case of her own death, made a nominal
sale of them to a relative under pledge of emancipation. When this man
proved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, and
the purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit for
freedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the state
supreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was in
strict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shall
suffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence in
this state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right of
action to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall be
a runaway or fugitive."[62]

[Footnote 61: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, May 25, 1849.]

[Footnote 62: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the
New Orleans _True Delta_, Dec. 16, 1854.]

Kidnappings without pretense of legal claim were done so furtively that
they seldom attained record unless the victims had recourse to the courts;
and this was made rare by the helplessness of childhood in some cases and
in others by the fear of lashes. Indeed when complexion gave presumption of
slave status, as it did, and custody gave color of ownership, the prospect
of redress through the law was faint unless the services of some white
friend could be enlisted. Two cases made conspicuous by the publication of
elaborate narratives were those of Peter Still and Solomon Northrup. The
former, kidnapped in childhood near Philadelphia, served as a slave some
forty years in Kentucky and northern Alabama, until with his own savings he
bought his freedom and returned to his boyhood home. The problem which he
then faced of liberating his wife and three children was taken off his
hands for a time by Seth Concklin, a freelance white abolitionist who
volunteered to abduct them. This daring emancipator duly went to Alabama
in 1851, embarked the four negroes on a skiff and carried them down the
Tennessee and up the Ohio and the Wabash until weariness at the oars drove
the company to take the road for further travel. They were now captured
and the slaves were escorted by their master back to the plantation; but
Concklin dropped off the steamboat by night only to be drowned in the Ohio
by the weight of his fetters. Adopting a safer plan, Peter now procured
endorsements from leading abolitionists and made a soliciting tour of New
York and New En