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Chapter Three
Cotton and Slaves
Dr. Dan L. Morrill
University of North Carolina at
Charlotte
E-mail comments to
N4JFJ@aol.com
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The Stafford
Plantation Slave Cabin is the only known domicile in Mecklenburg
County in which slaves once lived.
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Popular images of the Old South are clothed in romantic myths.
Some people draw their inspiration from movies like "Gone With
The Wind" or "Song Of The South." To their way of thinking,
Dixie was a land filled with stately, white mansions, with
luxuriant magnolia trees and manicured lawns, with chivalrous
gentlemen wearing spiffy suits, with elegant damsels in sweeping
gowns, with seemingly endless fields of cotton, and, of course,
with obedient, content, devoted slaves.
Others
see the Old South in darker hues. Largely because of its being
intertwined with the institution of human bondage, the
ante-bellum South for folks of this persuasion was a region
filled almost exclusively with exploitation and unfairness.
Images of cruel slave masters twirling their mustaches as they
prepare to flog their bondsmen or take sexual advantage of their
demure bondswomen are uppermost in the imaginations of the most
vitriolic critics of the ante-bellum South. The reality of the
Old South, however, was more complex, subtler, and more muted
than either of these caricatures suggests.
One fact
is undeniable. Slavery was a fundamental component of the
social hierarchy of pre-Civil War Mecklenburg County. In 1860,
slaves composed approximately 40 percent of the local population
(6800 of 17,000), making Mecklenburg County one of the highest
in terms of the number of bondspeople in the North Carolina
Piedmont. This writer encounters many individuals who wrongly
believe that Mecklenburg County was never part of the Cotton
Kingdom of the Old South. It most assuredly was. Indeed, some
of the most imposing plantation houses in all of the North
Carolina Piedmont are located in Mecklenburg County. Each bears
incontestable testimony to the fundamental importance of slavery
to this region's ante-bellum way of life.
Anyone
who doubts the impact of the institution of human bondage upon
Charlotte-Mecklenburg in the years before and during the Civil
War need only examine the historical record. In Charlotte, for
example, where 44 percent of the people were slaves in 1850,
town officials passed ordinances that closely circumscribed the
behavior of blacks. Bondspeople were not allowed to be out on
the streets after 9:30 P.M without written permission of their
owners. They could not buy or sell alcohol or even smoke a pipe
or a cigar in public. Slaves could not leave their plantations
without a pass or assemble without the permission of their
owners. Slaves could not hold worship services and were forced
to go to the white man's churches. A town guard roamed the
streets of Charlotte from 9:00 P.M. until dawn and had the
authority to "visit all suspected Negro houses," including those
occupied by free blacks, most of whom were artisans. Any black
who defied these ordinances was harshly punished. "A severe
lashing awaited blacks found guilty of breaking any of these
ordinances," writes historian Janette Greenwood.
| This is a slave collar. The
inscription reads: "Levy M. Rankin, Dealer Of Fine
Mules & Negroes. Charlotte, N.C. 1853." |
There
is no denying that the institution of human bondage rested
ultimately upon coercion. The great majority of whites, who
prided themselves on having been the first to declare themselves
independent from British rule in 1775, had no qualms about
enslaving their black brethren. Slavery was entirely legal and
protected by the U.S. Constitution. The United States, despite
outlawing the importation of slaves in 1808, witnessed a massive
expansion of the institution of human bondage in the 75 years
following the American Revolutionary War. There were 697,897
slaves in the United States in 1790. The number had increased
to 3,953,760 in 1860.
Bondspeople
represented a major financial investment on the part of their
owners, so it is not surprising that their masters exerted great
effort to capture runaways. In 1860, the average sales price
for a healthy, young bondsmen was equivalent to the price of an
average house. Admittedly with deflated Confederate dollars,
slaves sold in Charlotte in August 1864 brought the following
prices. "Boy 18 years old $5,150, boy 11 years $4,100, girl 16
years $4,300, woman 35 years $3,035, girl 16 years (very likely)
$5,000, boy 21 years $5,200, man and wife and 2 children aged 2
and 4 years (the man with one eye) $6,500."
Advertisements seeking assistance in capturing escapees appeared
frequently in Charlotte newspapers during the Civil War.
$300
Reward.
I will give the above reward to any person who will take up my
boy SAM, if captured without serious injury and delivered to me
or confined in Jail so that I can get him. He has been lying out
over twelve months ranging from near Charlotte to Reedy Creek.
He is 22 years old, medium size, and has a scar on his forehead.
Address me at Charlotte, N.C.
Feb. 24, 1863
Jno. Wolfe
$20
REWARD
Runaway from my plantation, nine miles from Charlotte, on the
Statesville Railroad, a negro boy named DANIEL. The boy is about
22 years old, five feet one or two inches high, right or left
foot cut off by a railroad car, and walks with a stick. I will
give the above reward if the boy is brought to my plantation or
confined in any jail so that I can get him. The boy was raised
in Petersburg, Va., and was purchased in Richmond last winter.
Aug. 24, 1863
R. P. Poindexter
One
slave house, the Stafford Plantation Slave Cabin, survives in
Mecklenburg County. The physical record of human bondage is
also present in several slave cemeteries. Perhaps the most
evocative is the McCoy Slave Burial Ground off McCoy Road just
east of Beatties Ford Road. A rock monument, most likely
erected in the 1920s, contains the following inscription.
ERECTED BY
ALBERT McCOY'S
CHILDREN TO HIS
SLAVES
UNCLE JIM AND HIS
WIFE
LIZZIE
UNCLE CHARLES &
FAMILY
Some visitors
to this site are offended by the marker's language. They
consider it to be paternalistic and demeaning. Others are
touched by what they regard as a gesture of gratitude on the
part of the descendants of the slave owner. Regardless, there
is certainly no question about the sincerity of the McCoy
family's motives. They remember Jim and Lizzie with great
affection and have even handed down one of the many stories
Lizzie used to tell the McCoy children.
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| Location of McCoy Slave Cemetery |
Here is
one of Lizzie's favorite tales. It's about a little boy who
had three dogs -- Junga, German, and Ring. To entice the dogs
to run to him, the boy would play this song on his horn: "Tu to,
my Junga, Tu tu my German, Poor Ring, long time a comin', they
want me to die, they want me to die. " One day the boy's mother
told him to lock the dogs in the smokehouse and take two bags of
wheat to the mill to get the contents ground into flour. After
meeting and talking with a squirrel, a possum, and a coon, the
boy encountered the "Old Bad Man," who grabbed the little boy
and carried him into the forest and chained his arms and legs to
a wall in his house. "Human bones were scattered all around the
room and a large stone sharpening wheel sat in the middle,"
Lizzie would tell her enthralled audience.
Then the
"Old Bad Man" took out a knife and asked the little boy if he
had one wish before he died. The little boy said that he wanted
to play a tune on his horn. "Tu to, my Junga, Tu tu my German,
Poor Ring, long time a comin', they want me to die, they want me
to die. " The loyal canines, Lizzie explained, responded as
expected. They dug their way out of the smokehouse, scampered
to their master, and ate the "Old Bad Man."
The
Neely Slave Cemetery is another
poignant reminder of the days when human bondage held sway in
Mecklenburg County. It is situated in a small grove of trees in
an office park near Carowinds Amusement Park in the Steele Creek
community. Thomas Neely , who had arrived in southwestern
Mecklenburg in 1754 and who owned fewer than ten slaves at the
time of his death in 1795, was a generous, kind-hearted, and
compassionate master. He made special provisions in his will
for the welfare of his chattel labor. He stipulated that "our
negro Joe . . . to be taught to read" and wanted his son to give
“our negro wench Susy two days every week for the purpose of
providing herself in clothing." Neely ordered that the "negro
child Dinah . . .to be learned to read," and even insisted that
"none of my legatees may sell any of my negroes out of the
family under penalty of losing their inheritance.”
Sarah Frew Davidson , the mistress at The Grove
Plantation, the home of her father William Davidson, encouraged
some of her slaves to become literate. Her motive was
religious. "After tea attended to the instruction of our young
servants," Sarah recorded in her journal on February 7, 1837.
"Being much troubled and perplexed relative to my duty on this
subject and believing that religious instruction can not be well
communicated without some knowledge of letters, about six weeks
ago I commenced learning them to read."
Slaves
in the South placed great emphasis upon performing "a good
burial," because death was an act of liberation, a breaking of
the chains of bondage. “The slave funeral was at once a
‘religious ritual, a major social event, and a community
pageant,’ drawing upon a mixture of cherished traditions,”
explains historian Emily Ramsey. Customs brought from Africa
mixed with habits learned on the plantation to produce a
dramatic amalgam of funerary traditions. “After the death of a
slave, a coffin would usually be made by a slave carpenter while
the body was laid out on a cooling board” writes Ramsey. “Since
a corpse would decay quickly in the stifling Southern heat,
slaves adopted the practice of sitting up all night to guard the
body from prowling animals, often ‘singing and praying through
the night.’”
Typically, the funeral began after sunset. A
procession of mourners, carrying torches to light the pathway,
would leave the slave houses and proceed across the fields and
meadows toward the burial ground, which was usually located in a
far corner of the plantation. The coffin and the pallbearers
would go first, followed by the dead person’s family, then the
master and his family, and finally the members of the slave
community. Mournful spirituals accompanied the entire
proceedings, and sobbing and lamentations were acceptable
behavior throughout the ceremony. Simple fieldstones mark the
burial sites in the Neely Slave Cemetery
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The ground is covered with periwinkle. Archeologists have
identified 42 graves.
The
Neely Family Bible reveals a lot about the nature of the
personal relationship that existed between the Neely family and
their bondsmen and bondswomen. John Starr Neely , the last
member of the family to own chattel laborers, meticulously
recorded the birth date of all his slaves who were born on the
farm in the 1850s and 1860s. “Louisa was born August 25th,
1854,” Neely inscribed. “Henry Jackson was born July 10th,
1856."
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| Location of Neely Slave Cemetery |
One of
the most confounding aspects of the institution of human bondage
was its capriciousness. Masters were in total control and could
distribute rewards or punishments as they saw fit. Indeed,
their influence extended even beyond death. George Elliot , a
Mecklenburg County planter who died in 1804, stipulated in his
will that two of his slaves would be set free. "For the many
faithful, honest, and meritorious labors and services which I
have received for near forty years from my honest slaves . . .
Tom and Bet, I hereby liberate them and each of them from
slavery." He gave Tom and Bet money and even the use of part of
his plantation for their lifetimes. The same master, however,
withheld freedom from his other slaves and gave them instead to
members of his family. "I will give and bequeath to my son
Richard Elliot one Negro boy named Zena, to him, his heirs and
assigns forever," George's will proclaimed. "I will give and
bequeath to my daughter Jane Dun, to her, her heirs and assigns
one Negro girl named Patsey forever."
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The
largest known surviving slave cemetery in Mecklenburg County was
once part of the Alexander Plantation on Mallard Creek Church
Road. It contains more than seventy graves. Sadly, it is now
situated in a gated apartment community and is not easily
accessible. This writer first visited the
Alexander Slave Burial Ground in the mid-1970s with William
Tasse Alexander , a direct descendant of the slave owners. We
walked through bramble and thicket to reach the hallowed spot.
Rows of rock-marked graves amid a lush blanket of periwinkle
told us that we had arrived. Standing near the middle of the
cemetery was an inscribed tombstone erected after the Civil War
by the children of former slaves. "Our Father & Mother.
Soloman Alexander . Died May 18, 1864. Aged 64 Years. Violet
Alexander . Died Aug. 10, 1888. Aged 83 Years."
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This marker is on the fence
surrounding the W. T. Alexander Slave Burial Ground |
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| Location of W. T. Alexander Slave
Cemetery |
The
system of human bondage that held sway in the Old South is
obviously repugnant from the perspective of the prevailing
values of today. However, one should consider slavery within
the context of the time in which it existed. While it is
undeniable that some bondspeople were whipped and otherwise
mistreated, others were treated quite well, such as those who
belonged to John Starr Neely or William Tasse Alexander The
great grandparents of a descendant of some of the bondsmen and
bondswomen buried in the Alexander Slave Burial Ground told
William Tasse Alexander that the Alexanders were kind and
fostered close-knit slave-non-slave relationships. The
Alexanders bought shoes for their slaves, allowed them to visit
other plantations, and even permitted them to marry bondsmen and
bondswomen who lived elsewhere. Do not forget that Sarah Frew
Davidson taught the slave children on her plantation to read
and write.
It is also worth noting that slaves were not alone in
being beaten in ante-bellum Mecklenburg County. Early
nineteenth century disciplinary customs dictated that unruly
white youngsters be whipped. White parents had no compunctions
about beating their children. Indeed, their children expected
to be whipped -- often and severely. "Spare the rod and spoil
the child" was a popular dictum of the day. There is a small
brick building near the intersection of Sugar Creek Road and
North Tryon Street. It was once a school. The sons of slave
owners started coming here in 1837 to prepare for higher
education. The first full-time teacher was Robert I. McDowell ,
an honor graduate of Hampton-Sydney College. He would have
readily whipped any student who deviated from accepted norms of
behavior in the classroom.
The
evidence is clear. As a labor system, slavery was fundamental
to the operations of the economic system that brought great
wealth to some residents of Mecklenburg County in the first half
of the nineteenth century. The cotton gin, invented by Eli
Whitney in 1793, enabled farmers to ship about twelve times as
much cotton to market than they could before, and the world
price decreased by approximately one half. This meant that
industrious individuals who owned substantial amounts of land
and the requisite labor supply could increase their annual
income by 600 percent. "The machine allowed cotton to be
cheaply cleaned so that it could be spun into thread. All over
the South a plantation economy quickly developed to produce
short-staple cotton to fill the new demand," historian Tom
Hanchett explains. In 1790, the United States produced about
3,000 bales of cotton. The figure increased to 178,000 in 1810
and ballooned to more than 4 million bales on the eve of the
Civil War.
The
planters (anyone owning 20 or more slaves) and prosperous
farmers had a virtual stranglehold on political influence in
North Carolina. A white man had to own 50 acres of land to be
able to vote for State senators and 100 acres of land to serve
in the legislature. 85 percent of the members of the General
Assembly were slave owners in 1860, while 72 percent of the
white families in North Carolina owned no bondspeople. Free
blacks were totally excluded from the electoral process after
1835.
Oligarchy
held sway at the local level as well. The most powerful County
officials, the Justices of the Peace, were recommended by the
local delegation to the State legislature and appointed by the
governor, not elected by the people. Justices of the Peace
constituted a court that set the tax rate, decided where roads
were to be built, made provisions for education and poor relief,
settled boundary disputes, and rendered judgments in law suits.
"It was a cozy system," writes historian Paul D. Escott in his
book, Many Excellent People. Power and Privilege in North
Carolina 1850-1900.
Not
surprisingly, the most successful of Mecklenburg's cotton
farmers made their enhanced economic status known by building
fancy, new houses. These ante-bellum plantation mansions still
adorn the Mecklenburg landscape. "The model for much of the
architecture of the early nineteenth century was directly or
indirectly that of ancient Greece and Rome," one scholar
asserts. The Federal style was the most popular. Devised by
the Adam brothers in Great Britain and sometimes called the Adam
style , buildings of this genre most commonly have small entry
porches, windows aligned horizontally and vertically in
symmetrical rows, cornices decorated with tooth-like dentils,
side-gabled roofs, and semi-circular or elliptical fanlights.
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The
W. T. Alexander House, most likely built between
1820 and 1825, is one of Mecklenburg County's finder
Federal style plantation houses. |
An
excellent example of the Federal style is Rosedale , Sarah Frew
Davidson 's home at 3427 North Tryon Street in Charlotte. Built
shortly after 1800 and for many years the centerpiece of the
William Davidson Plantation, Rosedale has exquisite interior
appointments. "Adamesque mantels, cornices, and ornamental
blinds exhibit a correctness unique in Mecklenburg County, where
vernacular interpretations of Adamesque interior detail were
more usual in houses of the Federal period," writes Charlotte
architect Jack O. Boyte. Other imposing Federal style houses in
Mecklenburg County include Latta Place ,
Oak Lawn ,
White Oaks , the W. T. Alexander House and Holly Bend .
The
grandest Federal style house in Mecklenburg County is Cedar
Grove . It is part of a series of structures on the Torance
Plantation on Gilead Road near Huntersville. These buildings
illustrate how the local built or man-made environment of the
late 18th and early 19th centuries evolved
in response to changing economic conditions and practices. Hugh
Torance , a peddler originally from Salisbury, erected a humble
log home on this land in 1779 but had to wait until Cornwallis's
British and Tory army marched away from Mecklenburg County in
1781 before he could move in. Soon thereafter, Torance married
Isabella Falls , whose first husband had been killed in the
American Revolutionary War. Isabella and Hugh Torance had a
single son, James, who was born in 1784.
Hugh
Torance made his livelihood mainly from farming. He struggled
during the early years to eke out an adequate living. After the
invention of the cotton gin, however, Hugh began to prosper.
His wealth enabled him to transform his home into an imposing
two-story Federal style house in 1796. If you visit the Hugh
Torance House, you will notice that it has two chimneys. One
is built of rock and the other of brick. The rock chimney is
the older and was on the western end of the original log cabin.
The brick chimney dates from 1796, when the front of the house
was reoriented to face west.
Hugh
Torance and his family vacated his first abode on the Torance
Plantation in 1800 and set up housekeeping in a larger brick
home he built next door. James, his son, had been living with
an uncle in Salisbury and attending school but returned to the
plantation in 1805. He established a store in his father and
mother's old house. Again, by visiting the Torance House you
will see a one-story addition that extends eastward from the
main block of the structure. That is where James Torance
operated his mercantile business.
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Torance House and Store |
The
account books from James Torance 's store have been passed down
over the generations. They provide a fascinating glimpse into
the lifestyles of the people of northern Mecklenburg County in
the early 1800s. "Debts at the store were often settled in the
fall with cotton, and some customers paid by freighting cotton
and farm produce from the store to Camden and Charleston," says
historian Christina Wright. "But Mecklenburg," Wright
continues, "was still the frontier; settlers were still trading
in fur and indigo, and buying powder and flints, as late as the
1820s." James did sell an impressive array of goods from his
store, including farm implements, medicine, spinning wheels,
looms, clothing, medicines, and even "little luxuries like
coffee, tea, and spices."
Hugh and
Isabella Torance died in 1816, leaving their son a sizeable
estate that included 33 slaves. Like his father, James was an
industrious and adroit businessman and made lots of money
raising cotton for shipment chiefly to the South Carolina port
cities of Charleston and Georgetown. Always looking for ways
to enrich himself, James also erected a large watered-powered
grist and saw mill on his plantation in 1824-25. Soon
thereafter, farmers began coming from the surrounding
plantations to have their grain ground into flour and the timber
sawn into lumber. Only the massive rock foundation walls of the
Torance Mill have survived.
In 1831,
James Torance decided to build a new home for him and his third
wife, Margaret Allison , at the site of his mother and father's
house. The massive red brick structure, named Cedar Grove , was
the largest and grandest home in ante-bellum Mecklenburg
County. James traveled to Charleston to buy the knocker for the
front door. Tin, copper, sash cord, wood screws, and locks were
shipped from New York City. Pipe arrived from Philadelphia.
The lumber and brick were produced on the plantation. Cedar
Grove survives virtually unchanged. "There are 5,000 feet of
floor space, the first-floor ceilings are thirteen feet high,
and the cellar walls are twenty-two inches thick," says Wright
about Cedar Grove. An elegant spiral staircase ascends from the
entry hall, down which Southern belles no doubt made their
spectacular entrances at the gala festivities.
James
Torance was a member of Hopewell Presbyterian Church , still an
active congregation on Beatties Ford Road. Nowhere in
Mecklenburg County does the aura of the Old South linger with
greater impact than in the sanctuary of this venerable house of
worship. Sometime before 1760 the Hopewell congregation erected
its first meetinghouse. It was a simple log structure. During
the Revolutionary War this log edifice gave way to a frame
building, which served as the meetinghouse or church until the
1830's. In 1833, or shortly thereafter, Rev. John Thomson
guided the Hopewell congregation through the rigors of building
a brick meetinghouse that according to one estimate cost $3000
to erect.
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Hopewell Presbyterian Church |
That the
congregation selected the Federal Style for its new house of
worship is not surprising. After all, this was the architectural
motif that the plantation owners of the Hopewell community --
the Lattas, the Torances, and the Davidsons -- had selected for
their imposing homes. The brick meetinghouse was altered in the
late 1850's. The brick floor was removed, and a vestibule was
added. The people of Hopewell Presbyterian Church even
installed a pulpit. Finally, an exterior door on the east side
of the expanded house of worship led to the slave gallery.
Imagine
what attending a service in Hopewell Presbyterian Church in the
1850s would have been like. The hierarchical social order of
ante-bellum Mecklenburg would have been apparent to even the
most casual observer. Seats were rented to raise money to pay
the minister's salary and to meet other church expenses.
Downstairs the slave owners and their families would have sat in
their subscribed pews. The wealthiest planters would have sat
near the front, and their less fortunate compatriots would have
occupied pews toward the rear. The poorest whites would have
had to sit in the balcony, their seats separated from those
occupied by the slaves only by a wooden divider.
Juliana
Margaret Conner , a Charleston belle who visited Hopewell
Presbyterian Church in 1827, was not overly impressed by even
the wealthiest and most politically powerful people she met
She called Charlotte a "place not offering anything worthy of
note or interest" and remarked that none of the women at
Hopewell was properly attired for church. "There were not two
bonnets which differed in shape and color in the whole
congregation," she exclaimed. Conner described the backcountry
gentry as an essentially a boring lot who lived a humdrum,
"almost primitive" existence of "no excitement." The Piedmont
planters knew nothing of culinary delicacies, feasting instead
upon foods like "ham and chickens, vegetables, tarts, custards
and sweetmeats, . . . . corn or wheat cakes and coffee."
The
minister at Hopewell would have preached with great emotional
fervor, his sermon emphasizing the depraved nature of mankind
and the absolute necessity of God's grace for salvation. Each
fall and spring Hopewell Presbyterian Church would have
celebrated "Communion Season." All members, including the
slaves, would have come forward to sit at a table where the
minister or an elder would have served each individual bread and
wine out of a common cup. To the leaders of the Hopewell
community there was no conflict between slavery and the lessons
of the Bible. To their way of thinking, most slaves lacked
discipline and culture and had to be treated like children but
always within a system of strictures based upon God's law. "For
centuries, a wide range of social thinkers had seen the
institution as fully compatible with human progress and
felicity," writes Peter Kolchin in his book, American Slavery
1619 - 1877. Jeff Lowrance, the present minister at Hopewell
Presbyterian Church, told this writer that he is "embarrassed"
that the members of his congregation once followed this
misguided line of thinking.
Most
slave owners in Mecklenburg County, like their counterparts
elsewhere in the South, owned relatively small numbers of
bondsmen and bondswomen. "In rough terms," states Peter Kolchin,
"about one-quarter of Southern slaves lived on very small
holdings of 1 to 9." The percentage in such peripheral cotton
growing areas as Mecklenburg County was even higher. The
majority of Mecklenburg farmers simply did not have enough money
to compete with the likes of James Torance or W. T.
Alexander. Representative of this sizeable group was Thomas T.
Sandifer , a physician, whose house still stands on Moore's
Chapel Road. In 1860, Sandifer's "personal estate was worth
$7,000.00, and he held three slaves," writes historian Frances
P. Alexander. "Sandifer's slaves included two men, ages 33 and
20, and one woman age 31." The relationship of Sandifer and his
slaves would have been personal and intimate. "On farms with
fewer than ten slaves," says Kolchin, "masters could typically
be found in the field, toiling alongside their slaves while
bossing them and casually interacting with them."
There were
a few Mecklenburg farmers who eschewed slavery and refused to
participate in it. Such was the case with George Martin Oehler
, who along with many of his relatives migrated from Germany to
northern Mecklenburg County and neighboring Cabarrus County in
the early 1840s. Oehler became an elder of Ramah Presbyterian
Church in 1856 but was asked to leave at the outbreak of the
Civil War because of his “Northern sympathies.” Oehler's house
is hidden deep in the woods just north of the intersection of
Asbury Chapel Road and Huntersville-Concord Road east of
Huntersville. |
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