In the predawn hours of July 24, 1845, a group of slave catchers composed of six white men and a black man burst into the room where Catherine “Kitty” Payne and her three children were sleeping. At gunpoint, the men violently loaded Catherine and children into a wagon and made for the Mason-Dixon line about ten miles away. The best description and analysis of Catherine Payne’s life and legal challenges is given in Megan Linsley Bishop’s 2007 Master’s Thesis.

What Samuel Maddox really wanted was to sell his uncle’s former slaves. And for that reason, Kitty, Eliza Jane, Mary, and Arthur James went to prison. After the nighttime kidnapping, the speedy wagon journey got them over the Mason Dixon line, and from there, a day or two later, they stopped at the plantation of Kate and Fannie Withers. In their short time there, Eliza Jane could tell that Kate was sweet on Samuel but that Fannie, her older sister, had no use for either of them. The sisters were “bad friends” … so said Eliza Jane to Mary.

A few days after they reached the Maddox plantation and after the heartsick Mrs. Maddox refused to stay with Samuel, a servant from Fannie arrived, put the family in a wagon, and brought them to her home. It was, Eliza Jane, thought, rather like a kidnapping in broad daylight, except that Fannie gave them food and a comfortable room and didn’t hit anybody. Eliza Jane could not understand why they were there if Samuel or Mrs. Maddox owned them, but she felt safe in Fannie’s house.

And then night came. Each night since the kidnapping, Eliza Jane had startled awake to remembered terrors of the pounding door and the men storming into their sleeping place. But this night was worse—they heard noise at a back door just as Eliza Jane was settling in. This was no memory, no nightmare. Someone was trying to break in!

Except this time, Fannie herself went to the back door and opened it. The kids huddled near their mother and they all listened closely to the muffled conversation drifting up from downstairs. After a lengthy exchange that grew contentious at times, Fannie convinced Samuel that the family was asleep and should not be awakened, that he could return for them in the morning. With Samuel gone, Fannie sent for Sheriff Walden who was a close family friend. Sheriff Walden told the family that the safest place for them was the county jail, which would prevent Samuel from selling them South while court challenges proceeded. He offered to put the family in the debtor’s cell, which was more comfortable than those used for convicts. The family agreed, and Eliza Jane, her mother, and siblings would spend the next year at the jail where Sheriff Walden’s kids would periodically play with the Payne children in the jailhouse courtyard.

Their conditions were relatively comfortable, but the setting made a profound impression on Eliza Jane. What she saw opened her eyes to a world she hardly knew existed. She saw others who had been reclaimed from up north brought in, saw some of them whipped in the square.

Slave sales were held on the courthouse steps next door, and she saw husbands and wives sold separately and children sold separately from either parent. She saw the tears and the wounds and evaluation of black bodies as though they were cattle or horses, saw scars and worn down old black folks who had been ground down through hard labor. And she realized that nothing separated them from her except whatever it was that Mrs. Maddox had done. And if Samuel Maddox had his way, that is where they would be. She was no better or worse than these sufferers, and yet, a quirk of fate had made her life better temporarily at least.

Over the next year, three court cases tested the extent to which the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 could be enforced.