Austin Bearse | |
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| Born | April 3, 1808 |
| Died | December 2, 1881 (aged 73) |
| Occupation | sea captain |
| Known for | abolitionism |
Austin Bearse (1808-1881) was a sea captain from Cape Cod who provided transportation for fugitive slaves in the years leading up to the American Civil War.
Bearse was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, on April 3, 1808. As a youth he worked occasionally as a mate on slave-trading vessels off the coast of South Carolina and saw firsthand how cruelly the slaves were treated. [1] Decades later, he recalled in his memoir that "they were separated from their families and connections with as little concern as calves and pigs are selected out of a lot of domestic animals." Often the families and friends of the departing slaves were allowed to spend the night on the ship before it set sail. When morning came, Bearse had the unpleasant duty of warning them that it was time to say goodbye, and, as he put it, "the shrieks and cries of grief at these times were enough to make anyone's heart ache." [2] :9
Affected by these experiences, Bearse became an abolitionist. He continued working as a seaman, but refused to trade below the Mason-Dixon line. [2] :10–12
In 1847, at the request of Quaker agents Abigail and Lydia Mott, he smuggled a slave named George Lewis from Albany to Boston. There Lewis was reunited with his daughter, who had also run away. Bearse found Lewis a job, and the Reverend Leonard Grimes of the Twelfth Baptist Church raised the funds to ransom Lewis's wife and remaining children from the slaveholders. This was the first of many such rescues in which Bearse took part. [2] :10–12
Soon after Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Bearse became a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, a fugitive slave rescue organization with connections to the Underground Railroad. [1] Around that time, [3] he moved to City Point in South Boston. [2] :37 In 1851 he worked as a harbor spy for the Committee, keeping an eye out for slave-catchers. He also served as dues collector until 1855. Coordinating with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Wendell Phillips, Lewis Hayden, William Ingersoll Bowditch and other committee members, Bearse undertook several daring slave rescues in his 36-foot sloop, the Moby Dick. [4] In one case, the committee hired him to retrieve a fugitive slave named Sandy Swain from the brig Florence, which was moored at Fort Independence after sailing from North Carolina. He brought with him several white abolitionists and a party of black dock workers from Long Wharf, and persuaded the captain of the brig to hand Swain over to him. As they were sailing away, they dressed Swain as a fisherman so he would blend in when they landed at City Point House. From there, Swain was driven to a safe house in Brookline, and continued the next morning on his way to Canada. [5]
On another occasion, Bearse was asked to retrieve a fugitive slave from the Sally Ann, also from North Carolina. He was unable to enlist a party of men to go with him on short notice, so he and his brother decided to try it on their own. [5] To intimidate the other captain, Bearse tied jackets and hats to the railing of his own ship to make it appear from a distance as though he had a large crew to back him up. He then sent his brother in the yacht's rowboat to pick up the stowaway. Apparently fooled, the captain of the Sally Ann turned the stowaway over to the Bearse brothers, who brought him to South Boston and put him up in his home. The freed slave then continued on the Underground Railroad to Canada. [1]
In 1853 Bearse was interviewed by Harriet Beecher Stowe at the office of the Liberator as part of her research for A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin . [2] :8
Towards the end of his life, Bearse published a memoir, Reminiscences of the Fugitive Slave-Law Days in Boston (1880). He died on December 2, 1881, and was buried in the Beechwood Cemetery in Centerville, Massachusetts. [6] The Austin Bearse House in Centerville (built c. 1691) is part of the Centerville Historic District.
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. The scheme was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The enslaved who risked escape and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the "Underground Railroad". Various other routes led to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession, existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790. However, the network now generally known as the Underground Railroad was formed in the late 18th century. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. One estimate suggests that, by 1850, 100,000 enslaved people had escaped via the network.
Samuel Gridley Howe was an American physician, abolitionist, and an advocate of education for the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824 he had gone to Greece to serve in the revolution as a surgeon; he also commanded troops. He arranged for support for refugees and brought many Greek children back to Boston with him for their education.
In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th century to describe enslaved people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.
Passmore Williamson was an American abolitionist and businessman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a free state in the antebellum years. As secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and a member of its Vigilance Committee, Williamson is best known for helping Jane Johnson and her two sons gain freedom from slavery on July 18, 1855.
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The William Ingersoll Bowditch House is a historic house at 9 Toxteth Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. It is a good example of vernacular Gothic and Greek Revival architecture, built c. 1844-45 as part of one of Brookline's earliest formal residential subdivisions. William Bowditch, the first owner, was an active abolitionist who sheltered fugitive slaves as part of the Underground Railroad, and was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 17, 1985.
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The Town of Barnstable is a city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the county seat of Barnstable County. Barnstable is the largest community, both in land area and population, on Cape Cod, and is one of thirteen Massachusetts municipalities that have been granted city forms of government by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but wish to retain "the town of" in their official names. At the 2010 census it had a population of 45,193. The town contains several villages within its boundaries. Its largest village, Hyannis, is the central business district of the county and home to Barnstable Municipal Airport, the airline hub of Cape Cod and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Additionally, Barnstable is a 2007 winner of the All-America City Award.
John Augustus Bolles was an American politician who, from 1843–1844, served as the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth. He also served as a staff officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War and was brevetted to Brigadier General. Bolles was the son of an abolitionist preacher and the brother in law of General John Adams Dix. He was also an accomplished legal scholar prior to the war and advised the War Department on the legality of upholding the conviction of Clement Vallandigham. Bolles had conducted the first broad study of the Dorr Rebellion as well as Chief Justice Taney's opinion in Luther v. Borden and concluded that the federal judiciary could not take jurisdiction over Vallandigham's appeals. The judiciary sided with Bolles on this matter.
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Ellis Gray Loring was an American attorney, abolitionist, and philanthropist from Boston. He co-founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society, provided legal advice to abolitionists, harbored fugitive slaves in his home, and helped finance the abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator. Loring also mentored Robert Morris, who went on to become one of the first African-American attorneys in the United States.
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