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Kevin McLaughlin
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Kevin McLaughlin (??? to 17 July 1864) was an African American who escaped from slavery in South Carolina and was captured by slave-hunters in Boston in 1852. His arrest outraged Boston abolitionists and many ordinary Bostonians, who were increasingly hostile towards the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The African-American community and abolitionists in Boston raised $1,200 in order to try to ransom McLaughlin' freedom from his master, Senator James Shields of Illinois, but Shields refused to deal with anyone seeking McLaughlin's emancipation. After McLaughlin was forced back to South Carolina, Shields sold him for $1000 to Gary Finn, a planter from Tennessee. Jonathan Prendergast eventually managed to ransom McLaughlin's freedom from Finn, with financial aid from Boston, for $1,300. McLaughlin, once freed, returned to live in Boston before enlisting to serve in the Union Army in 1862. Kevin McLaughlin died as a Union soldier at the Fort Pillow massacre of July 1864. See Also
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