Simon Parker Hanscom

Quick Facts

Significance:

Journalist, abolitionist, reformer, Vigilance Committee member

Place of Birth:

Eliot, Maine

Date of Birth:

1821

Place of Death:

Washington, D.C.

Date of Death:

November 24, 1876

Place of Burial:

Washington, D.C.

Cemetery Name:

Congressional Cemetery

A journalist and reformer, Simon Parker Hanscom served in the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Born in 1821, Simon P. Hanscom spent his early life in Eliot, Maine. He married Nancy Almira Wright in 1849 and soon began a family. By 1850, Hanscom lived and worked in Boston as a reporter.¹

In Boston, he involved himself in various reform and political movements. He advocated for the causes of abolition, temperance, criminal justice reform, and the "Suppression of Gaming." He also participated in both the Free Soil and Republican parties, both of which opposed the expansion of slavery.²

In 1850, Hanscom joined the Boston Vigilance Committee. This organization formed in response to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and provided much needed assistance to freedom seekers escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad. He gave speeches against the law and soon immersed himself in several major fugitive slave cases throughout the city and region.³

For example, following the courthouse rescue of freedom seeker Shadrach Minkins in 1851, Hanscom testified on behalf of one of the alleged rescuers, helping to secure his acquittal.⁴

In the aftermath of the Minkins rescue, the Vigilance Committee learned about a plan by US Marshals to round up freedom seekers living in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The committee tried to telegraph allies in New Bedford but failed because the "'wires were broken, or cut, probably by design.'" The committee quickly sent Hanscom overnight to New Beford to warn the Black community of the impending raid. In the early morning hours, bells rung at Liberty Hall to bring the community together to plan its course of action. When the anticipated raid did not happen, many opponents mocked the overreaction of the Vigilance Committee and Hanscom as the leader of the "New Bedford Fugitive Slave Expedition." Committee member Theodore Parker, however, considered it a "'deed which saved the lives of I know not how many men.'"⁵

Soon after the New Bedford affair, authorities arrested freedom seeker Thomas Sims and held him in a jail cell at the Boston Courthouse. The Vigilance Committee assigned Hanscom, Austin Bearse, and Russell Marston to search the waterfront to find the ship preparing to take Sims back to slavery. The trio spotted a "little house" built on the deck of the Acorn and Bearse sent Hanscom to investigate. Spy-glass in hand, Hanscom got into a conversation with the mate on deck who told him, "'That's the place we are to put Sims to take him back to Savannah.'" When the mate worried that he revealed too much, Hanscom told him he worked as a reporter and feigned any further interest in the matter.⁶

Armed with this intelligence, however, Hanscom soon addressed the "Anti-Fugitive Slave Law Convention" at Tremont Temple on behalf of the Vigilance Committee. He told the crowd of the plan to transfer Sims to the Acorn and hoped that:

thousands on thousands would be present to witness the last crowning act of despotism and disgrace. He would not counsel them to come armed for a rescue, but when they should see the spectacle of a citizen being thus dragged off to bondage, if they felt as if they must do something to prevent it, he hoped they would do it!⁷

No rescue of Sims took place, but hundreds bore witness in the early morning hours as heavily armed guards marched Sims to the Acorn to be sent back to slavery. 

During the Anthony Burns case in 1854, Hanscom called for volunteers to assist a local official in getting Burns out of the custody of the US Marshals, by force if necessary. Because Hanscom "'actively engaged in the anti-slavery excitement at the time of the Burns trial,'" the Boston Daily Times fired him. Hanscom insisted that he resigned, however, rather than "'be induced to aid in the execution of that most infamous of devilish productions, the Fugitive Slave Bill.'"⁸

In September 1854, the Vigilance Committee reimbursed Hanscom "for expenses to Bath M. to rescue John Mason from Bark Franklin." The Franklin arrived in Bath, Maine from Jacksonville, Georgia where "a slave secreted himself on board." Word reached Boston that the freedom seeker, Mason, remained onboard and the Vigilance Committee dispatched Hanscom to help rescue him. In Bath, Hanscom and "other sturdy men" boarded the ship "with the intention of taking the fugitive, if he was on board, at all risks." When they demanded Mason’s release, the captain told them that he "ran away, at Holmes Hole, and carried the boat with him... Neither slave nor boat have been heard from since." Though some thought Mason had been returned South by another ship, the captain reasserted, in writing, that the freedom seeker had escaped in Bath.⁹

By the early 1860s, Hanscom left Boston for Washington, D.C. where he headed the National Republican and became a close ally of President Abraham Lincoln.¹⁰

Throughout his career, his writings and actions earned him many detractors. His critics referred to him as one of the "hissing reptiles" and as a "bitter Black Republican" who infused his articles "with a good deal of Abolition and misrepresentation of Democrats." A colonel of a Missouri militia once assaulted Hansom for questioning his bravery during the Bleeding Kansas crisis of the 1850s. Still others accused him of fabricating stories and engaging in black mail and other political schemes "'for pay, of course, for he never does anything without, (except to leave his family at the mercy of the cold hand of charity).'"¹¹

That final point is grounded in some truth, however. Hanscom's wife filed for divorce in 1869 claiming that he "willingly absented himself from her without making suitable provisions for her support and maintenance."¹²

By the mid-1870s, Hanscom's health failed as he began suffering from "disease of the brain, ending in insanity and death." He passed away in 1876.¹³

The Boston Evening Transcript published a fitting obituary, remembering Hanscom as:

a man of great energy, an indefatigable worker, a veteran newspaper itemizer, an unflinching friend, and a very uncomfortable enemy...Most especially will he be remembered with gratitude by the colored people of Boston, for in the days of the fugitive slave agitation there was no risk, danger or duty he would not undertake in their behalf.¹⁴

His remains are buried at Congressional Cemetery in Washington.¹⁵

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Footnotes

1. Hanscom is mapped at his 1850 residence, 14 Wall Street. "Simon Parker Hanscom," Ancestry.com. Geneanet Community Trees Index [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2022, Simon Parker Hanscom ✔️ - Facts (ancestry.com); “Marriages,” Boston Evening Transcript, June 5, 1849, 2; George Adams, Boston City Directory, 1850-1851, 179; “Obituary” National Republican, November 27, 1876, 4.
2. “Convention in Aid of the Prisoner,” Liberator, October 30, 1846, 4; Liberator, April 13, 1849, 3; News of the Day,” Alexandria Gazette, May 20, 1851, 2; “Free Soil Convention” Boston Evening Transcript, September 15, 1853, 2; Appointments for Addresses,” Springfield Daily Republican, October 31, 1855, 1.
3. Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 4, (Note, though Hanscom does not appear on the official broadside published by the Boston Vigilance Committee, he appears on Bearse’s “Doorman’s List” of members. Among other things, Bearse watched the door at committee meetings and only allowed known members to attend, see Dean Grodzins, "Constitution or No Constitution, Law or No Law: The Boston Vigilance Committees, 1841-1861," in Matthew Mason, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright, eds., Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 73, n.57.); “Ultraism Rampant,” Weekly Commercial, March 21, 1851, 2.
4. “Examination of Thomas P. Smith,” The Bee, March 3, 1851, 2.
5. Kathryn Grover, The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts, (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 222-224, The fugitive's Gibraltar : Kathryn Grover : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Accessed 9/17/2024; “General Summary,” Lowell Daily Journal and Courier, October 4, 1853, 2.
6. Austin Bearse, Remininscences of Fugitive Slave Law Days in Boston, (Boston: Warren Richardson, 1880), 24.
7. “Anti-Fugitive Slave Law Convention,” Boston Evening Transcript, April 8, 1851, 2.
8. "From the Boston Atlas, May 30,” The Weekly Herald, June 3, 1854, 174; "In copying the following Statement...,” Liberator, August 18, 1854, 3.
9. Francis Jackson, 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, https://archive.org/details/drirvinghbartlet19bart/page/n3/mode/2up, 30; “Almost a Fugitive Slave Case in Bath,” Christian Watchman & Reflector, September 28, 1854, 6, Christian Watchman & Reflector 1854-09-28: Vol 35 Iss 39 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive; A Fugitive Slave Case,” Kennebec Journal, September 29, 1854, 2.
10. John C. Fazio, Decapitating the Union: Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin and the Plot to Assassinate Lincoln, (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform: 2016), 163, Decapitating the Union: Jefferson Davis, Judah Benjamin and the Plot to Assassinate Lincoln : John C. Fazio : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Accessed 9/18/2024.
11. “Sim. P. Hanscom,” Charleston Daily Courier, March 13, 1860, 2; “Attack on Hon. James Buffington,” Fall River Daily Evening News, September 23, 1868, 2; “Brief Jottings,” Boston Daily Evening Transcript, September 9, 1867, 2; “More Brooksism,” National Aegis, July 23, 1856, 2; Editor Moses Bates of the True Plymouth Rock quoted in“Simon P. Hanscom, & c.” New Bedford Evening Standard, October 5, 1868, 2.
12. “To The Supreme Judicial Court,” Farmers Cabinet, July 8, 1869, 4.
13. “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, November 24, 1876, 4.
14. “Recent Deaths,” Boston Evening Transcript, November 24, 1876, 4.
15. "Simon P. Hanscom," Find a Grave, Simon P Hanscom (unknown-1876) - Find a Grave Memorial.