Edward G. Loring

Edward Greely Loring (Boston, MA, January 28, 1802 – Winthrop, MA, June 18, 1890) was a Massachusetts judge much reviled in Massachusetts and the North in the early 1850s for ordering escaped slaves Thomas Sims and Anthony Burns to be returned to slavery under the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Public opposition to these decisions, confirmed by a Bill of Address passed by the state legislature, led in 1857 to Loring being removed from office by Governor Nathaniel Prentice Banks.

A descendant of New England pioneer Thomas Loring, Edward Greely Loring was born in Boston in 1802. He was educated in common schools and at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1821. He studied law afterward, and was admitted to the Suffolk County bar.

Loring was appointed judge of probate for Suffolk County, Massachusetts in 1847. He had also been appointed the United States commissioner of the Circuit Court in Massachusetts in 1841. As commissioner, Loring was responsible for issuing warrants for arrest and ruling in cases under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which was widely opposed in Boston and the North. In 1851 an escaped slave named Thomas Sims was captured in Boston; Loring ordered his return to slavery in the South, as required by the new law. Boston abolitionists were outraged. In 1854 Loring ordered another escaped slave, Anthony Burns, returned to slavery in Virginia. During the prosecution of this case there was an attack on the courthouse in which James Batchelder, a 24-year-old police officer temporarily employed by the U.S. Marshal, was stabbed to death. Widespread protests marked the trial and its aftermath. President Franklin Pierce felt obliged to send U.S. troops to ensure that the ruling be carried out.

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