ed 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.]

A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves. Thus Lucinda who
had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state
petitioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was
doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband
"from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering
as they are, could not induce her to be separated."[68] On other grounds
William Bass petitioned the South Carolina general assembly in 1859,
reciting "That as a