Kidnappers
From 1811-1829, Martha "Patty" Cannon was the leader of a gang that kidnapped slaves and free blacks from the Delmarva Peninsula of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia and transported and sold them to plantation owners located further south. She was indicted for four murders in 1829 and died in prison while awaiting trial, purportedly a suicide via poison.
In the 1820s-1830s, John A. Murrell, who led an outlaw gang in western Tennessee, was once caught with a freed slave living on his property. He was sentenced to ten years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary for slave-stealing. Murrell was also known to kidnap slaves and sell them back to other slave owners.
John Hart Crenshaw was an American landowner, salt maker, and slave trader, from the 1820s-1850s, based out of Gallatin County, Illinois. Although Illinois was a free state, Crenshaw leased the salt works in nearby Equality, Illinois from the U.S. Government, which permitted the use of slaves for the arduous labor of hauling and boiling brackish water to produce salt. Due to Crenshaw's keeping and breeding of slaves and kidnapping of free blacks, who were then pressed into slavery, his house became popularly known as The Old Slave House and is alleged to be haunted.
Read more about this topic: Reverse Underground Railroad