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Interviewed by Clinton Sandvick

In October, the Oxford University Press will be publishing ''The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era'' by Michael A. Ross, an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. Ross's first book, ''Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court During the Civil War Era'', examined Justice Miller's career on the Supreme Court. Ross has changed pace and his next book follows the 1870 kidnapping of a white seventeen month old girl, Mollie Digby, by two African American women in New Orleans. While virtually unknown today, the case was a national sensation at the time. Everyday, newspapers around the country were publishing reports of the kidnapping and subsequent trial. Unsurprisingly, the story became intertwined with the racial politics of Reconstruction. Here's my interview with Michael Ross about his new book.

'''Your previous book, ''Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court During the Civil War Era'', focused on the impact of Justice Samuel Freeman Miller on the Supreme Court. How did you shift from looking at the Supreme Court to examining Reconstruction in New Orleans?'''

For my first book, I did a lot of research on New Orleans during Reconstruction because Justice Miller authored the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in a case, the famous Slaughter-House Cases, that emerged from the fearsome political and legal struggles that took place in New Orleans during that era. I stumbled across the Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case while doing that research. Every historian has had a moment like this. You are immersed in old letters or newspapers when a different story from the one you are working on catches your eye. In the documents you find an account of something no one has written about before, an untold story begging to be told. Usually when this happens, you pause, shake your head, think “wow, that would be great to tackle someday,” and then return to the task at hand. Seldom do you go back to it. The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case is an example, for better or worse, of what happens when you actually take the bait and decide that the event you stumbled across is too rich, too full of historical implications, to pass up.

When I first found the Digby case, I was reading all of the 1870 New Orleans newspapers, looking for references to the Slaughter-House Cases and the efforts by ex-Confederates to obstruct Reconstruction in the state and local courts. When I reached the June 1870 editions, the story of an alleged Voodoo abduction demanded a quick read. ‘That can’t possibly have happened,’ I thought to myself. The press had to have been spreading unfounded rumors. The New Orleans papers, after all, also reported ghost sightings. But to my amazement, each day’s paper contained new articles about the Digby kidnapping—including reports of the police arresting and interrogating Voodoo practitioners. And by the time it was clear that the human sacrifice rumors were exaggerations, the story had taken other compelling turns. (Editor's note: Ross has more about the human sacrifice allegations at his Tumblr blog - michaelaross.tumblr.com.)