USA > North Carolina > Toward freedom for all : North Carolina Quakers and slavery > Part 9
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THE CLIMATE OF OPINION
Despite the Manumission Society survey of 1825, it is difficult, at this distance, to sense the true climate of opinion on the subject of slavery in North Carolina during the first half of the nineteenth century. The sympathy of certain judges for the slave is evident on the one hand, yet Quakers lost hard-fought cases in court. There was rather widespread interest in the Manumission Society at one time, and it was noted that so many non-Quakers were assigning their slaves to the North Carolina Yearly Meeting in 1822 that the practice had to be stopped simply because the Quakers could not care for so many. There were several hundred manumissions in the state annually, most of which were allowed by the superior courts, although a few were granted directly by the General Assembly. One petition to the legislature for the freedom of slave Daniel Sutherland and his wife bore the names of fifty-five white citizens of Fayette- ville in 1833.48 Such an act indicates the high esteem in which certain individual black persons were held by their white neighbors; yet, as the century wore on, the General Assembly became more adamant in its stand against widespread manumissions. John Spencer Bassett has said that the people of North Carolina were possessed of great sympathy for the black and favored legislation for his protection and improvement, and that the legislature was generally willing to consider ameliorative legislation, but that it always drew the line at any action which threatened the institution of slavery itself.49
This theory would explain, for example, why the legislature denied the request of Quaker Caleb Winslow for the freedom of his slave Mills in 1816. The typical petition to the legislature for the manumission of a slave was very specific in its description of the "meritorious service" performed by the slave in question, but Caleb Winslow was a little vague. He stated that Mills had been a faithful servant and should "enjoy the liberties of freedom as other persons of colour," but he showed his hand when he admitted that his real reason for wanting to manumit his slave was that as a Christian he wanted to "do to others as I would be done by." While most of the petitions in the Legislative Papers in Raleigh were granted, that of Caleb Winslow was denied. While it is true that he hardly established the claim of meritorious service in his petition, one suspects
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that the real reason for the denial was that his attitude was inimical to slavery itself.50
The existence of a Quaker community in North Carolina was far from a total loss to the proponents of slavery in the state. As one of the earliest groups in the state, they contributed a far larger number of people to the population than their numbers in the nineteenth century would indicate. Their strict discipline and their habit of disowning dissenters meant that each generation gave up large numbers of people to the non-Quaker population. There was, in other words, a growing number of former Quakers in North Carolina. Many had been disowned for owning slaves, and many others were descendants of such people. One can imagine the bitterness associated with having one's name read out in a public meeting, listing his sins and declaring him cut off from the fellow- ship into which he had been born. Some of them probably took grim satisfac- tion in suing for the possession of slaves and otherwise embarrassing those whom they must have regarded as their persecutors. One of the reasons consis- tently given by North Carolina Friends for the need of strict care in legal papers and the urgency of sending free blacks out of the state was the need to protect them from "disowned heirs."51
Occassionally, "Quaker" names turn up among the informers and prosecuting officers who caused Quakers trouble. Thus, Richard Woodard and Miles Elliott were the informers who, in 1788, helped recapture Dick, a black man who had been manumitted by John Smith in Perquimans County shortly before.52 David Pritchard, Esq., was chairman of the County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of Pasquotank County in 1814.53 Francis Newby was chairman of the Perquimans County Court in 1806.54 Governor Jonathan Worth was born into a Quaker family but was disowned for marrying an Episcopalian.55 Although he was a unionist politically, he was a slaveholder.
Harriet Peck, a Rhode Island schoolteacher in the New Garden Boarding School, described an ex-Quaker slaveholder in a letter to a friend back home. Miss Peck herself was an ardent abolitionist and a member of an abolitionist society in her home state. In her letter she described a "Dr. Mendenhall," a man who grew up in the Quaker faith in Guilford County and was active in anti- slavery work as a youth. Later, however, he married a South Carolina girl who was not a Friend and became a member of the Baptist Church. Eventually, he became a Baptist preacher. By the time Harriet Peck knew him, he owned quite a number of slaves, explaining that people had no respect for a person who did not own slaves. 56
CARE OF QUAKER-HELD NEGROES
Certainly one of the biggest problems the Quakers had was not due to any hostility from the outside, but simply the gigantic task of caring for the several hundred black persons who had become the responsibility of the yearly meet- ing, its agents, and Quakers in general. The pattern of their care seems to have varied from place to place. In the Eastern Quarterly Meeting, the number of
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slaves was large and the number of Friends families on the decline. This made the problem a massive one. The trustees of the Eastern Quarter were the appointed agents of the meeting for sufferings, which was domiciled at James- town in Guilford County. The distance between the two areas is indicated by the official highway distance today between Greensboro and Elizabeth City: 235 miles. In an age that relied on horses for travel, it is natural that the Eastern Trustees acted with considerable independence of the officers in Jamestown. They often differed with them.
The policy of the yearly meeting and the meeting for sufferings was to hire out the Quaker-held Negroes and keep a part of their wages in escrow against future emigration expenses, or for their private use if they were to be manumitted. The tendency at Jamestown was to demand higher wages than the Eastern Trustees wished, and to keep a larger share than the latter deemed fair. If the blacks were to be free even in theory, argued the Eastern Trustees, they should have the effective use of their earnings.57
Hiring black workers was a common practice at that time, and Friends were forbidden to hire slaves whose wages would benefit their owners. There was no such prejudice on the part of the general public, however, and there were non- Quaker slaveholders who kept their slaves purely as a source of revenue, hiring them out on contract to the highest bidder.58 Even churches sometimes were endowed with the income of certain slaves. On the plantations of eastern North Carolina there was a ready demand for black workers.
On the other hand, the Eastern Trustees criticized Piedmont Quakers for keeping yearly meeting blacks in their homes as house servants. This arrange- ment was feasible in the Piedmont and may have accounted for a considerable proportion of Quaker-held Negroes in that section, for their number was much smaller there and the number of Quaker families much larger than in the East. But slaves also were common as house servants in non-Quaker homes, and the Eastern Trustees argued that non-Quakers would scarcely notice the difference between those who were slaves and those who were technically free.59
An earnest effort was made, however, to make a distinction between Quaker- held Negroes and slaves. The yearly meeting, and following its lead, the quarterly and monthly meetings, kept up a lively concern for the education and moral training of the blacks under Friends' care. The standing committee received the following instructions from the yearly meeting in 1817: "The Standing Committee are required to use exertions for the education and Reli- gious Instruction of the people of colour under Friends care."60 For many years rather feeble efforts had been made in this direction, but in 1818 greater diligence was used, and the committee reported that some had learned to spell, and "some few" to read.61 The same year, the Western Standing Committee reported that "most of the People of Colour in Minority under Friends Care are in a way to get a portion of School learning, and it is the Sense and Judgment of the Committee that Friends endeavor to extend the Education of Males so far as to Read, Write and Cypher as far as the Rule of Three, and those of the Females
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to read and write."62 In 1819, the Western Standing Committee "agreed to recommend to each individual of the Committee to use exertions for their (the blacks) improvement in Literary education." The committee also authorized the publication of a manuscript on Education of the People of Colour.63
It has already been noted that Levi and Vestal Coffin conducted a school for slaves briefly at New Garden Meeting in 1821. The law of 1831, however, brought an end to any organized efforts to educate black children.64
QUAKERS PROTEST NEW LAWS
There is much evidence that slavery was taking a milder form around the turn of the century and into the early decades of the nineteenth century, and it is convenient to regard the Nat Turner Rebellion as a turning point after which laws became more severe. Yet, scholars from John Spencer Bassett to Kenneth Stampp have pointed out that a trend toward greater severity was already underway before 1831.65 Perhaps the difference was in public feeling and enforcement of laws more than in actual legislation stemming from the rebellion.
There can be no doubt about the panic in the eastern counties of North Carolina. Within a few miles of Nat Turner's home in Southampton County, Virginia, were the bulk of the free blacks in the care of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting. The Patrols, which had become largely inactive, again roamed the countryside to check the passes of any black persons not attended by whites.66 The law against teaching blacks, passed in 1831, reflected the new mood. Assemblies of blacks were discouraged, and a law of 1842 prevented "exhorting or preaching or holding any religious service where slaves of different families were assembled."67
Despite their discouraging experience with petitions, North Carolina Friends responded to the stiffening trend with more petitions. These petitions followed the pattern of the eighteenth century petitions, arguing against slavery on moral and political grounds, and appealing to the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Such petitions were presented to the North Carolina General Assembly by North Carolina Yearly Meeting in 1815, 1817, 1823, and 1831.68 The petition of 1817 begged support of the colonization movement in conjunction with the "General Government," and also asked that no new slaves be allowed to enter the state. That of 1823 called attention to the kidnapping of free blacks and objected to the spectacle of slave-traders passing through the state. It also pointed out the irony of sending missionaries to foreign lands while there was so much to be done for the black population of North Carolina.
Antislavery petitions were presented to Congress in 1816, 1823, 1837 and 1849.69 The petition of 1823 expressed special concern for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1837, the Friends' petition to Congress requested assistance for the American Colonization Society and again urged that slavery and the slave trade be abolished in the nation's capital. This petition also expressed opposition to the admission of Texas to the Union, since
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it was to enter as a slave state. In 1849, the yearly meeting again petitioned Congress to bring about the "amelioration of extinction" of slavery, and to recognize the independence and nationality of Liberia, the land where many of their own former slaves resided. In all of their petitions, North Carolina Quakers reflected the interests and concerns of the national antislavery groups in general, North and South. Another petition to Congress in 1847 expressed North Carolina Friends' opposition to the Mexican War and did not deal with slavery.70 Since women still held separate meetings in the nineteenth century, the Women's Meeting of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting presented a petition of its own to Congress in 1838. It reflected the interests of men Friends.71
As Nathan Mendenhall said, it was "an expensive troublesome and hard thing" to try to do the impossible for nearly a hundred years. The Quakers did win partial successes which, in the end, allowed them to take most of their own slaves to "some free government," at great expense and trouble to themselves and Quakers in the North and West. In their effort to do away with slavery, however, or even to soften the laws on slavery, they were highly unsuccessful. It was made all the harder by the fact that they respected the function of government and hoped in vain to be able to live under the law in good conscience. Unable to change the laws, they lived uneasily in a slaveholding society. Many emigrated to escape the tension, and others left the Society, but a remarkable core held fast to principle and remained.
It would have been indefensible for the committed leadership of North Carolina Quakers not to have fought the court battles for the freedom of individuals, worked through the Manumission Society, and prepared the petitions for Raleigh and Washington. Seeing their petitions fail, they might have sought public office and fought the matter out before the electorate and in the legislature as members themselves, but given the vast power of the slave- holders, any attempt to do that would probably have been as futile as the "innocuous" petitions. Perhaps they did as well as they could in the moment of history in which they lived.
New York
Mt. Pleasant
Pennsylvania
Indiana
New Jersey
Ohio
Philadelphia
Newport
Springfield
<--
Maryland
f-Gallipolis/
Cincinnati
West Virginia
Delaware
Salt Works
Virginia
Kentucky
Fincastle
To Liberia
Norfolk
Elizabeth City
Edenton
-
----
Tennessee
New Garden . Jamestown
Cane Creek
New Bern
North Carolina
Beaufort
To Haiti
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Greensboro
Hertford U
Routes to Liberty of Quaker Free Negroes
Richmond
Relocation in the West and North
Removal of Quaker-free Negroes to free territory within the United States had begun on a modest scale even before the colonization ventures. In 1822, the North Carolina Yearly Meeting accepted a proposal from the Deep River Quarterly Meeting that a committee be appointed to investigate the laws in other states on the question of black immigration.1 The committee, consisting of George Swaim, Phineas Nixon, Josiah Parker, James Jones and John Stuart, reported back in 1823 that there was nothing in the laws of the states of Ohio, Indiana or Illinois to prevent blacks from going there and living as free persons. Accordingly, the yearly meeting gave instructions to the committee to proceed to remove black persons under the care of the yearly meeting to those places "as fast as they are willing to go; or, as may be consistent with our Religious profession." They were authorized to use up to two hundred dollars from yearly meeting funds for that purpose.2
The groups traveling by land to other states were much smaller than those going overseas, and the expeditions were carefully prepared. A list was drawn up for all those going, with their ages, former owners, and any other data that might be needed. If there were manumission papers available, they were taken along. Otherwise, the owner, whether the yearly meeting or an individual, gave a power of attorney to the person moving his "property" to another state. As in the case of those going overseas, each emigrant was given a new outfit of clothing, made up specifically for the occasion from bolts of cloth. Since they were always moving to colder climates, this was given due consideration in the wardrobe.3
Travel was by wagon, and horses and wagons were bought especially for the journey. The trips were long, and it was common to sell the horses and wagons in Ohio or Indiana rather than bring them all the way back empty. Sometimes contracts for removal stated alternate prices, one if the equipment was sold, another if it was returned. 4
The route followed varied with the destination. Obviously, the famous Joe,
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who was kidnapped on his way west, went by way of Kentucky, probably by way of the Cumberland Gap. The route blazed by Daniel Boone, himself of a Quaker family, would have been a logical path for them to take. This would have been for those going to southwestern Ohio and Richmond-Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana. Others went to northeastern Ohio to the Quaker settle- ment at Mt. Pleasant, just west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Addison Coffin described what he called the usual Underground Railroad route in a postcard to J. Waldo Woody in 1894. This route went from Guilford County, North Carolina to Fincastle, Virginia, just north of Roanoke. From there it went in a north- westerly fashion to Salt Works on the Kanawah River, twelve miles above Charleston, (West) Virginia, following the course of the Kanawah to the point of its confluence with the Ohio at Point Pleasant.5 Once a black person crossed the Ohio River he was in free territory, finding himself near the town of Gallipolis. The Quaker Negroes would then be within reasonable range of the Mt. Pleasant area, or if it had been so planned, could continue on to western Ohio or Indiana (see map p. 74). It was a long journey. When the family of Charles F. Coffin moved from Guilford County, North Carolina, to Richmond, Indiana, by wagon in 1824, it took them six weeks.6
These expeditions followed the roads of the white emigrants going west. There was an established stage route at one time from New Garden, Guilford County, North Carolina, to Richmond, Indiana, as evidenced by an old, undated "Bill of Road to Richmond" in the archives of Guilford College. It made a first stop at Clemmons, North Carolina, proceeded to Fugats Ford of the New River in Virginia, and continued through Walker's Mountain, Gile's Court House, Peter's Ferry, and Mouth of the Indian River. In Ohio it touched Gallipolis, Jackson, Scioto Salt Works, Chillicothe, Leesburg, Wilmington, Franklin on the Great Miami, Eaton and White River Meetinghouse before reaching Richmond, Indiana. The distance given was four hundred and eighty-one miles.7 The distance from New Garden to Richmond today over modern roads is just under five hundred miles.
Often the blacks moved simultaneously with the white emigrants, for when the yearly meeting agents heard that a Quaker family was moving to Indiana, they were likely to ask them to take along a group of Quaker-held Negroes. Thus, in 1826 Thomas Kennedy wrote to Nathan Mendenhall at Jamestown that they were "about getting some of our black people to the State of Indiana," and inquired if anyone from there was moving to Indiana and might help.8 The Jamestown-New Garden areas lay on the path that expeditions to Indiana might take and were frequent stopovers for those coming from the eastern North Carolina counties. Again in 1827, Kennedy wrote that he had heard that Isaac White was moving to Indiana and inquired if he would be willing to "convey" some of their black people to that state.9
It is clear that Friends were helping their former slaves to get to free states long before the formal decision of 1823. As early as 1814, the meeting for sufferings reported that forty black persons had been sent to freedom in
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RELOCATION/WEST AND NORTH
Pennsylvania.1ยบ The report of the same body in 1820 said that some who were willing had been helped to go to northern states. Reports from the several quarterly meetings indicate that one black was sent to Philadelphia in 1823, and nine to Indiana.11 The yearly meeting decision, of course, spurred this movement. In 1824, ten went to Indiana, six to Philadelphia, nine to Ohio, and sixteen to "Free States," unspecified.12
CONDUCTORS OF THE EXPEDITIONS
In 1825, the names of those conducting the expeditions begin to emerge and, although some records are fragmentary, the names of the most active men who led some hundreds of slaves to freedom are preserved. The first of these is Asa Folger, who had in his company the famous Joe. Having arrived in Union County, Indiana, he wrote back to the meeting for sufferings in North Carolina that his group had arrived safely except for Joe. He wrote in April, 1825, and it was July of the next year before he finally got Joe to free soil. Evidently, Folger then considered himself to be an immigrant and took up permanent residence in Indiana.13
Another honored name on the freedom trail is that of Joseph Hunt. In 1826 and 1827, he took two groups of black persons totaling twenty-eight souls to Clinton County, Ohio, a place within the limits of Indiana Yearly Meeting.14 There seems to have been some surprise when he arrived with his charges, but the Committee on African Concerns of the Indiana Yearly Meeting sent a formal receipt each time to the North Carolina Meeting for Sufferings, acknowledging the arrival of expeditions and listing the names of the persons for whom Hunt carried powers of attorney. The communication of 1827 also bears the names of the committee appointed to "advise and assist said persons of colour in procuring places of residence, getting employment and such other aid as may be necessary." It is signed by George Carter, Clerk of the Day.15 Joseph Hunt may well have made other such expeditions, for the leaders of several expeditions are not identified.
David White devoted much time to the work with Quaker-held blacks, not only as a leader of emigrant groups, but also in making arrangements for others and defending still others in court. He was in Philadelphia with the thirteen unwelcome charges from North Carolina in 1832 while the Julius Pringle was lying there at anchor and not allowed to unload its cargo of refugees. 16 In 1835, he conducted a group of fifty-three to Indiana,17 and the next year he was back in Philadelphia again.18 That time he left only one black refugee in the City of Brotherly Love and took twenty-seven others on to New York, where he received a kindly reception from Friends. As late as 1840, David White took two black persons with him to Indiana (or Ohio), and we find him living in Indiana in his advanced years.19
Others who made at least one trip each were: John White (1826, Indiana), Joseph Stafford (1826, Indiana),20 John Fellow (1826, Indiana; 1826, Haiti),21 Joseph Harris (1827, Ohio),22 Robert Peele (1834, Indiana), Thomas Outland
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(1834, Indiana),23 and Miles White (1834, Indiana; 1834, New York).24 Other agents who were active in making arrangements and may also have conducted groups westward are Thomas Kennedy, Isaac White and Jonas Mace. It is clear that Vestal Coffin, a member of the Manumission Society and reputed organizer of the Underground Railroad, took part in this work, but no expedition appears credited to him.
The big years in the exodus of Quaker-held Negroes from North Carolina were 1826, when fifty-four went west from the Eastern Quarter alone,25 and 1834, when 133 were taken to Indiana.26 The 1834 undertaking was a major effort carried on by Young Friends, the names of Robert Peele, Thomas Out- land and Miles White being properly associated with this group. The Trustees of the Eastern Quarter, under the direction of Caleb White, bought twelve horses and thirteen carts and wagons for that expedition at a cost of $2,490. The cost was so great that individual trustees borrowed money on their own collateral to finance it. The plan was to sell the horses and wagons in Indiana if possible and recover most of the money. This was a virtual caravan, with two groups of fifty- three and thirty-five getting off on October 10, and the final group of forty-five leaving on October 15. The Young Friends carried powers of attorney "to manumit, set free, settle or bind them out."27 According to Caleb White, the departure of this group left only 211 yearly meeting blacks in the Eastern Quarter, and those might follow soon.
RECEPTION IN FREE STATES
Occasional response from those who received the black charges in the free states has already been noted. There was considerable correspondence with the meeting for sufferings, and most of it appears to have been among acquain- tances, for many of the Indiana and Ohio Friends were transplanted North Caro- linians themselves. From Indiana, Samuel Charles, himself a North Carolinian, wrote in 1826 that Friends there were resentful toward North Carolina Friends for sending so many blacks there.28 In the same year, William Talbert, clerk of the meeting for sufferings in Indiana, allowed himself some private opinion in a letter to Nathan Mendenhall. Agreeing heartily with the right of black persons to live where they wished, in view of the attitudes of so many people in Indiana, he wondered if it would not be better to found a colony for blacks somewhere in the Southwest. 29
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