Capture, Trial, and Prison

Part 3-Capture, Trial and Prison

One can
imagine how excited George Thompson, James Burr and Alanson Work were as they
rowed across the Mississippi River from Quincy to Missouri that July evening in
1841. At last, they would help slaves escape from slavery. They took no
precautions to protect themselves. Thompson stayed with the boat at the water’s
edge while Burr and Work walked to the designated thicket to meet with the
slaves they had talked to earlier. Little did they know they were surrounded
and watched by armed men the entire time.

It was a
strange encounter from the beginning. Because no black person could testify in
Missouri court, the slave Anthony had been taught several questions to ask Work
and Burr. The abolitionists didn’t notice that Anthony spoke very loudly when
he asked where they were being taken and why. In answer to Anthony’s questions,
the naive abolitionists explained the runaways would travel by night and be
hidden by friends during the day until they came to a great lake where they
would be taken by boat to freedom in Canada. Slavery was no longer legal there.
The slaves would live free. After he had asked all of the questions he had been
taught, Anthony gave the signal he had memorized. He said in an overly-loud
clear voice, “We will be governed by your directions.”

They started
to walk toward the river as the posse of slaveholders emerged from the
surrounding brush cocking their rifles and shotguns. Work and Burr were
surprised the slaves they were trying to help grabbed them and held them tight
for the posse. They were quickly subdued.

Thompson
was easily taken at the river. He, too, was shocked when the slaves who came to
the water’s edge didn’t jump into the boat. Instead they held it tight to the
shore as Thompson pled in vain. The armed men took him into custody.

The
three Quincy men were held overnight in William Boulware’s house. The next
morning they were paraded into Palmyra – and it was a parade. Word spread
throughout Marion County like wildfire. The families of the posse joined the
procession and others entered along the route. Once in the county seat the
three were held in the town’s log jail. It was a very secure building, being
two log structures, one built inside the other with the space between the walls
filled with stone rubble to make escape difficult. For extra security, the men
were chained together and anchored to the wall. People flocked into town from
the countryside to get a look at the abolitionists. They could peer through the
barred window at the hapless men.

Justice
moved quicker in the 19th Century than today. The men went to trial in
September of 1841, just weeks after their arrest. The result was a foregone
conclusion. Unlike today, when we take great care to try to make juries
representative of the community, the sheriff hand-selected a “blue ribbon” jury
composed of important men in the community. Six of the twelve were
slaveholders, including John Marshall Clemens, father of the boy who would grow
up to write as Mark Twain.

There
was no law in Missouri regarding enticing a slave to run away. The three men
were charged with simple larceny – theft of property. The jury instruction from
the judge to the jury sealed their fate. He instructed the jury that if the slaves
had taken “one step” with the abolitionists they were guilty of the crime. (You
can read the jury instructions in the appendix of,

Searching for Jim,
Slavery in Sam Clemens’s World

.) They were sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Thompson,
Work, and Burr were failures at freeing slaves. But their foolish and naive
mission did more for escaping slaves than a success ever could have. They
accomplished three things. That night Anthony and the slaves realized they had
been wrong. One of them, perhaps it was Anthony, we will never know, went to
the open barred window in the dark of night and apologized to the three. He
explained that the slaves knew nothing of abolitionists and Canada. From that
day, word spread among the enslaved that there were people across the river in
Illinois that wished to help runaways.

The
second accomplishment was that it cemented the idea in the minds of Missouri
slave holders that their slaves were loyal and wished to remain slaves.
Slaveholders, by and large, believed their slaves were happy under slavery. It
was a lie, but they did not give it a lot of thought. The action of Anthony and
the other slaves in coming to a master proved to them their slaves were
content. After 1841 runaway slaves in Missouri relied on other slaves and the few
free black people who lived in Northeast, Missouri for assistance. This
provided great cover. Whenever a slave would run off, the local authorities
would immediately go off searching for white abolitionists who had “duped”
another slave into leaving. As late as the beginning of the Civil War, the case
of Thompson, Work, and Burr was being cited in the Northeast Missouri press as
proof that slaves were loyal and would never raise a hand against their
masters.

The
greatest impact Thompson, Work, and Burr had was upon the abolitionist
movement. Thompson proved to be an excellent propagandist and the three became
national stars. Within a week a letter from him appeared in William Lloyd
Garrison’s newspaper

The Liberator

. He cast himself, Work, and Burr as new
Christian martyrs suffering like the early Christians in the “dungeon” of
Marion County. He kept up a lively stream of letters and later wrote of their
experiences in the book,

Prison Life and Reflections

, which became a
must-read among abolitionists. He inspired countless people to take up the work
of resisting slavery.

Though
they failed in achieving their goal, their conduct as prisoners, their
continued adherence to their beliefs, and Thompson’s constant promotional work
kept them the focus of the abolitionist world. Thompson kindly assigned the
income from the book to Alanson Work to help support his family. The three men
served five to five-and-a-half years in the penitentiary in Jefferson City
before they were paroled following a national campaign on their behalf.

Sources

Dempsey, Terrell.

Searching
for Jim, Slavery in Sam Clemens’s World.

Columbia, MO:

University of Missouri Press, 2003.

Palmyra Missouri Whig

, July 17, 1841.

Palmyra Missouri Whig

, September 25, 1841.

Circuit Court records of Marion County, Missouri.

Liberator

, August 27, 1841.

Liberator

, October 8, 1841.

Liberator

, November 5, 1841.

Liberator

, December 10, 1841.

Thompson, George.

Prison Life and Reflections

.
Hartford, Conn.: A. Work, 1853.