Kidnapping into slavery in the United States

Kidnapping into slavery in the United States
Tearing up the free-born and manumission papers and kidnapping of a free black, in the U.S. free states, to be sold into Southern slavery, from an 1838 abolitionist anti-slavery almanac
Date	1780–1865
Location	Northern United States and Southern United States
Participants	Illegal slave trader kidnappers, police, criminals, and captured free blacks
Outcome	The selling of free negros, and forced return of fugitive slaves into Southern slavery, ended with the Union victory in the American Civil War and the passing of the U.S. Constitution's Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment giving freed slaves citizenship rights.
Deaths	Unknown

Forced labour and slavery
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The pre-American Civil War practice of kidnapping into slavery in the United States occurred in both free and slave states, and both fugitive slaves and free negroes were transported to slave markets and sold, often multiple times. There were lucrative rewards given for the return of fugitives. Three types of kidnapping methods were employed: physical abduction, inveiglement (kidnapping through trickery) of free blacks, and apprehension of fugitives. The enslavement, or re-enslavement, of free blacks occurred for 85 years, from 1780 to 1865. Kidnapping of black children for resale was a consistent issue throughout the slavery period.

The term Reverse Underground Railroad has been retroactively applied to the clandestine network of slave traffickers who abducted free blacks for reward amounts ranging from $400 to $700 (estimated to be $9,000 to $15,000 by 2019 standards). Although the Underground Railroad—the network of abolitionists and their sympathizers who helped smuggle escaped slaves to freedom, generally to Canada but also to Mexico—is far more celebrated and written about, the Reverse Underground Railroad was just as active as its counterpart. Historian Richard Bell writes that the "professional kidnappers left their mark everywhere and spirited into slavery roughly as many African Americans as Tubman and her comrades and collaborators ever assisted in escaping from it."