[inaudible conversations] welcome this evening. a wonderful book talk with richard bell on his really remarkable narrative history of "stonele: five boys kidnapped in slavery. 'o" i'm emma and an opener here. it's an amazing store. it's a wonderful thing to be an owner of an independent book store in case anyone is curios. the remarkable places and events like this are remarkable opportunity we have. i always like to start these events especially on nights when we're inviting kind of remarkable writers into our

midst to talk about the shop. but first i want to talk about richard bell, scholar, beautiful writer. this book really jumps in with his incredibly human picture of a young by, and from that moment i knew that i was in sure creative hands but he is a remarkable scholar. educated at cambridge harvard, moved professor at the university of maryland, has won one of the major awards and if there's a round of applause it is for people who are educating the next generation of historical -- people to have a sense of history and what it means as human beings in the world but also particularly as americans, and somewhere from wells is dedicated to helping us mine that history. he is -- a 2017 public scholar after the national endowment for the humanities.

and has had fellowships from the huntington library in california to cambridge in england and everywhere in between, yale and the library of congress. so this is a mind we want sort of tilling the soil of america's past and helping us come to under and he has written a remarkable book in stolen. it's a history about five young men in philadelphia, boys, who were kidnapped and taken back into slavery in the south. they were free and that freedom was stripped from them, it ands then about their resistance to that exact the culture of commerce and the sort of pursuit of money that led to people wanting to take that rightful freedom away from them. it's also as i said sort of a beautifully told story and i think that merging of incredibly insightful historical perspective pushing merged with real store-telling ability is an

important service behalf of readers and leaded me to talk about book stores because we are of course places of transaction, places of commerce. we sell books and it's important we do to support people who are working alone on incredibly important pieces of scholarship, on story-telling, on the novels that help us understand how other human beings think and feel, and we want to sort of support that. but we are most fundamentally in my maintains places places of tk satisfaction and in order to support being community centers and cull culture centers and supporting people coming together to talk about books, to hear from people who thought incredibly deeply 'on other topics and to mine that sense of who we are as individuals and together. one of the remarkable things but book. you have an independent experience and then it can join you to other people in which is communal experience. at the end of this book -- i now lost my place -- there's a moment at the very end when richard writes about sort of the

act of writing this book as much as the story itself, and he hits on two things. one is that this was a book that tries to find moments of grace in the midst of struggle and lot of in a difficult story and also something that wanted to sort of highlight what it is to revel in liberty and seek it to grasp it back when i has been taken away and if think that's an important thing for us to look bat interest our history and find, it's an important thing to do at this moment and time so we are incredibly pleased to have all of you here on the guess first sort of wintry night in the city of baltimore and you all came out said something about what we're seeking collectively, and it is just a delight to have richard bell in our midst. thank you, richard, thank you to all of you and we got a really interesting conversation next. [applause] >> what a thought of the

introduction. i'm grateful for the opportunity to talk but this stuff on the record. with sheila yesterday. i'll speak for -- a nod to use the microphone. i'm going to speak for 25 minutes. brought some notes but the story is important and i want to get right and you don't want to hear my blather on so i'll try to frame my remarks around what i heat rein -- written and if -- this is a story full of adult themes for folks in the back know that. so, cornelius sinclair was ten years old and he was trapped. cornelius was trapped in the belly of a small ship, bobbing in the delaware with just a mile south of philadelphia, and a man had grabbed ten-year-old cornelius from the city's market, one hour ago, pushed a black gag into this mouth,

tossed him into a wagon and hauled him here. and it was dark below the waterline, but ten-year-old cornelius could see just enough from in this ship's hold to know he was not the only black child locked down here. four other pair of eyes stared back at him. for other black boys. one looked about his size, probably nine or ten or 11 years old, like cornelius. two more were obviously taller and older, perhaps 14 or 15 years. the last of them was shorter and smaller than everyone else. might have been as young as eight years old. yesterday, all five of these boys had been free. but today they were slaves. they were prisoners of a gang of child snatchers who planned to sell their lives and labors, most likely to plantation owners in the deep, deep south.

these boys abductors got away with this. ten-year-old cornelius sinclair would spend the rest of his life as someone else's property somewhere very far away. he would never see his family again. cornellus sinclair dishappened in late august, 1825. he was one of dozens of african-american children to vanish in similar circumstances from philadelphia that year alone. and in the early 19th century the city of philadelphia was actually the hub of american slavery's blackest market. it's grid streets, tangled alleys were huntinggrounds for crews of professional kidnappers who made their livings turning free black kid like ten-year-old cornelius into southern slaves. and they did their work swiftly and shamelessly, in brazen

affront to the city of philadelphia's reputation as the city of brotherly love, as a safe haven for people of color, and as the headquarters of america's antislavery movement in this period. none of that to kidnappers mattered one jot. in truth, early 19th century philadelphia was actually one of the most dangerous places to be free and black anywhere in the united states. and this is a product of its location. try imagine a map of 19th 19th century america in your head and think but the position of philadelphia, within pennsylvania, and the position of pennsylvania which borders to the south of course the times several slave states. maryland, delaware, virginia, west virginia, all of them rung along pennsylvania's southern border and that border was known as me the mason dixon line.

the boundary seems increasinglily important as a marker of when you move into southern slave states and push interest a free northern state like pennsylvania. because by 1825, the year that cornelius was kidnapped, pennsylvania was a free northern state. one of men in the lord that sleevely disentangled themselves from race slavery over the previous 50 years and that meant thatch boundary line running across the borer this mason dixon line as far as black people were concern, became ever more important and by 1825 the year that cornelus was kidnapped that mason dixon line, for black people seemed to divide two worlds separating northern free states from southern slave states. it was the closest thing for african-americans to a modern international border anywhere in north america. it mattered. philadelphia's proximity to the mason dixon line, to that front

deer -- frontier line made many block residents whether they were free or runaways from slavery seeking refuge in philadelphia, may philadelphia's many black residents attractive targets for professional kidnappers. professional people snatcher. they preyed on the members of this city's black community rerentlessly, putting bulls eyes on their backs, putting prices on their heads and the people they stole could fetch in louisiana and mississippi and alabama anywhere up to $15,000 per person in modern money. of course mississippi, alabama, louisiana, think of them on the map, the three of the new territory and states rising up along the gulf of mexico, along the gulf coast. and the american settlers swarming into territories and states like those three, needed and demanded, they said, a

nearly bottomless supply of forced labor to cut sugar cane and to pick cotton. and it seemed they would take almost anyone to do that work, including children as young as ten-year-old cornelius sinclair. planters in the deep south may not have liked buying a small proportion, mack five percent, of their enslaved labor force from kidnappers, but to be honest, they had few other options. they'd been forced to look for sources within the united states to satisfy their labor needs ever since 1808, the year that lawmakers in washington had passed legislation that outlawed any further slave imports from overseas, from africa, from the caribbean or whenever it might be and that 1808 decision outlawing further legal participation in atlantic slavery proved to be a major

turning point in the history of slavery in america. that 1808 decision spurred the growth of an internal slave trade, within the united states. the domestic slave trade within the united states. a massive forced redistribution of enslaved people from plantations in places like virginia, maryland, and delaware, so that many of them get sold to legal interstate slave traders who carry them south and west, to resell them at jacked up prices in louisiana, mississippi, alabama, according to the best scholarship that legal domestic slave trade moves a million enslaved people, all of them against their will in the course of 50, 60, 70 years after the revolution. the legal domestic slave trade. but settlers in the deep south want still more, and the more they will willing to pay -- the

mow they were willing to pay the more temping and profit age it couple for sunshine sufficiently cold-blooded to try to kidnap free adults and children, including cornelius, from northern cities like philadelphia, try to smuggle them into this larger and legal supply chain, and then try to sell them in this vast new southwestern slave market. these incentives left philadelphia's large and dynamic free black community dangerously exposed. by 1825, the city of philadelphia had become the center of an interregional kidnapping operation. it was the northern terminus of what we might usefully call the reverse underground railroad. india louts talk but the comparison a little bit because this reverse underground railroad, the kidnapping and human trafficking, interslavery of free people and its a mitt much better known namesake the

underground railroad, they ran in opposite directions, of course, but in many ways they were actually mirror images of one another. on the underground railroad, the good one, the famous one, enslaved people abandoned southern plantations and trekked northward, dreaming of new lives and new opportunities in freedom. on the reverse underground railroad, free black people vanished from northern cities like philadelphia and were made to trudge southward to be sold into plantation slavery. on the underground railroad, conductors like harriet tubman risked their lives and liberty to help fugitives from slavery make the epic juniors ys from freedom. on the reverse underground railroad the conductors and station agents were kidnappers and human traffickers motivated by money, secure simple.

the number of people who made these journeys in one direction or the other, out of or into slavery, was roughly the same. each one carried hundreds of black adults and children across state lines, each and every year in the early 19th century. both of this networks roared to life in the early 19th century to exploit what by then was becoming major differences in he legal status of slavery in the north and in the south. both of these networks were loosely opportunistic, -- loosely organized and highly opportunistic can both of them ran on secrecy and relied on circle odd trusted participants, forged documents, false identities, on disguise. whether traveling from the slave states into the free states, or vice versa, from the free states

into the slave states, black voyagers on these two networks had to hide often, hide in stables, attics and banks. the direction of central was different, of course, but if you looked to the routes they took on the map, the routes taken by freedom seeker and by victims of kidnapping and human trafficking, the directions are different but the routes would be large the sale. might even have passed one another on the roads from time to time. most americans i hope know a good deal but the underground railroad and i'm saying this in november 19 when their a movie at the box office that made $12 million last week outperforming expectations by 50% and that movie is harriet, for the record. so, most americans i hope know something but the underground regard. historians have spent decade studying the strategies and tactics that harriet tubman and

her fellow conductors and station agents used to help freedom seekers escape from slavery. accounts by former passengers on tubman's railroad, and biographies of many other former participants have spurred immense interest, no tubman' her colleagues and collaborators. they're achievements are starting to saturate the popular culture and that's a wonderful thing. there are walking tours, museums like the national underground railroad freedom center in cincinnati or the amazing underground regard visitor center outside cambridge, maryland, in this state. a television show until last year and now there is this movie "harriet." all of them are delved indicated to celebrating the men and women who created the secret network through which the enslaved could escape to freedom. but we know far less about what i'm calling tonight the reverse

underground railroad. it conductors and station agents worked tirelessly to remain untouchable and the identities of all but a handful of those grotesque actors still remain a secret centuries later. harriet tugman on the underground railroad was a pretty good self-promoter and would go on lecture tours to spread the word about this important thing ship would go on fundraising tours to raise money for her important work. and to be clear, the people who ran the reverse underground railroad did not do that. only rarely did their names and their crimes appear in surviving police files or in trial transcripts. that low profile the result of the years they spent in the shadows, protected by of extra his, bribes and widespread

indifference . and unlike legal interstate slave traders who acted out in the open, who were doing by the standards of the law of the day, nothing wrong, legal slave traders sometimes left their papers to historical societies, to southern colleges, and you can go read them. that is not true for the conductor and station agents who did the kidnapping and human trafficking on the reverse unground railroad. those outlaws left no business records. they left no bundles of private letters for historians like me to stumble across in an air conditioned reading room in the library of congress. these kidnappers and human traffickers did not write memoirs, bragging about what they did. they did not pose for paintings. they did not pose for photographs. their houses, their warehouses, no longer stand. but as i argue in this new book "stolen," which came out a couple weeks ago, these professional kidnappers and this

reverse underground railroad left its mark everywhere in 19th century himself if you look over section decade of the 19th century, the numbers are nothing less than stagger,le over that half century they stole away probably tens of thousands of free black people in that period. many of them. children like cornelius, many of them under the age of 16. most of those they kidnapped could not read or write. most 0 of those they kidnapped were never heard from again. their families and friends searched, petitioned, advertised, they waited in awayest for news, any news, but usually no news came. free black people in northern cities like philadelphia had very few white allies in the early 19th century beyond the ranks of a few quaker-led

antislavery societies. what is more, white employers openly disdiscriminated against african-american job an applicants while city constables generally ignored people of color's complaints and generally turned a blind eye to whoas white on black street violence. so when children like ten-year-old cornelius went missing, their parents could hardly ever persuade mayors, or magistrates, to get involved. to do something. it was rarer still for anyone to be able to gather enough evidence to issue warrants, to search property, to interrogate suspect's, and on the very rare occasions when things like that did happen, even then experienced members of kidnapping cute knew what to do and what to say to talk their way out of trouble and to get

back to work. how many people here have heard of 12 years a slave? i think a lot of hands in the room which is wonderful. you remember 12 years a slave, both a movie and a memoir. a movie based on the memoir, the memoir is called 12 years a slave and written by a map called solomon northup but his experience as a prisoner passenger on the reverse underground railroad, and in that incomes being a passenger against his will, and being kidnapped and trafficked interest slavery he was not at all unusual. but what is unusual but northup's story, number one, he was ever able to escape from the slavery into which he had been cast, and second that he chose to write about and we have this amazing, extraordinary memoir 12 years a slave, and in it he tells his story of what happened to him. he tells us nat 1841, he was

living in upstate new york, when one day he is lured, beck conditioned, into manhattan by two well-dressed white confidence men and to be clear northup is an adult at this time in his mid-30s, relatively pros produce, highly skilled musician and also literate. and in manhattan these two well-dressed white confidence men wine him, dine him, and they drug him. and then they sell him to legal interstate slave trader, not very legal, clearly corrupt. sell him to an interstate slave trader in washington, dc, northup is then forced on to a slave ship bound for new orleans, and in new orleans, he is sold in one of the city's infamous slave marts, to a planter who puts him to work in his cane fields. and in 2013, an oscar winning

film, an extraordinary film, based on nor thunderstorm's even more extraordinary autobiography, drew overdue attention to shall mon northup's ordeal. what i would like to say tonight is both the million hero and that amazing movie offer distorted and perhaps misleading views as to who the agents of this reverse underground railroad typically were, who they typically targeted, and how they typically made money because it turns out that northup's experience grotesque though it was, was in many ways not at all typical of the larger reverse unground railroad. most kidnappings were committed not by smartly dressed confidence men, but by poorer people who had never set foot in a fancy bar or restaurant and never wined or dined nip in their lives. most of the kidnappers active

0en the rovers underground railroad were men which should not surprise but but some wore women which surprised he in. moe he moe host he kidnappers would white but what start el me was to fine a tiny number of african-american people who were also in this business as kidnappers as well. regardless of their gender, regardless of their race, the kidnappers then reverse underground railroad rarely approached highly rid recall middle aged men like northup. they preferred instead to lure away poorly educated children with reuses that could sweptly separate them from their families and loved one very few of the captives traveled by ship down the east coast, around florida to new orleans, as northup did. far more commonly kidnappers were force consider chain gangs

and caravans. the prisoners were dragging across the done trip against their will, they rarely end up in showrooms in the new orleans, the crescent city or on the auction block. they're vastly more likely to be sold off in ones and twos, somewhere along the way. usually to hardup planters in the mississippi interior, the alabama interior, the louisiana interior to planters who wanted to buy more slaves but didn't have much money and couldn't afford big city new orleans slave prices and were ready to cut a deal with someone they met on the road. what i described as being more typical of northup's experience is almost exactly what happened to ten-year-old cornelius sinclair. he was one over the five central figures in my new book, stolen.

in august 1825, cornelius and fewer boys living in philadelphia, fall into the clutches of america's most fearsome gang of kidnappers. their cappers hustle them on to the ship just outside philadelphia. warehouse them in a pair of safe houses the kidnapper own which is just south of philadelphia, which is home to most of delaware, slivers of maryland, lives of virginia, they warehouse them for a week, and then they keep going. then they march these five boys halfway across the continent to the deep south, journey of two million depths. where they hope to sell them as slaves. i'm not going to tell you much more today about what happens to

cornelius to alex, to enus to joe, and to sam, but if you read the subtitle of my book it's "stolen, five free boys kidnapped into slavery and astonishing odyssey home. i will tell thank you the tighting ever so slightly misleading but not how. and i'm certain police not going to tell you the how and the why of that astonishing odyssey home. i hope you pick up the book and take a look. all i will say here is that what did happen next to ten-year-old cornelius and to the four other boys who began their journey together in the belly of that ship outside philly, what would happen next would involve two murders, three exhume makes of dead bodies and escape, a recapture, , a lawsuit, race riot, suicide, a seance and the

nation's largest manhunt so far. instead of telling you what happened, let me just quick live note that the full story of what did happen to cornellus, centerline care and these four other boys who went missing from philadelphia in august 1825, has never before been told. and that is for understandable recents because cornellus was a child when he meant mitting, came from the hard up family that was not the sort of family to leave a lot of traces behind in libraries and in archives. and that's a problem. there's many historians and teachers in the room here and this is a problem because historians like us, we need sources, we need lots of sources to reconstruct past lives in ways that are true and ways that are fair. the stories and struggles of the many wheel who do not leave rich

troves of diaries, memoirs and personal papers for me to stump bell upon. their stories remain unstudied and untold as a result of those problems. so to reconstruct the most basic outline of what did happen to cornellus and his journey along the reverse underground railroad i first took advantage of two well-known sources about this case. one is a cache of two dozen let letters to or from the mayor of philadelphia who will become engaged in this case. the hand write is not great but we have known about them for a while and we're very lucky they were pre served in the archives of the historical society of pennsylvania in downtown philly. we have known but brief coverage of cornelius' case in a single philadelphia area antislavery magazine called the african observer. but on their own, those two bodies of sources turn out to be too few and too thin to sustain

a whole reconstruction of this case. to sustain a whole become. so i've had to go looking elsewhere, digging around in any archive i can fine to try to find scraps, i guess, scraps of information that if you weave together enough of them you can start to fleshing -- flesh out hopefully a broader story and for anyone who what done historical research what i am about to say may hit close them to, there has been a lot of fail on my part in looking for scraps. a lot lot of waisted -- wasted effort looking for scraps, a lot of days in different archives finding nothing at all. this is truly to some degree node until a haystack work and all historian does this work every day and it's hard and frustrating and often very disappointing. but ultimately i think it's been worth it and the course of about six years of research for this

book, i've unearthed i think more than 100 new pieces of information, new sources, scattered everywhere. they were buried within dish count the other day, buried within 35 archives in 14 states and the district of columbia. and i'm going to introduce you to just three of those of sources which i dug up in the course of this research. one was the hand written notes of a trial that took place in tuscaloosa alabama that would signed cornelius sinclair's state forever, forever slave or forever free. also came across and this one i never thought i would fine -- two letters in the hand writing of one of the kidnappers. writing to the governor of pennsylvania, explaining exactly what had happened, and then saying, i had nothing to do with

it. and the third source i found -- i'm actually going to read to you, the third source i found, i found in a philadelphia newspaper published three days after cornelius disappeared, and it's a missing persons ad that was put there by his father, joseph sinclair, only page eight. it says: boy lost. my son, cornellus sinclair, a colored boy, 11 years old, left his friend yesterday, and as he had no cause and has never been absented himself, i fear he has been seduced away by some evil mined person. my son cornellus is a very dark mixed race boy. pretty stout, thin long fingers but his eyes are week and his left eye is smaller then hays

right. any person hearing about our son, will confer a favor on his afflicted parents by giving information to my employer at number 19 south street. before with go question and commends let me wrap up with a couple of brief reflections why i think studying the reverse underground railroad in 19th 19th century america is important and why cornelius sinclair's particular experience as a writer on this railroad in 1825 is worth our time. to begin with i would oaring forcefully that then as now, families belong together, and thus any story about free children ripped from their families and in this case swallowed up by slavery, is a story worth telling for its own sake but the remarkable ore develop that cornellus and his four fellow captives, sam, alex

and over, the remarkable ordeal these five boys endured demand attention for many other reasons as well. for one thing it serve as pointed reminder that people snatching and child snatching most particularly, was very frequent, evil, pernicious, and politically significant in this period. and that black freedom in northern towns and cities before the civil war was actually achingly fragile. it was paper thin. this story demonstrates, too, i hope, the important role this go text trade in kidnapped free people played in accelerating the spread of southern slavery into the deep south in this period. as i said i'm not going preview the book's ending or tell you exactly what did happen to cornellus after he was kidnapped and trafficked into alabama but

i will drop a few hints here. i will say here that the dogged efforts of all those involved in trying to save him and the four other boys from the horrors of southern slavery would have profound consequences. the rescue efforts of parents and allies, and the aftermath of their campaign, would radicalize black communities across the free states, emboldening african-americans to embrace violence in the cause of self-defense and in the cause of mutual protection against enslavers as never before. their efforts would reshape the rest of the american antislavery movement as well. by encouraging white abolitionists with access to a prints press to begin focusing the public's attention on the suffering of black families forcibly separated by slavery.

that's new tactic in the antislavery campaign and approves to be a potent one. but most modally outrage over the abduction of these five boys in 1825 does remarkably force lawmakers in pennsylvania to pass a tough new anti-kidnapping law known as a personal liberty law designed to protect the right to remain a free black people within the borders another the state of pennsylvania, protecting them kidnaps and slave hunters hunted bounty hunters a well and that law enrages southern slave holders and sets in motion a chain of retaliations that culminate in the passage through congress in washington something i hope every tenth grade student in this done has heard of which is the fugitive slave act of 1850, pro slavery abomination that sets this country on a

collision course with civil war. cornellus sinclair's experience as a forced rider on this reverse underground railroad was the result of the confluence of massive economic and political forces, and what happened to him as i've just suggested would usher in a new chapter in the history of slavery and freedom in the united states. but that lasting legacy must not be allowed to obscure the urgent and human stakes of his particular story. a ten-year-old boy and four other free children are dragged into slavery in 1825. they will have to fight like hell to try to escape. thanks very much indeed. [applause]

>> if. >> you've said that a law was passed in 1808 prohibit the import addition of slaves. why what that done when it was written into the constitution that until 1808 the importation of slaves would not be prohibited. >> the context here for this 1808 law is important. as correct can i wind chill outed the text of the 12787 federal constitution has a lot to say about traps atlanta -- transatlantic slave trading but never use those words. it says exactly as you just quoted to me -- >> importation of such person. >> the translattic slave trade and says congress cannot prohibit, cannot outlaw or regulate or touch or obliterate american participation in

translattic slavery for at least 20 years from 1787, and another part of the constitution you may know sets up a process for amending the constitution. it says you can change any part of the federal constitution going forward. but the small print says, the one bit of the constitution you cannot amount away for 20 years is this bit where we say you can't touch the translattic slave trade stomp protection tv the translat trick slave trade is double down on in the to constitution of 1787 and yet on the first day of 1808 the first day allowed under the term of the constitution, congress and the jefferson administration does actually outlaw, does the thing that the founders hopes wouldn't happen, 20 days -- 20 years and one day later and there's a lot of reasons as to why that happened and none of them are heroic.

none of them are al trueisic, none of them are big sign that people in congress agreed that slave trading is horrible and we must do something to start to strangle american slavery . really it's the opposite. by 1808, to a greater or lesser degree, there is consensus that importing enslaved people from abroad is expensive and dangerous and you could be importing people with revolutionary ideas about freedom from places in the caribbean who might heave heard about the haitian revolution and also an economic argument that america already has plenty of enslaved people and why don't we just recontribute the people we have to the place is they're most needed and you can imagine that representatives from states in the upper south, like virginia and maryland, whose slave holding population will ben fest most from the domestic slave trade are very happy to go along with this idea of outlawing legal importation of

translet thick slavery, dot not mean that no black person is ever again imported into the united states. just mean is it's illegal to do. so there is smuggling of black people into american slavery? you bet there is and other historians a have written but this but i'm focuses on the black market which sound like pun. not trying be funny. the black market of kidnapping and human trafficking within the united states in my book "stolen." hand over here. >> i was really -- i do a lot of research with the united states census and have for 40 years. and i was quite shocked to discover when i was trying to do research on an image of an african-american man from 1880, that in the census in the 19th century, for at least for a period of time, african-americans and enslaved people -- enslaved people were listed as property and so they

did not appear in the census. have you encountered that or do you have anything to tell us? >> in the -- >> i can't remember the exact time period but it went on for a long time. >> after the end of the civil war? >> immediately before the civil war but itself you're trying to track where someone was -- i was tracking a person with the unfortunate name of samuel jones. did he have to have jones as a last name? made it very hard to follow and i thought could i follow him in the census but i couldn't because before the civil war when i was trying to track where he was born, he likely was listed as property. >> a lot of people in the room who probably know more about hoe the census can be used and -- than die so i'll make general related point in regard to your question using the census for african-american history. it's unfortunately a pretty blunt tool for african-american history before the civil war, for some of the reasons you've

laid out, how people are recorded and how accurately people are recorded. and often falls to the equivalent of state level census or to simple plantation records on southern plantations to compliment or fill in gaps left by the federal census, and even then these resource that survived, historical sources that survive, patchy, incomplete, many of them don't survive, filled with biases and holes and points of view, so making statistickiccal claims which a modern statistician would regard as robust based on the 19th century census is very dangerous ground to stand on. when i talk about the magnitude of the underground railroad and the magnitude of the reverse underground railroad, i drew a comparison, said they're they same order, the same power, tens of thousands in each over a 50-60 year period but notice i was not more specific than that. and that's because anyone who

claims they know what the exact number of people who exited slavery via the underround railroad or claims how many exactly were kidnapped and trafficked into slavery, what i call the reversus underground railroad, that person is lying to you. we do not have absolute figures for either. both of them are underground, jaw law, criminal or pseudo criminal depending on the state you're in, enterprises, the records don't exist to say accurately. that said in both cases whether we're talk budget in underground railroad or the reverse underground railroad there are bodies of sources that tell us something. there are missing persons ads, there are runaway slave ads. there are changes in the census and to he free black population of cities like philadelphia which may or may not be revealing. plantation records which may or may not have insight about people leaving the plantation unexpectedly or new purchases mad at suspiciously low prices

which suggest yourself have done a deal with a kidnapper, and if you read enough office thieves things el especially for me, i spent six years reading missing persons ads in philadelphia, baltimore, new york, boston, papers in the 1810s, 1820s and 1830s and the sad truth is you can't open an issue of a newspaper in an urban free city like philadelphia without running across add like the run i read from joseph sip claire -- sinclair and it's hard not to walk away with the conclusion, robust or otherwise, that we're talking beaut scale of human trafficking into slavery that should not be measured in the dozens or hundreds or perhaps even the thousands but over 50 year period, should be measured in the tens of thousands which is broadry eeye question throw it our best guess of the size of the good famous underground railroad. two more questions i think. >> can you say something about what you think this kind of history and this historic work

that you have done maybe says about the baltimore that we have today, some reflection -- i've become thinking a lot how this history -- what does history have to save but the struggles we have in baltimore today and i wonder if the reverse underground railroad says anything about it or anything that you studied in coming to this piece of work. >> a wonderful question about what this work reveals about how baltimore functions today. maybe how other city in the united states function tonight. i'm historian. astudy dead people. the deader the better, and modern history terrifies me. and offering something cogent by way of insight into the way baltimore functions today is really above my pay grade and i encourage you to read the book and to see what connections you personally would make because probably many people nor more but this subject than die. so just make some general points which is to say that the structures of urban cities

aside, we know that the reverse underground railroad survived and prospered and functioned in large part because of widespread indifference among the white population of philadelphia in the 1820s. there are committed antislavery people in baltimore both white and of course black but meaning the white folks it's a minority position, radical, unusual position to stand up and say, yes issue think slavery is a moral outrage and we should strike it down now. in 1820s that's a very unusual thing. only a small number of white people would dare so say. many more free black people would say that so as many people that would listen. that's one thing. the larger resonance i find between this story but kidnapping and human trafficking and the world we live now, i say two things. free black parents were well aware that kidnappers stalked

their neighborhood and they wanted their children to be safe. and that meant talking to them all the time as far as we know from surviving sources about being on the lookout, not going anywhere alone, never going down certain alleys, trying to read body language, never talking to strangers, and it's a bit of a jump but this always reminds me of what we call the talk nowdays, about african-americanan teeners should handle themselves around the police. that a may seem like a stretch but main there's something to be investigated there. and the other thing i will say is one thing that brought thome in this book stolen is the fragility of black freedom in supposedly free cities, and that to be legally free is different from living in a racially equitable world, and i think

there's nothing historical but the sentence i just said. could apply that today as well. and that the freedom of people on social margins was particularly vulnerable in the 1820s and philadelphia, that's free african-americans, but in 2019, that is african-americans and many other groups. i'm think but the crisis on our southern border, where whether you have the right papers in certain states in the union right now, i'm thinking about i.c.e. and separation of families and also thinking about the continuing prevalence of slavery in this country and around the world. we tend tell ourselves that slavery is dead and buried, that slavery is an artifact of america's past. when its comes to race slavery it has been outlaud by several amendments at the end of the civil war and re cop struck but does not mean that other types slavery do not thrive and grow and live is in country and

around the whorl, sex slavery. agricultural slavery, domestic slavery, it's happening in california, on the big agribusiness that supply super markets, restaurants, sex slavery happening across the united states. domestic slavery is happening under the protection of diplomatic immunity all over washington, dc today and every night. happening in london, too. not just american problem. it's happening in all the great global capitols of the he world. two organizations that study this phenomenon, one is called free the slaves, the other one is called anne slavery international. they statement in 2019 somewhere between 30 and 40 million people in slavery around the world, and to be clear, that is vastly more that were enslaved in the united states when lincoln became the president in the election of 1860. so there's a lot more work to do. this is not just history but as

your question suggests an ongoing fight, an ongoing struggle to which arch should be committed. i think i will stop there. if anymore questions and comments see me. i'd be happy to sign any books. thank you so much for your time. [applause] >> type of, university of oklahoma professor provides a one volume history of the united states. new york university journalism professor pamela newkirk conditions the eek tiffanies of diverse programs. a look at the 2020 election. labor reporter steven greenhouse discusses the challenges american workers face today and brian fitzpatrick, offer his thought oses 'class action lawsuits. all airing tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2's booktv. check your program guide for

more information. >> on our author interview program "after words" the federalist be viewer michael malice but far right politics in america remember here's a portion of that program. >> there's absolutely no agreement across the subculture other than who the enemy and is what the nature of the enemy is. those who favor a awe to the tarean police state and anarchists and those who are internationalists in the sense of i'm going to be a citizen of the world, not the leftest sense but the sense i don't oowe allegiance to a particular nation and very proud americans who will take our country back so across this very little agreement other than who you are against and that is what is interesting because the press would like everyone to be pained with the same noow nazi fascist brush and when you ask groups what they want they're in favor of returning monarchy, so it's

really hill lawyerous. when you deal with any subculture, how many different factions there are, and people in on the right think the left ace mon smith you have the hilary types and bernie sanders types and jill stein, they genuinely loathe each other. >> it's always great pleasure to be here at books and books. mitchell kaplan has been a staunch sporter from -- supporter from the beginning and i can literally say if weren't for him i woun'