Power Point to Accompany the Consortium’s lesson
“Slavery, Naval Stores and Rice Plantations
in Colonial North Carolina”
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Vasquez d Ayllon, 1526

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
Peedee River 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.
Roanoke Island, NC

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.
From Virginia to Carolina

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 presentday 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.
Carolina’s Lords Proprietors
set the stage for Slavery

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.
“…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.”
Carolina’s Lords Proprietors
set the stage for Slavery
•
Early on, the status of those enslaved was written into
law:
“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
North Carolina Slavery Grows Slowly

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.
…“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
North Carolina Slavery Follows
Agricultural Patterns
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 tobaccogrowing region 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 4060% 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 ricegrowing and naval stores industries.
 Bringing slaves to do the hard labor, the Lower Cape Fear
region became the highest concentrated area of slaves.

It may have grown slowly, but it grew…






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.

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.