Abolitionists vs. The New York Kidnapping Club

Guest: Jonathan Daniel Wells, Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, and author of "The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War" The Fugitive Slave Clause required states to return escaped enslaved people to their Southern enslavers. Nefarious groups like the New York "Kidnapping Club" capitalized on this clause and terrorized Black communities by kidnapping free Black children and selling them to plantations in the South.