It will be noted that more than half of the slaveholders18,316-owned not more than five slaves, and therefore that their real economic interest lay with the non-slaveholders. If we add those who owned less than ten, most of whom were of the same class, we find the total is 24,520, leaving the small total of 10,158 who owned ten or more. Of course the total of the slaveholding class was greater than the number of slaveholders since their families must be included. The relative numbers were approximately 173,290 of the slaveholding class as against 456,652 in the non-slaveholding class. For the non-slaveholders and that part of the other class mentioned above slavery was a bond and a shackle. Labor was not only cheapened but degraded and the door of opportunity was to a great extent closed. Consciousness of this came slowly to the State as a whole, but the flood of immigrants moving to the free North and West to found there abolitionist families is testimony beyond impeachment that the more progressive elements of the non-slaveholding population were finding it out individually. It cannot be said that anti-slavery feeling ever died in North Carolina, for among the Quakers at least it survived, but it was silent from 1835 until after 1850. By that time a new leaven was at work, due to better education, better means of communication with the other sections of the State and the rest of the world, and visible and growing evidences of the effects of slavery. Daniel R. Goodloe, who left the State in 1844, and in 1848 became one of the editors of the National Era, an abolition paper published in Washington, was the first of a group of North Carolinians to become outspoken and active opponents of slavery. He became convinced by the arguments used in the State in 1831 in defense of slavery that it was wrong, and further study and reflection made him believe it wrong for other than humanitarian reasons. Hinton Rowan Helper, the most important of the North Carolina abolitionists, hated the negro and based the entire argument of his famous Impending Crisis on the economics of slavery and the non-slaveholders, and his main thesis was unanswerable. He represents perfectly the point of view of the educated and thinking non-slaveholder. Hedrick also represents the revolt against slavery for economic and social reasons. One of the clearest indications of the spread of antislavery sentiment is to be seen in the fact that by 1860 the New York Tribune, the most hated probably of all the antislavery newspapers, had about 200 subscribers in the State and other similar papers were also circulated in increasing numbers. Abolitionists traveled over the State ostensibly as peddlers, booksellers, or preachers, but really circulating tracts, newspapers, or Helper's book. In 1860 four were known to be engaged in this work in Guilford County alone. They were George W. Vestal, Daniel Worth, Samuel Turner, and Jesse Wheeler. It is not doubtful that there were many more in the same locality as well as in other sections. It became increasingly difficult to convict such offenders and finally they were regularly tried by juries composed entirely of slaveholders. The final and by far the most significant movement against slavery took, as was to be expected, an economic form. The demand for ad valorem taxation of slave property was a conscious attempt to secure justice in taxation and unconsciously was a movement of the non-slaveholders, led by the artisan class, against slavery itself. There is to my mind scarcely a doubt that had not the war intervened the issue would have led to a complete reorganization of parties which in time and no long time-would have put the State in the hands of the non-slaveholders and ultimately would have made of North Carolina a free State. The State in 1835 was decadent; in 1860 it was steadily moving forward. One can almost believe that the very nature of the people was being changed. The rapidly growing expenditure of public money for internal improvements and public education was heartily approved by the majority of the people. Conservative they still were, but they were awake and from economic progress were looking to intellectual and political progress. The future was bright and the horrors. of the war and of reconstruction are intensified to the student of North Carolina history because of the wonderful educational work that they interrupted, the progressive spirit that they stifled, and the faith in the future that they destroyed. BIBLIOGRAPHY SOURCE MATERIAL The Washington, D. C., National Intelligencer, 1834-1860. The Raleigh Register, 1835-1860. The North Carolina Standard, 1834-1860. The Raleigh Star, 1830-1854. The Fayetteville Observer, 1835-1860. The Tarboro Press, 1835-1860. The Tarboro Southerner, 1852-1860. The Washington, D. C., Union, 1850-1855. The Congressional Globe, 1835-1860. Abridgement of the Debates in Congress, 1832-1843. The Murphey Papers, Raleigh, 1915. The Correspondence of Jonathan Worth, Raleigh, 1909. The Diary of James K. Polk, Chicago, 1910. Memoirs of William W. Holden, Durham, 1911. (John Public Education in North Carolina, Raleigh, 1908. Laws of North Carolina, 1835-1860. Journals of the Senate and House of Commons, 1835-1860. SECONDARY MATERIAL Barringer, R., History of the North Carolina Railroad, Chapel Hill, 1894. Bassett, J. S., Suffrage in the State of North Carolina, (Report of the American Historical Association, 1894). Bassett, J. S., Slavery in the State of North Carolina, Baltimore, 1899. Boyd, W. K., Antecedents of the Convention of 1835, (South Atlantic Quarterly, 9:83, 161). Boyd, W. K., Early Relations of North Carolina and the West, (North Carolina Booklet, 7:293). Cole, A. C., The Whig Party in the South, Washington, 1913. Connor, H. G., The Convention of 1835, (North Carolina Booklet, 8:90). Connor, R. D. W., Historical Foundations of Democracy in North Carolina, (Proceedings of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, 1912). Connor, R. D. W., John Motley Morehead, (Proceedings of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, 1912). Franklin, E. R., The Instruction of United States Senators by North Carolina, (Historical Papers of Trinity College Historical Society, 7:1). Moore, J. W., History of North Carolina, Raleigh, 1884. Wagstaff, H. M., State Rights and Political Parties in North Wheeler, John H., History of North Carolina, Philadelphia, 1851. Wheeler, John H., Reminiscences of North Carolina, Columbus, Ohio, 1884. Wiley, C. H., Speeches and Reports as Superintendent of Common Schools from 1852 to 1860. The Biographical History of North Carolina, Greensboro, 1905-1908. Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas, Madison, Wis., 1892. The North Carolina Manual, Raleigh, 1914. The James Sprunt Historical Publications. The North Carolina Booklet. Historical Papers of the Trinity College Historical Society. |