The Kidnapping of Free Blacks
On July 1, 1852, the Ironton Register reported the kidnapping of an unnamed free black man from Ice Creek in Lawrence County, Ohio. According to the report, "kidnappings take place altogether too frequently in Lawrence county - we understand that some dozen blacks have been kidnapped from the county within a few years..." One of the more infamous incidents was the abduction of seven children and one grandchild of Peyton Polly, which occurred on January 6, 1850, at the head of Little Ice Creek. Kidnapping of a free Black man, in the U.S. free states, to be sold into Southern slavery From an 1834 Boston abolitionist anti-slavery almanac (LOC) Kidnapping was perhaps the greatest fear of free blacks in pre-Civil War America. It was a common occurrence but yet it is seldom talked about. Even Frederick Douglas was, by his own admission, plagued by the thought of losing his freedom at any given moment. In his work "My Bondage and Freedom" he wrote in 1855, "I was...
