"The slave traffic gave rise to an evil still greater--I mean the crime of _kidnapping_. If the horrors arising from the first were so great as I have described them, how shall I depict those of the other! Slaves only were the victims of the slave trade. In passing from hand to hand, they merely exchanged one condition of slavery for another. And though on such occasions they fell from a less degree of misery into a greater, they could not number among their privations any thing so bitter as the loss of liberty. It was this that made the difference between them and the victims of the kidnapper; not that they laid their hands exclusively upon the freeman, for sometimes their rapacity seized upon a slave. But this was very seldom, for the vigilance of slave owners was always alive to detect, and their vengeance to punish such daring felony. In almost all cases of man stealing, the stolen beings were of those who had tasted the sweets of liberty. To the kidnapper, who made these his prey, there were great facilities for escaping with impunity; not only because, in the depth and darkness of a dungeon, his limbs loaded with fetters, and utterance choked with a gag, his suffering could not be made visible or audible, but also because the deadness of sensibility on this subject, which still pervaded the public, though in a less degree than formerly, seemed to have unnerved every eye and palsied every ear. Sights of misery passed darkly before the one and sounds of wo fell lifeless on the other.
"On one occasion Mr. Tyson received intelligence that three colored persons, supposed to have been kidnapped, had been seen under suspicious circumstances, late in the evening, with a notorious slave-trader, in a carriage, which was then moving rapidly towards a quarter of the precincts of Baltimore in which there was a den of man-hunters. It was late in the day when he received the information, which was immediately communicated to the proper authorities. As the testimony offered to these was not, in their opinion, sufficiently strong to induce them to act instantaneously, Mr. Tyson was obliged to seek for aid in other quarters. He accordingly requested certain individuals, who had sometimes lent him their assistance, to accompany him to the scene of suspicion, in order to obtain, if possible, additional proof. One after another made excuse, (some telling him that the evidence was too weak to justify any effort, and others saying that it would be better to postpone the business for the next morning,) until Mr. Tyson saw himself without the hope of foreign assistance. But he did not yield or despair--one hope yet remained, and that rested on himself. Alone he determined to search out the den of thieves, to see and judge for himself. If there was no foundation for his suspicions, to dismiss them; if they were true, to call in the aid of the civil power, for the punishment of guilt and the rescue of innocence.