USA > North Carolina > Toward freedom for all : North Carolina Quakers and slavery > Part 7
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THE BRIG DORIS
However, correspondence of the Colonization Society with the meeting for sufferings of North Carolina Yearly Meeting reveals a well-meaning organiza- tion with broad humanitarian sympathies. Friends had good reason to be on good terms with the Society. The relationship had begun in 1819, when the yearly meeting had agreed to raise one thousand dollars for the work of the Colonization Society.45 In 1825, David White reported to the meeting for suffer- ings that "sixteen of ours" had gone out from Norfolk for Liberia under the American Colonization Society.46 In 1826, when the brig Doris sailed for Liberia, she had fifty Quaker-held Negroes aboard.47 The Doris made another voyage in 1827, bearing sixty-seven black persons who had been under the care of North Carolina Friends. 48
The emigration of such numbers of people to Liberia and Haiti caused considerable commotion. First, the agents of the meeting for sufferings went about among the blacks encouraging them to go. In spite of the terse wording of the statement of the meeting for sufferings in 1826 that the blacks under their care "must abide by the consequences" if they refused to emigrate, the evidence is that emigration was genuinely voluntary and that no undue pres- sure was brought to bear. The agents of the meeting for sufferings were zealous, however, and on at least one occasion the agents of the Eastern Quarter protested that they were too much so.49 As was indicated in the report to Thomas Wistar for the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, there were always black persons who preferred to stay in North Carolina, and they were allowed to exercise this preference. The agents informed their charges when an expedi- tion was planned, however, and tried to make it as attractive as possible.
The American Colonization Society also did direct recruiting for their expedi- tions in the Friends communities. John Kennedy, an agent for the Society,
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wrote to R.R. Gurley from Elizabeth City, North Carolina, on October 3, 1826, and reported that he had won the goodwill of Thomas Trueblood, Benjamin Pritchard, Caleb Morris and Aaron White, of that area. They were all Quakers. Trueblood told him that he had two fine women, mother and daughter, that he thought would go. Pritchard had two men to go and informed him that he could probably get as many as twenty from that "immediate quarter."50
The recruiting at that time was for yet another sailing of the brig Doris from Norfolk. Josiah Parker gave an interesting report to the meeting for sufferings of his own experience in getting forty-one of his own charges to Norfolk for that expedition. First, they all were supplied with new clothes, apparently a routine procedure for all groups to be resettled, whether abroad or in the West. Large bolts of cloth were purchased wholesale, and the Quaker women cut it up and fashioned garments from it. Since it had been nearly two years since the first Quaker-free Negroes had gone to Liberia, this group must surely have been eager to be going to a land where a black man could hold his head high because everyone else was black. They must have been impatient for the African tropics while they shivered in the cold of the North Carolina winter. Parker reported that most of them were eager to go to "the land of their forefathers."51 The preparations for this voyage of the Doris seem to have stirred up a regular fever for going to Liberia.
The Parker group of black people traveled to Norfolk in two large rented wagons. Since it was winter, it was cold and rained incessantly. The roads turned into a sea of mud, and the journey was delayed because of it. Yet, when they got to Norfolk, the brig Doris had not yet arrived. John Kennedy, reporting to the Washington office of the Colonization Society from Norfolk, reported the arrival of the wagons with their forty-one or forty-two blacks aboard with their baggage. All of them, he said, had been reared in Friends families or liberated "through their instrumentality." Nor was this a group of the aged and infirm. Only one of them was sixty years old, a third were children under twelve, and the remaining two-thirds were between fifteen and fifty-two.52
But the emigrants faced frustration, for the brig Doris had not yet arrived. John McPhail owned a large house in Norfolk, so he lodged the people there, thinking it would be for only a few days. The days wore on, and with the crowd- ing, the miserable weather and the idleness, doubts arose to plague the emigrants. They had made the difficult decision to break with the past, and now some began to wonder if they had done the right thing. To make matters worse, local blacks and some whites began to taunt them and ridicule their resolve to go to remote and primitive Africa.
On January 22, John Kennedy again wrote to the Colonization Society to report that not only had the brig Doris not arrived, but that thirty-two blacks expected by barge from North Carolina had not arrived because the canal had frozen over. At length, Kennedy sent two covered wagons to pick up the luckless émigrés stalled in the canal. In the meantime, Quaker Aaron White and his wife arrived in Norfolk from North Carolina expecting to see the black
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people off to Africa, since most of those coming by canal had been under their influence. Learning that the barge was frozen in the canal, the Whites turned around and went back to make sure that the passengers were properly treated as they were transferred to the wagons. By January 24 the group from the barge had arrived, making a total of eighty-four Quaker-held Negroes in Norfolk awaiting passage for Liberia aboard the Doris.
A week later, on February 1, the group was still waiting. Kennedy again wrote to R.R. Gurley at Washington to report that the emigrants were tired of waiting and were getting restless. Some were taking local jobs at miserable wages, and others were wandering off without leave. Eventually, most of the wanderers came back, but one man simply disappeared.53 Just when the Doris did finally arrive is not clear, but on March 19, John McPhail wrote to the Colonization Society: "After the Doris sailed . . . "54
Word soon reached the Carolina plantations about the miserable time the black emigrants had in Norfolk waiting for the brig Doris. It caused so much unhappiness among those remaining that they began to lose interest in Liberia, and it looked as if the persuasive efforts of Josiah Parker and Aaron White had come to naught. The spell had been broken. Then, after the ship finally did leave, there was anxious waiting for word from Liberia. On July 29, Josiah Parker wrote to Richard Mendenhall at Jamestown, North Carolina, that no more black persons would consent to go to Liberia until they had word from those who had already gone.55 Aaron White wrote to Nathan Mendenhall in the same vein on August 23.56
Quite unkown to Aaron White, word had already been received from the Doris when he wrote. Two days before his letter, R.R. Gurley had written to Nathan Mendenhall reporting that word had come back from the Doris that her passengers had arrived safely, were well, and were happily engaged in agri- cultural pursuits. True, two small children had died enroute, but in terms of the hazards of sea travel at that time, Gurley thought that was a very modest loss. The letter was ecstatic as he described the tropical paradise to which the poor ex-slaves had gone. Like much of the colonization literature, it is reminiscent of the early literature about America.57
Just as the long delay in the departure of the Doris in early 1827 had caused so much disillusionment, now the good news from Liberia stirred up new enthusiasm. By November 9, 1827, the Doris was back in Norfolk harbor with a load of eighty-two persons ready to leave for Liberia the next morning. That time, there was no delay, and the emigrants were addressed before their departure by a Mr. Hinshaw and "another clergyman," amid fervent prayers for a safe voyage.58 The extent of Quaker involvement in this sailing, however, is not clear.
THE NAUTILUS
There was a great deal of Quaker interest, however, in the sailing of the good ship Nautilus shortly thereafter. In preparation for this event, Nathan Menden-
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hall and Phineas Albertson had been busily recruiting in the eastern counties of North Carolina. In a letter to R.R. Gurley on October 9, 1827, Nathan Menden- hall wrote that he had the assent of sixty or seventy "people of colour" to go to Liberia.59 On November 22, he wrote to John McPhail at Norfolk that forty-five blacks were believed to be on their way to that city from Northampton County, North Carolina, and that twenty-five were to go from Pasquotank and Perquimans counties. At that time he was planning to go to Wayne County, where he hoped to collect forty more emigrants, arriving with them in Norfolk on December 5.60
On December 9, Mendenhall wrote to Gurley confirming his arrival in Norfolk and announcing the presence in that port of 164 persons awaiting passage to Liberia. Of these, 144 were from North Carolina, eleven from Baltimore, seven from Richmond, and two from the "Eastern Shore of Virginia." The ship sailed on December 16, 1827, with 164 emigrants on board. Also on board were the Quaker agents, Nathan Mendenhall and Phineas Albertson, who had determined to go along as far as the Virginia Capes. Two days later hey disembarked, and at that time the ship was still windbound and was unable to put out to sea until December 28.61 The meeting for sufferings of North Carolina paid $1132.48 3/4 for the "outfits and embarcation" of 142 per- sons aboard the Nautilus. The other twenty-two were paid for by other nterested persons. 62
The Nautilus arrived in Liberia after a passage of fifty days and a loss of "only three" infants and one four-year-old boy, all of whom were sick before they left Norfolk. John McPhail accompanied this crossing and reported to Nathan Mendenhall in some detail on his return. He found the colony prospering, and some of the colonists had returned on the Nautilus to visit relatives and recruit for the colony. Unfortunately, Captain Hatton, of the Nautilus, was stricken with an illness while in port in Liberia and died there. 63
McPhail's enthusiasm was shared by other correspondents of the meeting for sufferings. In December of 1828, one John C. Stanly,64 of New Bern, wrote the meeting for sufferings offering his son to accompany one of the Friends' ships to Liberia, and reported: "I have seen letters from some of the persons sent out by Friends from Beaufort they are much pleased with their situation."65 Maria Miller, a Friend resident in New Bern, wrote Nathan Mendenhall at about the same time: "The young man who went with those emigrants to Liberia, we understand he has returned, brought favorable news, said they arrived there safe and were gratefully received, in token of which there was a grand Publick dinner given at the Hotel." There was an ominous note in Maria Miller's letter, however. She had received reports that in New Bern some of those who had refused to go to Liberia were in jail and would probably be sold into slavery.66
For whatever reason, a new hesitancy now developed toward Liberia. Some of the letters from the colonists were unfavorable. A Mr. Ashmun, agent in Liberia of the American Colonization Society, complained of the large number of superannuated and uncooperative individuals who had come out to the
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colony, and announced a policy of requiring certificates "stating that those tha wish to emigrate are industrious, etc ... "67 Caleb White, writing to Phinea: Albertson in July of 1828, requested that no Friends from the meeting foi sufferings come to the Eastern Quarter at that time because of the conviction o the trustees of the Eastern Quarterly Meeting that the general disposition o their charges was hostile to Liberia. 68
NAT TURNER REBELLION STIRS NEW INTEREST IN EMIGRATION
Despite the apparent end of emigration to Africa from eastern North Carolina, a desperate situation arose in 1831 and 1832 which revived interest ir Liberia once again. Slave masters had always been very sensitive to insurrec. tions, real or imagined, distant or nearby. The Denmark Vesey "Insurrection' in Charlestown in 1822, which was nipped in the bud before anything really happened, nevertheless spread alarm among slaveholders everywhere.69 Slave revolts in the West Indies caused great anxiety on the continent.
It was the Nat Turner Rebellion in 1831, however, and the resulting massacre of some fifty whites at Southampton, Virginia, that spread terror throughout eastern Virginia and North Carolina. It happened only a few miles from the old Quaker communities in Perquimans, Gates and Northampton counties in North Carolina. Soon after the massacre, in Washington, North Carolina, two black persons were convicted of conspiracy and immediately executed to save them from lynching. Thirty blacks were jailed in Duplin County, twenty-five in Sampson County, and fifteen in New Hanover County. Two were hanged in Onslow County, and about fifteen were murdered by mobs in the eastern part of the state. 70
THE JULIUS PRINGLE
In the midst of the great fear then existing in the black community, Jonas Mace found himself charged with the care of a group of forty or fifty ex-slaves who belonged to the yearly meeting and were living in Core Sound, a com- munity where few Friends remained at the time. In March of 1832, Mace wrote: to Nathan Mendenhall from Beaufort explaining that these persons were of the: "Howard and Brown set," that he had been put to much trouble and expense by them, and in spite of all he could do they were in imminent danger of being sold into slavery. It was therefore imperative that they leave North Carolina.71 Most of the people in this group had indicated a willingness to go to the West. The meeting for sufferings agreed to help resettle them, but while they were making arrangements for them to go to Indiana, an emissary came from that state to warn them that blacks could not settle in Indiana legally and that severe penalties were being applied for violations. The message seems to have reflected public perceptions in Indiana, rather than a legal fact, but the effect was the same.72
As a consequence, Indiana was abandoned, even though preparations were already underway for the journey. As an alternative, emigration to Haiti was
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revived. On May 20, Jonas Mace wrote that he was prepared to embark a group of blacks for Haiti and that he expected to go with them.73 On June 3, 1832, Benjamin Mace sent the passenger list of ninety-two persons who were bound for Haiti aboard the schooner Julius Pringle.74 Nevertheless, the same day George Swaim wrote to Nathan Mendenhall that ninety blacks had embarked on the Julius Pringle for Philadelphia on that day. Since the Julius Pringle did definitely carry a load of Quaker-held Negroes to Philadelphia at that time, it can only be concluded that for whatever reason, the expedition for Haiti was diverted to Philadelphia.
The meeting for sufferings had already been in touch with Philadelphia Friends concerning this group of emigrants. Even though many ex-slaves had already been received in Philadelphia, Friends there did not encourage the expedition. There was increasing resistance from the general white public in the Quaker City. When James Peale had arrived in Philadelphia only a short time before with some Quaker-held Negroes from North Carolina, he could find no one willing to receive them. A mob had formed, and Philadelphia Quaker Benjamin Cooper had had to step in with an offer to be personally responsible for their good conduct before the mob could be quieted.
At the very time the Julius Pringle was heading toward Philadelphia, strong anti-black legislation was pending in Harrisburg. Friends had managed to lobby such laws to death previously, but they feared the arrival of the Julius Pringle would tip the scales against them. George Swaim hurried to Philadelphia to receive the ship, but Friends there told him that if it docked in Philadelphia there would be another Boston Tea Party. Rumor was rife in the city. Instead of ninety, it said that there were six hundred blacks aboard the ship, and that they were the very ones who had massacred the whites in Southampton in the Nat Turner Rebellion.75
In the midst of this excitement, David White arrived in Philadelphia from North Carolina with thirteen Quaker-held Negroes, and thus added fuel to the fire. At length, on June 14, the Julius Pringle did dock in Philadelphia. The atmosphere in the city was so charged that the passengers were not allowed to leave the ship. The weather was unbearably hot, and the passengers were in great distress in their crowded quarters. Many had left families behind in North Carolina and begged to go back to them. When it was suggested that they go to Liberia, few wanted to go. After three days of agony in Philadelphia harbor, Friends in that city found a farm for them on the New Jersey shore at Red Bank, and there they were cared for by local Quakers.
A committee of five Friends from the Chester-Philadelphia area was appointed to pursue the matter of Liberia further. The American Colonization Society readily agreed to arrange their passage, and local Friends set about preparing them for colonization - most of them having now decided that they were willing to go. The group was divided into ten "families," each of which was provided with "an ample stock of household utensils, including a suitable quantity of bedding, etc."
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The Pennsylvania-New Jersey Friends were much impressed with this group of Quaker-free Negroes from North Carolina, and their description is one of the best that we have of these people. They found them "orderly, temperate, industrious, and intelligent ... likely to advance the interests and the general prosperity of the colony" to which they were destined. In the group were "no less than seven valuable mechanics, (vis., a carpenter, bricklayer, plasterer, blacksmith, cooper, turner and shoemaker). For these and others they provided the necessary tools to carry on their work in Africa. Since most of them were agricultural workers, they supplied them with a liberal number of axes, spades, shovels and hoes. Ever mindful of their spiritual welfare, the Quakers gave them copies of "the Holy Scriptures, school books, tracts, etc.," and impressed on them the importance "of avoiding the use of ardent spirits, and of maintain- ing a sound moral reputation, as well as contributing to the support of suitable associations for divine worship."76
On the twelfth of July the party boarded the brig American, which had been procured by the American Colonization Society. Eighty-eight persons of the original ninety undertook the voyage. A small child had died, and one woman had chosen to remain "near the Delaware." Philadelphia Friends employed the same Joseph Robertson (Robinson?), who had come with the group from North Carolina to be in charge of them, for the trans-Atlantic crossing. The captain of the ship was one William Abels (Aheb?), a Methodist minister. The black emigrants had come to know and trust both men. The ship put in at Norfolk, Virginia, on the way, and Jonas Mace was there to see the "88 of ours" during their stopover there.77
It was September 13 before the group that had left Beaufort, North Carolina, on June 3 finally arrived at Mesurado, Liberia. An article published in The Friend in Philadelphia on December 7, gives a highly informative description of their settlement there:
The company was well received by the governor and other officers of the colony. Each family was settled in a comfortable house, with the understanding that they were to have the privilege of occupying it for six months, if they inclined to do so. Daily rations of rice, and other articles of good and wholesome provi- sions, are served out to each family, which it is understood, will be continued for six months if required; this supply, the agent learned from one of the emigrants, is so abundant as to enable some of the most provident of them to make occasional savings over and above their actual daily wants. Orders were given by the governor for an allotment, in fee simple, of a farm of ten acres of land, also a lot of half an acre in the TOWN, to each family.
From the best observation our agent was capable of making, every able bodied emigrant might obtain immediate employment at liberal wages - the mechanics (say) from $1.50 to $2.00, and labourers 75 cents to $1.00 per day.
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Some of them expressed an intention of writing home encourage- ment to their friends to follow them to the colony.78
The odyssey and final settlement of this group cost a tidy sum. The total expended was $4,722.19, of which a generous $3,750.60 was paid by Phila- delphia Friends from funds "said to have been raised" for removal of blacks. Philadelphia Friends, in addition to money, saw to the care of the refugees while they were stranded on the Delaware and outfitted them with the clothing and equipment they would need in Liberia.79
The whole affair caused great distress to George Swaim. He had spent many years trying to "do to others as he would be done by," and he was growing weary. In his lengthy journal-report to Nathan and Richard Mendenhall of the meeting for sufferings, he spoke of how he had imperiled his private affairs in the work, and just before leaving for Philadelphia had persuaded the sheriff to postpone a judgment against his house for seven hundred and fifty dollars.80 Benjamin Mace was tired, too. In a letter to the meeting for sufferings after the Julius Pringle episode, he said he was "Tired of the black trade," and planned to migrate to the West soon to join his relatives, most of whom had already gone there.81
The Julius Pringle affair seems to have ended emigration to Liberia, unless some few went on scattered ships until 1836. In that year, David White reported to the meeting for sufferings that the Quaker-held Negroes flatly refused to go to Liberia.82 The reasons for the disillusionment were many. The final refusal of the blacks aside, there were many friends of the blacks who had objected from the first that colonization was nothing more than a scheme of the planters to be rid of the bothersome free blacks. In 1817, a convention of free blacks was held in Philadelphia, and it protested any measure that would have a "tendancy to banish us from (America's) bosom." To do this, they contended, would be cruel and "in direct violation of those principles which have been the boast of this republic."83 The famous philanthropists, the Tappan brothers, who had been early supporters of the movement, had turned against it by 1833 and were now supporting the abolitionists. Public opinion in the North generally was turning strongly toward abolition.
As for North Carolina Friends, they were under growing pressure from the London Yearly Meeting, and especially from Josiah Forster, sometime clerk of that body. Abolitionism had won out in England in 1833, and Friends had been in the forefront of that movement. Forster carried on correspondence with Jeremiah Hubbard, of the North Carolina Meeting for Sufferings, and challenged both the morality and practical effectiveness of colonization. The American black man, he argued, was no more an African than the white American an Englishman or a European. By the same logic, he contended, America should be turned back to the Indians. Actually, asserted Forster, freedom is due a person "in the land where Providence gave him birth," not in far-off Africa.84 Hubbard and others argued back, pleading the peculiar circumstances under
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which the North Carolinians, white and black, found themselves. Yet, the logic of the British position influenced the thinking of many North Carolinians.
Abolitionist sentiment was growing everywhere in the United States, except in the South. Indiana Yearly Meeting instructed its meeting for sufferings to circularize other yearly meetings in 1831 to solicit the General Government to abolish slavery in the United States.85 In 1838, the North Carolina Meeting for Sufferings, with the formal approval of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting, petitioned the state legislature in these words: "We entreat you to legislate for the extermination of slavery in this State."86
The rise of abolitionism marked the end of foreign colonization, but the problem facing North Carolina Friends was not yet solved. The original intention was to resettle Quaker-Free Negroes within the limits of "free govern- ments," including the free states of the United States. In point of fact, removal to free states had gone on simultaneously with the colonization ventures and was now to continue after them.
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