To get back to the 18th century, written by one of my friends, the Beaufort County Slave uprising:
Today in NBBAS history, from Volume One:
Beaufort County Slave Uprising, North Carolina
8 July 1775
North Carolina's Royal Governor Josiah Martin began formulating plans for a massive British invasion of the South, beginning in North Carolina. One of the plans Martin considered was arming the slaves so that they would rise up against their Whig masters. This was a tactic that Virginia's Royal Governor would also use. However, Martin later denied that he had ever advocated a slave revolt. A slave uprising did occur in July 1775 along the eastern part of North Carolina, in Beaufort, Pitt and Craven counties and along the Tar River.
On July 8 the Pitt County Safety Committee ordered out the militia to "shoot one or any number of Negroes who are armed and doth not willingly surrender their arms." The 100 militiamen captured forty of the "suspected heads" of the uprising. The uprising had supposedly been organized by a white sea captain and "Merrick, a negro man slave who formerly Belonged to Major Clark, a Pilot at Okacock but now to Captain Naath Blinn of Bath Town." Five of the slaves were whipped, receiving 80 lashes each, and had their ears cropped. As soon as those slaves were punished there arose a second revolt in Craven and Pitt counties. Though 250 armed slaves were reported to have been on the road between the counties, none were found.
According to the captured slaves the plan was for all the slaves to rise up on July 8th and to "fall on and destroy the family where they lived, then to proceed from House to House, (Burning as they went) until they arrived in the Back Country where they were to be received with open arms by a number of persons there appointed and armed by the Government for their Protection, and as a further reward they were to be settled in a free government of their own." The militia recovered "considerable ammunition" from the slaves lending credence to the story. In the end the Whigs decided to destroy Fort Johnston on the Cape Fear River so that it would not be a gathering point for runaway slaves.