The Having of Negroes Is Become a Burden: The Quaker Struggle to Free Slaves in Revolutionary North Carolina

"Adds an important sharpness to a cloudily understood aspect of American history. Crawford helps bring Quaker history into the mainstream of a larger context, providing a compelling narrative of a region, a community, and a fascinating individual."--Emma J. Lapansky-Werner, Haverford College

"A thorough and often extraordinarily eloquent collection of documents from the struggle over emancipation and African-American freedom in the age of revolution."--Jon F. Sensbach, author of Rebecca's Revival

Michael Crawford presents the compelling story of colonial manumission movements among North Carolina Quakers in this illuminating volume. Embedding complete primary documents within the context of his own interpretive analysis, Crawford effectively shows how the consequences of this group's antislavery activism radiated out from a few individuals to the region, the state, and, eventually, the nation.

Students and scholars will be able to draw their own insights from the important documents presented in The Having of Negroes Is Become a Burden, many of them obscure or recently discovered. Through diaries, petitions, legislative debates, and letters, well-known as well as unknown players in the struggle for manumission are allowed to tell their own stories in their own words. This approach has the effect of highlighting the personal motivation of figures both prominent and obscure in the movement.