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
Early Meeting House
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Wind-Aiding and Abetting Runaways on the Underground Railroad
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The majority of Quakers in Randolph and Guilford counties, including Levi Coffin and his cousin Vestal Coffin, who were active members of the New Garden Friends Meeting, established the North Carolina Manumission Society in 1814. Committed to gradual emancipation and legal reforms, Quakers’ recognition of African Americans’ humanity did not mean they completely accepted them into American society. On the contrary, gradual emancipationists’ paternalistic attitudes led them to believe that Blacks might be able to cultivate a space for themselves in the society after being completely prepared and trained for the duties of citizenship.
Consequently, Quaker members proposed to assist African Americans to leave for Liberia and Haiti, as they were convinced that their lives would be better if they started anew on foreign soil. However, as time passed, the Coffins left the Manumission Society to pursue the more direct and radical act of helping runaways escape freedom through extralegal means.
While Quakers failed to directly interfere or encourage the runaway slaves who hid in the woods and thickets of New Garden, Levi Coffin explained how he and other members felt a moral obligation to provide aid to fugitives who needed care, food, or shelter. His conversion to anti-slavery began when he was seven years old when he witnessed a gang of handcuffed and chained slaves being driven by a man on horseback with a long whip along the road. Levi’s father politely asked, “Well, boys, why do they chain you?” One of the men sadly replied, “They have taken us away from our wives and children, and they chain us lest we should make our escape and go back to them.”
As Levi traveled among the 200 acres of New Garden Woods, which presently encompasses Guilford College, he carried sacks of corn to feed the hogs that also contained bacon and corn bread for the slaves. While they ate, he sat and “listened to the stories they told of hard masters and cruel treatment or spoke in language, simple and rude, yet glowing with native eloquence, of the glorious hope of freedom which animated their spirits in the darkest hours and sustained them under the sting of the lash.” Despite the danger of being caught traveling without a pass, the love and longing for separated family members continued to be strong.Routes to Freedom: Quaker Influence on the Underground Railroad
Stories often depict stories of husbands and fathers who traveled behind the train of wagons during the day and crept up to the camp at night, close enough for his wife and children to see him and bring him food. One incident captured the cruelty that a slave master enacted on a runaway slave. When the master asked, “Weren’t you well treated?” His slave replied, “Yes, massa.” The master then asked, “What made you run away?” The man replied, “My wife and children were taken away from me, massa, and I think as much of them as you do of yours, or any white man does of his. Their massa tried to buy me too, but you would not sell me, so when I saw them go away, I followed.” His master coldly replied, “I've always treated you well, trusting you with my keys, and treating you more like a confidential servant than a slave, but now you shall know what slavery is. Just wait till I get you back home!” Even after the master threatened him with the severest punishment, the man refused to confess who had written the pass. Finally, to force him to confess, the master placed the slave’s hand on the blacksmith’s anvil and struck it with a hammer until the blood settled under his fingernails.
In 1817, a lengthy legal case involved an African American man named Benjamin Benson kidnapped in Delaware and sold in Guilford County to a slaveholder. Eventually, the Guilford County Supreme Court ruled in his favor, but the backlash from slaveholders sparked the idea of an organized method of helping enslaved people to escape to freedom. Fugitive John Dimery’s escape to Indiana was the earliest documented instance of Underground Railroad activity. Dimery, freed by his master somewhere in North Carolina, resettled with his wife in New Garden. In 1819, he was granted his freedom after his master died in 1819. However, his master’s sons came to New Garden to collect Dimery in the night. Subsequently, Dimery directed his daughter to “run for ‘Mr. Coffin.” Vestal and his friend Isaac White caught up with and detained the kidnappers while “the woman of the house” quietly untied Dimery who “disappeared into the woods.” Addison Coffin reported that Dimery traveled along the Underground Railroad to Richmond, Indiana that night.
During the night, runaway slaves came to Levi’s home and entered his room asking for food or assistance. Although southern law inflicted heavy penalties on persons who aided or abetted a fugitive slave in escaping, Levi and Vestal constructed plans to help fugitives escape safely to the North and avoid patrollers or mounted officers. On several occasions, Levi and Vestal intervened on behalf of people who had been illegally kidnapped.
For example, when Vestal learned that an upstanding African American man from Pennsylvania had been stolen and sold into slavery in New Orleans, he contacted the man’s friends who sued the owners, and he regained his freedom. While Vestal is credited with leading the movement, Levi was designated as “President of the Underground Railroad.” From 1819 to 1826, Levi helped no less than 1,000 African Americans travel along the 500-mile Kanawha Route from New Garden, North Carolina to Ohio and Indiana.
By 1830, the population of Guilford County comprised 84 percent whites, 14 percent enslaved, and 2 percent free black people. The New Garden community, which was predominantly white and included free and enslaved African Americans, had ties to northern free state areas through family and faith community connections to Quaker settlements in the northwest, especially to Wayne County, Indiana, and the other regions of Indiana and Ohio. As new lands opened in territories that did not practice slavery, many southern Quakers moved to the northwest instead of migrating to the southwestern territories. Source: Fergus Bordewich, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, Amistad, 2006.
Levi recalled aiding an enslaved woman named Ede. Purchased to work as a servant for Dr. Caldwell, who was in Guilford County visiting relatives, Ede was a married mother of four children. Her husband and three children were left behind, whereas the youngest, a newborn, was permitted to go with its mother. Dr. Caldwell’s wife was despondent about separating families. To satisfy his wife, he told her that Ede's husband—who belonged to another master—“was a trifling negro, and that his master would probably sell him before long; that slave marriage was not legal; and that perhaps Ede would soon get a better man for a husband.” Filled with grief and dismay about being more than a hundred miles away from her family, Ede fled to the woods the night before they were scheduled to leave. While preparing provisions, she thought that if she and the baby could hide in the woods for a week or two, then her master and mistress might have reconsidered letting her stay with her family.
They were exposed to the cool and chilly elements for several days and nights. She lit a fire and used a bed of leaves to shelter them as best she could. When the baby became ill, and they ran out of food, Ede wanted to leave her hiding place. Familiar with the Coffin family’s reputation of aiding fugitives, she came to their house. Despite knowing the heavy penalty for harboring a fugitive slave, they ignored the law. Ede was kindly received, given a hot supper, a comfortable resting place, and advised on what to do next.
When morning came, the question arose, “What should be done with Ede?” The family would not let her return to her hiding place in the cold with her sick child. Begging not to be returned to her master, she repeated her sad story. As the tears streamed down her cheeks, she threatened to take her own life rather than be separated from her family.
The next day, Levi spoke with the Caldwells to persuade them not to send her away. The Doctor replied, “Yes, she ran off several days ago to keep from going home with our son Sam, I suppose. She needs a good flogging for her foolishness--she would have a good home at his house. Do you know where she is hiding?” Relating to the incident of Ede coming to their home and what they had done for her, Levi pleaded her case by quoting scriptures and requesting that they put themselves in her place. The mistress was touched.
She thanked his mother for caring for the sick child and admitted that she had very reluctantly given her consent for Ede to be separated from her family. He told them that Ede was willing to return home if they allowed her to stay but that she would rather die than be separated from her husband and children. Dr. Caldwell listened but made no reply. Levi then inquired whether his father would be prosecuted for violating the law if the Caldwells pressed charges.
Levi Coffin and his family left North Carolina in September 1826. Shortly after they arrived in Newport, they learned that fugitives came and interacted with free Black communities, mainly from North Carolina, who were the descendants of slaves who had been freed by Quaker years before and sent to free states at the expense of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting.
Fugitive slaves who sought refuge in these communities were often pursued and captured because free African Americans were neither skillful in hiding them nor shrewd in helping them escape to Canada. Levi asked why the community of friends did not take them in, hid them when they were pursued and then helped them get to Canada? Admitting they were afraid of the penalty of the law, he told them that when he was a boy, he read in the Bible that it was right to take in the stranger and administer to those in distress. Thinking it was always safe to do right, he added, “The Bible, in bidding us feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said nothing about color, and I should try to follow out the teachings of that good book. I was willing to receive and aid as many fugitives as were disposed to come to my house.”
With the support of his wife Catherine, the Black community recognized Coffin’s house as a place where hunted and harassed fugitives could find sympathy and support for the journey northward. Throughout the winter between 1826 and 1827, the number of fugitives who came to their house increased. Quakers who were reluctant to participate under the penalty of the law contributed clothing and provided aid, but they were too afraid to shelter them in their homes.Describing the plight of fugitives in great detail, Levi Coffin recounted:
The care of so many necessitated much work and anxiety on our part, but we assumed the burden of our own will and bore it cheerfully. It was never too cold or stormy, or the hour of night too late for my wife to rise from sleep, and provide food and comfortable lodging for the fugitives. Her sympathy for those in distress never tired, and her efforts in their behalf never abated. This work was kept up during the time we lived at Newport, a period of more than twenty years. The number of fugitives varied considerably in different years, but the annual average was more than one hundred… Sometimes when the fugitives came to us destitute, we kept them several days, until they could be provided with comfortable clothes. This depended on the circumstances of danger.
If they had come a long distance and had been out several weeks or months--as was sometimes the case--and it was not probable that hunters were on their track, we thought it safe for them to remain with us until fitted for traveling through the thinly settled country to the North. Sometimes fugitives have come to our house in rags, foot-sore and toil-worn, and almost wild, having been out for several months traveling at night, hiding in canebrakes or thickets during the day, often being lost and making little headway at night, particularly in cloudy weather, when the north star could not be seen, sometimes almost perishing for want of food, and afraid of every white person they saw, even after they came into a free State, knowing that slaves were often captured and taken back after crossing the Ohio River.
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Wind-Society of Friends and the Challenged Views of Slavery
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Although the natural and geographic features of North Carolina’s farming economy was far less substantial than the plantation systems of low country South Carolina or the tidewater area of Virginia, by 1715, in response to the colony’s growing population and changing economy, slavery became an integral part of everyday life. The Quaker landowners who lived in the western region of the Piedmont and the mountains maintained small family farms whose mixed economy was fueled by small groups of enslaved Africans, indentures, and hired laborers. However, for the most part, their lives and livelihoods were not dependent upon slavery.
Since the 1670, members of the Society of Friends have held benevolent, humane, and brotherly attitudes towards enslaved Africans. In 1671, the Quaker minister George Fox asked Barbadian slave owners to consider providing them with religious instruction, not abusing them, and emancipating them after a period of service.
Although Quakers were convinced that slavery went against Christ's teachings, any condemnation of the practice fostered disunity and disagreement, which would be a severe violation of their faith. Only a select few members like William Edmondson in 1676 and William Southeby in 1696 publicly denounced slavery for being unchristian, as it enslaved Africans. By the 1700s, the traumatizing infliction of such severe physical and emotional violence led many Quakers to believe that slavery would have a damaging impact on their souls. They wanted to live fuller lives as an example of godliness. Their main concerns were that landowners who depended on others’ labor would become greedy and lazy and that economic interests would supersede spirituality. By the eighteenth century, slavery was an accepted custom and deeply embedded in the economy.
Quakers’ growing opposition to slavery developed slowly by establishing manumission societies that sought to abolish slavery through voluntary emancipation. In 1723, the North Carolina General Assembly grew increasingly concerned that the practice of widespread manumission would increase the population of free African Americans. In response, it adopted restrictive policies on emancipation by prohibiting slave owners from freeing their slaves unless as a reward for “meritorious service.”
The increase in antislavery rhetoric was addressed in annual meetings throughout Quaker communities in New England, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. In 1752, Thomas Beals denounced slavery at the first meeting of New Garden Friends in Guilford County. Following the publication of John Woolman’s book ‘Some Considerations On The Keeping of Negroes,’ annual meetings debated such issues as ending and participating in the slave trade, discouraging abusive treatment, and encouraging manumission from the 1750s onward. By 1758, members were encouraged to include African American slaves in meetings, which would be held at specific times, in designated places, with a certain number of friends in attendance “for the purpose of preserving good order.”
During monthly meetings, Quakers frequently discussed the treatment of slaves and whether their masters encouraged them to attend services. By 1768, the long soul-searching process led to a debate on the true intent of participating in the slave trade. Slave trafficking would be a punishable offense, and friends were not allowed to purchase, trade, or sell Africans. By 1772, the yearly meeting agreed that “thenceforth no Friend should buy a slave ‘of any other person than a friend in unity,’ except to prevent the separation of man and wife, or parent and child…Furthermore, it declared that ‘no Friend should sell a slave to anyone who was used to buying or selling slaves for gain.” The following statement formally declared the standing committee’s views on the slave trade:
“Being fully convinced in our minds and judgments, beyond a doubt or scruple, of the great evil and abomination of the importation of negroes from Africa, by which iniquitous practice great numbers of our fellow-creatures with their posterity are doomed to perpetual and cruel bondage without any regard to their natural right to liberty and freedom, which they have not forfeited through any act of their own or consent thereto, but by mere force and cruelty--we are impressed with abhorrence and detestation against such a practice in a Christian community; for experience makes it fully manifest that instead of their embracing true religion and virtue in exchange for their natural liberty, they have become nurseries of pride and idleness to our youth--in such a manner that morality and true piety are much wounded where slave-keeping abounds, to the great grief of true Christian minds.”
In the wake of revolutionists’ rhetorical calls for freedom, egalitarianism, and natural rights, the legitimacy of slavery became even more highly contested. Members of meeting houses who desired the total liberation of all persons in servitude created committees that purchased slaves solely with the intent of setting them free.
For example, Eastern North Carolina Quaker Thomas Newby and 10 other friends circumvented the stringent manumission law by manumitting 40 slaves. By 1782, Quakers in the Yearly Meeting committed themselves to rid their community of slave ownership by requiring their members to emancipate all their slaves. By making their disapproval of participation in any level of the slave trade unmistakably clear, any members who continued to participate in the institution of slavery were publicly disowned.
The North Carolina General Assembly reaffirmed its strict manumission procedures established in 1741 and 1777. In 1796, when the courts were allowed to seize “illegally” freed slaves, Quakers faced an ethical dilemma about whether the value of human rights was more important than property rights. By 1800, North Carolina’s Quaker population, which is the largest, mainly resided in Randolph and Guilford counties. In 1801, the state required slave owners to enter a $100 bond for each freed slave. Without violating slave law, Quakers took advantage of a 1796 trusteeship law that allowed religious societies to appoint trustees who could accept gifts or “slaves” on the organizations’ behalf. In 1808, slave owners wished to emancipate their slaves by transferring them to the yearly meeting.
The slaves were then entrusted to trustees, who orchestrated their freedom once they provided proof of “meritorious service,” had a strong moral character, and enough self-sufficiency skills. Some arrangements required the trustee to relocate the slave to another state with less restrictive manumission laws regarding formal emancipation. While the purpose of the trusteeship plan provided slaveowners a legitimate way to maneuver North Carolina’s restrictive manumission laws and, in addition, prevented the possibility of African Americans being a part of re-enslavement, it also technically meant that the meeting house was enslaving Africans.