School History of North Carolina : from 1584 to the present time

by John W. Moore

2. This action on the part of the Convention was due in some degree, doubtless, to the constant agitation of the slavery question, though by no means due to that alone; but to the further fact, as well, that during the time they voted by sufferance they had plainly demonstrated their utter unfitness to appreciate or exercise the great right of suffrage.

3. As a class they were unthrifty and dishonest, and each year becoming more useless as members of the community; their association with the slaves was regarded as an evil to be avoided if possible; therefore, they were discriminated against in the legislation of the period. Virginia and Ohio had both enacted statutes which forbade them access to their borders. North Carolina provided by law that in case of their removal from the State they lost their residence, and were forbidden to return.

4. The right of the States to pass such laws for the protection of their slave property cannot be denied, unless the right of property in slaves be also denied. Nor can they properly be called unjust. The right of property in their slaves the people of North Carolina regarded as settled by the Constitution of the State and that of the United States. Theorists might speculate whether African slavery was consistent with the American Declaration of Independence as they pleased, but the right of property in slaves was undisputably recognized and secured in the fundamental laws of the land. As to the moral question involved, if any such there was, the Southern slave-owner regarded it as one between himself and his God, and not between himself and his Northern brother.

5. As a matter of course, slavery and intellectual culture are incompatible, and education was therefore denied the slaves. The right to testify in the courts against a white man, and even the right to defend himself from the assaults of white men, except in defence of life in the last extremity, were also necessarily denied him. These restrictions were necessary to the maintenance of the legal relations between the dominant and subject races.

6. Of course there were those who studied the slavery problem from every possible standpoint, except the constitutional legality of it. That, at least, was fixed. Some doubted the morality of it and others questioned the policy of it, and it is quite possible, had time and opportunity for gradual manumission and exportation offered, North Carolina would have been a free State, in the course of events, of her own accord.

7. The Northern States had sold their slaves rather than free them under their acts of manumission. It was not possible for this to be further repeated by the Commonwealths still retaining the institution; so in a blind ignorance of the future and in utter hopelessness of any practicable solution of their difficulty, except in remaining as they were, the statesmen of the South contented themselves with a simple policy of resistance to change.

1844.

8. Among the white people of North Carolina were found all who participated in the conduct of public affairs. The means of popular education had been too recently adopted to show effects upon the community. The labors of a few wise men were just being crowned with success, and the children of the poor were receiving the rudiments of education in every portion of the State.

9. In religion, the great mass of the people belonged to country churches. These rural congregations, as a general thing, met on one Saturday and the succeeding Sabbath of each month, to attend the preaching of a minister who often served other churches as pastor the remaining Sundays. Beyond the Sunday schools and annual protracted meetings, there were no other religious observances except occasional funerals and prayer meetings at private houses.

10. The balls and horse-races of former days in the eastern counties had, in a large measure, ceased. In the growth of the Methodist and Baptist Churches in that section, such amusements had been so discouraged that festivities of this kind became rare. In the western sections of North Carolina they had never been countenanced by the Presbyterians.