Reviewed by:

• The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War by Jonathan Daniel Wells
• Frank Towers (bio)

In recent years, historians have produced a wave of studies on the kidnapping and reenslavement of African Americans before the Civil War. Richard Bell, Erica Dunbar, Caleb McDaniel, Adam Rothman, and Joshua Rothman among others have shed light on the cruelty, pervasiveness, and legal complexity of kidnapping. They have also told stories of heroic resistance against the depraved pursuit of profit through stealing Northern Blacks from their homes to sell them in Southern slave markets. Adding to this scholarship, Jonathan Wells’s gripping history of kidnapping in 1830s New York exposes the proslavery underbelly of America’s largest city.

At its core, The Kidnapping Club is a story of the battle for freedom in the ante-bellum North, a section that despite its ban on slavery denied African Americans basic civil liberties. Led by “the indomitable” Black activist David Ruggles, Black New Yorkers waged a long struggle against kidnappers and their powerful allies in local government. Wells argues that white New York’s complicity in kidnapping went beyond a few corrupt cops and judges. Wall Street financiers facilitated kidnapping to appease Southern slave owners, whose cotton comprised one of the most valuable commodities traded through New York. Because of this obeisance to the South, “it sometimes seemed that the entire city, knowing that its richness and supremacy depended on Southern slavery, was more interested in reassuring slaveholders than in protecting the basic human rights of its Black residents” (5).

The Kidnapping Club begins by backgrounding the growth of New York as a gathering place for African Americans as well as the center of American finance and commerce, which drew much of its capital from trading slave-produced cotton. Black New Yorkers lived under a system of “strict racial segregation” that affected “nearly every aspect” of their lives (27). To thrive in a city that tried to [End Page 106] suppress them, they built their own businesses and institutions such as schools, churches, orphanages, and newspapers such as Freedom’s Journal, which exposed racial injustices.

Preying on this growing community was a ring of kidnappers whose key players included police marshal and notorious Democratic Party brawler Isaiah Rynders, who worked with Southern slave traders to identify suspected fugitives; police officers Tobias Boudinot and Daniel Nash, who arrested suspected freedom seekers from the South; and City Recorder Richard Riker, who routinely ruled in favor of slave catchers in cases of alleged fugitives. These officials abused their authority by condemning Black defendants to enslavement despite compelling evidence to the contrary brought by Ruggles and his allies. The kidnappers had close ties to Tammany Hall—the informal name for the city’s branch of the Democratic Party—which relied on patronage from Wall Street businessmen to fund its campaigns. Helping Southern slave traders not only earned these men cash bribes and bounties, it also “cemented the economic relationship between cotton growers and Manhattan brokers” (45).

To combat these powerful foes, Ruggles worked with other abolitionists to organize the New York Committee of Vigilance in 1835. The committee spread word when slave catchers were in town, gave sanctuary for freedom seekers, provided legal defense for accused fugitives, and waged a public pressure campaign against the kidnappers. Leading these efforts, Ruggles routinely risked his personal safety to confront police and rescue victims. This outspoken leadership made Ruggles a target of the kidnappers who physically assaulted him and tried to frame him for a crime. Meanwhile, Ruggles’s combativeness made him enemies within the Committee of Vigilance. Losing his eyesight and exhausted by fighting friends as well as foes, Ruggles left New York in 1841.

Around this time, the kidnapping club went into decline. An 1840 law requiring jury trials in fugitive cases took away corrupt judges’ power to convict. Two years later, Riker died and Boudinot declared bankruptcy. Instead of ending the story at this point, Wells moves to the...

审核人：

• 乔纳森·丹尼尔·威尔斯(The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Civil War )
• 弗兰克塔（生物）

近年来，历史学家掀起了一股研究内战前非裔美国人被绑架和重新奴役的热潮。Richard Bell、Erica Dunbar、Caleb McDaniel、Adam Rothman 和 Joshua Rothman 等人阐明了绑架的残忍、普遍性和法律复杂性。他们还讲述了英勇抵抗通过从家中偷走北方黑人并将其出售到南方奴隶市场的堕落追求利润的故事。除了这项奖学金之外，乔纳森·威尔斯 (Jonathan Wells) 在 1830 年代纽约的扣人心弦的绑架历史也揭露了美国最大城市支持奴隶制的阴暗面。

其核心是绑架俱乐部是一个关于战前北方为自由而战的故事，该部分尽管禁止奴隶制，但剥夺了非裔美国人的基本公民自由。在“不屈不挠”的黑人活动家大卫·拉格斯的领导下，纽约黑人与绑架者及其在地方政府中的强大盟友进行了长期斗争。威尔斯争辩说，纽约白人参与绑架的不仅仅是一些腐败的警察和法官。华尔街金融家协助绑架以安抚南方奴隶主，他们的棉花是通过纽约交易的最有价值的商品之一。由于这种对南方的崇拜，“有时似乎整个城市都知道其富裕和至高无上的地位取决于南方的奴隶制，因此比保护黑人居民的基本人权更感兴趣的是安抚奴隶主”(5)。

绑架俱乐部首先将纽约作为非洲裔美国人的聚集地以及美国金融和商业中心的发展作为背景，纽约从交易奴隶生产的棉花中吸取了大量资金。黑人纽约人生活在“严格的种族隔离”制度下，这种制度影响了他们生活的“几乎每一个方面”(27)。为了在一个试图[结束第 106 页]压制他们的城市中茁壮成长，他们建立了自己的企业和机构，例如学校、教堂、孤儿院，以及诸如Freedom's Journal 之类的报纸，这些报纸揭露了种族不公正现象。

劫持这个不断壮大的社区的是一伙绑架者，他们的主要成员包括警察局长和臭名昭著的民主党斗殴者以赛亚·雷恩德斯，他与南方奴隶贩子合作查明涉嫌逃犯；警察 Tobias Boudinot 和 Daniel Nash，他们逮捕了疑似来自南方的寻求自由者；和城市记录员理查德·里克 (Richard Riker)，在涉嫌逃犯的案件中，他通常会做出有利于奴隶捕手的裁决。尽管拉格尔斯及其盟友提出了令人信服的相反证据，但这些官员仍滥用职权，将黑人被告判为奴役。绑架者与坦慕尼协会关系密切——坦慕尼协会是该市民主党分支机构的非正式名称——后者依靠华尔街商人的赞助为其竞选活动提供资金。

为了打击这些强大的敌人，Ruggles 与其他废奴主义者于 1835 年成立了纽约警戒委员会。该委员会在镇上有奴隶捕手时传播信息，为寻求自由的人提供庇护所，为被指控的逃犯提供法律辩护，并发动公众对绑架者施压。领导这些努力，拉格尔斯经常冒着人身安全的风险与警察对峙并营救受害者。这种直言不讳的领导使 Ruggles 成为绑架者的目标，他们对他进行人身攻击并试图陷害他犯罪。与此同时，拉格尔斯的好斗使他在警戒委员会内部树敌。1841 年，拉格尔斯因与朋友和敌人的战斗而失去视力和精疲力竭，他离开了纽约。

大约在这个时候，绑架俱乐部开始衰落。1840 年的一项法律要求对逃犯案件进行陪审团审判，剥夺了腐败法官定罪的权力。两年后，Riker 去世，Boudinot 宣告破产。威尔斯并没有在此时结束故事，而是转向了……