Excerpt from Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick This anti-slavery sentiment in the State found expression in 1857 in Hinton Rowan Helper's Impending crisis, a most remarkable book and one entirely representative of a large body of opinion, unorganized, unconscious of its power, but slowly coming to a clear conception of the burden which slavery imposed upon the South and upon their own class in particular. But for John Brown's raid and the rapid progress of the States to civil war, North Carolina of the sixties would probably have been interesting as the scene of a fierce internal contest lover slavery with the odds in favor of its gradual emancipation. One of the most interesting chapters in this unorganized anti-slavery movement is to be found in the case of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, Professor of Chemistry in the University of North Carolina. Mr. Hedrick was born near Salisbury, in what is now David son county, but was then a part of Rowan, on February 13, 1827. He was of German stock, his great-grandfather, Peter Hedrick, having come to the State in the German migration from Pennsylvania. His father, John Leonard Hedrick, 'was a farmer and builder who by energy and thrift had reached a position of prosperity and comfort. His mother was Elizabeth Sherwood. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.