Aspects of Slavery and Freedom Seeking in North Carolina Main Menu Creative Commons License Preface and Acknowledgements ArcOnline Maps and ArcStory Maps Additional Project Components Introduction Earth Wood Fire Water Wind Escaping Network to Freedom Underground Railroad Locations Maps and Additional Resources Resources Brian Robinson 351175f8b63e375b96b75c26edde5534c94e8162 Torren Gatson 9cd3f098d43ed240801c35d1d0fd0737b5602944 Rhonda Jones 4c7a2610c10c17f5b487bcebc8abbbf64c221aa6 Arwin Smallwood 329b2d587e93ceaac77a3b3e316b5ce377128ac0 Self-Publish
Manumission Society of North Carolina
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Enslaved African Americans who practiced Christianity harbored mixed feelings of a religion based on hypocrisy, violence, and repression. Slave owners pondered about the impact of Christianity upon their slaves. Did Christianity make slaves docile and accept their condition, or did it inspire them to be rebellious? On the contrary, their right to religious fellowship served as an act of defiance and assertion of independence.
Aside from singing spirituals, slaves may have been silent in public, but their private actions and attitudes illustrated the depth of their discontent. African Americans’ quest for freedom included tactics that ranged from embattling slave codes, manumission, armed resistance, truancy, and escape beyond the boundaries of slavery’s grasp. Although the Bible did not explicitly condemn slavery, the stories of Moses and Job provided them the fortitude to imagine resistance and stage open rebellion and gave the courage to flee. Convinced that God will protect them, they expected injustice to be rectified in the world to come.
Members of the Society of Friends in Randolph and Guilford Counties, who considered slavery as morally wrong, were active members of the North Carolina Manumission Society when it was established in 1814. Quakers such as Levi Coffin and his cousin Vestal Coffin and other Quakers were virulent about antislavery and abolitionism. Although the Quakers were committed to gradual emancipation and legal reforms, their recognition of African Americans’ humanity did not mean that they fully accepted them into American society.
On the contrary, they often held paternalistic attitudes that there was a chance that African Americans might be able to cultivate a space for themselves provided that they were fully trained for the duties of citizenship. Taking into consideration initial opinions that blacks would fare better if they started their lives anew on foreign soil, Quaker members’ early antislavery activities sponsored colonization schemes to Liberia and Haiti.
Upon withdrawing from the Manumission Society, the Coffins engaged in more direct and radical acts of helping runaways escape freedom through extralegal means. The system flourished from 1830 to 1860, but the most active years spanned between 1819 and 1852. Creating a network of way stations in attics, barns, woods, and fields, they aided fugitives by petitioning masters, offering shelter, food, and clothing, and keeping them hidden to avoid their capture by slave patrols or their masters.