Description
Nigger Stealing. - - A considerable excitement was occasioned in the city (Kansas City, Missouri) last night by an attempt to run off a negro man belonging to a Mr. Knight of Clay County.
The negro had come over to our Market yesterday morning with a wagon load of produce. A wagon with two white men and a free negro from Kansas, as they said, were also at the Market House all day. In the morning the free negro went to Knight's slave and made propositions to him to run away. The slave went and told his master, who advised him to play it out.
A party of men were placed on the watch. It had barely grown dark when the two white men hitched up their team and started from the Market House up Walnut St. followed by the free negro and Knight's negro in Knight’s wagon.
The party on the watch saw every movement and concealed themselves in the deep cut of Sixth street on each side of the crossing of Walnut. When both wagons reached the junction of the two streets, the party of watchers, numbering a dozen or more, stepped out and captured the entire party. It was all done in the quickest and quietest manner possible.
The two white men and their negro confrere were lodged in jail. A good many excited individuals were around and it was loudly talked of lynching them. They were allowed, however, to go through the panic of expectancy, though strongly guarded.
The party is said, by those who know most about them to be connected with the notorious Jake Hurd clan, and it is supposed that the negro was taken for the purpose of selling him. No matter which class of negro stealers they belonged to, they ought to be dealt with to the extremity of the law.
We clip the above from the Kansas City Journal of Commerce, of Wednesday the 24th inst. We believe that paper is quite right in supposing that the party attempting to run off the negro of Mr. Knight is connected with the “notorious Jake Hurd clan" and we are glad to see that the people of Kansas City. are beginning to understand the nature of the negro traffic carried on along the border, and the character of the men engaged in it.
Negro stealing as carried on in this part of the country is not principally done by Republicans, nor yet Abolitionists, but by men who steal them to sell again, or to return them for the reward which may be offered, and who are, in nearly every case supporters of the Democratic party.
(Researcher’s note: Jake Hurd was known to operate in Platte County, Missouri. Also see entry for 03/02/2014 “Freeborn, Falsely Imprisoned - Allen Pinks' Life Story Would Make a Movie.”
"Truth is, Pinks was a Judas goat to his people. Wearing the sheepskin of the Kansas abolitionist and waving the promise of escape, the black man had been luring unsuspecting slaves away from their Missouri owners’ farms, shops, or homes into the waiting arms of ruffian allies. Pinks was arrested with two white codefendants identified as Thomas McGee and Henry McLothlin (or McLaughlin). Both were associates of (Jake) Herd (Hurd). McGee, in fact, was in the gang that had stopped Doy and taken those free blacks into Missouri the year before.")Date(s) of Creation
10/27/1860
