USA > North Carolina > Toward freedom for all : North Carolina Quakers and slavery > Part 5
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Job Miller - 3rd of 10th mo, 1781 for selling Negroes
Josiah Murdaugh
- 3rd of 10th mo, 1781 for selling Negroes
Isaac Barbor
- 3rd mo, 1784 for selling Negroes
Foster Toms
- 1st mo, 1785 for hiring and selling Negroes
J. Outland - 12th mo, 1785, for hiring and selling Negroes
John Shepherd - 4th mo, 1787, for selling Negroes
Caleb Elliott - 8th mo, 1789, for slaveholding
John Chappel - 8th mo, 1789, for slaveholding
Jonathan Newby
- 8th mo, 1793, for not manumitting slaves29
In the Contentnea Quarter, Edwin Ellis and Peter Peacock were disowned on January 12, 1793, for refusing to manumit their slaves.30
YEARLY MEETING POLICY
Despite the fact that Quaker manumissions were clearly taking place and great pressure was being brought to bear on those who still held slaves, the Western Quarterly Meeting kept prodding for more vigorous action, and the North Carolina Yearly Meeting, in turn, encouraged the standing committee to be more zealous in encouraging Friends to free their slaves.31 The standing committee reported back to the yearly meeting in 1782 that it had carried out a visitation to slaveholding Friends with some visible results. Not only had a number of slaves been manumitted as a result of their visits, but there was "a Comfortable Prospect of the Releasement of several more Erelong."32 But the annual labors of the standing committee give ample testimony to the fact that Friends continued to hold slaves. Indeed, the Eastern Quarter reported to the yearly meeting in 1783 that Friends there had labored with those who still held slaves, and that "a considerable number hath been manumitted since last year, yet it is observable that many of those who hold them still continue to reject the advice of their friends and hold them yet in bondage; some of which appear to
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contend for the practice."33
Obviously, the day had not yet arrived in the Eastern Quarter when Friends would automatically be disowned for owning slaves. In spite of the official posi- tion of the Society and the sense of unity in the yearly meeting on this point, the older views and practices were slow in withering away on the plantations. Of course, even among those attending the yearly meeting, there might have been unvoiced opposition. Business among Friends is conducted by consensus, or the sense of the meeting, and a strong-willed clerk, supported by a group of weighty members of like mind, could probably carry the day against the timid minority who sat in silence, even when they disagreed. Yet, everything indi- cates that, even at that point, those in opposition to the policy of the yearly meeting were, indeed, in the minority.
The new form of the Slave Query adopted in 1783 was clear in its condemna- tion of slavery, but it recognized some of the problems attending manumission. It inquired:
Are friends clear of Importing, Purchasing, Disposing of, or hold- ing mankind as Slaves, and do they use those well who are set free, and are under their care, through noneage or otherwise, Endeavoring to encourage them in a virtuous life?34
Here we find a kind of intermediate stage between slavery and freedom. Minors could be kept under guardianship, as Joseph Jordan did, and reference is often made to this practice in the reports. As for adults, the same query which demanded that Friends be "clear of holding mankind as slaves" enjoined them to "use those well who . . . are under their care .. . "
It has already been noted that some of the slaves who were set free, like medieval serfs seeking the security of a patron, sought to bind themselves to their former masters for life, a practice which the yearly meeting frowned on because it jeopardized the freedom of the offspring. On the other hand, Friends were advised to "use those well who are sett free." This would have meant the paying of wages if they continued in service and definitely involved their defense against manstealers and the county courts. These people "under care" were probably still regarded as slaves by non-Quaker neighbors, for their new status would have been scarcely visible. The difference was that they were free to leave if they chose, had some small amount of money at their disposal, and would not be inherited by the heirs. Of very great importance was the fact that their children would not be slaves.
SLAVE LEGISLATION
In a state which was a relatively small community in terms of population and populated area, the state legislature kept abreast of developments in the Quaker communities and, in general, kept its firm policy on Quaker manumis- sions. (The 1779 law legalizing the sale of slaves freed by the Quakers in 1776- 1777 has already been cited.)
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In 1788, the legislature took action which both testified to the continuing manumissions by Quakers and the determination of the legislators to protect the institution of slavery. In that year, it passed a law broadening the scope of the 1779 law by calling on all citizens to report slaves illegally freed. By the 1778 law, only freeholders were entitled to report such persons. The law was specifically enacted as an antidote to the action of the Quakers, who were accused of releasing their slaves illegally. As the preface to the law put it: "Whereas divers persons from religious motives, in violation of said law, continue to liberate their slaves, who are now going at large to the terror of the people of this state ... " "Emoluments," consisting of one-fifth of the sale price, were to go to the informant. 35
A law of 1791 prescribed the death penalty for a white man who killed a slave, if he had previously been convicted of killing a slave.36 The penalty for the first offence was one year in jail. This law, however, proved to be too severe for the climate in North Carolina at that time. In the case of State vs. Boon in 1801, the law was nullified on the ground that it equated killing of a slave with killing of a free man.37 This was intolerable in the slave code of the time, which tended to reckon the slave as property, not as a legal person.
FRIENDS VERSUS THE STATE LEGISLATURE AND THE COUNTY AND SUPERIOR COURTS
Despite the county court records attesting to the legal manumission of a limited number of slaves, the evidence indicates that many Quakers ignored the law. They either refused to allege meritorious service when in their honest judgment none had been performed, or resolutely prepared manumission papers on their own responsibility if the courts denied permission to manumit. It seems clear that the courts would not pick up and offer for sale blacks who they themselves had already set free. This view is suggested in the wording of the summonses issued to the Quakers who were asked to come to Perquimans and Pasquotank county courts to answer for their slaves. For example, in 1785 John Anderson, Joshua Moore and Elihu Albertson were summoned by Sheriff Charles Moore, of Perquimans County, to appear in behalf of certain persons who had been taken up by him for "passing as free Negroes, supposed to have been manumitted by their former owners," the aforementioned Quakers. If they were "supposed to have been manumitted," it was obviously done without court approval. In this instance, the former owners were unsuccessful in their efforts to defend the freedom of the slaves Harry, Dinah and Patt, for the endorsement on the summons says "to be sold tomorrow 12 o'clock."38 Failure of the Quakers to comply with the legal requirements for manumission is further attested in a note announcing the sale by the Perquimans County Court on February 17, 1797, of two slave women, Rose and Sovey, who were "set free contrary to law."39
In fact, free blacks generally were subject to challenge and harrassment, a fact which increased further the danger that persons freed by the Quakers
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would be picked up and resold. The yearly meeting and the quarterly meetings constantly urged Friends to be vigilant to protect the freedom of their former slaves and make use of legal aid freely at the expense of the yearly meeting.
The yearly meeting made good its offer to compensate former owners of slaves for legal expenses. At the North Carolina Yearly Meeting of 1778, the Eastern Quarter was asked to raise four hundred and fifty pounds for this purpose, and the Western Quarter one hundred and fifty pounds.40 Even though the committee's lawyers won an order from the Superior Court of Edenton in 1779 for the release of those slaves freed in 1776-1777, that was the year that the legislature had responded with a law nullifying the order and confirming the earlier sales by the Perquimans and Pasquotank county courts.
It has been noted that the yearly meeting prepared, and then withheld, a petition to the state legislature in 1779 protesting the law of that year. In 1787, it approved and presented to the legislature a petition asking for the emancipa- tion of their (the Quakers') former slaves. Allen Jones presented a bill for that purpose in Commons, where it was approved and sent to the Senate. There it was debated, passed on first reading, but defeated on the second.41
Southern Quakers have been chided for their sober propriety and naive hope that appeal to the proper authorities might bring the desired results, but at least it can be said that they were persistent. A new petition to the state legislature in 1788 returned to the theme. It declared:
That as there are two acts of the General Assembly now in force for the prohibition of the freedom of slaves, which we humbly apprehend is in no wise Consistent with the principles of the Established Constitution, & contrary to the Declaration of Inde- pendence of the United States of America. Notwithstanding we believe those laws are not Constitutional, yet they have been vigorously prosecuted against Several Negroes which were liberated, by which they are again reduced into a State of Slavery, being dragged from their lawful Occupations, and Exposed to public Sale like Brute Beasts to parting of Man and Wife, and parents of Children, against the Laws of nature and nature's God: We being again religiously concerned to lay this Suffering Case before you, ardently desiring that you may take the Case into Serious Consideration, & repeal the aforesaid Acts, & grant an Act of toleration to such as may be Emancipated. 42
Unhappily, this petition did not reach the legislature, since that body adjourn- ed before the petitions arrived. A new petition in 1790 repeated the appeal of 1788, adding the argument that the restriction against emancipation was a violation of the property rights guaranteed in the Constitution. It was incon- sistent, argued the petition, "for any law to remain in force, which deprives them (the citizens) of the privilege of disposing of what the same Law declares to be their property, in such manner as they conscientiously believe to be a
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duty they owe to the Invincible Father of all the families of the Earth." This petition was presented to the legislature, but in the laconic language of the report to the yearly meeting of 1791, it "did not have the desired effect."43 Again in 1791, a petition was presented; a bill was introduced in the House, but it was rejected on second reading.44 Also in 1792 a petition was presented, a bill offered in the House, and again rejected on second reading.45 Another petition followed in 1793, and so on, annually, until 1798. In all, six separate bills were introduced to attend to the Friends' request, but each in turn was defeated.46 The tenor of all the petitions was similar, although the one of 1797 explained that it did not "enjoin general emancipation." The 1798 petition resulted in a bill which was defeated by a very large majority, but the committee felt that it was well worth the effort to confront the Assembly with the matter. 47 Never- theless, no petition was prepared after that until 1803. At that time, a bill was again introduced in each house, survived two readings in each house, but fell on the third.48
One of the earliest concerns of opponents of slavery in general was the desire to end the importation of slaves. This cause received more sympathetic atten- tion in the North Carolina Legislature than the Quaker appeals, and sometimes bills proposing the end of importation were considered in the same sessions as the Quaker proposals. Yet, that there were individuals in the legislature who were sympathetic to the Quaker cause is evident from the fact that bills were repeatedly introduced embodying their proposals. Generally, the committee conveying the petitions reported friendly receptions, even if their requests were rejected.
Interesting comment on the atmosphere in Raleigh at the time comes from the journal of Joshua Evans of Pennsylvania, who visited North Carolina in 1796 and joined the yearly meeting committee presenting a petition that year. He wrote in his Journal:
We attended the house of Common Council and had a number of private conferences with members, who received us kindly, but seemed mostly opposed to the freedom of the black people ... These opportunities were generally to my satisfaction, and I thought the respect they showed to me was marvelous . . . All this furnished me opportunities to touch their cruel laws and hardships to which the poor blacks were subjected ... When we came to settle for our board at the tavern the man would take no pay, he was so well pleased with the visit.49
A SICKNESS IN THE SOCIETY
Nevertheless, despite all the earnest efforts in behalf of the slaves, there is clear evidence in the North Carolina Yearly Meeting Minutes of a growing ill- ness in the Society. Continual scolding from the yearly meeting about laxness in attendance at meetings for worship indicates that there was decreasing
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interest in the general life of the Society. Anxiety over a general apathy prompted the yearly meeting to send out a special message to the quarterly meetings in 1797, and another in 1801, urging greater zeal in the cultivation of the spiritual life, and more earnest attention to the moral precepts of the queries.50
A source of much discouragement for Eastern Friends was the weakening of the meetings in the eastern counties through transfers of membership to the Western and New Garden quarterly meetings, as well as to other states. In the case of the Trent River Meeting in 1800, the entire body moved together and even retained its same officers. The group went first to Philadelphia, and finally settled in Ohio.51 The smaller Quaker communities in Carteret, Beaufort, Hyde, Craven and Jones counties eventually lost all their Quaker inhabitants and the meetings in those places were laid down.52 Discouragement over the question of slavery played an important role in this exodus from the eastern counties.53
However, the low state of the Religious Society of Friends in North Carolina was not restricted to that region. It extended to other parts of America, and even to England; the eighteenth century is commonly referred to as the period of "quietism" in Quaker history. In contrast to the evangelical fervor which launched the movement and sent eager missionaries throughout the western world, a spirit of narrow denominationalism had captured the Society. No longer did the Anglican Church need to fear that North Carolina would go Quaker, for Quakers were busily disowning their own members for conforming too easily to the society about them.
Yet, even in the face of this growing apathy, interest in the slave question continued to grow. Some North Carolina Friends even went so far as to suggest membership for blacks in their local meetings. It was in 1798 that the New Garden Quarterly Meeting asked for permission of the yearly meeting to make such a move. Such a startling request was referred to a special committee for study, and the committee came back to the plenary session with a favorable report, saying that since the Discipline took a clear stand in favor of racial equality, the New Garden Quarter should "attend to the Discipline in that respect without distinction as to colour." But the yearly meeting proved more conservative than its committee. After due deliberation, it declared it to be a "weighty matter" and postponed action until the following year.54 The follow- ing year, however, it was postponed again, and in 1800 it was finally denied. The fact that the matter was kept alive through three yearly meeting sessions indicates that it must have had considerable support, but North Carolina Friends as a whole were far too conservative to approve such an adventurous move at that time. By some strange quirk of pyschology, the anti-slavery Quakers never did receive blacks into membership before the Civil War, although the Moravians did so to a limited extent, and Baptists and others evangelized them actively.55
Nevertheless, the Society did sustain a consistent witness against slavery. The struggle with the State of North Carolina was an unequal one, but in their lone-
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liness Friends had the powerful moral support of the London Yearly Meeting. That body took a keen interest in the antislavery work of American Friends. The annual epistles from London praised American Quakers and in 1781 expressed the belief that the noble task of freeing the slaves "appears to be at no great distance." They gave an account of British Friends' efforts to get Parlia- ment to end the slave trade, and called on American Friends to pray for the oppressors as well as the oppressed, for they faced "a terrible and just retribu- tion for their evil acts."56 These epistles were usually printed and distributed widely among North Carolina Friends.
If Friends in North Carolina were less optimistic about the chances of early success in the struggle against slavery than were their British friends, they were not inclined to waver in their devotion to the cause. It was becoming more and more difficult to be a Quaker and own slaves at the same time. Dis- ownment for owning slaves was becoming more frequent, yet manumission remained difficult. The law continued to prescribe meritorious service as a prerequisite for manumission, thus imposing a severe restriction on Friends, who insisted on freeing their slaves simply because they believed slavery was wrong.
THE NORTH CAROLINA MANUMISSION SOCIETY
An important part of the effort to relieve this situation was the role of Quakers in the North Carolina Manumission Society. This society was organized in 1816 under the leadership of Charles Osborne, a Quaker minister and abolitionist from Tennessee, who actually had his roots at Center Meeting in North Carolina. Its purpose was to improve the climate for manumission and eventual abolition. The constitution of the society reflected the idealism of the American Constitu- tion and sought to extend the concepts of freedom and equality to the black portion of the population.57
A number of members of the standing committee of the North Carolina Yearly meeting were also members and officers of the Manumission Society. Among these were Jeremiah Hubbard, Richard, Nathan and James Mendenhall, Aaron and Vestal Coffin, Asa Folger, Paul Macy, Paul Macy, Jr., Phineas Albert- son, Daniel Worth,58 Joseph Hunt, Nathan Hunt, Phineas Nixon, Jr. and John Beard.59 The signature of Richard Mendenhall, which so often appears in Quaker correspondence, was subscribed to most of the messages of the Manu- mission Society.
One of the first acts of the Manumission Society was to appoint a committee to visit the general assemblies of major denominations in the state to solicit their support in the manumission effort. Members of the committee went out two by two and returned with favorable responses from the Presbyterians and Moravians, but Baptists and Methodists withheld their approval. Nevertheless, the visits continued to remind the churches of the iniquity of owning slaves. 60
In 1825, the Manumission Society undertook a survey of attitudes toward slavery in North Carolina. The report indicated that sixty percent of the popula-
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tion favored emancipation. If this survey has any credibility, it raises serious questions about the legislature. Was its slave policy actually opposed by a majority of the population?
The presidents of this society were required to deliver formal presidential addresses, which were cast in somewhat flowery language, and generally advocated manumission, colonization and abolition. Quakers Aaron Coffin and Moses Swaim were among those delivering such addresses. Since a major purpose was to educate the public, efforts were made to circulate these addresses as widely as possible. In Greensboro, William Swaim was generous in giving space to these and other manumission materials in The Greensbo -. rough Patriot.61 Other local papers tended to be hostile.
Quakers had learned that any effort to ameliorate the condition of the slave required help from the legislature, which was not forthcoming. The Manumis- sion Society now joined in the legislative struggle. In the state senate was George Mendenhall, a disowned Quaker from Jamestown, who, nevertheless, favored manumission and was attentive to the appeals of the society. Romulous Saunders, who represented the "Quaker District" of Guilford, Randolph, Chat- ham and Alamance counties, sometimes attended to their requests but was not actually an opponent of slavery. The Manumission Society paralleled the Friends yearly meeting in submitting petitions to Raleigh and Washington. They favored abolition in the District of Columbia and requested aid for the American Colonization Society.62
This matter of colonization kept recurring in the Manumission Society meet- ings and was always controversial. Levi Coffin, later to become "president" of the Underground Railroad, withdrew from the society as a young man when he became convinced that the planters were using it cynically as a method to be rid of undesirable blacks.63 With friends, he established a separate "anti-slavery band" at New Garden.
Nevertheless, colonization sentiment grew in the Manumission Society, and in 1826, Vestal Coffin, Levi's cousin, was appointed to help prepare the 119 free blacks who were being sent to Haiti by the meeting for sufferings of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting. The society also contributed to the expense of this expedition. 64
Despite Levi Coffin's charge that the Manumission Society was being manip- ulated by slaveholders for their own purposes, many in the society considered themselves abolitionists. In 1824, a group at "newbury" calling itself the North Carolina Abolition Society joined the Manumission Society and simply became another branch. The name seems not to have been an obstacle. In his presi- dential address of 1826, Moses Swaim recommended sending a delegate to the American Convention for the Abolition of Slavery in the United States, to be held in Baltimore. 65
The Manumission Society expressed interest in the education of blacks. Aaron Coffin noted that Levi and Vestal Coffin were operating a school for blacks at New Garden in 1821 and proposed that the society undertake a
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similar project. The idea was approved, but nothing came of it. Quakers con- tinued instruction of the free blacks under their care in the three R's and voca- tional skills, and at Salem the Moravians organized a Sunday School for blacks in 1827. In the latter school, adults as well as children were taught to read and write and recite Bible verses. However, in 1831, this work came to an end when the teaching of slaves was prohibited by law. 66
The Manumission Society established an important presence in North Caro- lina, even if its clear accomplishments were modest. Benjamin Lundy once spoke to a crowd at a militia muster in the state and was amused to find that his audience consisted of a curious mix of people in Quaker garb and military uni- form. A local chapter of the Manumission Society was formed, and the presi- dent chosen was a captain of militia and the secretary a Quaker.67 A North Carolina reader wrote to Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation in 1826 that a chapter was formed out of a crowd of three hundred gathered on the Yadkin River, and "There was not a Quaker among them."68
At the American Convention for the Abolition of Slavery held in Baltimore in 1826, it was announced that there were one hundred manumission societies in the United States at that time, forty-five of them being in North Carolina.69 At its height, the North Carolina Manumission Society grew so large it had to be divided into east and west "ridings,"70 and membership was estimated at more than two thousand. There were a number of Female Branches which busied themselves with preparing clothing for the émigrés going to Haiti and other good works.71
After 1831, perhaps due to the Nat Turner troubles and harsh new legislation, membership fell off. The last meeting was held at Marlborough Friends Meet- tinghouse in 1834. The faithful attenders at this final session were: for Center, Benj. Swaim, John Leonard and Wm. Raynolds; Springfield, Benj. Millican, Joseph Hiatt, Sam'l Hunt and Mordecai Mendenhall; Union, Sewell Farlow, Thos. Fentriss, Aaron Stalker, Nathan Farlow, Jr. and Joseph Newlin. A scheduled meeting at Center Meetinghouse was never held.72
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