Anthony Burns

Black man held in Boston federal custody under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 after escaping from enslavement in Virginia. His May 1854 arrest in Boston touched off the largest abolitionist protests of the antebellum era — an estimated 50,000 people lined the streets to witness his court-ordered return to slavery, the federal government deploying state militia and U.S. Marines to enforce the rendition. Defended by Richard Henry Dana Jr. and Charles Mayo Ellis. After return to Virginia, abolitionists purchased his freedom; he later became a Baptist minister in Ontario, Canada, where he died of tuberculosis in 1862 at age 28.