After his return to bondage in Virginia, Anthony Burns wrote an anguished plea to Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (Attorney Danner) asking for his help in securing his freedom. While abolitionists often resisted the idea of compensated emancipation, the following year, the Rev. Leonard Grimes, an African American Baptist minister and antislavery activist, used two checks totaling $1300 to purchase Burns' freedom. Burns moved to Ohio to study for the ministry at Oberlin College. He died in 1862.