Gilbert Horton

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For the North Dakota architect, see Gilbert R. Horton.
For the Mississippi politician, see Gilbert Horton (politician).

Gilbert Horton was a free-born African American who was captured with the intent of being sold into slavery.[1] Horton had worked on a ship known as The Macedonian after his father had worked for years to purchase his freedom.[2] When The Macedonian docked in Norfolk, Virginia, Horton traveled to Georgetown in Washington D.C., where he was arrested on the assumption that he was a runaway slave.[2]

Background

In August 1826, a local business owner in Croton Falls, New York, named John Owen noticed an advertisement in

The National Intelligencer[3] describing Horton. Owen brought this to the attention of William Jay, who was the son of John Jay, in order to express concern over the capture of a free citizen.[4]

Relief from capture

Through the efforts of Jay and Owen, Governor DeWitt Clinton wrote[5] a letter on behalf of Horton's freedom, to then President John Quincy Adams.

The work of Governor Clinton and Senator Henry Clay[6] ultimately secured Horton's release.

References

  1. ISBN 978-0813149790
    .
  2. ^
    ISSN 0027-8378
    . Retrieved 2021-06-29.
  3. ^ Tuckerman, Bayard (1894). William Jay and the constitutional movement for the abolition of slavery.
  4. ^ William Cooper Nell (1855). The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution. pp. 331–333.
  5. ^ An inquiry into the character and tendency of the American colonization, and American anti-slavery societies. 1835.
  6. ISBN 9780813162461
    .
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