Aspects of Slavery and Freedom Seeking in North Carolina
Water-Life-Mobility in Wilmington
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.
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.”“Slave pilots engrossed a large portion of the river traffic, and their owners were determined that this monopoly must continue.”