The Reverse Underground Railroad

Richard Bell Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2019).

Richard Bell’s new book is a beautifully crafted narrative tracing the story of five young boys - free African Americans from Philadelphia - who were kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 1820s. Bell follows their harrowing experiences in the slave South and their improbable and, as Bell describes, astonishing return to freedom.

Most of us are familiar with the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who conmen kidnapped in Washington City in the 1840s and sold into slavery. Northup toiled on a Louisiana plantation for twelve years before finally securing his freedom. In 1853 he authored his memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, detailing his experiences, the cruelty of the institution, and the near hopelessness of enslaved black people...while at the same time underscoring their humanity. In 2013, director Steve McQueen released an acclaimed film adaptation, 12 Years a Slave - and that’s how many folks understand the kidnapping con that took place in antebellum America. Bell tells us that the Northup story is more the exception than the rule.

Early 19th century Philadelphia - the Arch Street ferry (pg. 12)

Usually - the victims of such kidnappings were impressionable children - easily duped with scarcely the ability to fight back against adults. In Stolen, for example, conmen lured the five boys to a Philadelphia dock with the promise of compensated work. There, operatives of a nefarious kidnapping ring held the young victims captive before shipping them south into slavery. And thus the reader follows along the Reverse Underground Railroad - discovering secret locations, shady characters, and dubious sales involving fabricated claims of ownership.

The story is as gripping as any historical novel as the boys find themselves in a rather remarkable situation. After surviving the nightmarish ordeal of a slave coffle, they were essentially “rescued” from the kidnapping ring by those who had the biggest stake in the institution: Alabama slaveholders. Yes, after questioning the legitimacy of the kidnappers - slavers took possession of the boys and ultimately, after a suspenseful effort to establish identity, would be involved in the boys’ release.

If you are wondering why slavers would take such an interest, then you are not alone. I too found it surprising. But as Bell describes it, the interested slaveholding parties needed to maintain a legitimacy in the system - they could not break the rules, so to speak. They had to maintain law and order, lest growing anti-slavery forces in Philadelphia could prove that all involved in maintaining the legal institution were somehow complicit in the theft of life, as it were. “Southerners had begun to fret that [personal liberty] laws might one day eviscerate interstate comity…and criminalize slave catching in Pennsylvania…southerners would have to work harder to placate their neighbors in the North. If southerners could restore kidnapping victims…perhaps northerners might see such acts as gestures of good faith (178-179).

But here’s an interesting point: of course all slaves were kidnapped - in the sense that slavers had stolen their freedom. So to me the so-called “legality” of the institution is just a technicality. Freedom denied equalled lives stolen. Full stop.

Bell acknowledges this. The fifteen states where slavery was legal, noted abolitionist Henry Wright in 1855, was a “Confederacy of Kidnappers….there are 400,000…kidnapped men, women, and children still under the American lash. Who will help redeem them, and pay for their sufferings? (220). By mid-century, justification for “legal” extraction of blacks from free states had run amok as a result of the more robust Fugitive Slave Act - a component of the Compromise of 1850. But much of this later “slave catching” went unchallenged as by this time, Bell laments, many Americans were giving less attention to the kidnapping issue.

Abduction notice pg. 8

One thing that might strike the reader as a curiosity: Bell often speculates about what was taking place off stage or supposes what the actors in this very real drama were thinking. In the introduction, he notes “the tale told here has holes, and I hope readers will notice those moments when I have taken the liberty to speculate because the paper trail has run dry” (8). Normally, I would question the wisdom of this approach. Speculation and history seldom mix well. But in Stolen it works…the writing style adds life and humanity to a story about the human experience in bondage. It also renders the book immensely readable, and thus accessible to the public. Those of you who read my work and listen to my podcast will most certainly understand exactly how important I think it is for academic historians to reach a broader audience. Now more than ever perhaps.

Finally, I would like to echo Bell’s touching tribute to historian Ira Berlin, one of his colleagues at the University of Maryland. Dr. Berlin passed in 2018 and thus did not live to see this volume through to publication. Though I never had the pleasure of meeting him, I understand that Dr. Berlin was a kind, gracious, and encouraging man. His work on the history of slavery was, of course, monumental. We all owe him a debt of gratitude.

Please pick up a copy of Stolen and let me know what you think in a comment below - or on Twitter and Instagram.

With compliments,

Keith