USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Federal Period 1783-1860, Volume II > Part 17
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The spirit of schism spread to the other associations. From the Neuse a number of churches withdrew and organ- ized the Contentnea Association, which clung to the old ideas and methods. When the Country Line and the Pee Dee asso- ciations decided for the old order, certain churches withdrew and founded the Beulah and Liberty associations. Yet the movement for the adoption of the new ideas and methods was approved by a majority of the churches throughout the state. The cause of reform was led by a group of new leaders : Thomas Meredith, a graduate of the University of Pennsyl- vania who came to North Carolina and settled at Edenton in
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
1817, John Armstrong, a graduate of Columbian College of Washington, D. C. and pastor at Newbern, Samuel Wait and P. W. Dowd, also graduates of Columbian College. Cooperat- ing with them was Martin Ross, who had introduced the ques- tion of missions and cooperative organization in the Kehukee Association. Acting on his motion the Chowan Association in 1826 appointed a committee to arrange for the organization of the Baptist State Convention. In 1830, when the Benevo- lent Society met in Greenville, the fourteen members present adopted a resolution transforming the society into the "Bap- tist State Convention." A constitution, prepared for the oc- casion by Thomas Meredith, was adopted, which made the ob- jects of the convention ministerial education, state missions, and cooperation with the National General Convention in domestic and foreign missions. The organization proved per- manent and successful. The next step in the movement of progress was the foundation of a college for the denomina- tion, which was achieved with the charter of Wake Forest in 1833.
The problem of organization was not confined to the Bap- tists. Considerable dissatisfaction pervaded the Methodists. In the early days of the church there was discontent with the episcopacy. Joseph Pilmoor, the first Methodist preacher in North Carolina, never left the Church of England. William Meredith, who introduced Methodism into Wilmington, lived and died a Primitive Methodist. Glendenning, as we have seen, forsook the church. Parson Miller, of Rowan County, remained in the Church of England; indeed, he helped to es- tablish the Diocese of North Carolina.
The leader of the earlier discontent was James O'Kelley, a native of Ireland, who spent his later years in Chatham Coun- ty, North Carolina. When the motion to allow the itinerant to appeal from the Bishop to the Conference in the matter of his appointment was rejected in 1792, O'Kelley withdrew and soon organized the Republican Methodist Church, now the Christian Church. Another period of discontent opened after the great revival. On account of the small salary of the itinerant, there was a host of local preachers who retired from the ranks in order to support their families. They participated in the camp
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
meetings and the revivals, and demanded recognition in the councils of the church. In 1820 the General Conference al- lowed them to organize district conferences, the chairmen of which were the presiding elders. This concession was not enough; in 1821 the Roanoke District Conference of Local Preachers sent to similar bodies and also to the Virginia Conference a protest against rules for their government made by a General Conference in which they were not represented, and a petition for representation was sent up to the General Conference of 1824. From other states were also sent peti- tions for lay representation. When these were rejected, "union societies" were organized to agitate for reform, the second · society in the movement being the Roanoke Union Society, organized in Halifax County, November 3, 1824. A little later the Granville Union was formed on the Tar River Circuit. The policy of the itinerants and presiding elders toward the movement for reform was drastic. Accusing members of the unions of inveighing against the discipline and sowing dis- sensions, they frequently expelled them from the churches. When a second appeal for reform to the General Conference of 1828 was rejected, a new denomination was launched, the Associated Methodist Churches, later the Methodist Prot- estant Church; the first annual conference of the new move- ment was organized in North Carolina in December, 1828.
Thus between 1800 and 1830 religion underwent an exten- sive propaganda and took on the clothes of earthly organiza- tion. Thereafter its development was more conventional. The age of expansion was followed by a period of doctrinal con- troversies and denominational rivalry. Hence the years from 1830 to 1860 are of interest mainly to those who have a techni- cal interest in denominational history.
CHAPTER XI SLAVERY AND THE FREE NEGRO-LEGAL, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIAL
During the decade of 1830-1840, which marked an epoch in political, religious, educational, and economic development, the institution of slavery was modified. A permanent change took place in the relations between the dominant and the servile races, which had a profound influence on political history. This must now be traced.
The slave system in North Carolina had certain well de- fined characteristics. The first of these was its patriarchal character, the personal relation between master and slave, due to the prevalence of the small plantation and the low average of slaves to each slave-holding family. Contemporary evidence of this is given by Frederick Law Olmsted, who thought :-
"The aspect in North Carolina with regard to slavery" to be "less lamentable than that of Virginia. There is not only less bigotry upon the subject and more freedom of conversation, but I saw here, in the institution, more of the patriarchal than in any other State. The slave more frequently appears as a family servant-a member of his mas- ter's family, interested with him in his fortune, good or bad. This is the result of less concentration of wealth in families or individuals. * * * Slavery thus loses much of its inhumanity. It is still ques- tionable, however, if, as the subject race approaches civilization, the dominant race is not proportionately detained in its progress." 1
While in South Carolina Mr. Olmsted met a free negro peddler from North Carolina and in conversation with him received the following comparison of the negro's lot in the two states :--
" 'Fac' is, master, 'pears like wite folks doan ginerally like niggars in dis country ; dey doan ginerally talk so to niggars like as do in my country ; de niggars ain't so happy heah; 'pears like the wite folks is kind o' different, somehow.' "
1 Journey to the Seaboard Slave States, p. 367.
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"Well, I've been thinking myself the niggers did not look so well here as they did in North Carolina and Virginia; they are not so well clothed, and they don't appear so bright as they do there."
"Well, massa," was the answer, "Sundays dey is mighty well clothed, dis country ; 'pears like dere ain't nobody looks better Sunday dan dey do. But, Lord! working days, seems like dey had no close dey could keep on 'em at all, master. Dey is almost naked wen dey's at work, some un 'em. Why, master, up in our country de wite folks, why some un 'em has ten or twelve; dey doan hev no real big planta- tions like dey has heah, but some un 'em has ten or twelve niggars, maybe, and dey juss lives and talks along wid 'em. If dey gits a niggar and he doan behave himself, dey won't keep him; dey just tell him, sar, he must look up anudder master, and if he doan find him- self one, I tell 'ou, wen the trader cum along, dey sell him and he totes him away. Dey always sell off all de bad niggars out of our country ; dat's de way all de bad niggar and all dem no-account niggar keep a comin' down hear; dat's de way on't, master." 2
The number and distribution of the negroes, slave and free, and their ratio to the white population were just as notable as the relation between master and slave. The following table may be taken as a basis for comparison : 3
Year
White
Per Ct.j of In- crease
Per Ct. of Pop- ulation
Free Colored
In- crease
Per Ct. of Pop- ulation
Slaves
In- crease
Per Ct. of Pop- ulation
Total Popu- lation
Slave Per Ct. Owning of Fam- Families ilies
1790|289,143|
73.2
5,135
1.3 |102,726|
25.5
|395,005|16,310| 31.0
1800 337,764|17.19
70.6
7,043|41.56|
1.04 133,296|32.53
27.8
478,103
1810 376,410 11.44
67.7
10,266 45.76
1.83 168,824 26.65
30.3
555,500
1820 419,200 11.36
65.6
14,612 42.33
2.3
205,017|21.43
32.1
638,829
1830 472,823 12.79|
64.1
19,534 33.74
2.6
245,601 19.79
33.1
737,987
1840 484,870| 2.54|
64.3
22,732
16.31
3.01 245,817
.08
32.6
753,419
1850 553,028 14.05
63.6
27,463|20.81
3.2
288,548 17.38
33.2
869,039 28,303| 26.8
1860 629,942|14.42|
63.4
130,463|10.92|
3.1
(331,059|14.73| 33.3
992,622
It is evident that the negroes increased faster than the whites, and formed a larger percentage of the population in 1860 than in 1790. Within this increase there was a tendency toward a concentration of ownership; the percentage of slave- holding families in 1850 (26%) was less than in 1790 (31%). The average number of slaves held by each slave-holding fam- ily increased in the same period from 6.7 to 10.2. Likewise the percentage of those holding more than five increased. Evidently there was a slow but persistent influence driving to the wall the non-slave-holders and small owners, and also con-
2 Ibid., pp. 389-393.
3 Century of Population Growth (U. S. Census).
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
centrating property in the hands of the few. In the light of these facts the value of slaves is significant. No exact infor- mation can he had; but investigation has placed the valuation in 1790 at $150 to $200 per head. Therefore the value of slaves in North Carolina at that time was between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000. In 1863 the first state report on slave values gave $162,866,763 for 299,325 slaves, or $544 per head. Thus there was an increase in value along with concentration of ownership.
By far the most interesting decade in this development was that from 1830 to 1840, when the total population showed its minimum increase. This was probably due to the migration to the southwest then under way. The same decade also was the period when discontent with the existing social, economic, and political conditions reached its climax. After the establishment of a school system, the construction of the first railroads, and the revision of the constitution, there was a distinctly more hopeful tone in the press and among pub- lic men, and no succeeding decade gave to the census such depressing figures.
The sectional aspect of slavery was also significant. The eastern counties always had a larger slave population than the western. In 1790 the ratio of the sections was more than two to one, 70,504 in the east to 30,068 in the west; by 1860 it was one and one-third to one, 184,596 in the east to 146,653 in the west. In no western county in 1790 did the slaves out- number the whites; in 1860 they had a majority in four west- ern, as well as in fifteen eastern, counties. Thus the slave system found its way into the region of the small farmer.
These statistics reveal the working out of an economic transformation. With that process also came a change in public opinion regarding the institution of slavery and the rights of the slaves. For this the decade 1830-1840 may be taken as the dividing line; prior thereto a strong anti-slavery feeling existed, and also a liberalizing trend in the laws re- garding slavery; but within the decade the pro-slavery senti- ment increased until it dominated public opinion, and legisla- tion on slavery became more strict.
The earlier sentiment had three origins. One was the lib-
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
eral political philosophy of the Revolution which emphasized the rights of man. It was responsible for a movement to check the slave trade. The first Provincial Congress which met in August, 1774, adopted a resolution that "we will not import any slave or slaves, or purchase any slave or slaves imported or brought into this province by others, from any part of the world after the first day of November next."4 In the Hillsboro Convention which considered the Federal Constitu- tion the compromise preventing interference with the traffic was explained as a concession to South Carolina and Georgia, and James Iredell declared "when entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an event which must be pleasing to every generous mind and every friend of human nature; but we often wish for things which are unobtainable." Legislation on the slave trade was also notable. In 1786 duties intended to be prohibitive were levied on imported slaves at the following rates : 40s on those under 7 and over 40 years of age, £5 on those from 7 to 12 and from 30 to 40, and £10 on those between 12 and 30, and a tax of £5 on all brought in from Africa, while slaves imported from states in which the policy of emancipa- tion had been adopted were to be returned. There was, how- ever, a pro-slavery interest, and in 1790 it procured a repeal of the above statute. But the Haytien Revolt of 1791 aroused the slaveholders to the danger of admitting negroes from abroad, and in 1794 the importation of slaves or indentured persons of color was absolutely prohibited, unless the owners settled in the state or were passing through. The next year this exception was denied to those coming from the West Indies, the Bahamas, or South America. To a petition from Wilmington in 1803 regarding the arrival of free negroes from Guadaloupe was due the inception of the federal statute confiscating any ship bringing negroes or persons of color to states which prohibited their importation. Apparently the liberal sentiment was again dominant in 1804, for, South Car- olina having withdrawn her restrictions in 1803, the legislature of North Carolina adopted a resolution proposing that Con- gress be given authority to prohibit the slave trade. The
4 Colonial Records, IX, 1046.
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
real test of opinion, however, was the policy toward the ille- gally imported slave; should he remain a slave, be returned to Africa or elsewhere, or gain his freedom? In settling this matter Nathaniel Macon's influence was decisive. He re- garded the slave traffic as a commercial question, the sub- ject for sectional bargains, and as Speaker of the House of Representatives, his deciding vote in December, 1806, pre- vented the federal law of 1807 from including the prohibition of the sale of negroes illegally imported. The question being left to the states, North Carolina in 1816 provided for sale, one-fifth of the proceeds to go to the informer and the balance to the state.
Another test of political thought regarding slavery was the question of its extension in the territories. In 1789 when the land west of the mountains was ceded to the Union, one of the conditions was that "no regulations made or to be made by Congress, shall tend to emancipate slaves." However, by 1819 a more liberal sentiment was in the ascendancy. The discussion concerning slavery expansion in Congress, which resulted in the Missouri Compromise, produced no excitement in North Carolina. The legislature made no pronouncement on the subject, and opinion on the principles involved can be gleaned only from the press and the actions of senators and congressmen. The Raleigh Register, the organ of the dom- inant party, opposed any restriction upon the admission of Missouri; but the Minerva, representing the old federalist ele- ment, took the opposite view. Its editor defended the consti- tutional right of Congress to restrict slavery and added, "It is equally certain that true policy forbids the extension, as its submits to the toleration, of slavery." Some form of gradual emancipation was also advocated by the Minerva. The views of the editor were supported by a number of letters and addresses which appeared in the paper from time to time. The same divergence of opinion also existed among the politi- cal leaders. Senator Macon and six of the congressmen voted against the Compromise, while Senator Stokes and six con- gressmen cast their ballots for it. Stokes presented the rea- sons for his vote in a letter to Governor Branch; these were the need of territory in the southwest for the slave population then too numerous in the older regions of the South, and a
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
"charitable and respectful regard for the feelings, and even the prejudices, of that great portion of the Northern people that was adverse to slavery in any form, and that would join heartily with us in any constitutional measure to get rid of the evil.'' 5
Evidently anti-slavery opinion, so far as it was based on political thought and action, acknowledged the evils of slavery and was willing to ameliorate the condition of the slave. Al- though it was in abeyance after 1830, it undoubtedly influenced some of the more conservative leaders during the three decades prior to 1860. Its most notable expression is found in an address of Judge Gaston before the graduating class of the University in 1832 :-
On you too, will devolve the duty which has been too long neg- lected, yet which cannot with impunity be neglected much longer, of providing for the mitigation, and (is it too much to hope for in North Carolina ?) for the ultimate extirpation of the worst evil that affects the southern part of our Confederacy. Full well do you know to what I refer, for on this subject there is, with all of us, a morbid sensitive- ness which gives warning even of an approach to it. Disguise the truth as we may, and throw the blame where we will, it is slavery which, more than any other cause, keeps us back in the career of improvement. It stifles industry and represses enterprise-it is fatal to economy and providence-it discourages skill-impairs our strength as a community, and poisons morals at the fountain head. How this evil is to be conquered, how subdued, is indeed a difficult and deli- cate inquiry, which this is not the time to examine, nor the occasion to discuss. I felt, however, that I could not discharge my duty, with- out referring to this subject, as one which ought to engage the pru- dence, moderation and firmness of those who, sooner or later, must act decisively upon it.
A second source of anti-slavery sentiment was economic, a feeling that the presence of slaves was injurious to the whites. It was prevalent in the western counties, the region of the Scotch-Irish and Germans, where the slave system was intro- duced very slowly. Its earliest and certainly its most definite expression was that by a Rowan County committee in 1774: "The African slave trade is injurious to this colony, obstructs the population of it by freemen, prevents manufacturers and other useful immigrants from Europe from settling among us, and occasions an annual increase of the Balance of Trade
5 Raleigh Register, March 17, 1820.
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
against the Colonies." " However, the most important aspect of the economic opposition to slavery was the silent thought of the plain people. When to that were added observation and knowledge based on travel and residence in the free states, outspoken criticism frequently resulted. Examples were Hin- ton Rowan Helper, Daniel Reaves Goodloe, and Benjamin S. Hedrick.7
The third source of the sentiment against slavery was religion. In all denominations there was prejudice against the institution. Its earliest active manifestation was by the Quakers. In 1758 the North Carolina Yearly Meeting recom- mended kind treatment and religious instruction of slaves on the part of their masters. Ten years later traffic in slaves for profit was condemned, and in 1772 Friends were forbidden to purchase negroes except from Friends, unless to prevent the separation of husband and wife or for other cause approved at monthly meetings. In the latter year, also, the legislature was petitioned to join with Virginia in requesting the Crown to abolish the importation of negroes from Africa. By 1776 the policy of emancipation was clearly under way. Since the law placed obligations on the master desiring to emancipate, which he could not always fulfill, the Yearly Meeting in 1808 appointed agents "to receive assignments of slaves from mas- ters who wished to be rid of them," the duty of the agents being to send the slaves to free states and territories or abroad. Several thousand slaves were thus collected, most of whom found their way to freedom. Thus 111 slaves and eight free negroes sailed from Beaufort for Hayti in 1826, the following year fifty sailed for Africa, and sixty-seven others later in the same year. But by far the greater number were sent to Pennsylvania or the West, Friends in New York, New England, the West, and England contributing to the expense.8
The Baptists likewise realized the evils of slavery. The buying and selling of slaves for profit was condemned by the Sandy Creek Association in 1808 and 1835, and by the Chowan
6 Colonial Records, IX, 1026.
7 Helper was a native of Davie County, Hedrick of Davidson, Goodloe of Franklin.
8 Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery, ch. IX.
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
Association in 1818.9 Among the Methodist circuit riders there was also a strong anti-slavery sentiment, quite in har- mony with the action of the early conferences. James O'Kelly in 1789 published in Baltimore an essay on negro slavery, recommending gradual emancipation. James Meacham, who served circuits in Virginia and North Carolina, frequently urged masters to emancipate their slaves. "If ever I get rich through slavery," he wrote in his diary, "I shall esteem my-
self a traitor and claim a part in Hell with Judas, and the rich glutton * * O America, America: blood and op- pression will be thy overthrow.'' 10
Apparently the Presby- terian ministers did not openly oppose slavery, but one, at least,, Reverend Eli Caruthers, had no sympathy for the "dread institution." One Sunday in July, 1861, he prayed that the young men of his church "might be blessed of the Lord and returned in safety, though engaged in a bad cause." The next day the church officials dismissed him. He then elabor- ated his views in a book, "The Evils of Slavery," which was never published. In it he contrasted the "unjust, unchristian, inhuman laws of the South with the teachings of the Bible and the original instincts of Nature" and demanded emancipa- tion.11
The distinctive feature of religious anti-slavery sentiment was race relations within the churches. A large proportion of the Baptist and Methodist members were negroes. Com- plete statistics do not exist, but in the Chowan Association, one of the large Baptist organizations, over one-fourth of the members were negroes in 1843 and over one-third in 1860, which was doubtless greater than the general average in the state. Of the Methodists, approximately one-eleventh were negroes in 1787; by 1800 the proportion had arisen to one- fourth; by 1830 it was approximately one-third, and so it re- mained until 1860. Indeed Methodism in certain eastern coun- ties had its origin in missions to the negroes, notably in Wil- mington and Fayetteville. All denominations took an interest
9 Purefoy, Sandy Creek Association, p. 76; Minutes of Chowan Association, p. 7.
10 Papers of the Trinity College Hist. Society, IX, pp. 82, 94.
11 Bassett, Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina, p. 56. Vol. II-14
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in the religious life of the slaves, who often occupied gal- leries reserved for them in the churches. The Methodists and in some instances the Episcopalians assigned special ministers to work among them.
For purposes of propaganda societies were established. The Quakers of the piedmont section in 1816 organized the North Carolina Manumission Society, a union of four soci- eties which had been founded as the result of visits by Charles Osborn, the first American Abolitionist, in 1814.12 For over a decade the society prospered, more than forty branches being organized in Guilford, Randolph, Chatham, Forsythe, David- son, and Orange counties. Annual conventions were held and were well attended, the members present in 1819 being 281, and in 1825, 141. Among prominent visitors were Elihu Embree and James Jones, leaders of similar organizations in Tennessee, and Benjamin Lundy. The purposes of the so- ciety were gradual emancipation, amelioration of the slave laws, and development of public sentiment. In 1825 that senti- ment was estimated as follows: for immediate emancipation, two-sixtieths; for gradual emancipation, three-sixtieths; for emigration, four-sixtieths; ready to support schemes for emancipation, thirty-sixtieths; indifferent, three-sixtieths; regarding emancipation as impractical, nine-sixtieths; bit- terly opposed to emancipation, three-sixtieths. Petitions were sent to the legislature in 1824 and 1825. In 1819 Con- gress was memorialized through Congressman Settle, and in 1822 Congressman Long submitted a memorial from citizens of Randolph County asking for measures to abolish the Afri- can slave trade.13 In 1824 a petition favoring emigration of negroes to Hayti and in 1827 another praying for the prohibi- tion of the inter-state slave trade were submitted through Con- gressman Saunders. In 1830 Congressman Shepperd sub- mitted in behalf of the society a memorial favoring the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and also the slave trade among the states. Later, when the pro-slavery opinion was active, Shepperd's handling the petition was used
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