 Tearing up the free-born andmanumission papers and kidnapping of a free black, in the U.S. free states, to be sold into Southern slavery, from an 1838 abolitionist anti-slaveryalmanac | |
| Date | 1780–1865 |
|---|---|
| Location | Northern United States and Southern United States |
| Participants | Illegal slave trader kidnappers, police, criminals, and captured free blacks |
| Outcome | The selling offree negros, and forced return offugitive slaves into Southern slavery, ended with theUnion victory in theAmerican Civil War and the passing of theU.S. Constitution'sThirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and theFourteenth Amendment giving freed slaves citizenship rights. |
| Deaths | Unknown |
The pre-American Civil War practice ofkidnapping into slavery in the United States occurred in both free and slave states, and bothfugitive slaves andfree negroes were transported to slave markets and sold, often multiple times. There were lucrative rewards given for the return of fugitives. Three types of kidnapping methods were employed: physical abduction, inveiglement (kidnapping through trickery) of free blacks, and apprehension of fugitives.[1][2] The enslavement, or re-enslavement, of free blacks occurred for 85 years, from 1780 to 1865. Kidnapping of black children for resale was a consistent issue throughout the slavery period.
The termReverse Underground Railroad has been retroactively applied to the clandestine network of slave traffickers who abducted free blacks for reward amounts ranging from $400 to $700 (estimated to be $9,000 to $15,000 by 2019 standards).[3][4] Although theUnderground Railroad—the network ofabolitionists and their sympathizers who helped smuggle escaped slaves to freedom, generally to Canada[5] but also toMexico[6]—is far more celebrated and written about, the Reverse Underground Railroad was just as active as its counterpart. Historian Richard Bell writes that the "professional kidnappers left their mark everywhere and spirited into slavery roughly as many African Americans asTubman and her comrades and collaborators ever assisted in escaping from it."[7]
Free African Americans were most frequently kidnapped from theborder states, includingDelaware,Maryland,Kentucky, andMissouri. But kidnapping was also prevalent in states farther north, such asNew York,Pennsylvania, andIllinois, as well as in abolition-minded regions of some Southern states, such asTennessee.
Free blacks in New York City andPhiladelphia were particularly vulnerable to kidnapping. In New York, a gang known as 'theblack-birders' regularly waylaid men, women and children, sometimes with the support and participation of policemen and city officials.[8] In Philadelphia, black newspapers often featured missing children notices, including one for the 14-year-old daughter of the newspaper's editor.[9] Children were particularly susceptible to kidnapping; in a two-year period, at least a hundred children were abducted in Philadelphia alone.[10][11] In 1826, Rhode Island newspaper editors recounted having met slave catchers and an enslaved man at a tavern in western Alabama. After the traders passed out from drinking, the editors interviewed the slave, who had been chained to a post in the tavern. The Rhode Island paper recounted: "He informed us he was a native of the city of New-York, had been employed on board of acollier vessel running between that city and Richmond, Virginia, and that whilst atNorfolk, the master of the vessel, who had become involved a difficulties, by his own dissipation, sold him to a slave dealer, who took him to the interior of Virginia, where he was sold to a planter, in whose service he remained, till after making several attempts to escape from bondage, he was sold to an Alabama trader, to whom, by purchase, he now belonged, and at whose hands he met with the most savage treatment. He farther informed us, that a few days previous, he had absconded, and had nearly reached theOhio River, when he was overtaken; and was then on his way back to the plantation of CONOLL WISTER, where he expected to meet the most savage treatment for his temerity. He was intelligent and interesting; and anxious to discover whether he were free or not, we questioned him relative to the location of the city of New York, its streets, inhabitants, public edifices and climate, and were perfectly satisfied the tale he told was scrupulously true."[12]
From 1811 to 1829,Martha "Patty" Cannon was the leader of a gang that kidnapped slaves and free blacks from theDelmarva Peninsula of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, andChesapeake Bay, and transported and sold them toplantation owners located farther south. She was indicted for fourmurders in 1829 and died in prison while awaiting trial, purportedly as a result of suicide viaarsenicpoisoning.
In 1906, newspapers reported on the death and funeral of a former enslaved woman named Mary Marlow. She had recounted that "when she was a girl, about twelve years old, she was on a fence nearRichmond, Va., seeing aprocession go by in honor of Lafayette, and she was stolen, taken to Georgia by slave traders and became the property of Hon. Francis V. De Launey [of Milledgeville, Georgia]."[13]
John Hart Crenshaw was a largelandowner,salt maker, andslave trader, from the 1820s to the 1850s, based out of the southeastern part of Illinois inGallatin County and a business associate ofKentucky lawman and outlaw,James Ford. Crenshaw and Ford were allegedly kidnapping free blacks in southeasternIllinois and selling them in the slave state of Kentucky. Although Illinois was afree state, Crenshaw leased thesalt works in nearbyEquality, Illinois from theU.S. Government, which permitted the use ofslaves for the arduous labor of hauling and boilingsalt brine water from local salt springs to produce salt. Due to Crenshaw's keeping and "breeding" of slaves and kidnapping of free blacks, who were then pressed into slavery, his house became popularly known asThe Old Slave House.
Other cases of the Reverse Underground Railroad in Illinois occurred in the southwestern and western parts of the state, along the Mississippi River bordering the slave state ofMissouri. In 1860, John and Nancy Curtis were arrested for trying to kidnap their own freed slaves inJohnson County, Illinois to sell back into slavery in Missouri.[14] Free blacks were also kidnapped inJersey County, Illinois and taken away to be sold as slaves in Missouri.[15]
Black sailors who voyaged to southern states faced the threat of kidnapping.South Carolina passed theNegro Seamen Act in 1822 out of fear that free black sailors would inspire slave revolts, requiring that they be incarcerated while their ship was docked. This could lead to black sailors being sold into slavery if their captains did not pay fees resulting from them being jailed, or if their freedom papers were lost.[16]
In the 1820s–1830s,John A. Murrell led an outlaw gang in western Tennessee. He was once caught with a freed slave living on his property. His tactics were to kidnap slaves from their plantations, promise them their freedom, and instead sell them back to other slave owners. If Murrell was in danger of being caught with kidnapped slaves, he would kill the slaves to escape being arrested with stolen property, which was considered a major crime in the Southern United States. In 1834, Murrell was arrested and sentenced to ten years in theTennessee State Penitentiary inNashville for slave-stealing.
In 1839, the governor of South Carolina placed a notice in the newspapers about two seven-year-olds who had been taken from a plantation in the Colleton District by persons unknown; Harry would have been able to tell someone his parents were Prince and Fanny; also the case for Sary, whose parents were Scipio and Diana.[17]
The 1827 newspaperThe African Observer described how several Philadelphia children were lured on board a small sloop, at anchor in the Delaware River, with the promise of peaches, oranges and watermelons, then immediately put into the hold of the ship in chains, where they took a week-long journey by ship. Once landed, they were marched through brushwood, swamp and cornfields to the home ofJoe Johnson and Jesse andPatty Cannon, on the line between Delaware and Maryland, where they were "kept in irons for a considerable amount of time". From there, they were again put on board another vessel for a week or more, where one of the children heard someone talking aboutChesapeake Bay, in Maryland. Once landed, they were marched again for 'many hundred miles' through Alabama until they reachedRocky Springs, Mississippi. The same article described a chain of Reverse Underground Railroad posts "established from Pennsylvania to Louisiana".[18]
In the West, kidnappers rode the waters of the Ohio River, stealing slaves in Kentucky and kidnapping free people in southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, who were then transported to the slave states.[19]
A free Black sailor named Stephen Dickenson wasshanghaied in New Orleans by his ship captain and a slave trader, who eventually sold Dickenson and a number of other kidnapped African-American sailors at the slave market inVicksburg, Mississippi.[20]
Many kidnapped black people were marched to the South on foot. The men were chained together to prevent escape, while the women and children tended to be less restricted.[21]
As early as 1775,Anthony Benezet and others met in Philadelphia and organized the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully held in Bondage to focus on intervention in the cases of blacks and Indians who claimed to have been illegally enslaved. This group was later reorganized as the biracialPennsylvania Abolition Society.[22] The Protecting Society of Philadelphia, an auxiliary of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society,[23] was established in 1827 for "the prevention of kidnapping and man-stealing".[24] In January, 1837, The New YorkVigilance Committee, established because any free black person was at risk for being kidnapped, reported that it had protected 335 persons from slavery.David A. Ruggles, a black newspaper editor and treasurer of the organization, writes in his paper of his futile attempts to convince two New York judges to prevent illegal kidnapping, as well as a daring successful physical rescue of a young girl named Charity Walker from the New York home of her captors.[25]
State and city governments had difficulty in preventing kidnappings, even before theFugitive Slave Act of 1850. ThePennsylvania Abolition Society compared records of apprehended blacks to try to free those who were wrongfully detained, kept a list of missing people who were potential abductees, and formed the Committee on Kidnapping. However, these efforts proved to be expensive, rendering them unable to work effectively due to their lack of sustainability.[26]
Citizens, particularly free black citizens, were active in lobbying local governments to adopt stronger measures against kidnapping. In 1800,Richard Allen andAbsalom Jones sent a petition to Congress from 73 prominent free Black citizens urging a stop to the kidnappings. It was ignored.[27] Due to the lack of effectiveness from government institutions, free blacks were frequently forced to use their own methods to protect themselves and their families. Such methods included keeping proof of their freedom with them at all times and avoiding contact with strangers as well as certain areas. Vigilante groups were also formed to attack kidnappers, including black kidnappers, the latter of whom were universally condemned by the free African-American community.[26]
From Philadelphia, highconstable Samuel Parker Garrigues took several trips toSouthern states at the behest of mayorJoseph Watson to rescue children and adults who had been kidnapped from the city's streets. He also successfully went after their abductors. One such case was Charles Bailey, kidnapped at fourteen in 1825 and finally rescued by Garrigues after a three-year search. Unfortunately, the beaten and emaciated youth died a few days after being brought back to Philadelphia. Garrigues was able to find and arrest Bailey's abductor, Captain John Smith, alias Thomas Collins, head of "The Johnson Gang".[28] He also tracked down and arrested John Purnell of the Patty Cannon gang.[29] Watson publicized the hunt for the kidnappers in several newspapers, offering a $500 reward.[27] On one occasion, a courageous 15 year old Black boy named Sam Scomp spoke out about his kidnapping during his attempted sale to a white southern planter named John Hamilton. The planter himself contacted Mayor Watson to arrange a rescue of the boy and another kidnapped youth.[27]
Slavery in Alabama (1950) recounts two stories illustrating the difficulty of escaping once sold south. In the first, two family members were able to prove they were stolen and legally free in the north, but the Alabama courts simply never addressed the claim, just passing it forward for years.[30] In another case, the buying family had no guilt about owning a legally free person:[30]
Back home in Maryland, Jesse said, he and his family had been free. His father had owned a good home and a small farm on the outskirts of a thrifty village. When Jesse was a stalwart lad of eighteen, he had gone on an errand to the shores of Chesapeake Bay. There slave traders seized him. They carried him to Richmond and sold him on the slave block, paying no attention to his protestations that he was free. He was taken from Richmond to Montgomery and there bought by the Goldthwaites. He had been in that family for fifty years. Jesse had told the Goldthwaites his story, but, although his mistress sympathized with him, neither she nor his master thought there was anything they could do about it—they had bought him in good faith. Rebellion, curbed by stern discipline, had gradually, through the years, given way to despair. Jesse had been, he said, a desperate character until he had come under the influence of Dr. Tichenor. But now that the slaves were free it had occurred to him to try to get in touch again with his family in Maryland. Dr. Tichenor helped him write the letters he suggested, but they were unanswered. Jesse never found again the family from whom he had been stolen.[30]
In 1853,Solomon Northup publishedTwelve Years a Slave, a memoir of his kidnapping from New York and twelve years spent as a slave in Louisiana.[31] His book sold 30,000 copies upon release.[32] His narrative was made into a2013 film, which won threeAcademy Awards.[33]
Abolitionist publications frequently used accounts of people who were kidnapped into slavery for their publications. Notable works that published these accounts include TheAfrican Observer, a monthly publication that used firsthand accounts to demonstrate the evils of slavery, as well asIsaac Hopper's Tales of Oppression, a compilation by the abolitionistIsaac Hopper of kidnapping accounts.[18]
kidnapping.