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NOTE TO USERS This reproduction is the best copy available. UMI* MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY 'HARBORING NEGROES': RACE, RELIGION, AND POLITICS IN NORTH CAROLINA AND INDIANA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PUBLIC HISTORY BY BRIAN LANG HACKETT MURFREESBORO, TN DECEMBER, 2009 UMI Number: 3391706 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI Dissertation Publishing UMI 3391706 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. uest ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 'HARBORING NEGROES': RACE, RELIGION, AND POLITICS IN NORTH CAROLINA AND INDIANA BRIAN L. HACKETT APPROVED: Dr. Christopher Brenden Martin Dissertation Committee Chair Dr. David L. McWatters Dissertation Committee V-0 . C4-^^y Dr. Lisa J. P/jditt Dissertation \Jommittee w&u Dr. Lynn A. Nelson History Department Director of Graduate Studies Dissertation Committee &<. S/a^ssx^?/ Dr. ^fny L. Sayw^fd History Department Chair oiLy Dr. M ichael Allen Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the College of Graduate Studies Dedication FOR DEA ACKNOWLEDGEMENT S If this work is worthy of any notice at all, it is because I have had the help and guidance of so many people. These people, and so many others not listed here, will never know the depth of my gratitude to them. I truly hope that I am worthy of their efforts on my behalf. I begin this list with the faculty and staff of the History department at Middle Tennessee State University. I am grateful that they saw enough in me to allow me a place in their Public History PhD program. I am grateful for Dr. Rebecca Conard and Dr. Susan Myers-Shirk who met with me prior to my application to the program and aided me in getting through my time at MTSU. I have been blessed with a number of professors who have aided me during my tenure at the university including several whom I had the privilege to assist in the teaching of their classes. From each one of them I gained something that will make me a better teacher and a better historian. This list includes, Dr. Jan Leone, Dr. James Williams, Dr. Bren Martin, Dr. ii Louis Haas, Dr. Bren Martin and Dr. Lynn Nelson. Especially note worthy is the help I received from Dr. David Row, who was kind enough to mentor me during the professional residency phase of my tenure at MTSU. I am grateful for the dedication and support of my Dissertation Committee which included, Dr. Bren Martin, Dr. Lisa Pruitt, Dr. Lome McWatters, and Dr. Lynn Nelson. One could not ask for a better group of historians or mentors during this long and Challenging process. Likewise I am • grateful to Dr. Amy Sayward, although not an official member of my committee, was a big help in putting the dissertation together. In addition to these extraordinary people I have had the great privilege to have received guidance and friendship from three extremely wonderful individuals. These three professors, Dr. Louis Haas, Dr. Lome McWatters, and Dr. Bren Martin, are a large part of how I succeeded during my time at MTSU. Dr. Haas, whose insights and humor kept me going when I felt like giving up, was always putting things into perspective. He is the kind- of person who always made you feel better after meeting with 111 him, even after the briefest conversation. He is also a great teacher in every sense of the word. Dr. McWatters is the kind of person that makes you want to be a better person. He is always cheerful, full of life, and ready for the next thing. He taught me that one should never be afraid to take on new challenges or to miss an opportunity to re-invent oneself. Everyone should try to be like that. Dr. McWatters is also responsible for helping to make this dissertation readable. His ability to make my sentences more readable with fewer words is truly the work of a talented wordsmith. He also is a master to the mysteries of the proper use of the comma and the slayer of redundancy; two skills I hope I gathered from his mentoring. Dr. Martin, as chairman of my Dissertation Committee acted as both mentor and friend, keeping me both sane and on track to finish my degree. Watching him work with students helped me rekindle my interest in teaching history and why we do what we do. It is professors like Dr. Martin that inspire students the most. If there is any good in this dissertation, it was his coaxing that has brought it out. iv In addition to these fine people, I am grateful to my classmates, especially Tara White, Harry Klinkhamer, and Brian Dempsey who did their best to help me and keep me relatively sane during this whole affair. While mentioning sanity, I cannot forget to mention three remarkable women who deal with the insanity of the History Department office every day: Kathy Slager, Cheryl Floyd and Elaine Chisum. They, and their ability to navigate the MTSU system in good humor while making time for an often irritable old graduate student, will forever have my gratitude and respect. Outside of the University, I am grateful for the help of many in making this work complete. I am especially grateful for the staff of the Parke County Courthouse, especially in the Clerk's Office and the Recorder's Office. I am also very grateful for the help of Cindy Hein and her staff at the Parke County Library. The local history room at the library is one of the best I have ever had the opportunity to work. I am also very grateful for the help of an extraordinary local historian, Charles Davis of Parke County. His help has been priceless. His knowledge and insights about local history and the history of the Canals v in Indiana are second to none. It was a great privilege to work with him. I am also grateful for the help of Dr. Thomas Hamm and his staff at the Quaker archive at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. I am especially thankful for the help of Anne Thomason, archivist, and student Emma Sundberg for their much needed help there. Likewise, I am grateful for the help of Gwen Gosney Erickson at the Guilford College archives in North Carolina. Most importantly I could not have completed this work without the help and support of my research assistant who provided me with many of the best items found in this dissertation. She also was there to give me countless words of advice and support. It is a good thing that she is my mother, Polly Hackett, because I could never repay what she has done for me in making this dissertation what it is. She spent many hours on the phone, in libraries, on the computer hunting down leads for me. She was also able to recruit my father, Charles Hackett, into the hunt. I guess this is only fair since it is they who gave me a love for history and a desire to explore it in the first place. vi My many research requests to them were just a little payback for all those station wagon trips to graveyards and historic sites we took as a family. Lastly, I could not have made it to the first stage of this dissertation without the support of my wife Dea and my children Nina and Ben. I am the luckiest man in the world to have them by my side. Brian Lang Hackett, Fall 2009. Vll ABSTRACT The purpose of this dissertation is to challenge currently accepted ideas about free blacks in the north in the last few decades before the Civil War, focusing on the plight of a group of African Americans from North Carolina and their white, largely Quaker, supporters. The road to freedom for freepeople in the North was a dynamic and multilayered process, in this case involving the interaction of free blacks and Quakers from North Carolina, newly freed enslaved people from Alabama, and white communities in Indiana. The primary focus of this work is a group of free and enslaved African Americans and their Quaker supporters that found themselves involved in a court case in Indiana. The principle question explored is how this event illustrates a broader perspective of the role of blacks in a "free" society in the few decades before the Civil War. Also examined is how influences outside the state would come to shape actions within the state, and how these events would viii affect the future. Lastly, it is a goal to see that at least part of the story of the freemen who suffered great hardship in making a place for themselves in Indiana and elsewhere is told, giving them the agency they deserve. IX CONTENTS DEDICATION i ABSTRACT viii ACKNOWLEGMENTS ii LIST OF ILLISTRATIONS xi CHAPTERS Introduction 1 Section I: Introduction: North Carolina 40 1. Colonization and Slave Societies - '52 2. Quakers and Slavery in North Carolina 89 3. The Migration 124 Section II: Introduction: Indiana 141 4. Law and Politics 153 5.