Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home

University of Maryland professor Bell (We Shall Be No More) uncovers the history of the Reverse Underground Railroad in this moving account of five African-American boys kidnapped from Philadelphia and sold into slavery in 1825. According to Bell, “child snatching was frequent, pernicious, and politically significant” in the decades after Congress banned slave imports from Africa and the Caribbean in 1808. After being kidnapped, the boys were forced to make a 1,000-mile trek to the slave markets of Natchez, Miss. Along the way, 10-year-old Cornelius Sinclair was sold to an Alabama cotton planter, and the kidnappers beat another boy to death. In Rocky Springs, Miss., 15-year-old Sam Scomp convinced a plantation owner that he and the others had been abducted, setting into motion a series of legal battles that, Bell argues, culminated in the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which “put the country on a collision course with civil war.” Drawing from a wealth of archival materials, Bell paints a harrowing picture of this human trafficking network and the “tens of thousands of free black people” it ensnared. The result is a scholarly work that tells a powerful human interest story. (Oct.)