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ORANGE, North Carolina in the 1840s: 1 through 8 of 8

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  1. The Second Middle Passage: Slavery Moves West
    date September 5, 1844 to December 1, 1846map ORANGE, North Carolina, GREENE, Alabamatags Cameron family, Slavery

    The second stage of the transatlantic slave trade was also called the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage was a horrifying experience for slaves headed to the Americas. Slaves were quartered on ships for up to two months and treated as cargo. They were often chained in shackles and kept below deck where they had to lay down because there was less than three feet of height. There was never enough food...

  2. The Shawshank Plantation, or Nowhere to Run...but Home
    date November, 1844 to February 5, 1847map GREENE, Alabama, ORANGE, North Carolinatags slavery, runaway, Alabama, North Carolina, Cameron family

    In the film The Shawshank Redemption, a convict named Brooks was paroled after 50 years in prison. He was distraught at the thought of having to leave the dehumanizing Shawshank penitentiary that had been his home for so long. Brooks was released and, after a few months of trying to readjust, he gave up and hung himself. Letters written 150 years earlier from the Cameron Plantations reveal a similar...

  3. Go West, Young Man! (Whether You Want To Or Not)
    date September 5, 1844 to April 8, 1848map ORANGE, North Carolinatags Westward Expansion, Slavery, Migration, slavery, runaway

    One of the more striking aspects of the Cameron plantation letters is the account they offer of the exportation of slave life from the areas of initial settlement on the Atlantic seaboard beyond the Appalachian mountains into the old Southwest and the Mississippi. Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone and Generations Of Captivity trace this development to the period of the American Revolution, when British...

  4. Slave Owner Uses Modern Medicine to Treat Malaria
    date September 21, 1846 to September 26, 1846map ORANGE, North Carolinatags Science/Technology, Medicine, Slavery

             In late September 1846 several slaves from the Fairntosh plantation in Durham, North Carolina fell sick with malaria. Their owner, planter Paul Cameron, tells his father Duncan how he provided medicine for his sick slaves as well as the traditional herbs and teas. “Since that time we have a great deal of chill and fever at the mill quarter in [unintelligible] I have made the best arrangements...

  5. Bad Medicine and the use of Galvanism in the Cameron Plantation letters at Stagville
    date October, 1846 to 1846map ORANGE, North Carolinatags Galvanism, slavery,, plantation, slaves

    There is numerous life situations featured in the letters of the Cameron Plantation. The focus of interest here is the life of the enslaved people as seen through the eyes of the Cameron family. Of course because of this we must interpret based on what we see in the letters. There are real human issues. These include affection, sickness, disease, travel, and home life just to name a few. The goal of...

  6. "Weather" or not a slave was treated well.
    date September, 1845 to December, 1847map GREENE, Alabama, ORANGE, North Carolinatags Slavery, plantation, Weather, Slaves

    When we learn about slavery and the slaves’ masters we often get a picture of an evil cold hearted man, who would whip and torment slaves, while they worked in weather conditions that made it impossible to get any work done. We also often assume that their (the slaves) masters would force them to work whether they were sick or even near death. Using the plantation letters from the Cameron Family...

  7. Greene County Goes Yellow with Fever
    date January, 1847 to December, 1847map ORANGE, North Carolina, GREENE, Alabamatags Plague, Cameron family, alabama, Slavery, Yellow Fever

    In 1847 inhabitants of the Mississippi River basin  had to deal with an outbreak of Yellow Fever.  Transmitted by mosquitoes, Yellow Fever caused symptoms including fevers, chills, headaches and nausea.  In the later months of 1847 the letters that overseer Charles Lewellyn sent to Paul Cameron about the condition of his plantation were fraught with the names of slave that were ill, recovering or...

  8. Casual Affection: An Explanation of Duality between Affection and Dominant Ownership.
    date December 28, 1847map ORANGE, North Carolinatags Plantation Life, Cameron family, Slavery

    How can one person treat another as both indispensable and an object to be purchased? Frances Cameron writes to Duncan Cameron, “A man servant who formerly belonged to my mother is about to be sold, and has applied me to buy him [...] I am particularly desirous of purchasing him [...] But a good male servant in my establishment, is indispensable ...” (series: 1.3.3, box: 43, folder: 1023, date:...