Aspects of Slavery and Freedom Seeking in North Carolina
Wind-Society of Friends and the Challenged Views of 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.