A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715–1865
Antwain K. Hunter
University of North Carolina Press
Spanning the 1720s through the end of the Civil War, A Precarious Balance explores how free and enslaved Black North Carolinians accessed, possessed, and used firearms—both legal and otherwise—and how the state and white people responded.
North Carolinians, whether free or enslaved, Black or white, had different stakes on the issue, all of which impacted the reality of Black people’s gun use. Competing views of Black people’s firearm use created social, political, and legal points of contention for different demographics within North Carolina and left the general assembly and white civilians struggling to harness Black people’s armed labor for white people’s benefit.
A Precarious Balance challenges readers to rethink how they understand race and firearms in the American past.