| 1829 |
A free black from North Carolina, David Walker writes Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World; as a result free blacks and slaves were attacked through legal means. Immediately, North Carolina instituted stiff penalties for dismantling anti-slavery materials, and it created quarantine laws for any ships carrying free blacks. In 1830, a law was passed to prohibit slaves and free blacks from reading and writing. The state also ordered all blacks emancipated after 1830 to leave the state within 90 days.
|
| 1831 |
Nat Turner slave rebellion, South Hampton, VA.
|
| 1834 |
NC State vs. Will: landmark decision that a slave could resist white men to save his own life.
|
| 1835 |
• North Carolina Constitution Convention of 1835 (reaction against Walker's Appeal)
• Major amendments to the state constitution,
• Abolition of borough representatives and free black suffrage.
|
1830-
1860 |
North Carolina exports 100,00 slaves to the Deep South.
|
1850 |
Compromise of 1850; Fugitive Slave Law [see US Timeline} |
1861 |
Runaway North Carolina slave Harriet A. Jacobs writes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. |
| 1857 |
Native North Carolinian Hinton Rowan Helper's The Impending Crisis of the South: How to meet it was the most widely read tract against slavery ever written by a Southerner.
|
| 1860 |
North Carolina's black population includes 331,059 slaves and 30,463 free blacks (10 percent of black population)
- Sources of free black population:
a. Chief source was manumission, but legal restrictions made this difficult after 1830.
b. Purchases of freedom by slave himself.
c. Births by free Negro and white mothers, despite law against miscegenation.
d. Immigration, despite laws against it.
- Most were scattered through rural slave-holding areas although there were pockets of
blacks in cities and towns.
- Increasing legal restrictions gradually curbed free blacks' freedom to move around, associate with slaves, keep arms, trade, teach, or preach.
1860: Plymoth, NC, slave revolt October 1860.
|
| 1860 |
Although Southern Democratic candidate John C. Breckenridge carried North Carolina, the majority of North Carolinianss opposed secession after Lincoln's election. North Carolina displayed strong unionist sentiment from the 1850s throughout the Civil War.
|
| 1861 |
North Carolina secedes from the Union May 20, 1861.
|
1861-
1862 |
• Union forces led by Generals Benjamin F. Butler and Ambrose E. Burnside capture Hatteras Inlet, Roanoke Island, New Bern, Washington, Fort Macon, and Plymouth.
• Federal occupied entire sound region and held it through the war.
|
| 1864 |
Confederate General Hoke, aided by the Ram Albemarle, captures Plymouth, retaining control of Eastern NC until the end of the war.
|
| 1865 |
Federal land and naval forces capture Fort Fisher and occupy Wilmington.
|
| RETURN TO TOP |
