Joseph K. Hayes

Quick Facts

Significance:

Abolitionist, Police Captain, Member of the Boston Vigilance Committee

Place of Birth:

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

1812

Place of Death:

Brookline, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

1907

Place of Burial:

Brookline, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Walnut Hill Cemetery

Joseph K. Hayes served as a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee and publicly resigned from his position as Boston Police Captain rather than participate in the rendition of freedom seeker Anthony Burns.

Born in 1812 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Joseph K. Hayes moved to Portland, Maine as an infant with his family.¹ From his early childhood, his mother instilled in him a "sympathy for the oppressed." For example, at a young age, he "had often sat in the 'negro pew,' to testify against its wicked proscription" for "as long as that pew remained, it nullified all that was preached from the pulpit."²

Hayes moved to Boston in 1833 and married Esther B. Parsons in 1839.³ He first supported himself as a carpenter. When an angry mob attacked the radical abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison in 1835, Hayes sheltered Garrison in his carpentry shop. According to Garrison, Hayes "not only closed the doors of his shop and barred them, but gallantly endeavored to keep the mob back."⁴ In addition to his work with abolitionists, Hayes also participated in the temperance movement, even involving himself in sting operations to catch illegal alcohol sellers. For example, in 1839, he testified against a shop keeper named Cummings for serving gin. At the hearing, he said "I, as a temperance man, have pledged myself for years to do all I can to stop the use of sale of ardent spirits. My object in going into Cummings's shop was to get evidence."⁵

By 1844, Hayes had become the superintendent of Tremont Temple, a prominent integrated Baptist church that served as a gathering space for meetings of abolitionists and other social reformers.⁶ Though Tremont Temple provided his primary employment, Hayes also held positions with the Boston police force serving as a Special Police Officer and constable.⁷

Hayes joined the 1850 iteration of the Boston Vigilance Committee that formed in response to the new Fugitive Slave Law. He publicly listed his name and contact information at Tremont Temple on the committee's broadside.⁸ In this capacity, he arranged for the committee to hold some of their meetings at this prominent gathering space.⁹ He also worked with other committee members, including William Cooper Nell and Lewis Hayden, to help put an enslaved girl "en route for liberty" though she ultimately "concluded to return South with her sick Mistress and children" believing that they would set her free.¹⁰

In 1851, authorities arrested Hayes, along with Lewis Hayden and others, for their alleged role in "aiding and abetting in the late rescue" of freedom seeker Shadrach Minkins from the Boston courthouse.¹¹ While at the courthouse, Hayes told the assembled crowd to "stand by" and follow the officers wherever they took Minkins. The Commonwealth argued that the case against him "was 'weaker than water,'" and he ultimately faced no repercussions for his alleged role in the rescue.¹²

Hayes also figured prominently in the Anthony Burns case. Authorities arrested Anthony Burns under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law in May 1854. Just days before, Hayes had been made captain in the Boston police force.¹³ Abolitionists unsuccessfully attempted to rescue Burns from the courthouse shortly after his arrest. To ensure that Burns' rendition would proceed without further incident, officials sent in extra police and military units to control the expected crowds of protesters. Hayes told his men, in no uncertain terms, "I wish you distinctly to understand how much I shall help the United States in this business. If there is an attempt at a rescue, and it is likely to fail, I shall help the rescuers."¹⁴

On June 2, the day of Burns' rendition, Hayes received orders to provide security to transfer Burns. His superiors instructed him that "if his police force should be unable to maintain their stand against the pressure of the crowd, they were to swing back right and left; this was to be a signal to the military at the other end, who had instructions instantly, without giving warning, to fire upon the crowd."¹⁵ Rather than comply with these orders, which he felt violated Massachusetts' Personal Liberty Laws, Hayes abruptly resigned his commission in a public letter to the mayor which read:

I have received an order which, if performed, would implicate me in the execution of that infamous Fugitive Slave Bill. I therefore resign the office which I now hold as Captain of the Watch and Police, from this hour, 11 o clock.¹⁶

Hayes became an instant hero among the abolitionists as word of his resignation spread. His admirers praised his integrity. Reverend James Freeman Clarke said, "All policemen would imitate the noble act of Capt. Hayes, and resign rather than debase themselves by such a service."¹⁷ Harriet Beecher Stowe, in town for Boston's first Woman's Rights Convention, sent an autographed copy of Uncles Tom's Cabin, writing:

Permit me to present you with this book as a slight expression of my admiration for the noble example you have so recently set to our whole country, of preferring worldly loss rather than a loss of manhood and honor...May the blessing of God ever follow you and yours, for your steadiness in refusing to execute the infamous and irreligious Fugitive Law!¹⁸

At Tremont Temple, where Hayes quickly resumed his previous employment, abolitionists held an event in his honor. During this event they presented him with money, a gold watch, and a silver salver and he received lavish praise from leading reformers including Theodore Parker and William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison, whom Hayes had helped in the mob attack of 1835, referred to him as "an unflinching friend of the slave, true to his convictions of duty at whatever cost, under all circumstances."¹⁹ Abolitionist Charles M. Ellis said:

We are proud to claim as a fellow-citizen one who though poor, cannot be bought; who loves his integrity better than his daily bread, and who has given such as example of what a true American citizen should be.

Hayes humbly addressed the crowd, expressing his surprise for all the honors bestowed upon him "for having performed so simple and obvious a duty; for, had he done otherwise, ... he would have been a villain, in his own eyes."²⁰

Hayes continued his involvement with the abolition movement until the end of the Civil War. He continued to work at Tremont Temple for a time before joining the internal revenue department where he worked for nearly 30 years before retirement.²¹

He passed away at home in 1907 and is buried in Walnut Hill Cemetery in Brookline.²²

Footnotes

1. The Boston Globe, July 28, 1907.
2. The Liberator, June 30, 1854.
3. The Boston Globe, July 28, 1907; Columbian Centinel, October 23, 1839.
4. The Boston mob of "gentlemen of property and standing." : Proceedings of the anti-slavery meeting held in Stacy Hall, Boston, on the twentieth anniversary of the mob of October 21, 1835, Phonographic report by J. M. W. Yerrinton (Boston: R.F. Wallcut, 1855), Internet Archive, 59.
5. Boston Statesman, April 20, 1839.
6. Stimpson's Boston Directory (Boston: Stimpson, 1844), Boston Athenaeum, 276.
7. Daily Atlas, March 6, 1845; Boston Courier, August 6, 1845.
8. "Members of the Committee of Vigilance," broadside printed by John Wilson, 1850, Massachusetts Historical Society. At this time, he lived at 18 Vine according to the 1850 City Directory. National Park Service maps geographically locate him at the approximate location of this address.
9. Account Book of Francis Jackson, Treasurer The Vigilance Committee of Boston, Dr. Irving H. Bartlett collection, 1830-1880, W. B. Nickerson Cape Cod History Archives, Archive.org, 18.
10. William Cooper Nell, Selected Writings, 1832-1874, edited by Dorothy Porter Wesley and Constance Porter Uzelac (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2002), 397, 402.
11. Boston Evening Transcript, February 21, 1851, 2.
12. Gary Collison, Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 123, 147.
13. Boston Evening Transcript, May 29, 1911; Albert Von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson's Boston (Cambridge: Havard University Press, 1998), Internet Archive, 196.
14. Charles Emery Stevens, Anthony Burns: A History (Boston: J.P. Jewett and Co, 1856), Internet Archive, 137.
15. Stevens, Anthony Burns: A History, 138.
16. Stevens, Anthony Burns: A History, 278; and Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns, 206-207.
17. James Freeman Clarke, The rendition of Anthony Burns. Its causes and consequences. A discourse on Christian politics, delivered in Williams Hall, Boston, on Whitsunday, June 4, 1854 (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & co. 1854),Internet Archive, 3.
18. The Liberator, June 30, 1854.
19. The Liberator, June 30, 1854.
20. The Liberator, June 30, 1854.
21. The Boston Globe, July 28, 1907
22. Boston Evening Transcript, July 29, 1907.