I haven’t read the book, but the movie didn’t show what efforts his family made to save him.
I would have decided not to include that in a movie; it could have lessened the sense of isolation and hopelessness.
He was eventually rescued by friends - white, btw; not all were slavery supporters or even racists, even in the South. Meanwhile, they had no information to go on, no resources to work with, and could expect little help from the authorities. What do you think they *could *have done?
Even the legal authorities who would be inclined to help had no information to go on, either.
All that is true enough. There was no FBI in those days, no real communications network, so even if there WERE police who wanted to find him, it would have been extremely difficult.
Northup was a traveling musician, so his family was probably used to him being away on various gigs for long periods. I still have to ask- what did THEY think had happened? Did they fear he’d been kidnapped or killed? Did they think he’d just abandoned them? Did they TRY to find out where he was and hit a dead end? Did they call on the police and get a cold brush-off?
To ask such questions is not to place any blame on Northup or his family.
Yup, it was real. How common? Tough to say. Most of the comments here seem to stem from today’s society. That is to say, the comments are without understanding of the times in which slavery occurred here in the US. The many differences in the slavery society, just as there are differences of thoughts in today’s society.
I have not seen the movie. I’d suggest accepting it as entertainment only. If it should motivate questions like this … good. It’s a start. I’m no expert on the subject, but my interest was created long ago (6 years old) as a neighbor, friend, classmate’s family owned a well known Underground Railroad house on the US side of the Niagara River … a well known passage to Canada.
How to catch a runaway slave? The question was pondered by slave owning societies and actions/laws were a result. Ex: an uneducated slave has left. The slave has to gather info on where to go to change societies or be recaptured. Question for today’s society: how often did the likely-to-runaway slaves meet with free neighbors (for IDing purposes)? Or, was a main method for IDing runaway slaves an effect of, “never seen 'em before & heard a slave ran away recently”? The hunters had the system stacked in their favor. Info (best being wrong info) on where to escape. In other words, getting more than a few miles away would be quite difficult, even with help.
How easy was it to be a slave hunter? I don’t know. Was it similar to bounty hunting? That is to say, catch a fugitive and bring them to the nearest law authorities? IDK. Today’s society depicts it as capture and return to owner, a much different act. Also, depicts as reward given by owner rather than Fed, State sources of bounty hunting.
To research such a topic thoroughly would be a monumental task. In the end, what would the gains be? Legal slavery isn’t likely to return to the US for a very long time, hopefully never. But, the topic of the movie might just remind us of the original definition of slavery. That is to say, some in today’s society wish to change it’s definition. Slavery is a state of being without options. Today, we all have options. Some more so than others.
Prisons are not slavery. To say so is to admit to not knowing what legal slavery was.
Is there illegal slavery today in the US? Likely, but legal systems are in place to aid anyone in such distress.
As regards the family looking -
where would you even start?
You’d have to try to put it into context of the times.
Once he was gone, the family wouldn’t even know where to start looking. It’s already been noted that communications are basically limited to the speed of a horse - even if you wanted to, how would you distribute a “missing person” report?
Every small town would need one - and that’s even assuming that Simon ever got to leave the plantation.
It’s too easy to view it through today’s eyes without thinking about what it was like - remember that to even write a letter, he had to steal paper and make his own ink, he couldn’t buy a stamp.
What prospect did he have of ever contacting anybody? And remember (as depicted in the movie) - Simon was a highly intelligent, educated and resourceful person with much life experiences - what more of someone that was poorly or uneducated?
You’ve misstated my intent.
I’m not claiming that these abductions were “rare to non-existent”. I’m not claiming to know how common these abductions were.
What I’m claiming is that the evidence offered in this thread that such incidents were common has been “rare to non-existent”, and the various rationales offered to support this notion have been very weak IMO.
So that leaves all possibilities. Possibly it was every bit as common as people are claiming. Possibly it was very rare, similar to kidnappings nowadays. Possibly it was somewhere in between. I make no claims in this regard.
How about the black press at the times of kidnappings.
What strikes us as strange is that you claim not to know enough or care enough about this topic to do even the slightest bit of research. Yet you keep chiming in on the thread. It took me less than one minute to find the link above.
Well, the people who were there at the time felt that it happened enough to spark a war that killed more Americans than any other war. As cited above, and as stated widely in historical accounts, the North’s anger at the South’s trying to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act(s) and the South’s fury at the feeling that the north was thwarting the enforcement of the act were major factors in the schism that led to Secession.
So other than the claims of the people who were there at the time, on all three sides (North/South/Slave), and historians since, all we have to go on are the doubts of someone who admits to not caring enough make any effort.
How will we manage to discern which position is correct?
Well if you are unable to figure out the difference between enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act and kidnapping free blacks, it’s not surprising that you would have a hard time discerning which position is correct.
What are you showing from that link?
From looking around a bit, it looks like it wasn’t particularly uncommon. This probably sums it up, from what I’ve seen.
I don’t think anyone here has claimed definitive knowledge of the frequency of such kidnappings: most appear to have acknowledged that statistics, if they exist at all, are not readily available via on-line sources. Are you saying that you object to any post in response to the OP’s question unless it includes some sort of authoritative statstic?
I hope we can agree (if you read post 32) that Northup was indeed abducted and that the circumstances of Northup’s abduction could easily be replicated under the conditions prevailing in the 1840s. I don’t claim to know how common these types of abductions were either, but it would be ludicrous for even the most unknowledgeable person to claim that Northup’s case was the sole example of its type, would it not?
Sorry to have misstated your intent, btw. I think most people would say it wasn’t very clear (and still isn’t, to me). Just sayin’.
But that happens to have been the question in the OP. The question was: “How common was this?”
Sometimes the best answer to a question of this sort is: “we don’t/can’t know”.
You don’t necessarily need numbers specifically. A rough comparison to other types of crimes might be informative, for example.
Of course.
But there are a lot of crimes committed today. Let’s take murder, kidnapping, rape, for examples. Suppose someone asks, about any of these, “how common is this?” Do you think a valid and informative answer to this question is to point to a specific instance of this happening and then say “well we know it happened at least this once and it could have happened in similar circumstances a lot of other times”?
I’m not sure exactly which part you want a cite for, JM. Is it for the totality of his explanation, or for some specific part?
One issue here, it seems to me, is that citing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 doesn’t really answer the OP’s question about how common kidnapping and enslavement were. That is, the presence of a law legalizing the capture and return of runaway slaves doesn’t really tell us how many slaves were kidnapped and dragged off to slavery without even resorting to the law, and nor does it tell us how many of the slaves returned to the South under the Fugitive Slave Acts were actually runaway slaves, and how many were free blacks kidnapped into slavery through the use of this particular legal mechanism.
Little Nemo’s general claims about the Fugitive Slave Act are pretty much on the money. The Act itself can be found here, and davidw quoted from Section 6 in his post, above. The law did, in fact, allow someone to take an alleged fugitive into custody, and also required citizens to assist when required. As Eric Foner, a noted historian of slavery and Reconstruction, says in his college-level textbook:
One aspect of Little Nemo’s description that i do not believe is correct is his claim that “The slave hunter then transported the accused person down to a court in a southern state where there was a hearing to determine if they actually were a runaway.” In fact, one of the most controversial aspects of the Fugitive Slave Act was that such hearings were generally held in the place where the alleged runaway was captured, and the officials overseeing the proceedings were federal officials. For example, in the famous cases of Thomas Sims and Anthony Burns, which caused considerable unrest over the Fugitive slave Act in Boston in 1851 and 1854 respectively, the hearings that determined the issue were held in Massachusetts, not in the states from which Sims and Burns had allegedly fled.
As Foner notes, the antebellum South’s assertions of states’ rights and the tyranny of federal government imposition ring pretty hollow when you consider that it was the Southern states that pushed so hard for the federal government to get involved in the return of runaway slaves, even when Northern states like Massachusetts had laws on the books prohibiting citizens and lawmen from assisting in the capture and return of runways.
It was also true, as Section 8 of the law suggests, that the magistrates who determined the fate of the alleged runaways were, in fact, paid twice as much for making a determination in favor of the claimant than they were for making a determination that allowed the alleged runaway to go free. The fee, payable by the claimant, was ten dollars for successful claims, and five dollars for unsuccessful claims. Frederick Douglass spoke out against the law, and described this disparity in payment requirements as a form of bribery, in his famous 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”:
Of course, none of this really answers the question of exactly how many blacks were kidnapped into slavery in the way that Solomon Northup was. If Northup hadn’t been freed, as a couple of people have already pointed out, we probably wouldn’t know anything about him or his story. Both before and after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, kidnapping free blacks and sending them south to slavery was illegal, so it stands to reason that the people who participated in such activities probably didn’t leave many records for posterity.
But as a start, perhaps someone could come up with the the total number of individuals who were repatriated into slavery based on the FSA. Then the next step would be coming up with an estimate as to what percentage were originally free.
Of course, you would also have to add in some number whose kidnappers were not relying on the FSA. But it would be a start.
I am showing that it was widely reported by the people who cared about the issue; the people that it affected.
For someone who claims that he doesn’t care you sure are asking about it a lot. Why should we do your research for you if you don’t care? This is not a debate thread but you are turning it into one. Why don’t you go and post a thread in Great Debates if you are having issues with the cites?
Nice one! My mistake might have been saying “it” instead of “Well, the people who were there at the time felt that kidnapping free blacks under the aegis of the Fugitive Slave Act happened enough to spark a war that killed more Americans than any other war.” I trying to show that it wasn’t regarded as rare at the time.
I’m not sure any source exists that would satisfy your insistence on unimpeachable hard numbers.
Being kidnapped and sold into slavery was a pretty severe issue and one which would be widely reported on by the people it affected, regardless of how common it was.
You don’t need to do anything for me.
However if you are going to post answers in GQ that have little in the way of sources to back them up, you run the risk that someone like me might come along and point that out.
Of course, the problem with that would be that there’s no actual evidence that “the people who were there at the time felt that kidnapping free blacks under the aegis of the Fugitive Slave Act happened enough to spark a war that killed more Americans than any other war.” (Which might be the reason you didn’t try this version the first time.)