66
Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina.
[326
All this prosperity was beginning to attract the notice of the whites. Several other negroes in the place were making progress in the same way. Some of the whites thought this was likely to have a bad effect on the slaves generally. Fearing something like this, Lunsford had been careful, as he said, not to intrude his intelligence, but to seem to know less than he did know. He dressed as poorly and fared as simply as if he were still a slave. He also said that he was careful never to do anything which looked like leadership of the other negroes, that he had done nothing disorderly, and that he had never plotted to free the slaves. The good opinion in which he was held by some of the best men in the place is evidence that this is true. On the evidence of his biographer none of these things were alleged against him. Everything indicates that he devoted himself quietly to the one object of purchasing his family. Certainly with that object in view it would have been a most unwise thing to appear to be an agitator. Throughout the administration of Governor Dudley, and through part of that of Governor Morehead, he was janitor and messenger in the office of the Governor’s private secretary. Both the Governor and the private secretary testified to his great efficiency and integrity. To one class of whites, however, his presence and his success were becoming exceedingly objectionable. These were the younger and more adventurous members of the community. They were in most cases the poorer classes, although some reckless sons of the leading families acted with them. They inherited one effect of the System of slavery in the ignorance that all this class shared for lack of common schools. With untaught minds their passions were often the impulse of action, and such seems to have been the condition now. They were unable to see far enough to understand that an industrious and progressive negro like Lane would be an advantage to the negro race, making them more conservative and restraining the tendency to excesses. They became alarmed, and soon convinced themselves that it would be a great calamity if every