North Carolina v. Negro Will (1834)
In 1834, on a plantation in Edgecombe County North Carolina, a slave named Will refused to share a hoe he had made with his own hands, an act of defiance that got him shot in the back. As he lay wounded, Will reached up and fatally slashed his overseer on the hip and the arm, earning himself a trip to the gallows.
But before the death sentence could be carried out, the plantation owner hired a lawyer to defend Will, paying the unheard-of fee of $1,000. That lawyer, Bartholomew Moore, would one day become the state’s attorney general. But at age 33, he persuaded the court to overturn an earlier ruling governing slavery and reduce Will’s sentence to manslaughter – arguing that slaves were entitled to self-defense. As the “black codes” of North Carolina were strengthened in the 1830s to prevent slaves from rebelling against their masters, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled favorably for blacks, both slave and free, beginning with State v. Will in 1834.
On January 22, 1834, a slave named Will was involved in a disagreement with his master’s slave foreman, Allen. Allen wanted the hoe that Will handmade for his own use. When the foreman and an overseer attempted to seize Will and whip him, he ran away. In the process, the overseer shot Will in the back. When the overseer, a man named Baxter, eventually caught up with Will, the slave fatally stabbed him. As a result, the Edgecombe County Superior Court sentenced Will to death.
In his “Memories of an Old-Time Tar Heel,” Kemp Battle, the plantation owner’s son wrote, “I can truthfully say that I treated our slaves as well as I thought possible. The law did not allow them to be taught reading and writing. … Little could be done for them except to feed and clothe them well and look after their health and provide overseers of high character and intelligence.”
Battle spoke fondly of a longtime slave named Allen, who was one-fourth white: “The estimation in which Allen was held by the neighborhood is shown by the fact that after my grandfather’s death, when his slaves were sold at auction at a time of financial depression, Allen brought $500 while other Negro men brought only $300.”
It was Allen, Battle and other historians note, who demanded Will’s hoe. Once refused, Allen reported the slave’s insubordination to the overseer, Richard Baxter. Baxter got his gun and ordered Allen to get a whip and follow him.
Once confronted, Will removed his hat in deference to the overseer. But shortly into his reprimand, he began running. Baxter shot Will in the back and commanded two slaves to give chase. As Will struggled on the ground, he cut a wound with a knife that caused Baxter to bleed to death.
Moore, one of two lawyers hired to defend Will, came from a poor farming background and carried a reputation for backing the underdog. Historical accounts differ on whether he was unknown at the time, and therefore good enough to defend a slave, or whether he already found the respect that would bring high office.
He argued against a murder case on legal grounds – Baxter would have faced manslaughter charges had he killed Will – and as a moral question. “Absolute power,” he argued, “is irresponsible power.” His defense struck a note with Justice Gaston, who wrote the opinion for the N.C. Supreme Court.
The state Supreme Court ruled unanimously that any slave under such provocation could only be charged with manslaughter. This challenged the 1829 State v. Mann decision which held that a master’s power over a slave was absolute and that the slave’s submission must be “perfect.”
It may be difficult, viewed through a modern lens, to see this decision as a move toward justice considering slavery would endure for another three decades. Will’s success in court seems even more hollow considering the plantation owner, James Smith Battle, sent him to a plantation in Mississippi after the trial, hoping to avoid any difficulties on his own land with a slave who had killed a white man.
In Mississippi, Will killed a fellow slave and – that time – died by hanging. His wife, known as Aunt Rose, was heard to lament, “Will surely had hard luck.”