James C. Johnston
(Chowan County)
Featured Character – Divided Allegiances
James
C. Johnston
Courtesy of the North Carolina State
Archives
James Cathcart Johnston, a planter and Unionist, was born
in 1782. One of North Carolina's wealthiest planters during the
Antebellum
period, he inherited from his father, who was the first North Carolina
senator, Hayes Plantation in Edenton. James attended Princeton and the
University of North Carolina. Although
he passed the bar on April 11, 1804, Johnston became
a planter. By 1860
he owned almost twelve thousand acres
of land in three different counties, and five-hundred and fifty slaves
to work
his holdings. Like
a majority of large
planters in the Upper South, Johnston
grew mostly corn and grains, not cotton.
Although he donated money to the American Colonization
Society and aided
a free black family in Ohio,
Johnston
never freed any of his enslaved work
force. A Whig
politically, Johnston
never sought
office. A firm
Unionist, he referred to
secessionists as “wicked.” Unlike
the
other large slaveholders in the Albemarle
region, Johnston
did not evacuate further west after the Union invasion of 1862. Writing to his Pasquotank
County
overseer, Christopher Wilson Hollowell, on February 12, 1863, Johnston
mentioned that:
“The Buffaloes while I was absent
destroyed all the
boats in
and about Edenton but respect mine...”
(taken from a letter
from James C.
Johnston to Christopher W. Hollowell on February 12, 1863)
Upon his death on May 8, 1865, Johnston
gave his property and assets to three overseers, Edward Wood, Henry J. Futrell,
and Christopher Wilson Hollowell. The Hayes Plantation is owned today by
descendents of Edward Wood.
.
"Seat
of James C. Johnston, Esq.,"
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, March 1857 (No.LXXXIL,
Vol.XIV), p.448
Courtesy of the North Carolina
State Archives