Biography
James E. Burr was an abolitionist ministry student at the Mission Institute in Quincy, Illinois. He joined Alanson Work and George Thompson in crossing the Mississippi River on July 13, 1841, to help enslaved Missourians escape to Illinois and onward to Canada. The plan was betrayed, and all three were captured, convicted of larceny or slave abduction, and sentenced to twelve years of hard labor. Burr remained imprisoned for a little more than four and a half years before receiving a pardon in January 1846.
