When he finished, the audience burst into applause.
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. 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.
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 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, expressed mild disapproval, calling the incident
"unjustifiable" but "not unpardonable."
Small and Bates were never recaptured; where slavery had been abolished three years before.
None of the rioters were ever brought to trial. The editor of the Columbian Centinel 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 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. 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."
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