20
-
U
The Free Negroes of North Carolina
THE FREE NEGROES OF NORTH CAROLINA.
According to the census of 18G0,
there were in the United States, in
round numbers, 487,000 free negroes,
of which the fifteen slave-holding States
contained 251,000. Virginia stood first,
with 58,000 ; North Carolina second,
with 30,000 ; and in the seven States
south of these, in which the most rigor-
ous free-negro laws prevailed, there were
a total of less than 40,000. In Virginia
they formed 10. GO per cent, of the negro
population, in North Carolina 8.42 per
cent., and in the other seven States
alluded to considerably less than two
per cent.
There is hardly another instance in
the range of history in which a class as
comparatively insignificant in numbers
and as timid and unaggressive in spirit
has been the occasion of so much alarm
and disquietude. The nearest parallel,
though by no means a close one, is per-
haps that of the Romanist of England
in the latter part of the seventeenth
century. However, to a candid mind
there can be little doubt as to whether
the panic of the English Whigs or that
of the Southern slave-holders had the
better foundation in reason and proba-
bility.
The laws of almost all the slave-hold-
ing States, not even excepting many
that were early to abolish and oppose
slavery, attest plainly enough what an
ever-recurring, ever-deepening problem
the free-negro question was from very
early colonial times. In the frequent
spasmodic reiteration of such laws we
see the futile attempts either to lay or
to largely control this spectre, which,
springing into being at a word, waxed
or waned as it was viewed through the
medium of alarm or security. Still, the
apprehension of which the free negroes
were doubtless in nearly every case the
innocent cause was nacural, if not rea-
[ January,-
e?l t S
, 9-?
/ ?2&
sonable. Not that they were formida-
ble within themselves. Among a homo-
geneous people with solidarity of inter-
est their very existence would have been
ignored. But the slave -owners, like
the upholders of all abnormal, arbitrary
institutions, could not but be excessive-
ly suspicious and susceptible to panic.
They dreaded the example and influence
of free blacks dwelling among their en-
slaved brethren. They saw in the free
negro an instigator and disseminator of
insurrectionary doctrine which he per-
haps never thought of, and gave him
credit for a philanthropy and temerity
which I am sure he never possessed.
The negro legislation of the South —
indeed, of all the slave-holding States
in proportion to the number of slaves
and the consequent danger of insurrec-
tion — was harsh and grim enough,
and it is not my desire to condone it.
For the sake of fairness, I would only
say, in passing, that a man whose house
is stored with deadly explosives cau
hardly be blamed for placing very severe
restrictions on fire. The crime and folly
in placing and keeping them there over-
shadows, if it does not excuse, the rest.
Then slavery grew into an institution
amid, and took the indelible impress of,
an era of rigorous laws and cruel, un-
natural punishments the world over.
Scourgings and brandings, mannings
and hangings, were as a rule inflicted
for offenses now deemed trifling. Not
only were criminals treated with incred-
ible barbarity, but in the army, the
navy, the school, the shop, the farm,
the rod was seldom out of the hand of
authority. Whitefield himself held it
laudable to bring the negro under chris-
tianizing influences, even if the only
road lay through slavery; to save hea-
then African souls at the expense of
heathen African bodies. I would also
V
1886.]
In the Clouds.
19
As Rood made his last shot, his
strongly marked dark face was lighted
with a keen sense of triumph. Although,
according to strictest construction, the
ball had not penetrated the centre, it was
within a hair's breadth of it, and it was
so unlikely that it would be surpassed
that he tasted all the assured triumphs
of victory before the battle was won.
With Mink's second shot arose the
great dispute of the day. Like Rood's,
it was not fairly in the bull's-eye, if the
point of intersection might be so called,
but it too lacked only a hair's breadth.
Mink was willing enough for a new
; trial, but Rood, protesting, stood upon
his rights. The judges consulted to-
gether apart, reexamined the boards,
finally announced their incapacity to de-
cide, and called in the " thirdsman."
Mink made no objection when the
miller, as referee, came to look at the
board. He, too. examined it closely,
holding his big hat in his hand that it
might cast no shadow. There was no
perceptible difference in the value of
the two shots. Mink hardly believed he
had heard aright when the " thirdsman,"
with scarcely a moment's hesitation, de-
clared there was no doubt about the
matter. Rood's shot was the fairer. " I
could draw a line twixt Mink's and the
centre."
There was a yell of derision from the
young fellows. Rood wore a provok-
ing sneer. Mink stood staring.
" Look-a-hyar," he said roughly, " ye
haffen-blind old owe// Ye can't tell the
differ 'twixt them shots. It's a tie."
" Rood's air the closest, an' he gits
the fust ch'ice o' beef ! " said the old
man, his white beard and mustache yawn-
ing with his toothless laugh. "Ai-yi!
Mink, ye ain't so powerful minkish yit
ez ter git the fust ch'ice o' beef."
" Ye '11 hev the second ch'ice, Mink,"
said Price consolingly. He himself, the
fourth best shot, had the fourth choice.
" I won't hev the second ch'ice ! "
exclaimed Mink. " It 'a nobody but
that thar weezened old critter ez 'lows
I oughter. Fust he sent his gran'son,
that thar slack-twisted 'Gustus Tom, ter
git in my aim, — wisht I bed shot him !
An' then, when I lets him be thurdsman,
he air jes' so durned m'licious he don't
even stop an' take a minit ter decide."
Mink's heart was hot. He had been
wounded in his most vulnerable suscepti-
bility, his pride in his marksmanship.
" Look-adiyar, Mink ! " remonstrated
Price, "ye ain't a-goin' off 'fore the
beef 's been butchered an' ye git the
second ch'ice. Stop ! Hold on ! "
For Mink was about to mount.
" I don't want no beef," he said. " I
hev been cheated 'mongst ye. I won
the fust ch'ice, an' I won't put up with
the second."
Price was nonplused for a moment ;
then he evolved a solution. " I '11 sell it.
Mink," he cried, "an' bring ye the
money ! An' don't ye furgit old Tobias
Winkeye," he added beguilingly.
"Who's old Tobias Winkeye?"
asked the old man, tartly.
Price laughed, sticking his hands in
the pockets of his jeans trousers, and
looked around, winking at the others
with a jocosity enfeebled somewhat by
his light sparse lashes. "Jes' a man ez
hev got a job fur Mink," he said, enig-
matically.
The old miller, baffled, and appre-
hending the mockery, laughed loud and
aggressively, his white beard shaking,
his bushy eyebrows overhanging his
twinkling eyes.
"Iledn't ye better bust the mill
down, Mink?" he said floutingly.
"I will, — see ef I don't!" Mink
retorted, as he wheeled his horse.
Only idle wrath, an idle threat, void
of even the vaguest intention. They all
knew that at the time. But the sig-
nificance of the scene was altered in the
light of after events.
Mink's fate had mounted with him,
and the mare carried double as he rode
out of Piomingo Cove.
Charles Eybert Craddock.
1886.]
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
21
add that it was the curse of the South
to be chained by self-interest, — self-
preservation they considered it, — that
despotic controller of conduct, in an atti-
tude towards slavery which tlie more
disinterested world had outgrown and
come to execrate.
To North Carolina belongs the sorry
honor of being more lenient in the exe-
cution, if not in the spirit, of her laws
governing this unhappy class than either
Virgiuia or any of the other South-
ern States. Not only did she contain
the largest proportion of whites, Texas
alone excepted, and have therefore less
to fear from a servile insurrection, but
the negroes, instead of being collected
on large plantations to themselves, were
more generally divided up among small-
er owners, in much closer contact with
the whites, better understood, better
treated, and consequently less disposed
and less able to inflict harm. The num-
ber of slave-holders in North Carolina
must have been comparatively very
much larger than in the other States, as
well as the number of slaves who were
yearly hired out, usually passing into
the families of small non-slave-holding
farmers. This feeling of comparative
safety had its influence in according
both the slaves and free negroes more
privileges on sufferance than was com-
mon in the large slave-holding States,
though cruel statutes were not wanting,
which were enforced and even exceeded
in time of panic. Thus the free negroes
possessed and exercised the elective fran-
chise down to the constitutional conven-
tion of 1835, one hundred and twelve
years after they had been formally dis-
franchised in Virginia. The same as-
sembly also abolished their schools,
although no penalty was ever imposed
for the teaching by a white person of a
negro, slave or free, to read or write.
On this question, the attitude of the
State was similar to that of the South
in general. They also held real estate,
which was prohibited in many other
States, and in some instances even be-
came slave-owners themselves.
Although North Carolina modeled
her free-negro legislation iargely upon
that of Virginia, she never entirely re-
moved every restriction from manumis-
sion, as Virginia did from 1782 to 1805.
Her attitude towards the foreign slave-
trade about the same period was mid-
way between that of Virginia and the
States to the south. She neither pro-
hibited it, like Virginia, nor encouraged
it, like South Carolina and Georgia ; but
contented herself with imposing a tax
on slave importation, and declaring it
to be "of evil consequence and highly
impolitic." Neither did the great move-
ment for gradual emancipation in Vir-
ginia, about 1785, which under the lead-
ership of Jefferson promised so much
for a time, ever find much favor in this
State.
Of the proprietary period in North
Carolina, which came to an end in 1729,
the colony being then barely seventy
years old, there is only one statute extant
restricting the manumission of slaves, or
in any way relating to free negroes.
This act marks the adoption of a policy
subsequently modified and never rigidly
enforced except in periods of alarm, but
still to the last never wholly abandoned.
This policy had its root in the generally
accepted theory of the incompatibility
of slaves and free blacks in the same
community, and its end was the expul-
sion and exclusion of the latter. The
act permitted the manumission of "good
and orderly slaves " for " honest and
faithful service," but the freedman must
forthwith depart the province forever,
under penalty of being sold to any one
who would transport him out of the
country. Had this law been strictly
carried out, the tender of freedom to
a creature as ignorant and as helpless as
the slave perforce was would have been
only mockery. For philanthropy at
large had not yet taken note of him, if
indeed it had of anything, with practical
22
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
[January,
effect. But the presence of nearly 5000
slaves in the State at the census of 1790
proves either that the act had fallen
into disuse, or that their immigration
from Virginia was tolerated, as it was
later on in quiet times. Indeed, a con-
siderable sprinkling of free negroes from
this State served in the white regiments
through the whole war of the Revolu-
tion. Several distinguished themselves.
Local tradition preserves the memory
of one by the name of Uibby, of noted
bravery. He lived to a great age, and
I have heard old men tell of his in-
dignant protest at the polls when his
ballot was refused at the next election
after the disfranchising convention of
1835. Several large tracts of land in
this vicinity were, during the latter
part of the last century, the property of
free negroes. One was a school-teacher
and the neighborhood scribe. Several
deeds in his handwriting are still pre-
served. The children of some of the
best families in the neighborhood were
numbered among his pupils. In fact,
negroes, slave and free, were to some
extent employed as teachers in several
States, about that date. It is clear tliat
either the bitter race prejudice of later
times was then much less strong, or that
the calling of teacher was less regarded.
Doubtless both conditions were true. It
is well known that the former was large-
ly a thing of more recent growth ; while
neither the Old World nor some por-
tions of the New seem then to have been
very particular as to who had either
mind or soul in charge.
After the Revolution, public opinion,
and consequent legislation to the detri-
ment of this class and the race in gen-
eral, had received marked impulse from
two different, though collateral, sources.
The first of these was the aggressive
emancipatory spirit of the North, which
found national expression in the famous
Quaker memorial to Congress in 1790;
the other, the periodic alarms of antici-
pated insurrection of the slaves, — above
all, the Nat Turner insurrection, just
over the Virginia border, in 1831.
Largely to resentment against the ab-
olitionism of the North, and perhaps
partly to a dread lest the newly liber-
ated blacks of the North should gravi-
tate towards the great mass of their race
at the South, importing the dangerous
doctrines of discontent and insurrection
as they came, may be ascribed the first
series of those laws passed in 1795. The
first act, passed iu 1795, compelled all
free negroes entering the State to <nve
bond in the sum of £200 for their good
behavior, which was virtual exclusion,
as it was doubtless intended to be. Man-
umitted slaves were permitted to remain
on the same condition, which, with the
aid of their emancipators, they some-
times succeeded in complying with.
Failing to give the bond, and persisting
in remaining in the State, both classes
forfeited their freedom. An act passed
in 1796 was still more stringent. Ac-
cording to this, no slave could be manu-
mitted except for meritorious services,
to be adjudged by the county court, the
bond as to future behavior being still
required. It will be uoticed that, while
the Northern States required a bond to
guard against a manumitted slave fall-
ing on the public for support, the large
slave-holding States took that means to
prevent his tampering with the slaves;
each sectiou guarding against what it
had most to fear. Closely following the
above act came another, requiring six
weeks' notice to be given preceding the
term of the court which would be
prayed to confirm the deed of manumis-
sion. With increased severity, it com-
pelled the freedman to give bond in the
sum of SI 000 to quit the State in ninety
days after manumission. It further en-
acted that no deed of manumission should
work to the detriment of an emancipa-
tor's creditors.
At this time North Carolina was less
merciful to the free negro than Virginia.
The former leaned, in theory at least,
1886.]
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
23
rather to the policy of South Carolina
and Georgia. But the period from 1799
to 1801 was a time of great excitement
and apprehension of insurrection in Vir-
ginia. The result was that the act of
1782, facilitating the manumission of
slaves, and taking all restrictions from
their residence in that State, was re-
pealed, and measures of unwonted se-
verity were adopted. This alarm also
extended to North Carolina, and actu-
ated the only legislation of consequence
on the subject for many years after that
of 1795. The inference from the fact
that no supplemental legislation of this
nature followed for nearly thirty years is
that either the working of the laws was
satisfactory, — a quality never character-
istic of such acts, — or that they were
but the expression of a passing mood of
the public mind, and that they lost their
vitality when the mood changed. If the
concurrent tradition of the country is
to be believed, the latter was the case.
Numbers of free negroes, especially in
the northern tier of counties, agree in
the statement that their forefathers
came over from Virginia about sixty or
eighty years ago, and that they were
unhindered. Here they found cheaper
lands, and laws, in their execution at
least, more lenient, as well as a social
attitude less hostile than in aristocratic
Virginia. That this immigration was
considerable is to be gathered from the
fact that quite a third of the free-negro
population of the State was to be found
in the counties contiguous to Virginia.
The presence of large numbers in some
of the southern counties leads to the be-
lief that there was also some immigra-
tion of this class from South Carolina,
though in a much less degree. How-
ever, free negroes were to be found in
every county in the State, ranging from
less than a dozen in some of the western
to more than two thousand in some of
the eastern counties.
Bordering on Virginia, and occurring
at various intervals from the sea-coast to
the mountains, there were considerable
areas then considered too poor for prof-
itable cultivation. A meagre, whitish
soil, thirsty and unrecuperative, afforded
grudging sustenance to a puny, grotesque
growth of blackjack and chincapin, even
the renovating pine — the badge of the
State — being in many places a rarity.
They were dreary, poverty-stricken re-
gions, inhabited almost exclusively by
poor non-slave-holding whites, and selling
up to the war often as low as one dollar
an acre. The slave-holders and more
substantial immigrants settled farther in-
ward, along the streams, or on the stiffer
lands, then alone regarded fit for pro-
ducing tobacco. However, 1 will add
that the development of the bright to-
bacco industry — for which this soil,
aided by commercial fertilizers, is won-
derfully adapted — has very recently
made this the most prosperous part of
the State.
To this section the free negroes had
been straggling over from Virginia from
a very early period. And although their
immigration into the State was prohib-
ited, under heavy penalty, by the acts
of 1795, — supplemented by still more
stringent ones, none of which were ever
repealed, — they continued to come, al-
most up to the war of secession. In some
cases their coming was doubtless surrep-
titious, but usually, by selecting a quiet
period, and settling in a favorable neigh-
borhood, they ran little or no risk of
having the law enforced against them.
They rarely, at any rate towards the
last, penetrated very deep into the State :
partly because they feared opposition ;
partly because they attached a vague idea
of safety to the border ; mainly because
there lands were cheap, and the poor
white population not averse to their set-
tlement. For the land-owners, being in
need of labor, found it much cheaper to
employ them than to hire slaves. It was
only in such neighborhoods that the free
negro could ever hope to become a free-
holder. The lands farther inward were
24
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
[January,
not only more valuable, but also in the
hands of large owners, who rarely sold
unless constrained by debt, or desirous
of moving West. Land at the South
was, in a stronger sense than elsewhere,
considered the final investment of money.
Least of all would the nervous slave-
owner have been disposed to sell to this
half-feared, half-despised class. But the
poor whites of the border, with no slaves
to be corrupted, owned more or less poor
land, for which they were glad to find
purchasers, tenants, or laborers. Yet
notwithstanding the merely nominal
price of land, a large majority of these
immigrants always remained too poor to
become freeholders, squatting instead on
barren, worn-out corners, or along rocky,
uutillable ridges ; the convenience of
having this docile, uncomplaining help
within call being deemed a fair compen-
sation for the equally superfluous wood
and water they consumed. In some in-
stances they were tenants at will by a
tenure not unlike the milder types of
feudalism.
A very few prospered, bought larger
and better farms, and even owned slaves,
— one as many as thirty, — which they
held up to general emancipation. But
generally, when they bought land at
all, the purchase was ludicrously small,
and, in the country phrase, " so po' it
could n't sprout er pea dout grunt'n."
On these infinitesimal bits they built
flimsy log huts, travesties in every re-
spect of the rude dwellings of the earli-
est white settlers. The timber growth
being often too scant to afford fence
rails, their little patches of phantom
corn mixed with pea-vines — or, rather,
stubs, their little quota of hulls akimbo
on top — were encircled by brush fences,
which even by dint of annual renewals
were scarcely to be regarded by a beast
of average hunger and enterprise.
The subsidence of the alarm of 1802
was followed by nearly thirty years of
comparative quiet. So far these alarms
had, with scarcely an exception, euded
in smoke, leaving little permanent im-
press on the popular mind. The un-
fathomable race prejudice of later years
had not yet developed into a mania.
Negrophobia was then a hardly known
malady. The resentment against the
antislavery spirit of the North had not
yet been poured out on the head of the
negro. The attitude of the races to-
wards each other was widely different
from what it afterwards became. But
about 18o0, a growing mistrust on the
part of the whites manifested itself.
Abolitionism, hitherto the hobby of vis-
ionaries and isolated philanthropists,
had now grown to be the watchword of
a militant, uncompromising party. Its
subtle leaven permeated the whole coun-
try, encouraging the slave, exasperating
the master. It would be curious to
know what were the real grounds of
these panics. But in all history there
are fewer mysteries more insolvable.
Secretiveness is the chief characteristic
of the negro, and on this subject, above
all others, he is immovably silent. It
seems most probable that there was gen-
eral disquiet among the slaves at these
periods, but no far-reaching conspiracy.
That the scare was out of all proportion
to the danger is not to be doubted. The
mystery and uncertainty that shrouded
the whole matter left the imagination full
play. Still, all the white survivors of
that time that I have questioned agree
in maintaining that a great change came
over the negroes. They are said to have
suddenly become less joyous, more ret-
icent and thoughtful. Large meetings
of a quasi-religious character were held
in secret. Braver meetings found their
scores swell into hundreds. By incredi-
ble journeys between sun and sun rep-
resentatives from many counties fre-
quently attended the same meeting.
Then the memorable sun spots of 1831
undoubtedly wrought on the supersti-
tion of both races. Apprehension took
hold of the whites ; it grew into alarm,
and burst iuto panic when Nat Turner
1886.]
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
25
and his followers began their midnight
butcheries just over the Virginia border.
In general it might be said that the
fears of the people spoke in framing the
negro laws, their hearts in executing
them. But on occasions like this, it was
the reverse. All the dead laws were
hunted up, put into execution, and ex-
ceeded. Patrolling, the greatest of all
hardships to the sociable, restless negro,
not hitherto common in this State, now
became a system, strict and unsparing.
This highly wrought state of the pub-
lic mind naturally found expression in
legislation. Minor acts of this nature
were passed in 1830, and in the follow-
ing year legislation began in earnest.
From then till 1837 the statute book
abounds in stringent laws against slaves
and free negroes.
Whenever servile insurrection arose
or was apprehended, the free negro
seems to have fallen under even greater
suspicion than the slave. He was half
believed to value his freedom solely as
a means to sow discontent among the
slaves. The fact that he was out of all
sympathy with them, that really a strong
dislike existed between the two, did not
exonerate him. It was doubtless regard-
ed as but another proof of his astute
dissimulation. It was made unlawful to
free any slave under fifty years of age,
aud then it could be effected only as a
reward for meritorious services. Such
persons were allowed to remain in the
State on giving bond in five hundred
dollars for their " good behavior." A
fine of five hundred dollars was imposed
for bringing a free negro into the State,
and he must leave in twenty days or be
sold, for ten years. If a native free
negro left the State for ninety days, he
could never return.
The state convention called in 1835,
to amend the constitution, among other
important changes, such as the disfran-
chisement of the l>oroiighs and the re-
moval of the gubernatorial election from
the legislature to the people, also dis-
franchised the free negroes. Hitherto
there had existed in this State the strange
anomaly of a class incompetent to tes-
tify in court, and otherwise almost as
destitute of rights as brutes, exercising
a function everywhere deemed the first
of privileges, and which the vast mass
of freemen in the most enlightened coun-
tries of the world are yet striving to at-
tain. But even prior to their disfran-
chisement the free negroes were too timid
and lethargic ever to possess even the
modicum of political influence to which
their numbers would seem to have en-
titled them. In a few of the northern
counties only do they ever seem to have
become an object to demagogues. There
is still a tradition among them in Gran-
ville County that they lost the franchise
on account of their persistent support
of the notorious Potter. Potter, though
a man of parts and a natural orator, was
a consummate demagogue and a violent,
unscrupulous man, whose new departure
in iniquity evoked special legislation.
Toward the last, the free negroes falling
more and more into disrepute, their sup-
port carried such a stigma with it as to
be an element of weakness rather than
of strength to a candidate. More than
one candidate of those days, twitted by
his opponent on the stump about this
element of his constituency, retorted by
declaring his willingness to throw out
every free -negro ballot, if his assailant
would do likewise.
After this period, the life of the free
negro grew unspeakably harder. Not
so much that the laws were harsher, but
because the attitude of the whites be-
came and continued more hostile. Nei-
ther the harshness nor the leniency of
the laws was of great moment to him,
who could in no wise put them in oper-
ation even for his own protection. His
lot added the disability of the slave to
the responsibility of the freeman. De-
pendent on his own industry and enter-
prise, as the slave was not, he found the
field of his labor contracted, till subsis-
26
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
[January,
tence became a formidable problem in-
deed. Except among the non-slave-hold-
ing farmers, who were often too poor to
pay him sufficient hire to sustain life, he
could hud little employment that did not
bring him in contact with the slave,
while the main end of public policy was
to keep them as far apart as possible. In-
termarriage and social intercourse were
of course strictly forbidden by law.
With him, all depended on the temper
of the whites among whom he lived. If
they were kind and well disposed, he
had little to complain of. But if they
were cruel or alarmist, his condition was
pitiable beyond words. Then all his
movements were closely watched, and
his actions ingeniously tortured to sin-
ister ends. It',. in quest of employment,
he ventured out of his immediate neigh-
borhood and neglected to take his free
papers, he got into serious trouble. Even
carrying them in his pocket, if his ac-
tious aroused suspicion and his explana-
tion was not at once prompt, lucid, and
consistent, he also got into trouble.
Dumb as a witness against the domi-
nant race, he not infrequently became the
object of the spite of malicious white
men, or the wanton cruelty of heartless,
unthinking striplings.
It is not to lie wondered that the free
negroes, unelastic and prone to unthrift,
underwent still further deterioration.
Cowed, perplexed, and dispirited, they
huddled together on any scant, sterile
bit of land that they were fortunate
enough to be possessed of, erected clus-
ters of their frail little huts, and like
oppressed, hopeless classes the world
over sunk into profound listlessuess and
sloth. The women grew unchaste, the
men dishonest, until in many minds the
term "free negro" became a synonym
for all that was worthless and despicable.
Their settlements were commonly con-
tiguous to some town ; the counties in
which were located Raleigh, Wilming-
ton, New Berne, and Fayetteville con-
taining nearly a fourth of all the free
negroes in the State, in which the apter
males became barbers, fiddlers, or Jacks-
of-all-trades. Some followed ditching,
well-digging, and such work as was con-
sidered too perilous or too unhealthy to
risk slaves in its performance. I never
knew a neighborhood without a free-
negro shoemaker. In fact, they were
largely, perforce, a class of piddlers ;
and like piddlers everywhere more in-
dispensable than any other element of
the community. The majority kept soul
and body together with the product of
their sterile little patches, eked out with
a petty traffic in the rude articles of
their own make, such as chairs, splint
baskets, horse-collars and door-mats made
from shucks and bark, "dug" troughs,
bread-trays, etc. Many derived almost
their whole living from the sale of gin-
ger cakes, and watermelons, wild nuts,
and fruits when in season, at the neigh-
boring towns, or on Saturdays and " big "
days at the cross-road stores and coun-
try post-offices.
In some of the county seats, during
court week, an aged specimen of this lat-
ter type is still occasionally to be seen
selling ginger cakes. Generally tall,
meagre, stooping, slouching, for all the
world the color of his own wares, he
lounges half listlessly, half dejectedly,
on the shafts of the little steer-cart bear-
ing his antiquated confections, silently
awaiting the customers that never seem
to come nowadays. He and his cakes are
almost the sole survivors of ante-bellum
days. But in all his silent musings it
seems not to have occurred to him that
he is an anachronism. That he is still
catering to the obsolete gastronomy of
a long-gone generation, and that his good-
ies are caviare to their grandchildren,
has never entered his mind. At least,
if it has, he is too staunch a quietist or
pessimist, no one knows which, to care
much. He has seen the primitive wood-
en court house supplanted by a preten-
tious brick one ; the once boundless
court-house frreeu contracted and con-
1886.]
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
27
traded, till the pitiless march of brick
and mortar has left him no stopping
place save an unsafe and ignoble one in
the gutter. He has seen man and nature
change, but it lias never suggested new
methods, any more than the fact that
people quit eating home-made ginger
cakes a generation ago has suggested
the advisability of discontinuing their
manufacture. Like the persistent sibyl
of old, his serene confidence in his wares
is not a jot abated because they are ig-
nored of men and have diminished in
quantity. And there he will be every
court week, more punctual than judge
or jury, till some hard-hearted board of
town commissioners pronounce him a
nuisance, when he will uncomplainingly
take a remoter stand, unless perchance
before then death the gleaner should fol-
low iii the swath of death the reaper.
To one acquainted with the stringent
laws, against the manumission of slaves
and against the immigration of free
negroes, and not with the impunity with
which those laws were disregarded, the
number of free negroes in the State
might well be a matter of wonder.
From the infancy of the colony in the
latter part of the seventeenth century,
the laws placed every bar in the way of
manumission short of total and absolute
prohibition. First, only the "good and
orderly " slaves could be set free for
" honest and faithful " service. Later
on, when it became the custom to con-
strue these qualifications too liberally,
the power of determining these was re-
moved from the master to the county
court, which was essentially the same as
the method in the other Southern States.
Still later, a slave must be over fifty
years of age before be could be set free
at all. Excepting for a very short pe-
riod, the latter class of freedtnen were
the only ones permitted to remain in the
State, although under bond for their
behavior. For even the law of 1795,
which permitted free negroes to enter
and reside withiu the State on giving a
bond of £200, tantamount to prohibition,
was soon repealed. True, occasional-
ly the legislature did, by special enact-
ment, sanction the manumission of blaves,
and also suspend the banishing clause.
But the number manumitted in this way
must have been comparatively small.
But as the laws were often exceeded
or disregarded to the negro's harm, so
also were they sometimes exceeded or
disregarded in his favor. Many indus-
trious, thrifty slaves, especially mechan-
ics, not only hired themselves in the
face of a law forbidding it, but with
money thus earned bought their own
freedom, and sometimes that of their
families, and remaiued in the State un-
molested. Of course the whole trans-
action was informal and illegal, and in
the eyes of the law they were the prop-
erty of their former master. But they
were practically free men, and I never
heard of a case in which a master proved
treacherous. Nor would the community
have countenanced such an act.
I knew of a very touching instance
in which a free negro became the pur-
chaser, though not the owner, of his fam-
ily. He was a blacksmith, and had mar-
ried a slave woman, by whom he had
several children. His shop was on her
master's farm, where he was liked and
kindly treated. But finally the master
got involved in debt, and all of his
slaves, among them the blacksmith's
family, were seized by the creditors and
sold to a speculator, who resold them
in Mississippi. The husband, who was
then forehanded, went desperately to
work, and in a few years scraped to-
gether sufficient money, placed it in
their first owner's hand, and got him to
repurchase and bring back from the
terrible South the loved ones; content
that they should remain slaves — for
the temper of the neighborhood was hos-
tile to manumission — so that he need
not be separated from them.
Several large slave-holders in the east-
ern part of the State not only set their
28
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
[January,
slaves free by will, with legislative sanc-
tion, but also gave them an outfit and
paid their passage to Liberia. But bills
of manumission were not always sure
of passage. All depended on the mood
of the legislature. A noted politician,
since the war conspicuous for his ec-
centricities as well as for his services to
the State, is said to have opposed one
of these bills, by which a very old man
sought power to free his slaves at his
death, in the following speech : " Mr.
Speaker, this old man is a slave-holder,
the son of a slave-holder, the grandson
of a slave-holder, lie inherited slaves
without compunction, and has held and
enjoyed them far beyond the span of
most human lives without a qualm. He
never seems to have realized the sinful-
ness of slavery as long as it was useful
to himself. Now that he totters on the
brink of the grave he would fain pro-
pitiate an olfended God by an offering
that costs him nothing. Like a mediae-
val reprobate bequeathing his all to the
church, he would buy heaven, but his
heir must pay for it. I can see no jus-
tice in that. lie has waited too late.
And now, sir, if that is his only chance
of heaven, and my vote avails anything,
I shall keep hiin out. I vote nay." I
think the bill was lost.
In the excitement preceding the war,
as well as in the disorder attending it,
these mud-sills of society, of course, had
the hardest lot of all. They fared bad-
ly, not because they were the objects of
any special ill-will, — all fears of servile
trouble being eclipsed and forgotten in
the pressing exigencies of the hour, —
but simply because they were unprotect-
ed in a period of general confusion and
irresponsibility. Some few were seized
and sold as slaves, their feeble protest
being drowned in the tumult. All males
within the drafting age of from eighteen
to forty-five were compelled to serve
the Confederacy as laborers on the for-
tifications, unless already acting as ser-
vants for officers iu the field. Most of
the free negroes served in the latter
capacity, but few otficers being willing
to risk their slaves so near the Federal
lines. As laborers on the fortifications
they received the same pay as white
privates, while those that served the
otficers were still better paid by the in-
dividuals employing them. About the
beginning of the war the question was
mooted of compelling all free negroes
to choose masters and become slaves,
or be forthwith expelled the State; but
it was soon lost sight of in the stress of
affairs, if indeed it was ever seriously
entertained.
At the close of the war the appella-
tions "Old Issue" and "New Issue,"
to distinguish the free from the freed
negroes, were invented by the latter.
The blacks are quick at appropriating
new words, and sometimes very original
in applying them ; and this instance came
about as follows: Early in 1864, when
Confederate money had greatly depre-
ciated in value, it was rumored that the
government was about to make a new
issue of notes, whose purchasing value
would be fixed by law, and that they
would bring back the good old time
prices. While those competent to judge
must have known better, popular expec-
tation was on tiptoe. Wonders were
fondly hoped for from this magic " New
Issue." It came. Almost die only ef-
fect was at once to still farther depreci-
ate the "Old Issue," while prices went
steadily upward. The war ended while
these terms were still fresh in the pop-
ular mind, and the only result of this
great financial scheme was to add two
words — " 01' Isshy " and " New Isshy "
— to the negro's scant vocabulary. The
terms were expressive and appropriate,
and no one now thinks of using any
other.
The war ended, a radically new era
began. Life and thought, with a sharp
wrench, assumed new lines. The social
kaleidoscope, shaken by the rude hand
of war, shivered, and was recast into
1886.]
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
29
strangely new forms. The slave, sud-
denly metamorphosed into a free man,
struck out for himself with more or less
energy and judgment, but nevertheless
under a new impulse. His quondam
master, though stunned for a while, final-
ly dropped into a new rut, and began
life anew. But the effect on this neu-
tral class was comparatively slight. His
sloth was too profound, his isolation
too complete, he was too far out of sym-
pathy with his surroundings, to feel with
effect the impulse of the new order of
things. lie saw the war end, and op-
pression and disability cease, with his
inherent listlessness. Almost wholly
destitute of the vigor and elasticity of
the freedman and of the industrious
habits which the latter had perforce
acquired as a slave, the " 01' Isshy "
remains to-day largely an alien to the
strivings and aspirations of his contem-
poraries. Some, well to do at the end of
the war, failing to catch the new drift,
have become impoverished. The line
of demarkation between the Old and
New "Isshy" is not only still plainly
visible, but bids fair long to continue so.
Associating but little with each other,
intermarriage is not common. A free
negro who marries a freed one almost
invariably loses caste, and is disowned
by his people. The freedmen make no
secret of their dislike and contempt for
the other class, which is reciprocated by
feelings more covert, hut perhaps still
deeper. In their habits, manner, and
dress the free negroes still resemble, as
they always did, the poorest class of
whites much closer than tjiey do the
freedmen.
Of course the cause of the compara-
tive retrogradation of this class is to be
found in the innate indolence and shift-
lessness of the race, superinduced by
their exceptionally unfavorable condi-
tions of life under the old regime, the
influence of which will doubtless not be
entirely spent for many generations.
Both iustiuct and environment have
been against them. But there are two
factors that have worked together to
form or intensify the former that I have
not yet seen duly noticed. The first of
these lies in the fact that they are al-
most wholly a hybrid race, and there-
fore deficient in stamina, as hybrid races
are in general and the mulatto in par-
ticular. According to the census of
18G0, fifty-five per cent, of all the free-
negro population consisted of mulattoes,
a proportion eight times greater thau
existed among the slaves. Of course
the proportion of those with blood more
or less mixed was very much larger.
Indeed, of all the hundreds of free ne-
groes that I have known from child-
hood, I cannot now recall a dozen black
or very dark oues. Hardly a neighbor-
hood was free from low white women
who married or cohabited with free ne-
groes. Well can I recollect the many
times when, with the inconsiderate curi-
osity of a child, I hurriedly climbed the
front gate-post to get a good look at
a shriveled old white woman trudging
down the lane, who, when young, I was
told, had had her free-negro lover bled,
and drank some of his blood, so that
she might swear she had negro blood in
her, and thus marry him without pen-
alty. Since I became a man I have
heard it corroborated by those who
knew, and I still occasionally see the
children of this tragic marriage, now
grown old men.
The other factor in their decadence —
or perhaps more correctly, another cause
of their torpor and inelasticity — is the
considerable infusion of Indian blood
generally diffused by exclusive inter-
marriage in their own class, and which
has unduly asserted itself owing to their
irregular mode of life for many genera-
tions. From the nature of the case, the
extent of this infusion is of course hard
to approximate. If the account of the
free negro himself is to be received, it is
large, though his anxiety to disown all
negro affinity causes one to receive hia
30
The Free Negroes of North Carolina.
[January,
statement with caution and allowance.
But, tradition aside, many, if not the
larger part, of the free negroes whose
freedom dates back further than this
century show traits of mind and body
that are unmistakably Indian. In many
instances, long, coarse, straight black
hair and high cheek-bones are joined
with complexions whose duskiness dis-
claims white blood and with features
clearly un-African. True, these extreme
types are the exception ; but the ma-
jority shade up to it more or less close-
ly. These traits are more noticeable
among women, forming no exception to
the usual accentuation of racial charac-
teristics in the female. The mental
qualities of unrecuperativeness and tran-
scendent indolence of a drowsy, listless
type, coupled with lurking vindictive-
ness, all point the same way.
My neighborhood contains an " 01'
Isshy " town, a petrified remnant of
the past, hardly an exaggeration of the
general type, in which the above race
marks are to be seen in their full de-
velopment. It stands about five miles
from the railroad station, and consists
of some half a dozen families, scantily
provided with fathers, crowded into as
many little huts scattered here and there
on a " slipe " of very poor, rocky ridge.
Here they have vegetated for several
generations since their ancestors immi-
grated from Virginia, early in the cen-
tury. They are intensely clannish and
loyal to each other, timid and suspicious
of the outside world, of which they are
incredibly ignorant. Many of the wo-
men have grown old without ever see-
ing the cars or having been in a town,
although almost within sight of both.
They still cherish boundless respect for
the class that are to them, and to them
alone, "rich folks," coupled with an
abiding dislike of the '• New Isshy," es-
pecially if he is black. A marriage*
even a liaison, with one would be in-
stantly fatal to the reputation of any
female among them, though, excepting
the African, the children of many, in
point of variety of color at least, might
serve to illustrate the five races of man-
kind. After their own immediate class,
they associate almost wholly with the
poorest whites, though not quite as
equals.
Till the reduction of the revenue tax,
a few years ago, rendered " blockading "
no longer profitable, the whole settle-
ment was engaged, in connection with
several white men, nearly as poor as
themselves, in a petty traffic in illicit
tobacco. The tobacco, after being
stemmed and prepared in the lofts of
their little huts and pressed in the woods,
was smuggled off at night for sale in
the eastern part of the State. The qual-
ity of the product was necessarily of
the sorriest, and the annual profit must
have been paltry in the extreme. But
it fended the wolf after a fashion ; the
labor required was trifling and inter-
mittent, while the spice of danger was
doubtless grateful as giving some zest
to the monotonous languor of their lives.
For years they did literally nothing else,
save perhaps a still pettier traffic in un-
licensed whiskey, which I suspect they
have not yet abandoned. Cold, hun-
ger, even fatigue, they seem indiffer-
ent to, but labor when it assumes the
form of a task appalls them. Even the
children, instead of proclaiming their
wants with the unthinking clamor char-
acteristic of childhood, pine and dwindle
in silence, seeming to regard hunger as
the normal condition of life.
David Dodge.
