Thomas Sims

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Thomas Sims (born about 1834) was an enslaved African American who escaped from slavery in Georgia at age 17 and lived for a time in Boston, Massachusetts. He was arrested there under the federal Fugitive Slave Law on April 4, 1851. Following a dramatic court trial, he was returned to his owner against the strong protests of abolitionists. The federal government sent U.S. Marines to march Sims down the streets of Boston, to be taken away on a warship and transferred back to Georgia. Sims was sold to a new owner in Mississippi, but escaped in 1863 and returned to Boston. The “Sims tragedy” was a cause célèbre in the Massachusetts abolitionist movement (see for instance, the references in Henry David Thoreau’s Slavery in Massachusetts) and drew sympathy from many northerners. A month after Sim's arrest, Judge Edward G. Loring ordered the fugitive Anthony Burns back into slavery in Virginia. Another attempt was made by abolitionists, two hundred of whom had poured onto the streets in support of the fugitive. As in the case of Sims, Burns was also taken by U.S. Marines to a ship detined to Virginia. Within a year, Burns was back in Boston. African Americans had raised $1,300 to pay the "ransom" being asked of him.