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

“Make[s] use of hitherto unknown diaries and letters of George Walton (died 1789), a Quaker convert whose accounts of dreams and conversations with fellow Quakers provide an almost unique resource.”—Choice “[O]ffer[s] detailed evidence of the varied efforts made by eastern North Carolina Friends to fight [re-enslavement] laws. . . . [Crawford] makes clear the toll of trying to pursue one’s principles (in the case of Quakers) or pursue one’s freedom (in the case of African Americans) within the repressive legal climate of late-eighteenth century North Carolina—and indeed the United States.”—Journal of American History “Remarkable. . . complements the existing scholarly literature on the antislavery movement because it deals with a period, a place, and with people often ignored. It examines antislavery Quakerism in slaveholding North Carolina, and it allows the reader to become acquainted with antislavery active individuals other than the outstanding and well-known ones, especially George Walton. . . . An illuminating book that addresses a large audience thanks to its clarity.”—Southern Historian