by Angela Spivey

North Carolina Slave Narratives: The Lives of Moses Roper, Lunsford Lane, Moses Grandy, and Thomas H. Jones. William L. Andrews, general editor. David A. Davis, Tampathia Evans, Ian Frederick Finseth, and Andrea N. Williams, eds. University of North Carolina Press, 304 pages, $27.50 cloth.

Lunsford Lane was an employee of the North Carolina governor's office and a tobacco dealer. He was also a slave.

Lane's autobiography and three others tell a little-known story — of slaves who pushed the limits. Lane, for instance, refined a tobacco-curing method his father taught him. After working for his mistress all day, he manufactured tobacco and pipes at night, selling his goods in Raleigh until he had saved $1,000 to buy his freedom.

Left: "The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, formerly of Raleigh, N.C." Circa 1842. Courtesy of Documenting the American South, UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries. Click to enlarge.

It wasn't uncommon for slave owners to allow slaves with skills to sell goods or hire themselves out, says William Andrews, professor of English. Most masters would then keep a good part of the slave's earnings. "It certainly wasn't a fair labor relationship," he says. "It was highly unjust. But it was better than working in the fields from dawn to dusk and depending on the master once or twice a year to give you a little something extra if he felt like it."

After buying his own life, Lane arranged to buy his wife and six children for $2,500. He gave their owner bank notes promising to pay $500 each year. But before he could repay the debt, Lane was slapped with an order to leave North Carolina under a law that made it illegal for "any free negro or mulatto to migrate into this State." A petition in support of Lane from C.C. Battle, secretary to the governor, failed. Lane had to retreat to Boston. There he raised the remainder of the money, then managed to return to Raleigh long enough to buy his family and escape.

I think the reason Lane was run out of Raleigh was that he was making too much money," Andrews says. "These stories dramatize the injustice of slavery in a different way. These are people with great talents and abilities and hard work ethics. Yet they are forced to constantly adjust to all these restrictions, and in response they look for ways to open up those restrictions.

"Sometimes they're successful and sometimes they're not," Andrews says. "In the end, they're all headed for freedom."

Andrews edited North Carolina Slave Narratives with four alumni of Carolina's English graduate program, two of whom began work on the project while still students. The book is due out in November 2003.

Angela Spivey is associate editor of Endeavors magazine.