USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: The Federal Period 1783-1860, Volume II > Part 26
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able to freedom, or that slavery extension is one of the Constitutional rights of the Southı.
It is not, however, my object to attack the institution of slavery. But even the most zealous defender of the patriarchal institutions cannot shut his eyes against a few prominent facts. One is, that in nearly all the slave states there is a deficiency of labor. Since the abolition of the African slave trade there is no source for obtaining a supply, except from the natural increase. For this reason, among others, a gentleman of South Carolina, in an article published in DeBows Review for August, 1856, advocates a dissolution of the Union in order that the African slave trade may be revived. From North Carolina and Virginia nearly the entire increase of the slave population, during the last twenty years, has been sent off to the new states of the Southwest. In my boyhood I lived on one of the great thoroughfares of travel (near Locke's Bridge on the Yadkin River) and have seen as many as two thousand in a single day, going south, mostly in the hands of speculators. Now, the loss of these two thousand did the state a greater injury than would the shipping off of a million dollars. I think I may ask any sensible man how we are to grow rich and prosper, while "driving out" a million of dollars per day. I am glad, however, to say that the ruinous policy is not now carried on to such an extent as it has been. But there is still too much of it. I have very little doubt that if the slaves which are now scattered thinly over Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, were back in Virginia and North Carolina, it would be better for all con- cerned. These old states could then go on and develop the immense wealth which must remain locked up for many years to come. Whilst the new states, free from a system which degrades white labor, would become a land of common schools, thrift and industry, equal if not superior to any in the union. But letting that be as it may, still no one can deny that here in North Carolina we need more men, rather than more land. Then why go to war to make more slave states, when we have too much territory already, for the force we have to work it? Our fathers fought for freedom, and one of the tyrannical acts which they threw in the teeth of Great Britain was that she forced slavery upon the colonies against their will. Now, the secessionists are trying to dissolve the union because they are not permitted to establish slavery in the Territory of Kansas. If the institution of slavery is a thing good and desirable in itself, it is the easiest thing in the world for the people to vote for its introduction at any time after they have formed a constitution and been admitted as a state. If it is not a good thing, it would be an act of great oppression to force it upon them.
* * *
Born in the "good old North states," I cherish a love for her and her people that I bear to no other state or people. It will ever be my sincere wish to advance her interests. I love also the union of states, secured as it was by the blood of my ancestors and what- ever influence I possess, though small it may be, shall be exerted
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for its preservation. I do not claim infallibility for my opinion. Wiser and better men have been mistaken. But holding as I do the doctrines once advocated by Washington and Jefferson, I think I should be met by argument and not by denunciation. At any rate, those who prefer to denounce me should at least support their charges by their own name.
Frank and manly as was this statement, it received no sympathy or toleration. The students of the university burned its author in effigy, the faculty adopted resolutions repudiating the heretic among them, the newspapers reviled him, and the executive committee of the university declared his power of service at an end. As Professor Hedrick remained at his post, a second meeting of the committee was held at which his chair was declared vacant. A short time afterward the deposed teacher was in Salisbury to attend an educational convention. When his presence became known, a mob gathered, burned his effigy before his eyes, and forced him to leave town. Shortly afterward he left the state, never to return, but to render it loving and faithful service in the reconstruction period. Evi- dently freedom of spoken opinion on the slavery question was not possible in North Carolina-a violent reaction from con- ditions as they existed in earlier years.
While excitement over the case of Professor Hedrick was at its height, another matter attracted comment. This was a visit of Governor Wise, of Virginia, and Governor Adams, of South Carolina, to Raleigh on October 13. Governor Jenkins, of Georgia, was expected, but did not come. The aim of this gathering of functionaries was formally stated to be a desire to inspect the State Fair; but they left before that festival opened. According to tradition, their purpose was to consult with Governor Bragg about concert of action in case Fremont was elected, but no plan was adopted on account of Bragg's conservatism. In contrast to this concern over the right of slavery in territories was the opposition of Rayner, the Know Nothing. In an address at Philadelphia during the campaign he urged the members of his party to vote for Fremont in the hope that the election might be thrown into the House of Rep- resentatives. This action was denounced by the state demo- cratic executive committee, and made the subject of violent
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editorials by Holden, which led to an exchange of blows be- tween him and Rayner. The result of the election, so far as North Carolina was concerned, was never in doubt. There was no republican electoral ticket in the state, and Buchanan received an overwhelming vote. The irony of history is that Fremont had been suggested in 1855 as a possible candidate for the democrats, and F. P. Blair wrote to Bedford Brown suggesting that a movement in his interest be launched in North Carolina.
After the election of Buchanan interest in slavery extension again waned, and two other issues were again brought to the front. One of these was the old question of public lands. Duncan McRae, having retired from the consulship at Paris, returned to the state and announced himself as an independent candidate for governor in 1858 on the issue of distribution. A similar announcement was also made by W. F. Leake, but le soon withdrew in favor of McRae. As the whig party ma- chinery had collapsed and the Americans had lost heart after the congressional elections of 1857, in which they elected only one member, John A. Gilmer, of the Fifth District, there was no party opposition to Ellis, the nominee of the democrats; but the whig-American press advised their clientele to support McRae. By far the greater danger to the democratic cause was factionalism. The leader who had undoubtedly done much toward winning the party's victories was Holden, editor of the North Carolina Standard. In season and out of season his editorials had relentlessly and ably criticized the whigs. His advice had more than once determined party policy, and his paper in news service and ideas was superior to any other in the state. Early in 1857 a movement was launched to give him the democratic nomination for governor in the following year; but his success and that of the party raised rival .claim- ants for the honor, notably John W. Ellis, W. W. Avery, Judge S. J. Person, and A. W. Venable. Moreover Holden was a genuine man of the people, born in poverty, without family connections or ancestral traditions to aid in advancing his political fortunes. The jealousy of his power was therefore all the greater, and the opposition to his nomination was strengthened by the prejudice of the large number of whigs
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who had joined the democracy since 1850. The party conven- tion was ordered to meet at Charlotte, a strategic victory for Ellis, a western leader. A veritable preconvention campaign then followed. Most of the democratic newspapers threw their influence to Holden and the whig press openly approved his claims. Said the Fayetteville Observer: "Mr. Holden is a 'tried and valiant soldier' who has 'groaned and sweat' until he has made the democratic party all powerful in North Caro- lina. Without him these democratic lawyers would never have been judges, governors, congressmen, legislators-would have been scarcely heard of. But the work is done. And when he or his friends for him ask for participation in the honors of victory, it is only natural, now as then, that his creatures should 'take down his load and turn him like the empty ass to shake his ears and graze in commons.' How dare an editor of a newspaper, a man who has worked with his own hands, aspire to reward from his own party?"
Undoubtedly Mr. Holden was the favorite of the rank and file of his party, but the state convention was dominated by politicians, and Ellis was nominated. The Standard abided by the decision of the convention, and McRae, in spite of an aggressive canvass, was defeated by a majority of over 16,000. But a rift had been made which was soon widened. During the campaign, Senator Biggs resigned to accept the United States Judgeship for the District of North Carolina. Governor Bragg appointed Congressman Clingman to fill the unexpired term. When the legislature met Bragg was elected over the opposition of Holden and Reid. Evidently Holden had fallen out with the party machine. Thereafter he became more conservative in the matter of states rights and by 1860 he was identified with the union faction of the party.
Democratic supremacy, however, was threatened by a larger and more vital question than distribution and the rivalry of leaders. That was the unequal burdens imposed by the revenue system. As the scope of taxation was widened by the addition of new schedules, there was no equitable applica- tion of rates. Investment in land yielded more revenue than smaller amounts loaned at interest or invested in bank stock, while investment in trade was taxed less than land or stocks.
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Governor Reid in 1852 and 1854 called attention to this con- dition in the following words: "At present $1,000 loaned at interest pays $1.80, while $1,000 hoarded against the public convenience and public policy pays nothing at all; $1,000 invested in land pays $3, while $1,000 invested in trade pays $1." The remedy he proposed was the adoption of the adval- orem principle. "It is believed," he said, "that after except- ing slaves, each person's estate, real and personal, including money, whether at interest or not, ought to be taxed alike, according to value. This would require every person to con- tribute in proportion to the value of his or her estate, and would equalize the public burden between the various classes upon principles of justice." Although the revenue law was revised in 1854, 1856, and 1858, the advalorem principle was not adopted. The existing inequality was most marked in that class of property which Governor Reid excepted from his proposed reform, viz., slavery. Slaves were taxed only as polls, all between the ages of twelve and fifty being subject to a capitation equal to that paid by white polls between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five. In 1850 the total number of polls paying the capitation tax was 175,053. Making allow- ances for the taxation of both sexes of slaves to one of whites, and also a longer period during which the slaves were subject to taxation, the slave polls were approximately three-fourths of the total, or 131,000. Their real value, on an estimate of $800 each, was $104,800,000; the revenue yielded was $26,200. In marked contrast was the revenue from land, $36,398 on a valuation of $60,664,900. Thus slave property, having a greater value than land, yielded less revenue. Another in- equality was revealed in the contrast between the income taxes and the slave polls. According to the revenue law of 1856, the white mechanic whose income was $500 or more paid $5 in addition to his poll tax, while on the able-bodied slave, per- haps also a mechanic and a competitor of the white, only a poll tax of 50 cents was imposed. Similar inequalities in the taxation of slaves and other forms of property were also apparent.
Evidently here was a dormant issue, inflammable in charac- ter, which might rouse the non-slaveholding whites against
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the slavocracy. It was championed in 1858 by a group of legislators, led by Moses A. Bledsoe, democratic senator from Wake County. When the committee on revenue was appointed, Mr. Bledsoe submitted resolutions denouncing as unjust and undemocratic any discrimination for or against any form of property, and directing the committee to be guided by the principle of the resolution in its deliberations. The resolu- tions were promptly rejected. A few days later Mr. Turner proposed a bill for a constitutional amendment embodying the advalorem principle to be submitted to the people. Mr. Gorrell, a whig, offered an amendment for an open unre- stricted constitutional convention, and Mr. Ramsay also pro- posed an amendment specifically demanding the advalorem taxation of slave property. The bill for the convention, and also the proposed amendment, were rejected. Mr. Bledsoe, however, was uncompromising; he sought but was denied the privilege of protesting against the revenue law, which was drafted along traditional lines. In the meantime the agita- tion was started in the House of Commons. Messrs. Faribault and Speer introduced resolutions similar to those of Bledsoe, and Mr. Dockery presented a bill for a constitutional conven- tion ; both were tabled.
Defeated in the legislature, Mr. Bledsoe carried the issue to the people. An organization for propaganda was estab- lished, the Raleigh Working Men's Association. It empha- sized the inequalities arising from the slave capitation and the privileged position of slave property. Slaveholders, it was claimed, benefited most by railroads and internal im- provements, yet they contributed less than their share to the burden of the public debt. A distinct appeal to class feeling was therefore made. Illustrative is the following extract from an address by Frank I. Wilson, agitator of the cause, and also an employee of the North Carolina Standard:
Our preachers all tell us that our lot has been cast in a Christian land. I will not deny this, but I sometimes have my doubts about it. Of one thing I am sure; as working men, we have fallen on evil times. Dark and troublous clouds are lowering around us. Compelled to the disgrace of labor, either mental or physical, to maintain our- selves, our wives and children, the keen scented nostrils of patriots smell treason in every movement of our muscles, and in every idea
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of our brains. In every pulse throb of the blood that courses through our veins, they feel a jar to the Temple of Liberty, and in every word we utter they hear the thunder tones of intolerable impudence and insolence. Ever and anon thus wrath, like arrowy lightnings, cleaves the gloom above and around us with a light whose lurid gleam is quite as substantial, if not as fearful, as chaos itself. Should not this appall us? Should not we pause, dismayed, horror-stricken, and trembling in every joint? Should we not crouch at the feet of these superiors, and humbly beg as inferiors, permission to breathe the free air of God ? What! a man with the smell of the workshop upon him, or with the pale face of mental exhaustion, to dare utter his sentiments! to dare expose his views! to dare have a soul, a mind, a thought of his own! Surely the acme of impudence is reached and the walls of insolence scaled.' 1
The leaders of the advalorem cause endured much vituper- ative abuse at the hands of the conservatives, especially those of the democratic party. Their reasoning, however, had to be met, and the argument against reform took three lines. First was the claim that equality in the matter of poll taxes was a part of a compromise in the Convention of 1835 by which slave property was to be protected in return for con- cession to the West in the matter of representation, where slaves were less numerous; hence the proposed reform would also lead to a change in the basis of representation and the apportionment of the school fund. In reply Mr. Bledsoe denied the existence of any evidence that taxation had been the subject of compromise, or that a new system of taxation would change the basis. The second argument of the con- servatives was that advalorem taxation of slaves would aid the abolitionist policy. "Give the abolitionists power to tax slaves at pleasure, and we establish a lever for the uprooting of slavery in this state, of which free soilers will soon take advantage." The apt reply was that the recognition of slaves as persons in the existing revenue system was in full accord with the abolitionists' views, while taxing them advalorem fitted in with the southern view of slaves as property ; such in- deed was the policy of the other Southern states and its adop- tion had greatly diminished state debts. The final argument against the advalorem principle was theoretical, that if value be the standard of revenue, the poorer classes suffer, that taxes on labor can never be satisfactory, and that levying on capital will inevitably result in proscription.
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So far as slavery was concerned, the friends of advalorem had the better of the discussion. Two conditions favored a wide acceptance of the proposed reform. One was that the slaveholders were in a large minority, and that industrialism, the antithesis of slavery, made marked progress between 1850 and 1860. The other was the revival of the whig party. Early
Gov. JOHN W. ELLIS
in 1859 the American members of the legislature held a caucus, agreed to abandon Know Nothingisin, and to renew their political life as whigs. The movement was well received by the people, for in the congressional elections of 1859 four whig candidates were successful, W. N. H. Smith, from the First District, J. A. Gilmer in the Fifth, J. M. Leach in the Sixth, and Zebulon B. Vance in the Eighth. For further suc- cess there was apparently only lacking a popular issue, and Vol. II-21
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that was found in the matter of taxation. Hence the whig state convention of 1860 wrote into its platform a demand for the advalorem principle, to be established by a constitutional convention, and John Pool, of Pasquotank County, was nomi- nated for governor. The democrats, threatened with a defec- tion from the party by Bledsoe and men of his type, and also under the necessity of conserving the loyalty of the slave- holders, renominated Governor Ellis, deprecated as "prema- ture, impolitic, dangerous, and unjust" the advalorem issue, but favored equality of taxation upon various classes of prop- erty as far as practicable within the limits of the constitution.
The ensuing campaign was hotly contested. In its early stage the advantage was with Pool and the whigs, for they clearly demonstrated the inequality in the existing revenue system. Several factors, however, turned the tide against them. One was the strategy of Ellis; pointing out the absence of exemptions in the proposed reform, he assumed the purpose was to tax the ovens, pots, chickens, eggs, and furniture of the small householder at equal ratio with the landlord's slaves. Thus the whig program was made the subject of considerable horse play over pots, pans, and tin cups. Another influence favoring the democrats was the strength derived from the national campaign, the argument that the rights of the South would be safer with a democratic than a whig administration. Finally the people of North Carolina were by nature con- servative, slow to accept reforms of whatever kind. Conse- quently Ellis was reelected, but his majority was 10,000 less than that of 1858, incontrovertible evidence that the whig party was once again a factor to be reckoned with.
In the meantime excitement over the slavery question, which subsided after the campaign of 1856, revived. The principal cause was the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry in October, 1859. Even conservatives, to say nothing of the fire-eaters, foresaw possibility of war, and urged military preparations. Volunteer military companies were organized in many counties, among them Buncombe, Edgecombe, and Warren. Governor Ellis procured from the Secretary of War a new supply of arms for the federal arsenal at Fayetteville. Even the Raleigh Register declared that the South would
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never submit to the election of Seward or a sectional repub- lican to the presidency. There was some demand that a special session of the legislature be convened. Governor Ellis, in December, consulted the council of state, which approved the course of Governor Wise, of Virginia, and summarized public opinion in the following resolution: "If we cannot hold our slave property and at the same time enjoy repose and tran- quillity in the Union, we will be constrained in justice to our- selves and our posterity to establish new forms."
Almost contemporaneous with the John Brown affair came the revelation of antislavery and abolition activity within the state. In 1857 Hinton Rowan Helper, a native of Davie County, had published his celebrated "Impending Crisis," a comparison of the slave and the free states to the disparage- ment of the former, and an appeal to the non-slaveholding whites to unite against the slave power. The book attracted little attention until 1859, when a large edition was subscribed to by prominent republicans and abolitionists for use in the congressional campaign. The work and its author then be- came the subject of violent denunciation. Helper was charged with having fraudulently used his employer's money when a young man, and "The Impending Crisis" was regarded as incendiary literature. During the summer of 1859 John A. Gilmer, whig candidate for Congress, was openly accused of possessing a copy. The whigs replied by making a similar charge against Governor Ellis. The North Carolina Standard thought the matter sufficiently serious to explain that the governor had received two copies; one presented in New York by Mr. Helper, was cast out of the window; the other, sent through the mails, was used to light the gubernatorial pipe. Early in 1860 it was discovered that 150 copies were being shipped to one Jesse Pope, of High Point. Judge Saun- ders thereupon issued a writ for Pope's arrest when he should apply for the books. Pope was an invalid, unable to walk, and a mob at High Point seized the books and burned them. Pope, it was now revealed, was only a blind for the operations of Daniel Worth, a native of Guilford County, who after spending some years in Indiana returned to the state in 1858 as a Wesleyan Methodist minister and established a church
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at Sandy Ridge, near Jamestown. In December, 1859, he was arrested for circulating Helper's book and was ordered to give two bonds of $5,000 each, one for his appearance at the Superior Court, the other to keep the peace. The first bond he gave, the latter he refused and went to jail. At the trial four copies of Helper's book, which he had sold, were exhib- ited. One purchaser had burned his copy, while another hid his in a hollow log. The penalty inflicted was one year's imprison- ment and a public whipping, the latter being remitted by the judge on account of the advanced age and calling of the pris- oner. Appeal was taken to the Supreme Court and bond was fixed at $3,000, but Mr. Worth left the state. The Supreme Court confirmed the verdict and the bondsmen had to pay. Five men, apparently converts of Worth, were also imprisoned in Guilford County and at least one in Mecklenburg. It is probable that Worth wrote the following letter to the. Boston Tract Journal in June, 1859:
The portion of the South in which I labor is wonderfully opened for the reception of antislavery truth. I am a native of the state, and have faithfully preached an uncompromising gospel at every point of my work. Not satisfied, however, with mere verbal effort, I determined to introduce antislavery books. Many thought this hazardous in the extreme, in view of the abominable laws on that subject, and greatly feared my enthrallment. I maintained that he that will not risk something for Christ is not worthy of him; he that will save his life shall lose it, etc .; and the success is beyond my expectations. These books were circulated at first rather covertly; but greatly disliking this covert operation, I came out boldly, dis- daining all concealment, and my book agencies are probably doing more than I am able to do by preaching. Among these books, I have circulated fifty copies of "The Impending Crisis," by Helper, which takes fire in dry stubble. *
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