Aspects of Slavery and Freedom Seeking in North Carolina
Earth-Labor-Railroads
Toward the mid to late Antebellum period, railroads became the future transportation technology. In North Carolina, the railroads turned attention away from canal development [even though those developed remained in use].
Railroads in North Carolina began construction in the 1830s as part of the renewed interest in naval stores (and, to some extent, rice) and the need to improve transportation. As a result, railroad construction had a major influence on slaveholding and, in turn, slavery, in particular, in the Cape Fear region. For instance, the slave population in this area grew from 9503 in 1840 to 16876 in 1850. In addition, the growth of the railroad affected other enslaved occupations, most of those who were pilots and ferrymen on the waterways.
North Carolina began to charter and operate railroads in the state in the 1830s. The first railroad to operate in North Carolina was the Petersburg Railroad, beginning in 1833 and linking Petersburg, Virginia to Weldon, North Carolina. The Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad and the Halifax and Weldon Railroad soon followed.
By the 1840s, several railroads were complete. For example, Greensville and Roanoke Railroad, Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, and the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad are railroads. The latter was the largest railroad in the world at the time of its completion.
Several railroads were constructed and operational in the 1850s and 1860s. However, the Civil War did interrupt the completion of a few railroads built in the period. More on Railroads HERE
One of the major companies developing railroads in North Carolina was the North Carolina Railroad Company, and this company, like other railroad companies, hired several enslaved people as well as owned several enslaved people as a company to work and develop the railroad. More on The North Carolina Railroad Company HERE
]Working on railroads, like working in minin, some times offered enslaved people the opportunity to escape. Slave Runaway notices bears witness to this fact.
R. O. Britton seeks compensation for a runaway slave named Marina, who absconded in 1845. Britton states that, prior to his marriage, his wife, Mariah P. Kennon Britton, owned the said nineteen-year-old "healthy & intelligent" Marina. He further relates that the said slave "escaped from her mistress ... in the night, in a disguised & clandestine manner," assisted by a free man of color named John Smith.
The petitioner surmises that the said Smith "passed the said negro woman as his wife or sister" and obtained from the railroad ticket agent "tickets for his own & for the passage of the said Marina over the said Road to the Town of Gaston," thus enabling Marina "to make her escape to the free states." Britton therefore asks the legislature to "indemnify him for the loss which he has sustained, in right of his wife, & for which by the laws of the State, the proprietors of Said Raleigh & Gaston Rail Road are liable." For another example, see HERE