Most of the captured runaway slaves suffered a miserable fate. After their furious owners claimed them from jail, most of them were handed over to slave traders for sale in the Deep South—the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, and New Orleans. One Northern newspaper reporter visited the railroad depot and spotted about fifty slaves, most shackled together, waiting to board trains. “Some … were weeping most bitterly,” he wrote. “I learned that many families were separated. Wives were to take leave of their husbands, and husbands of their wives, children of their parents, brothers and sisters shaking
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