Tony will not rise

What happened

Tony had run from Symon Overzee's plantation at St. John's, Maryland, twice already, and twice been brought back, once with bloodhounds. On 20 September 1656 he was ordered into the field, and he sat down on the ground and would not stir. Overzee, a Dutch merchant and planter, beat him with pear-tree twigs, and the overseer complained that he could not make Tony do anything. Nothing moved him. That afternoon Overzee had him tied by the wrists to a ladder, poured melted lard over him and left him in the open, and the court record says "the sd Toney wth in three howres dyed." The Provincial Court took depositions, and in December 1658 a jury returned "Ignoramus," no case to answer, so Overzee walked free; Rothbard says the court held that Tony had proved incorrigible. Rothbard writes that Tony "had the distinction of staging perhaps the first demonstration of nonviolent resistance in America," and that Overzee, "enraged because 'his property' was refusing to function as property," killed him (CiL, p. 110). A man who owned nothing, not even himself, kept the one thing he could refuse them, his labor, and he refused it to the end.