Kidnapping into Slavery in the United States

From 1780 to 1865, a widespread and organized practice of kidnapping free Black people and fugitive slaves for sale into slavery operated across both free and slave states in the United States. Historians have retroactively termed this trafficking network the "Reverse Underground Railroad," a counterpart to the abolitionist Underground Railroad. Kidnappers used three main methods: physical abduction, "inveiglement" (trickery, especially targeting children), and apprehension of fugitive slaves for reward. Rewards for returned fugitives ranged from roughly $400 to $700, equivalent to an estimated $9,000 to $15,000 in 2019 terms. According to historian Richard Bell, professional kidnappers forced into slavery roughly as many African Americans as the Underground Railroad ever helped escape.

Free Black people were most vulnerable in border states such as Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, but kidnapping also occurred frequently in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and parts of Tennessee. In New York City, a gang known as "the black-birders" abducted men, women, and children, sometimes with the cooperation of police and city officials. In Philadelphia, missing-children notices for kidnapped Black youths were common in Black newspapers, and at least a hundred children were reported abducted in the city over a two-year period. Children were considered especially susceptible to trickery-based kidnapping.

Notable documented kidnapping operations include the gang led by Martha "Patty" Cannon, who operated on the Delmarva Peninsula from 1811 to 1829 before being indicted for four murders and dying in prison in 1829, reportedly by suicide. In Illinois, John Hart Crenshaw ran a salt operation in Gallatin County using enslaved labor and was linked to kidnapping free Black people for sale into Kentucky; his home became known as "The Old Slave House." In Tennessee, outlaw John A. Murrell led a gang that kidnapped enslaved people from plantations under false promises of freedom, later reselling them; he was convicted of slave-stealing in 1834 and sentenced to ten years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary.

Efforts to prevent and reverse kidnappings included the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, founded in Philadelphia in 1775, later reorganized as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and the New York Vigilance Committee, which reported protecting 335 people from enslavement by January 1837. Philadelphia high constable Samuel Parker Garrigues traveled to Southern states to rescue kidnapped children and adults, including Charles Bailey, who was recovered after a three-year search but died shortly after returning to Philadelphia; Garrigues also arrested Bailey's abductor and a member of the Patty Cannon gang. Free Black citizens petitioned Congress in 1800 to intervene against kidnappings, though the petition was ignored.

The best-known account of this practice is Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir "Twelve Years a Slave," describing his 1841 kidnapping from New York and subsequent enslavement in Louisiana; the book was adapted into a 2013 film that won three Academy Awards. Other documented victims include Cornelius Sinclair and the sons of Jude Hall.