It feels strange to look back into the past and feel heartbreak for people's suffering, and all they did without, when they are long gone and there is nothing left to be done about their want or need. But I cannot always help myself, and that is how I felt when I read these words from a tenant farmer in Martin County, N.C. in 1887.
Jones County N.C.
August 1, 1818
I do not believe that I ever seen more runaway slave notices in one place than I found in a New Bern, N.C., newspaper published on August 1, 1818. In that single issue, slaveholders announced bounties for the capture and return, usually alive, but in one case dead or alive, of 11 men, 4 women, and 2 children who had escaped and were in hiding somewhere on the North Carolina coast.
David Cecelski 