Cornelius Sinclair (c. 1813 to unknown) was an African American child kidnapped in Philadelphia in August 1825 by Patty Cannon's gang. He was one of a number of children kidnapped that summer and later transported south, to be sold into slavery.[1] Sinclair was sold in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in October 1825 and subsequently freed in March 1827 through the efforts of several Methodist ministers, Robert L. Kennon and Joshua Boucher, who filed a lawsuit on his behalf. John Gayle of the Alabama Supreme Court presided over the trial, where a jury of slave-owners in Tuscaloosa found in favor of Sinclair's freedom. When he returned to Philadelphia he testified as part of the successful prosecution of one of his kidnappers.[2] The African American newspaper the African Observer provided coverage of the efforts to free Sinclair and prosecute the kidnappers.
References
edit- ^ Smith, Eric Ledell (2008). "Rescuing African American Kidnapping Victims in Philadelphia as Documented in the Joseph Watson Papers" (PDF). Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 129. Pennsylvania State University Libraries: 317, 330-332. JSTOR 20093801.
- ^ Crump, Judson; Brophy, Alfred L. (2017). "Twenty-One Months a Slave: Cornelius Sinclair's Odyssey" (PDF). Mississippi Law Journal (86). The Faculty Lounge: 457–512.
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