Browse Items (26 total)

Many people believe that Republicans wanted to abolish slavery because they viewed it as an immoral and evil institution. Some abolitionists used their religious beliefs to shape political debates over the issue of slavery. In an article, the…

“By the Constitution of this State I was empowered to be commander-in-chief to call out the militia, to execute the law, suppress riots and insurrections, and to repel invasion.” (Holden 1911, 120) This was Holden’s statement in…

In North Carolina’s 1864 gubernatorial elections between Governor Zebulon B. Vance and William W. Holden, Vance promoted strong intimidation tactics in order to scare Holden’s supporters into voting for Vance on election day. It is also…

Slavery expanded in North Carolina during the antebellum era. The enslaved population grew from 100,000 in 1790, about 25 percent of the total population, to 331,000 in 1860, approximately 30 percent. The slave population was not evenly distributed…

In 1838, the federal government forcibly removed 15,000 Cherokees from North Carolina and surrounding states to reservations west of the Mississippi river. In this forced march, known as the Trail of Tears, approximately 4,000 to 5,000 Indians died.…

Married white women in antebellum North Carolina had no independent legal identity. They could not sue or be sued, and they could not own property separate from their husbands. Their husbands were held liable for their actions. (Link 2009, 167-168)…

North Carolina enlisted approximately one-sixth of the men serving in the Confederate military. Nearly every adult white man served in some capacity. Nearly 110,000 volunteers and conscripts joined the military. (Only 115,000 white men were eligible…

In antebellum North Carolina, there were six distinct social classes. The gentry, or planter class, were those few people who owned more than twenty slaves, or well-to-do professionals like high-level public officials or lawyers. The middle class…

Levi Coffin, self-proclaimed “President of the Underground Railroad,” was born in Guilford County, North Carolina (near Greensboro). Coffin, a Quaker and abolitionist, grew weary of living in a slave state surrounded by the brutality of…

In the mid-19th Century, an elite southern white man’s reputation could make him or break him. He worked to demonstrate honor through honest dealings, activity in church and community life, respect for white women, generosity to lower classes, and…