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Stolen
Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home | Richard Bell
3 posts | 2 read | 4 to read
A gripping and true story about five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice, reminiscent of Twelve Years A Slave and Never Caught. Philadelphia, 1825: five young, free black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home. Their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War. Impeccably researched and breathlessly paced, Stolen tells the incredible story of five boys whose courage forever changed the fight against slavery in America.
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FashionableObserver

I‘m looking forward to reading this and meeting the author at the next Twin Cities Civil War Roundtable meeting! It‘s gonna be a good one. These stories have to be told. Reading them will certainly break our hearts, but we have to learn about and remember this history so that we don‘t repeat it. Lessons from the past can be warnings….

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DonnaZ
Pickpick

This was recommended by Mt. Vernon as a suggested reading. This true story is very interesting and could be made into a movie. It is an important story which needs to be told for people to understand our history, and to understand what it was like to live during this pre-Civil War time. This book really challenges us to think and look at historical figures in new ways.

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DreesReads
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Pickpick

Fabulously researched and written nonfiction work looking at the kidnappings of free black people in Philadelphia, who were taken to the south to be sold as slaves. Bell traces the story of 5 boys and 2 women, 5 of whom were free, and the hard work of many people that brought them home. Using court records, newspapers, letters, minutes, and more, he is able to trace their journey. Pub date 10/15/19 #netgalley #history #nonfiction

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