Cover and interior design. Copyright University of North Carolina Press.

1. Abraham Galloway
& the Slaves’ Civil War
Dav id S. C ec e l ski
Author of The Waterman’s Song
THE FI RE OF
FREED OM
Abraham H. Galloway (1837–70)
was a ­fiery young slave rebel, radical
­abolitionist, and Union spy who rose out
of bondage to become one of the most
significant and stirring black leaders in
the South during the Civil War. Through-
out his brief, mercurial life, Galloway
fought against slavery and injustice.
He risked his life behind enemy lines,
­recruited black soldiers for the North,
and fought racism in the Union army’s
ranks. He also stood at the forefront of
an African American political movement
that flourished in the Union-occupied
parts of North Carolina, even leading
a historic delegation of black southern-
ers to the White House to meet with
President Lincoln and to demand the
full rights of citizenship. He later became
one of the first black men elected to the
North Carolina legislature.
Long hidden from history, Galloway’s
story reveals a war unfamiliar to most
of us. As David Cecelski writes, “Gallo-
way’s Civil War was a slave insurgency,
a war of liberation that was the culmina-
tion of generations of perseverance and
faith.” This riveting portrait illuminates
Galloway’s life and deepens our insight
into the Civil War and Reconstruction as
experienced by African Americans in the
South.
“A vividly written and well researched
­narrative of the life of a largely over-
looked but major black leader in the
­Civil War and Reconstruction. It is true
that slaves earned their freedom by
fighting in the Union forces, sometimes
under horrendously discriminatory cir-
cumstances. ­Cecelski provides additional
force to the view that slaves militantly
exercised agency in defense of their
rights as the price of their participation.
Galloway was an important voice for
their insistence on a war for their lib­
eration and not just to save the Union.”
— Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R.
Segal Professor of History, University of
Pennsylvania, and past chair of the United
States Commission on Civil Rights
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
The University of
North Carolina Press
www.uncpress.unc.edu
VeraCecelski
Historian David S. Cecelski is the
author, most recently, of The Water­
man’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in
Maritime North Carolina.
Cover illustrations: “Colored Troops, under General
Wild, Liberating Slaves in North Carolina,” from Harper’s
Weekly, 23 Jan. 1864, courtesy, North Carolina Collection,
University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill; por-
trait of Abraham Galloway from William Still, The Under­
ground Railroad (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872)
Printed in U.S.A.
abraham
galloway &
the slaves’
civil war
THE
FIRE
OF
FREE-
DOM
Cecelski
“An excellent work of scholar-
ship by a topflight historian.
I am deeply impressed by the
detective work that went into
discovering Galloway’s story.”
— Edward E. Baptist,
Cornell University

2. Abraham Galloway & the Slaves’ Civil War
The Fire of Freedom
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
David S. Cecelski

3. The Secret Feelings of Their Hearts • 5
2
The Secret Feelings of Their Hearts
In early 1857, young Abraham Galloway vowed to depart the
world of his childhood. At twenty years old, he had lived by the banks of
the Cape Fear River all his life and had never traveled more than a day’s
journey from his friends and family in Smithville and Wilmington. But
that spring he and a friend grew determined, they later explained, “that
liberty was worth dying for, and that it was their duty to strike for freedom
even if it should cost them their lives.”1 His friend was a slave named Rich-
ard Eden, a barber by trade and a couple years older than Galloway. While
they resided in Wilmington, the two young men grew close enough that
they eventually dared “to communicate the secret feelings of their hearts.”2
A yearning for freedom was not the only reason behind their decision to
risk their lives and attempt to escape from Wilmington. Galloway had also
been having difficulty earning the wages that Milton Hankins expected
of him. A large influx of Irish and German immigrants into the city had
tightened the local labor market, increased the competition for building
jobs, and exerted a downward pressure on wages. Tensions between en-
slaved builders and free white tradesmen heightened and occasionally be-
came bitter.3 The danger for a slave builder like Galloway was greater than
merely low wages, however. Galloway’s value in dollars represented a sig-
nificant part of Hankins’s total worth, and the young male slave was ulti-
mately his most important asset. If Galloway did not bring enough money
into the household, Hankins may have felt compelled to put him up for
sale at the local slave market. A strong young man with a skilled trade was
worth a great deal, probably in the neighborhood of $1,000 or $1,200, at a
time when Hankins’s house and lot on Fourth Street had a tax value of less
than $100. Under those circumstances, Galloway had good cause to fear
his sale to parts unknown.
The fear of sale spurred many slaves to flight. Few would have resented
the prospect of being sold more than Galloway, though. He was a pride-
ful, thin-­skinned youth, proud of his abilities and prickly about the slight-
est affront to his dignity. He was also all too familiar with the slave pens
downtown, where auctioneers and buyers treated blacks no different from
livestock.4 Like all local slaves, Galloway had seen the caravans of chained
black men, women, and children trudging through town along the Post
Road.5 No slave could reliably protect himself or herself from such a fate,
but Galloway would have taken great risks to avoid being herded into
those slave pens, put on public display on that auction block, or confined
in those shackles.
His co-­conspirator, Richard Eden, had other considerations in mind
when he joined Galloway’s bid to gain his freedom. Prior to 1857, Eden had
managed to fashion a measure of independence for himself within the sea-
port. He recalled his owner, a woman named Mary Ormes or Mary Lorens,
as “tender hearted,” and another contemporary remembered her as “very
indulgent with her slaves for the times.” With her support, Eden served as
the barber at the Carolina Hotel and shared his profits with her. He always
“had some spending money by him,” a contemporary recalled.6 Eden had
also learned to read and write by trading little pies and banjo songs for les-
sons with a group of schoolchildren who were devoted to him. They called
themselves the “Pie Society.”7
The relative equanimity of Eden’s life changed in 1857. Sometime early
that year, Wilmington authorities discovered that he had clandestinely
married a free mixed-­race woman. Their nuptials broke a state law pro-
hibiting slaves and free citizens, of any color, from marrying.8 Eden faced
a penalty of thirty-­nine lashes on his bare back under the terms of the law.
Dreading the whip’s lash and fearing that he might be torn from his wife’s
side forever in retribution for his crime, the star-­crossed Eden decided that
he had little left to lose and grew determined to escape from the seaport.
National political affairs may also have influenced the timing of the
young men’s decision to flee Wilmington. That spring the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that blacks could never be full citizens of the United States.
Widely considered today one of the most extreme misreadings of the Con-
stitution in U.S. history, Dred Scott v. Sandford was one of a number of
incidents in the late 1850s that smothered African American hopes that the
nation would ever rise to its democratic ideals. Scott, a slave, had sued for
his freedom and the freedom of his wife and two daughters because they
had been held in northern states and territories where slavery was illegal at