SLAVERY & REVOLUTION
do if hard pressed,” Parker explained. “Once in the woods he might be obliged to hide unless [they] had dogs with them, but even in that case he might manage to give them the slip, for if he came to a stream of water he would wade or swim across it, or he might walk in it for a little way. . . . In this way he often managed to evade his pursuers.” If someone was caught, “he would be tied to the nearest tree, what few clothes he had on would be taken off, and he would be given thirty-nine lashes on his bare back.”12 Resistance could be deadly. “I remember one time there was a dance at one of the houses in the quarters,” recalled Fannie Moore, who was enslaved by a South Carolina family with many ties to Mecklenburg County. The dancers were “a-laughing and a-patting their feet and a-singing” when a militia group “shove the door open and start grabbing us. Uncle Joe’s son he decide there was [only] one time to die, and he start to fight. He say he tired standing so many beatings, he just can’t stand no more. The paddyrollers start beating him and he start fighting.” Eventually, one of the men “take a stick and hit him over the head and just bust his head wide open. The poor boy fell on the floor just a-moaning and a-groaning. The paddyrollers just whip about half dozen others and send them home and leave us with the dead boy.”13 Still, neither fear of rebellion nor concern about the violence required to maintain a slave economy led Mecklenburg’s residents to reduce their reliance on an institution that built wealth. By 1800, census takers counted 10,439 residents in Mecklenburg County. Of those, 1,988 – 19 percent – were enslaved African Americans. As the century advanced, their numbers and significance would grow.
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