1 A slave state
An illustration from the “narrative” of an enslaved man who escaped to the North shows slaves under the overseer’s whip. About the illustration
By the middle of the nineteenth century, slavery was a foundation of North Carolina’s economy and society. One-third of North Carolinians were enslaved — yet only a quarter of free families owned slaves. In this chapter, we’ll explore those inequalities and what slaveholders had to do to maintain them.
- 1.1Distribution of land and slaves
- 1.2Social divisions in antebellum North Carolina
- 1.3North Carolina v. Mann
- 1.4The Quakers and anti-slavery
- 1.5Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad
- 1.6Negotiated segregation in Salem
- 1.7Manumission
- 1.8A petition to free a white slave
- 1.9Black codes
- 1.10Advertising for slaves
- 1.11Runaways and slave hunters in the Dismal Swamp
- 1.12Antislavery feeling in the mountains
