Stealing Freedom Along the Mason-Dixon Line: Thomas McCreary, the Notorious Slave Catcher from Maryland

by Milt Diggins

Overview

Slavery, freedom, and kidnapping in the mid-Atlantic.

This is the story of Thomas McCreary, a slave catcher from Cecil County, Maryland. Reviled by some, proclaimed a hero by others, he first drew public attention in the late 1840s for a career that peaked a few years after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Living and working as he did at the midpoint between Philadelphia, an important center for assisting fugitive slaves, and Baltimore, a major port in the slave trade, his story illustrates in raw detail the tensions that arose along the border between slavery and freedom just prior to the Civil War. McCreary and his community provide a framework to examine slave catching and kidnapping in the Baltimore-Wilmington-Philadelphia region and how those activities contributed to the nation’s political and visceral divide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780996594448
Publisher:	The Maryland Historical Society
Publication date:	01/15/2016
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Milt Diggins, an independent scholar, is a former editor of the Cecil Historical Journal and a frequent contributor to local publications.

Table of Contents

Preface & Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 The Maelstrom 7

2 A Failed Compromise 56

3 "Hanging the First Abolitionist that They Catch in Maryland" 90

4 The Trials of Rachel Parker 135

5 Kidnapping … or slave Catching? 168

6 End of an Era 181

Afterword 201

References 205

Index 227

What People are Saying About This

Carol Wilson

Milt Diggins presents the Mason-Dixon Line as a perpetually shifting boundary between slavery and freedom, a border region in which free people of color as well as fugitive slaves lived in constant danger, and kidnappers operated with the government’s blessing.

Christopher Densmore

A thorough and thoughtful study those researching the Underground Railroad or the growing conflict between North and South over slavery should have on their bookshelves. We need more books like this.

From the Publisher

An extraordinary book—the terrifying tale of real life human hunters who earned their living legally tracking and capturing escaped slaves, and kidnapping free people of color, in the decades leading to the Civil War. Diggins weaves a compelling narrative of a notorious slave hunter, Thomas McCreary, and others like him, who operated for years along the border between slavery and freedom in Maryland and Pennsylvania. While white and black abolitionists, escaped slaves, and their free neighbors fought McCreary and others with fists, guns, and through the courts, they discovered that the man-hunters found much support for their legal and extra-legal activities, even at the cost of innocent lives and the freedom of many more. A must-read!
—Kate Clifford Larson, author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero

There is no other Underground Railroad book quite like this excellent study from Milt Diggins. Stealing Freedom offers the most sophisticated portrait yet crafted about a notorious slave catcher and about the tragic realities of antebellum kidnapping along the Mason-Dixon Line.
—Matthew Pinsker, Director, House Divided Project at Dickinson College

Milt Diggins presents the Mason-Dixon Line as a perpetually shifting boundary between slavery and freedom, a border region in which free people of color as well as fugitive slaves lived in constant danger, and kidnappers operated with the government’s blessing.
—Carol Wilson, Washington College

A thorough and thoughtful study those researching the Underground Railroad or the growing conflict between North and South over slavery should have on their bookshelves. We need more books like this.
—Christopher Densmore, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College

Matthew Pinsker

There is no other Underground Railroad book quite like this excellent study from Milt Diggins. Stealing Freedom offers the most sophisticated portrait yet crafted about a notorious slave catcher and about the tragic realities of antebellum kidnapping along the Mason-Dixon Line.

Kate Clifford Larson

An extraordinary book—the terrifying tale of real life human hunters who earned their living legally tracking and capturing escaped slaves, and kidnapping free people of color, in the decades leading to the Civil War. Diggins weaves a compelling narrative of a notorious slave hunter, Thomas McCreary, and others like him, who operated for years along the border between slavery and freedom in Maryland and Pennsylvania. While white and black abolitionists, escaped slaves, and their free neighbors fought McCreary and others with fists, guns, and through the courts, they discovered that the man-hunters found much support for their legal and extra-legal activities, even at the cost of innocent lives and the freedom of many more. A must-read!