A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of William Houston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who had come from Liverpool as a ship steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans had been offered passage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne de Blanc.  But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc had ordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away his papers and treated him as his slave.  After five years there Houston was sold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboring merchant, George Lynch, who hired him out.  In the Mexican war Houston accompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was sold to one Richardson.  But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of title, refused payment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J.F.  Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of the British consul.  While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printed his whole narrative that it might “assist the plaintiff to prove his freedom, or the defendant to prove he is a slave."[65]

[Footnote 65:  New Orleans Daily Delta, June 1, 1850.]

Societies were established here and there for the prevention of kidnapping and other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable among which for its long and active career was the one at Alexandria.[66] Kidnapping was, of course, a crime under the laws of the states generally; but in view of the seeming ease of its accomplishment and the potential value of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so many thousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty.  In 1860 there were 83,942 of this class in Maryland, 58,042 in Virginia, 30,463 in North Carolina, 18,467 in Louisiana, and 250,787 in the South at large.

[Footnote 66:  Alexandria, Va., Advertiser, Feb. 22, 1798, notice of the society’s quarterly meeting; J.D.  Paxton, Letters on Slavery (Lexington, Ky., 1833), p. 30, note.]

A few free negroes were reduced by public authority to private servitude, whether for terms or for life, in punishment for crime.  In Maryland under an act of 1858 eighty-nine were sold by the state in the following two years, four of them for life and the rest for terms, after convictions ranging from arson to petty larceny.[67] Some others were sold in various states under laws applying to negro vagrancy, illegal residence, or even to default of jail fees during imprisonment as fugitive suspects.

[Footnote 67:  J.R.  Brackett, The Negro in Maryland, pp. 231, 232.]