New York had a long history of slavery (abolished beginning only in 1817) but also a thriving Black community as well. Yet because of its financing of southern cotton, much of the city was pro-southern, led by the Democratic Tammany Hall political machine. The US constitution included a clause on the return of fugitive slaves. In his new book, The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War, Jonathan Daniel Wells quotes Harriet Jacobs describing New York in the 1830s as a âcity of kidnappersâ waiting to seize Black people, free or enslaved, and deliver them to slavery. The stories are shocking: 26 abductions in December 1837 and January 1838 alone, an arrest of a boy at his school desk, all aided by police, officials, lawyers representing slaveholders and racist judges.