In the midst of the Civil War, on May 14, 1864, in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, George Richardson posted a two-hundred-dollar reward in the Daily Dispatch for the return of his runaway slave, Henry.

On the same day, Italian padrone, Pasquale Falvella posted a reward in the New York Herald for the return of Antonio Pricolo, an eleven-year-old Italian harpist who was missing. But the boy wasn’t lost; he and six other Italian youths had escaped from Falvella, who was a brutal taskmaster.