Today, 1851, was just another day at work in a Boston coffee shop for waiter and escaped slave Shadrach Minkins. All this changed when two officers posing as customers seized him on the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Later, at his court hearing, a chaotic struggle resulted after Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court Lemuel Shaw refused to consider Minkins’ habeas corpus petition. Black abolitionists wrested Minkins from the court officers and hid him in a Beacon Hill attic. Eventually Minkins reached Canada on the Underground Railroad. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 exposed the Confederate's hypocrisy with their states rights argument. They were perfectly fine when the Federal government made laws which worked to their advantage regarding slavery. Below, image of a July 23, 1849 advertisement of sheriff’s sale of Shadrach Minkins in the Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald. The sale was to cover the owners unpaid business debts
Here’s an ad in the Virginia Gazette for a couple G. Washington’s runaway servants — people are not clear nowadays of the extent of white servitude in Early America; that’s why I find fault with America’s national anthem, ‘The Stars Spangled Banner.’ — “No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.” — such a bloody war song denigrating the common people. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-10-02-0266
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Today, 1851, was just another day at work in a Boston coffee shop for waiter and escaped slave Shadrach Minkins. All this changed when two officers posing as customers seized him on the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Later, at his court hearing, a chaotic struggle resulted after Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court Lemuel Shaw refused to consider Minkins’ habeas corpus petition. Black abolitionists wrested Minkins from the court officers and hid him in a Beacon Hill attic. Eventually Minkins reached Canada on the Underground Railroad. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 exposed the Confederate's hypocrisy with their states rights argument. They were perfectly fine when the Federal government made laws which worked to their advantage regarding slavery. Below, image of a July 23, 1849 advertisement of sheriff’s sale of Shadrach Minkins in the Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald. The sale was to cover the owners unpaid business debts