Power Point to Accompany Carolina K-12’s lesson

“Slavery, Naval Stores and Rice Plantations in Colonial North Carolina”

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� In 1526, Vasquez de Ayllon, a Spanish conquistador and explorer tried to start a Spanish colony near the Cape Fear region of present day North Carolina.

� He and 500 colonists settled around the mouth of the PeedeeRiver in today’s defined South Carolina.

� Ayllon’s 500 settlers included several enslaved Africans.

� The colony failed due to sickness, starvation, Civil War among the colonists, Native American attacks, and an alleged revolt of the enslaved Africans.

� The 150 surviving Spanish colonists abandoned the colony, sailing back to Hispaniola. The slaves remained and likely merged with local Natives.

Vasquez d Ayllon, 1526

� During the years Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to colonize North Carolina (1584-1590), Sir Francis Drake furnished NC with its first permanent black inhabitants.

� Drake, an adventurer, acquired numerous prisoners during a raid on the West Indies in 1585-1586. Among these prisoners were a group of “Negro slaves.”

� When Drake sailed to relieve the Ralph Lane Colony on Roanoke Island in 1586, he freed the black captives. They most likely merged with the local Indian population of Roanoke Island.

Roanoke Island, NC

� In 1619, around 20 Africans (from the West Indies) were brought to Virginia’s Jamestown settlement. They were exchanged for food and supplies.

� Permanent settlement of Carolina began in the 1650s, when settlers from Virginia pushed down into present-day North Carolina.

� By 1663, over 500 Virginia settlers had made North Carolina’s Albemarle region their home. It is likely many brought slaves with them.

From Virginia to Carolina

� In 1663, after his restoration to the English throne, Charles II granted the eight Lords Proprietors a huge tract of land south of Virginia (which is present day NC).

� Four of the proprietors were members of the slave trading company, the Royal African Company. The Lords Proprietors sought easy profits and recognized that a slave colony in Carolina held the greatest financial promise.

� In 1663, the proprietors encouraged slavery by promising settlers that they would be given land for every slave brought to the colony.

Carolina’s Lords Proprietors set the stage for Slavery

“…the Owner of every Negro-Man or Slave, brought thither to settle within the first year, all Men Negro’s, or slaves after that time, and within the first five years, ten acres, and for every Woman-Negro or slave, five acres.”

• Early on, the status of those enslaved was written into law:

Carolina’s Lords Proprietors set the stage for Slavery

“Every freeman of Carolina, shall have absolute power and authority

over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever.”Carolina’s Fundamental Constitutions,

Article 110; 1669

� Slavery was slow to grow in North Carolina due to the area’s treacherous coast and lack of good harbors.

� While some slaves had been shipped directly from Guinea to North Carolina as early as the 1680s, most of the colony’s slave trade came overland from Virginia or South Carolina.

� A majority of the 70,000-75,000 slaves who entered South Carolina between 1735 and 1775 were again exported, with Georgia and North Carolina being the principal destinations.

North Carolina Slavery Grows Slowly

…“Great is the loss this Country has sustained in not being supply’d by vessels from Guinea with Negroes; in any part of the Province the people are able to pay for a ships load; but as none come directly from Africa, we are under a necessity to buy, the refuse refractory and distemper’d Negroes, brougth from other governments.”

~Governor George Burrington, 1733

� The distribution of slaves in North Carolina followed agricultural patterns. Where tobacco, rice, naval stores, and grain flourished, slaves performed the labor.

� Before 1730 most slaves in North Carolina lived in the tobacco-growingregion of the colony’s northeast (Albemarle region).

� Large populations of slaves existed in Northampton, Halifax, and Warren counties, where on the eve of the American Revolution 40-60% of households owned slaves.

North Carolina Slavery Follows Agricultural Patterns

� Compared to North Carolina, slavery and plantation life expanded rapidly in South Carolina (which became a colony in 1712) due to it’s better accessibility.§ The number of blacks in the colony of North Carolina was estimated at

800 in 1712.§ South Carolina on the other hand had 4,100 slaves as of 1708; by 1720

the number of slaves there grew to 18,000 – more than 3 times the number of whites!

� During the 1720s, South Carolinian planters moved north into North Carolina’s Lower Cape Fear region and established rice- growing and naval stores industries.

� Bringing slaves to do the hard labor, the Lower Cape Fear region became the highest concentrated area of slaves.

North Carolina Slavery Follows Agricultural Patterns

� Between 1730-1767, North Carolina’s black population grew from approximately 6,000-40,000.

� By the American Revolution, slavery was firmly entrenched in North Carolina. As the institution grew, North Carolinians searched for means to regulate slaves’ behavior and ensure a stable work force.

� Though North Carolina never developed a full-fledged plantation system similar to those of South Carolina and Virginia, it did follow social, economic, and legal paths that firmly established slavery in the colony by the mid-eighteenth century.

� In 1790, 31% of all Tar Heel families owned slaves.� In Lower Cape Fear rice and pitch and tar industries, and tobacco-

producing areas of the northern piedmont, slave holdings were increasingly concentrated on large plantations.

� By 1771 62% of slaves in North Carolina lived on plantations with 10 or more slaves.

It may have grown slowly, but it grew…

� North Carolina, on the other hand, had a large Quaker population that was opposed to slavery.

� Even though the slave population was small, Quakers established regular religious meetings for slaves and urged slaveholders to treat them well.

� In 1770, Quakers sought the prohibition of slavery, which was not to become a reality until almost 100 years later.