Slaves' Status in North Carolina in the Antebellum Period: Pre-Civil War Slavery

Slavery in North Carolina had its origins is the practices (common in the colonies during the colonial period) of indenture and apprenticeship. Many of the original colonists who came to the English colonies arrived under the obligation imposed by the terms of their indenture. Frequently, they were required to pay for their passage across the Atlantic by agreeing to serve someone for a given number of years until the debt was paid.

However. as Alan Taylor, author of American Colonies, suggests, over time, the white "masters' came to see a difference between their white indentured servants and their black slaves. Those in the former condition would in time be free, while those in the latter, with its near permanence, came to be seen as a valuable property that could be bought as sold like any other. Race certainly played a role in this differentiation, since the indentured were almost always white, while the slaves were always black.

Perhaps surprisingly, given their circumstances, slaves were for the most part very religious and fairly quickly embraced Christianity, as Allen Dwight Callahan, author of The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible makes clear. Whether they did so at first just to gain status among the whites is irrelevant. Slaves, and more infrequently Free Blacks, did occasionally get the chance to attend white run churches and were indoctrinated in some of the basic tenets of the Christian faith, though they almost always remained in the back and deferential. An interesting example of this is seen in the early Moravian church of North Carolina. The Moravians at first allowed slaves (whom they owned) and some free blacks to join their church, though this policy later changed.

C.W. Harper pointed out in "House Servants and Field Hands", about the work slaves did on Plantations, it ranged from field work to more skilled labor such as cobbler or blacksmith to coachman, right up to housework. Serving in the main house was seen as a sign of prestige, and those who held positions in the house generally felt themselves a cut above the common field slaves. The slaves chosen to work in the house as butlers or nursemaids or in other positions were seen by the whites as being somewhat more intelligent than the average slave. Frequently, mulattos were chosen for positions because it was assumed by whites (and often by blacks as well) that the white blood in their veins would naturally render them more intelligent.

Of course, as Harper stresses, this view failed to take into account the fact that any slave who spent a great deal of time in the house was likely to pick up both the appropriate speech and mannerisms, and that it was not uncommon that children of house slaves were the ones chosen, since they would naturally have had greater exposure to whites and their ways and so be better equipped to meet their owner's expectations for a servant's behavior.

Generally, the only way that a slave found employment away from his owner and the Plantation was if his owner "hired him out" to someone else. Wilma Dunaway points out that this practice became increasingly common as the Civil War approached and the slowly growing industrialization of the South began to make the Plantation system seem, at least to some owners, a less and less profitable use for valuable slaves. At one point, even the son-in-law of John C. Calhoun decided to abandoned the traditional Plantation system, and simply hire out in slaves to various enterprises.

At first glance, it might seem that this arrangement was no better for the slave than his prior employment. One might expect, as Calhoun pointed out to his relation, that the new "employers" would be even less concerned for the well being of the slave than the Plantation owner had been (who could be expected have some financial incentive for maintaining a minimum level of health in his investment), and would therefore work the slave into the ground. However, the factors involved are more complex than this, as Todd L. Savitt indicates in his article "Slave Life Insurance".

For one thing, the owner of the slave in question still has considerable say in the way he is treated. He has the option of suing the lessee should maltreatment of the slave be reported to him or observed by him. In addition, by the 1850s, many slave owners who hired out their slaves either insured them themselves or required the lessee to take out insurance. Again, one would expect that this practice might, in and of itself, lead to the abuse of slaves. However, in this case, the insurance companies themselves acted to discourage the mistreatment of slaves by the lessees, or even on the part of the slave owner himself. Indeed, in order to get insurance at all, the owner had to demonstrate that he was providing adequate medical care and food to the slave.

Savitt goes on to point out that the insurance companies acted in other ways to the "benefit" of the slave for hire. They established tables which increased the cost of insurance for certain "hired out" activities and professions (the more dangerous ones) while decreasing them for less hazardous work. An example of this is seen in the turpentine industry, which because of it's high incidence of accident and injury, had one of the highest rates. This action aided the slave in two ways. The first was that presumably owners or lessees (depending on who paid the insurance) would be somewhat less likely to use valuable slaves in very dangerous work because of the greater cost involved. The second reason was that if they did, they may well have made a greater effort to improve safety. Another aspect of the insurance that made abuse of the slave less likely is that the insurers never insured the full value of the slave. This meant that owners or renters of the slaves could not expect full compensation if they worked the slave to death. Again, clearly this by no means implies any benevolence on the part of the parties involved, merely not very enlightened self-interest.

Jeffrey J. Crow, in his work A History of African Americans in North Carolina, tells us that the kinds of jobs that slaves might have as they are hired out varied greatly. They were usually, though not always, manual labor. Road construction, tree felling, building construction, and work bringing in another Plantations crops were quite common. In jobs of this sort, that usually took place in rural areas, a slave was less likely to receive any remuneration for any "extra" work he did beyond that which was expected of him.

An example of a job in which slaves had a bit more say in their circumstances can be seen in the Iron industry. Here, the workers were skilled and experienced, and the product was valuable and easily ruined. As a consequence, iron manufacturers such as William Weaver often found that they had less control and leverage over their slaves than Plantation owners would have over theirs. This was especially the case if the owner of the iron mill choose to hire out slaves from other owners. Charles B. Dew, in Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge, points to perhaps the most striking point in this story, which concerns the skilled workers at the refineries and forges. These men had great personal leverage, and exercised it when they chose. Particularly in the later years, they worked when they wanted and didn't when they didn't. Their skills were indispensable and they knew it. Weaver paid them on what was basically a task system basis: When they did "overwork" he put them down for so much cash on his books. Sometimes they preferred leisure over cash, but the choice seems to have been largely in their hands. One slave, the owner refiner Sam Williams, set up an account in a savings bank. Others chose to be "loafing" (as Brady put it), until such time as they felt like going back to work, but even then they collected pay for overwork.

Drew mentions that a middle ground example in slave employment between the manual labor jobs of the country side and the more complex jobs relations of the city can be seen in the Turpentine manufacturers of Eastern North Carolina. Here the labor involved the extraction of the sap to produce the turpentine and the distilling of the sap into turpentine. The first part of this process was similar to agricultural production, in that it took place in a rural setting and the work required little skill. This means that, unlike the slaves in the ironworks, these slaves were in no position to bargain or threaten (even indirectly) the boss.

C.W. Harper, "House Servants
and Field Hands" North Carolina Historical Review Vol. LV.
Num. 1, January 1978, p. 47.

Allen Dwight Callahan, author of The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible

Alan Taylor, American Colonies (New York: Viking, 2001)

Dunaway, Wilma A. "Slavery and Emancipation in the Mountain South: Sources, Evidence and Methods," Virginia Tech, Online Archives.

Todd L. Savitt, "Slave Life
Insurance,"Journal of Southern History, XLII, No 4
(November 1977), 588-589.

Jeffrey J. Crow, et al.., A History of African Americans in North Carolina. Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, 1992. p. 52.

Charles B. Dew, Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge. NewYork : W.W. Norton, 1994. Pp. 43-54.