No Longer Yours: Aspects of Slavery and Freedom Seeking in North CarolinaMain MenuCreative Commons LicensePreface and AcknowledgementsArcOnline Maps and ArcStory MapsAdditional Project ComponentsIntroductionEarthWoodFireWaterWindEscapingNetwork to Freedom Underground Railroad LocationsMaps and Additional ResourcesResourcesBrian Robinson351175f8b63e375b96b75c26edde5534c94e8162Torren Gatson9cd3f098d43ed240801c35d1d0fd0737b5602944Rhonda Jones4c7a2610c10c17f5b487bcebc8abbbf64c221aa6Arwin Smallwood329b2d587e93ceaac77a3b3e316b5ce377128ac0Self-Publish
12021-10-28T17:42:12+00:00Water-Life-Mobility in Wilmington4plain2021-11-18T21:48:07+00:00Wilmington offered enslaved blacks mobility and leisure activities. The slaveholders’ “indifference” toward slave travel offered many enslaved people the ability to travel over large distances, such as between Fayetteville and Wilmington along the Cape Fear River without supervision or proper authority. It was not difficult for slaves to travel unmolested.
Bills in the legislature noted that enslaved people often moved about as free men.
“Some light is shed on their freedom of movement through a bill enacted to prevent slaves from administering medicine without proper authority. This shows it was not uncommon for a slave to travel freely.”
The Governor’s Committee on Safety in 1831 noted that slaves learned their bad habits, of moving about freely, from free blacks. Their study on the committee found the relationship between slaves and free blacks to be extensive, generating anxiety for the committee. As Wilmington became more of a commercial hub, this increased the population of hired-out slaves in the Wilmington area. Slaveholders, generally, provided enslaved persons, in and about Wilmington, with more leeway regarding what they did with their leisure time. And, it seems that there was more than the usual slave hiring out of in the town.
“The majority of slaveholders, for reasons of either laxity or economic necessity, refused to cooperate in the enforcement of slave controls.”
Slaveholders ignored the pleas of free white laborers to prevent hiring out slaves due to competition and the dangers of slave mobility. Slave pilots dominated the Cape Fear region, in particular, in Fayetteville and Wilmington.
“Slave pilots engrossed a large portion of the river traffic, and their owners were determined that this monopoly must continue.”
James H. Brewer noted, “The problem of the slave pilots’ monopoly of the river traffic was presented to the general assembly through a series of memorials from white pilots requesting relief.” Brewer also noted, "Vessels entering the Wilmington ports frequently had slave pilots in charge of their navigation through shallow waters.”