Slave to Freewoman and Back Again: Kitty Payne and Antebellum Kidnapping

Abstract

In 1843, an African-American woman known as Kitty Payne and her three children arrived in Adams County, Pennsylvania, newly manumitted by their mistress, Mary Maddox of Virginia. Two years later, in July of 1845, a gang of men burst into the Paynes’ home and kidnapped the family, dragging them back south to slavery.

The story of Kitty Payne and her children echoed and replayed itself thousands of times in the years before the end of the Civil War. Between 1620 and 1860, a race-based system of slavery developed in America. Not all persons of African descent came to America as slaves, however, and slaves sometimes obtained freedom through manumission or escape. This created opportunities for corrupt individuals to kidnap free black Americans and sell them as slaves, regardless of their previous status. The abduction of free blacks into slavery is an extremely significant and far-reaching part of the antebellum African-American experience that many historians have previously overlooked.