Anti-Slavery Meeting On the Boston Common From Gleason’s Pictorial

Credit: Library of Congress
Media type: engraving
Museum Number:
Annotation: The illustration is from a popular nineteenth-century publication. It shows reformer Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) addressing an April 11,1851 meeting to protest the case of Thomas Sims, a fugitive slave being tried in Boston. A fiery and persuasive orator, Phillips was a member of the Boston Committee of Vigilance that tried to prevent Sims from being returned to slavery. The attempts failed and on April 13, United States marshals marched Sims to a ship that returned him to Savannah, where he was publicly whipped. Anti-Slavery Meeting on the [Boston] Common From Gleason’s Pictorial, May 3, 1851 Photomural from woodcut Prints and Photographs Division (52) -Taken from the Library of Congress
Year: 1851