Kidnapping Club

Prologue: Summer 1832: Norfolk, Virginia -- The battle engaged -- The birth of the Kidnapping Club and the rebirth of Manhattan -- New York divided -- New York, a port in the slave trade -- Policing and criminalizing the Black community -- Economic panic -- No end in sight -- New York and the transatlantic slave trade -- "Blessed be cotton!": the fugitive slave law and New York City -- The Portuguese Company -- New York and secession -- Civil war -- Epilogue: The hidden past and reparations due. "Although slavery was outlawed in the northern states in 1827, the illegal slave trade continued in the one place modern readers would least expect, the streets and ports of America's great northern metropolis: New York City. In 'The Kidnapping Club,' historian Jonathan Daniel Wells takes readers to a rapidly changing city rife with contradiction, where social hierarchy clashed with a rising middle class, Black citizens jostled for an equal voice in politics and culture, and women of all races eagerly sought roles outside the home. It is during this time that the city witnessed an alarming trend: a number of free and fugitive Black men, women, and children were being kidnapped into slavery.