On a Saturday in March 1834, seven-year-old Henry Scott sat at his desk in the African Free School on Duane Street in Manhattan, practicing his letters as his teacher Mrs. Miller watched. African Free School Number 5 had just opened in 1832 under the direction of African American teacher Jane Parker, and like the other Black schools Number 5 had been absorbed into the public school system. Abruptly the classroom door opened and in walked two men Henry had never seen before. One was a well-dressed southerner, the other a New York sheriff, and they had come for Henry.
Richmond industrialist Richard Haxall had built a fortune in the 1820s and 1830s by serving as the president of railroads and other businesses, including running his family-owned flour and milling operation, and like other southern businessmen he traveled frequently to New York. Haxall’s daughter would marry the youngest son of Robert E. Lee, connecting one of the region’s most prominent merchant families to one of its leading military families. But the blood and business ties between Wall Street and slavery were too intertwined to untangle. In fact, Haxall’s brother made the city his home, and on this March morning he had come to the school for Black children on family business: he claimed that Henry was Haxall family property, and he intended to take Henry back to slavery.
Announcing to the teacher and school superintendent that Haxall and the New York sheriff would be arresting Henry as a runaway, the school immediately erupted in chaos. Henry screamed and cried, while his young classmates shouted, “Kidnappers!” and “Let him alone!” and tripped over each other to run out of the school. Some children ran to their parents, while others chased Haxall and his police escort as they left the school with Henry. Pandemonium and disbelief at the brazen arrest of a schoolchild created enough chaos that Haxall could make off with his prey.
The Black and white abolitionist community in New York sounded the alarm bells and mobilized for the legal battle that everyone knew would now ensue. Haxall and the sheriff dragged Henry before New York City recorder Richard Riker, who sat on the bench in City Hall just blocks from the Duane Street school where Henry had been studying. Black activists like David Ruggles came into all-too-frequent contact with Riker because, as the city recorder, Riker also served as the main judge in the Court of Common Pleas.
Just blocks removed from Ruggles’s home on Lispenard Street in the middle of Lower Manhattan, but a world away in terms of wealth and privilege, Riker presided over criminal cases in a stately judicial building. The son of a US congressman and the descendant of a prominent Dutch family, Riker had been a district attorney, a second in a number of duels, a member of the New York State Assembly, and a prominent Democratic lawyer in a long and distinguished career. Bald except for a fringe of hair around his ears, with a pointed nose and small chin, “Dickey” Riker as he was known looked more like a clerk or bookkeeper than a distinguished politician. In his early days, he had fought a duel on the shores of Weehawken, just months before Alexander Hamilton would be killed in a duel with Aaron Burr on the same spot. Shot in the leg during the duel, Riker was taken to his home on Wall Street where a surgeon gave him only a one-in-ten chance of saving the leg. “I accept the chance cheerfully . . . do what you can, and by the aid of the Almighty and a fine constitution I may yet save both limb and life.” Though he walked with a limp for the rest of his life, Riker went on to serve the city and the state in a number of important political and legal roles, from a committee on the completion of the Erie Canal to the position of recorder.
By the time Henry Scott appeared before him, Riker had already been serving as the city’s recorder for more than five years. Unfortunately for the city’s Black residents, one of the chief responsibilities of the recorder’s office was to hear cases of people accused of being runaways from southern slavery. Dragged before Riker at all hours of the day and night, accused runaways found themselves before a judge known to sympathize with the South and slaveholders. In fact, Ruggles had publicly named Riker as a key cog in what Ruggles had branded the New York Kidnapping Club in a newspaper editorial. With little more than the word of a white person, and with little concern as to whether the accused was actually a runaway or had been born free, New York’s Black men, women, and children fell prey to kidnapping.
With little more than the word of a white person, and with little concern as to whether the accused was actually a runaway or had been born free, New York’s Black men, women, and children fell prey to kidnapping.Riker served his southern masters well, always eager to promote the Union by reaffirming New York’s willing participation in the return of suspected runaways. He was well aware that the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution required so-called fugitives from service (which could only mean escaped slaves) to be handed over to their owners. Many northern states and cities acquiesced reluctantly to the constitutional compromise over slavery, returning runaways only after every attempt to keep them free had been exhausted. Not so in New York City. Although a dedicated band of Black and white activists, lawyers, and politicians stood ready to join the fight to keep an accused fugitive from being returned, the city’s legal and political system was rigged against them.
Riker made his pro-South stance clear toward the end of one cold November day in 1836 when an alleged runaway was brought before him. An agent representing a southern slave owner had claimed a fugitive and appeared before Riker to make his case. The recorder had a message for the southern agent: “Tell your southern citizens that we Northern Judges damn the Abolitionists—we are sworn to abide by the Constitution. Tell your Southern citizens that the great body of the northern people are all right.” As Riker knew, the city teamed with pro-South and even proslavery Democrats, many of them Wall Street merchants, Irish laborers, members of Tammany Hall, and others who actively sought ways to entrap Black residents in the web of the kidnapping club. Riker unabashedly positioned himself near the center of the web.
At the courtroom hearing Haxall was joined by several prominent southerners then in the city on business. On the other side sat Black observers, all of whom saw Riker as a notorious friend of white southerners. Some even whispered that Riker himself had owned slaves when it was legal in the city. White abolitionists like Elizur Wright sat watching as well, gathering intelligence for a series of newspaper articles he would write called “The Chronicles of Kidnapping.” As Haxall and his pals walked into the courtroom, Wright noticed that Haxall did not even have the decency to look “honest people in the face.”
As a sobbing and terrified Henry sat before Riker at the start of the hearing, it became quite clear that Riker intended to live up to his reputation as the friend of southern masters. Richard Haxall claimed that Henry actually belonged to his mother, Clara Haxall, and that he had entered the courtroom to claim Henry on her behalf. New York law required that agents acting on behalf of owners had to present proof that they were an official and documented representative of the slave owner, but Haxall had no such proof. Riker could have released Henry then and there, but instead, unsure about what course to take since he was convinced that Henry was in fact a fugitive, he ordered the young child to jail while Haxall was given time to produce his father’s will. In the meantime, Henry’s classmates had begun raising money for his legal defense. By gathering pennies from parents and the Black community, the children in the city’s public schools helped to release Henry from the clutches of the New York Kidnapping Club, one of the few to escape from the long and powerful reach of Boudinot, Nash, and Riker.
The scars of Henry’s arrest remained emblazoned on the city for a long time, especially among the city’s Black residents, who remained constantly on alert for kidnappers. Parents warned their children about being tricked by strangers, even those who seemed friendly and kind. They knew that New York City was a dangerous place for Black children.
Even as they watched over their kids, fathers and mothers themselves were always vigilant for the agents of southern masters, well aware that while children could be manipulated and easily overpowered, grown men and women were stolen almost as easily. Professional slave catchers made money—and a lot of it—in pursuit of runaways. Thousands of ads promising rich rewards for runaways dotted newspaper columns across the country, offering fifty dollars or more for recaptures. Armed with detailed descriptions of runaways, slave hunters lurked in New York’s dark alleyways and in the crowded taverns, on the lookout for their quarry.
One such agent was a white lawyer named Fontaine H. Pettis, who had moved from his home in Virginia to New York City in 1833 for the sole purpose of recovering fugitive slaves for money. Pettis had been convicted of perjury in Washington, DC, in 1831 and sentenced to five years in prison, but President Andrew Jackson pardoned him. In a strange pamphlet he wrote after the incident, Pettis declared that if “any man shall speak of this unhappy affair . . . either in my presence, or out of it . . . I am determined without form or ceremony, sword in hand, to avenge the injustice thereby done me, with the crimson blood of the prostituted offended, whether he be judge or juror, or any other person whom I shall deem worthy of my notice.” Clearly, even before he became a member of the New York Kidnapping Club, Pettis was a violent and vile man.
Pettis placed advertisements in Virginia and Washington, DC, newspapers for his services. “Persons in the South,” one of his ads read, “who have, or may hereafter have, runaway slaves, suspected to be in either N. York or Philadelphia, may find it to their advantage to send a minutely descriptive communication.” A native of Orange County, Virginia, Pettis moved his law practice to New York specifically to represent slaveholders “in the northern cities to arrest and secure runaway slaves.” In fact, Pettis noted in his advertisements that the complicity of federal and local officials “renders it easy for the recovery of such property.” All slavers had to do was send Pettis $20, a “minutely descriptive” account of the fugitive, and the region where the fugitive lived in the North. Armed with this payment and information, Pettis promised southerners, “he or she will soon be had.” At the end of his ads, the lawyer noted that “New York City is estimated to contain 5,000 runaway slaves.” He was only guessing at the number, since no one really knew how many runaways had escaped to the North, but Pettis obviously believed that such claims would induce slave masters to recover their lost “property.”
By abducting New York’s African Americans, not just children but women and men of all ages, the New York Kidnapping Club, with the help of attorneys like Pettis, could with remarkable speed place victims on ships docked at the many wharves that lined Manhattan. Kidnappers then transported their victims through New York harbor and into the southern and foreign markets to be sold as slaves, or they could then collect the substantial finders’ fees that appeared in the fugitive slave ads in newspapers. It was almost too easy, especially when kidnapping rings knew that they had little to fear from white politicians, judges, and constables.
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