Atticus: The Black Asylum Seeker Who Set Off a Political War Between Maine and Georgia
In early May of 1837, Captain Daniel Philbrook of Camden and his mate, Edward Kelleran of Cushing, delivered a load of Rockland lime and hay to the port of Savannah, Georgia. They hired a local carpenter to make some repairs to their sloop, the Susan, also known as the Boston. The carpenter was named James Sagurs, and with him was a 22-year-old enslaved ship caulker named Atticus with freedom on his mind.
Like many enslaved skilled tradesmen in Southern cities, the young Black caulker enjoyed a bit more freedom than a typical field hand or domestic servant did. He befriended Captain Philbrook’s crew and asked about work opportunities in Maine for people in his trade.
Accounts differ regarding what happened next. According to Philbrook, Atticus scoped out the Susan for a spot to hide while his enslaver wasn’t looking and stowed away on his own accord. Sagurs and the State of Georgia later insisted Philbrook and Kelleran conspired to smuggle Atticus out of Savannah. The abolitionist preacher Joseph Aspenwall of Augusta, Maine, claimed, in the Advocate of Freedom,that a crew member of the Susan told him Kelleran either actively encouraged or allowed Atticus to hide amid “a crevice between the logs of hard pine timber.”
When the Susan departed for Maine on May 4, 1837, with Atticus aboard, a years-long political war between Georgia and Maine began.
Several days passed before Atticus was discovered on ship. One can only imagine what was said between the crew and the stowaway, but Philbrook and Kelleran decided it was too late to turn back. Instead of fulfilling their obligation under federal law to return Atticus to his enslaver, they continued to East Thomaston (present-day Rockland). James Sagurs and his brother Henry chartered the pilot boat Savannah to follow the Susan in hope of overtaking the schooner and retrieving their property, but they were too late or too slow.
After the Susan sailed into Rockland Harbor on May 9, Kelleran took Atticus to his farm atop Brooklyn Heights in Cushing. Southern newspapers later claimed Kelleran threatened to turn Atticus in to authorities if he didn’t labor for him. A more charitable explanation was that Kelleran allowed the young man to work at his farm for room and board until he figured out his next steps.
In Aspenwall’s version of the story, Kelleran or another local instructed Atticus to follow a path along the shore that would lead him to “New Guinea, (a settlement of colored people) where he would be protected.” Aspenwall was likely referring to Peterborough, a free Black community a few miles down the road in Warren, founded in the early 1780s by Amos Peters, a Revolutionary War veteran of mixed African and Wampanoag decent, and his wife Sarah Peters, a formerly enslaved woman from Guinea who sued for her freedom. It would have been an ideal place for a fugitive slave to hide out.
But Atticus got lost and returned to the Susan for shelter, according to Aspenwall. When the Savannah finally sailed into Rockland Harbor on May 26, James Sagurs went to the law office of Henry C. Lowell, Esq., to get a warrant for Atticus’ arrest under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. According to historian Cyrus Eaton, after “some difficulty and delay,” Sagurs managed to secure the warrant, but the magistrate refused to provide any further assistance.
David N. Piper, a local butcher and constable, was enlisted to assist in the search. Atticus’ slave clothes and tools were found aboard the Susan — proof he’d stowed away and was likely somewhere nearby. A search of Kelleran’s farm turned up nothing, so Piper reportedly returned the warrant, perhaps lacking a “strong desire” to find Atticus, Eaton suggested.
But as soon as the Sagurs offered a reward of $20, the tips rolled in. The identity of the tipster who caused Atticus’ capture remains a mystery to this day. According to South Carolina’s Charleston Courier,it was “believed” that Kelleran left a letter for Saugurs at a store in West Thomaston offering to turn Atticus in for the bounty. Aspenwall insisted Kelleran was the “Judas” who betrayed Atticus for “twenty pieces of silver.”
Other sources say the tip came from two white men who pretended to befriend Atticus and instructed him to hide in a barn on the estate of the late General Henry Knox, then ratted him out for a twenty.
Several residents of Shore Village (also in present-day Rockland) were outraged to hear a so-called “fugitive slave” had been captured with the help of local law enforcement. It was one thing to tolerate the existence of slavery many hundreds of miles away, quite another experience to see its brutality up close. While Atticus was led to the Savannah by Captain David Robinson, the Sagurs and Constable Piper, a crowd gathered to protest. A dispatch in the Charleston Courier characterized the assembly as an angry “mob” that could have become violent had Captain Robinson not subdued them.
“After the negro was placed on board a boat to be conveyed to the Pilot Boat, the mob exhibited further symptoms of violence, throwing stones, and threatening to sink the Pilot Boat, if she lay there until night, and rescue the negro but no further difficulty ensued,” read the account. The enslavers reportedly subjected Atticus to savage acts of cruelty during the voyage back to Savannah, according to the pilot of the boat.
A widely circulated account from the Savannah Daily Republican claimed Sagurs was only able to “recover” his property after making a “narrow escape from the mob” assembled by the “very virtuous kidnappers.” The Courier called the incident an example of the “disposition on the part of the East, to interfere with the rights of the South, which cannot be too loudly censured.” While Southern newspapers tended to exaggerate and sensationalize such incidents, it’s clear a substantial number of people in Rockland were appalled by the spectacle of Atticus’ capture and loudly made their voices heard.
That said, many prominent citizens of Thomaston expressed embarrassment over the way the Sagurs were treated and wrote a public letter condemning the “rudeness” directed at the slave-catchers. The nearly 80 signatories — including local merchants, sea captains and Democratic Congressman Jonathan Cilley — declared their opposition to assisting runaway slaves and dismissed the “excitement” caused by the arrest, suggesting protesters were well-intentioned but didn’t have the “real facts” of the case. Self-professed as “sober, thinking men,” the signatories insisted they “have no desire to embark in a crusade against slavery.”
Granted, the Maine merchants and captains also had strong economic incentives to stay neutral, and as Eileen Kurtis-Kleinman noted in an exploration of the Atticus case, at least one local captain considered trafficking in humans when lime wasn’t fetching high enough prices. “I have some encouragement for a freight of Negroes from Richmond which will pay very well, if I can get enough for them from this place. The New Orleans market is completely glutted with lime…” Captain George Crawford wrote to Thomaston shipping agent Joseph Gillchrest from New Orleans in 1834.
The Sagurs appeared before a magistrate of Chatham County, Georgia, charging that Captain Philbrook and Kelleran had plotted to “feloniously inveigle, steal, take and carry away” Atticus. A grand jury in Georgia indicted the two men and the case dragged on for years, as Georgia demanded Maine extradite the mariners to face punishment. Philbrook and Kelleran maintained their innocence, and three Maine governors — Democrat Robert Dunlap, Whig Edward Kent and Democrat John Fairfield — refused to give them up, citing lack of evidence. (Fairfield’s position later cost him crucial votes for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1844 Democratic National Convention, where he was defeated by Southern delegates still seething over the Atticus case.)
In the Advocate of Freedom, Aspenwall speculated that “Abolitionists would hardly object to [Kelleran’s] being delivered to the tormenters, provided he should be punished for traitorously betraying him to his master, instead of the act of helping away from bondage…”
Thomaston was never again notable for its locals’ anti-slavery sentiment. In 1840, Baptists couldn’t find a public venue in town that would host their anti-slavery convention due to the influence of “gentleman of property and standing.”
Little is known of what happened to Atticus after he was kidnapped and forced back into slavery. He probably wasn’t freed before forces under Gen. William T. Sherman captured Savannah at the end of 1864. By that time, he would have been in his late forties.
According to Maine historian Henry S. Burrage, Captain Eugene W. Cookson, a grandson of Captain Philbrook, encountered Atticus in the 1880s while delivering a load of Maine lumber in Savannah.
“One day an old colored man, boss of a gang of stevedores, said he would like to speak to him,” Burrage wrote in his 1905 history of the Atticus case, “and when the captain told him to proceed, the old man said, ‘I hear you are from Maine. I went there once in a vessel whose master was Captain Daniel Philbrook. I was a slave then.’ When Captain Cookson told the old man that he was Captain Philbrook’s grandson, Atticus, now known by another name, expressed his surprise and delight. The memory of that early incident in his life, which became a matter of interest and consideration in at least three states, had burned itself deep into his thoughts and feelings. In the lapse of years he had not forgotten those who befriended him in his endeavor to escape from bondage, and he found not gratification only, but immeasurable pleasure, in now giving expression to the regard which he felt for his old-time friends on the schooner Susan.”
Andy O’Brien is a writer and communications director for the Maine AFL-CIO. You can reach him at andy@maineworkingclasshistory.com.
