Reverse Underground Railroad

The Reverse Underground Railroad is the name retroactively given to a clandestine network of slave traders and human traffickers who operated in the United States prior to the American Civil War (1861–1865). Individuals and members of criminal networks would target and abduct free Black individuals living in northern states and smuggle them to southern states where slavery remained legal. There, the abducted individuals would be sold into slavery. Most were never able to contact or reunite with their loved ones again. The network’s name is a disdainful play on the well-known Underground Railroad, a similarly secret system that operated in the southern states to help enslaved people escape to freedom in northern destinations.

Experts who study the social and political dynamics of the United States in the pre-Civil War era are not sure how many people were trafficked from northern states to southern states through the Reverse Underground Railroad. However, consensus estimates place the number in the tens of thousands.

Background

Slavery was institutionalized throughout much of the United States during the country’s colonial and pre-independence periods. Following independence, the union’s northern states gradually phased out slavery during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, southern states continued to follow the practice due to its vital positive impact on their economies. These dynamics led to the formation of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of people who assisted escaped and runaway slaves seeking to reach freedom in the northern states, where slavery was banned. It also led to the reverse practice of capturing free Black individuals in northern states and selling them into slavery in the southern states for profit, which was mainly perpetrated by white criminals acting independently or as part of organized criminal syndicates.

In 1800, an act of Congress made it illegal for American citizens to participate in the international slave trade. Seven years later, Congress passed the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves; it went into effect on January 1, 1808, and made it illegal for slaves not born in the United States to be sold to US-based owners. This additional legislation disrupted the economies of multiple southern states, which hosted industries that were heavily dependent upon forced labor. No longer able to import inexpensive slave labor from common source locations such as Africa and the Caribbean, slave-owning southern industrialists were forced to purchase native-born slaves. Given the relatively short supply of individuals meeting these parameters, the cost of purchasing slave labor on the southern region’s shrinking network of legal markets soared.

Experts who study the Reverse Underground Railroad state that the practice of abducting free Black individuals from northern states and selling them into slavery in the southern states became widespread after the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves became federal law. However, scholars also note a lack of documented information about the Reverse Underground Railroad relative to the better-known Underground Railroad. Many of the surviving historical accounts of the Reverse Underground Railroad come from indirect sources and individual stories and anecdotes told by impacted individuals.

Overview

Historians and scholars have primarily developed their knowledge of the Reverse Underground Railroad from sources such as firsthand accounts, letters, newspaper articles, and court records. Information preserved in these documents have helped experts map out a general understanding of how the Reverse Underground Railroad worked.

These sources reveal a common approach used by individuals as well as organized criminal networks. Street-level operatives would observe localized populations of free Black people living in northern states, mainly in urban areas. They would then identify vulnerable targets, such as children and those who lived alone. The human traffickers who carried out abductions showed a strong preference for Black street youth, who usually circulated in public without any legal guardian or adult supervision. Experts who have studied the Reverse Underground Railroad note that the phenomenon occurred throughout the free northern states. However, they also note that such activity was particularly prevalent in Philadelphia, which was the major northern city in closest proximity to the southern states where slavery remained legal prior to the Civil War.

In the mid-1820s, authorities discovered an organized kidnapping ring operating in Philadelphia. Its leader, a human trafficker and slave trader named Joseph Johnson, enlisted relatives and accomplices of mixed Black and European ancestry to target Black children and adolescents between the ages of eight and fifteen. Johnson’s operatives would approach their targets under the pretense of offering them paid work, then persuade them to board a waiting ship which would supposedly bring them to their new place of employment. The ship would instead sail to southern slave states, where the abducted youngsters were sold into slavery.

Johnson operated the Philadelphia ring as part of the notorious Cannon-Johnson Gang, which was co-led by Johnson and his mother-in-law, Patty Cannon. The Cannon-Johnson Gang operated in multiple states from its base along the Maryland-Delaware border, and was one of the major criminal organizations profiting from the Reverse Underground Railroad. It flourished during the early part of the nineteenth century, with historians estimating that the gang abducted hundreds of Black people from northern states to sell as slaves to illicit buyers in southern states.

Every aspect of the Reverse Underground Railroad, from the methods perpetrators used to ensnare Black people in its network to the sale of abducted individuals to off-market buyers, was illegal under US law. However, the Reverse Underground Railroad thrived due to a combination of police indifference, bribery and corruption, and weak legal protections for the rights of free Black individuals, even in northern states. Though historians believe that criminal activity on the Reverse Underground Railroad peaked during the early part of the nineteenth century, they also note that similar practices remained active until slavery was outlawed by the official ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.

Bibliography

Bell, Richard. “You Know About the Underground Railroad. But What About the Reverse Underground Railroad?” Washington Post, 7 Nov. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/07/you-know-about-underground-railroad-what-about-reverse-underground-railroad/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

Hylton, J. Gordon. “Before There Were ‘Red’ States and ‘Blue’ States, There Were ‘Free’ States and ‘Slave’ States.” Marquette University Law School, 20 Dec. 2012, law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2012/12/before-there-were-red-and-blue-states-there-were-free-states-and-slave-states/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

“Landmark Legislation: Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.” United States Senate, 2022, www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/CivilWarAmendments.htm. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

Lindberg, Linda. “The Reverse Underground Railroad.” AARP, 3 May 2021, states.aarp.org/virginia/the-reverse-underground-railroad. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

Rodriguez, Junius P. Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-Clio, 2007.

“The Cannon-Johnson Kidnapping Gang.” Delaware Public Archives, archives.delaware.gov/historical-markers-map/the-cannon-johnson-kidnapping-gang/ Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

Waggoner, Cassandra. “The Underground Railroad.” Blackpast.org, 3 Dec. 2007, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/underground-railroad-1820-1861/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.

Wilson, Carol. Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780–1865. University Press of Kentucky, 2021.