The Hinton Rowan Helper House is a historic house on

United States Route 64 U.S. Route 64 (US 64) is an east–west United States highway that runs for 2,326 miles (3,743 km) from Nags Head in eastern North Carolina to just southwest of the Four Corners in northeast Arizona. The western terminus is at U.S. Route 1 ...

outside Mocksville,

Davie County, North Carolina Davie County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 42,712. Its county seat is Mocksville. Davie County is included in the Winston-Salem, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is ...

. Built on land that once belonged to

Daniel Boone Daniel Boone (September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the we ...

, it was the childhood and early adult home of

Hinton Rowan Helper Hinton Rowan Helper (December 27, 1829 – March 9, 1909) was an American Southern critic of slavery during the 1850s. In 1857, he published a book that he dedicated to the "nonslaveholding whites" of the South. '' The Impending Crisis of the S ...

(1829-1909) whose ''

The Impending Crisis of the South ''The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It'' is an 1857 book by Hinton Rowan Helper, who declares himself a proud Southerner. It was written mostly in Baltimore, but it would have been illegal to publish it there, as he pointed out. It wa ...

'' (published 1857) was an influential antislavery work that inflamed tensions in 1860. The house was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

and declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 1973. and

Description and history

The Hinton Rowan Helper House is located west of Mocksville, set back from the north side of

, a short way east of Bear Creek, on a parcel of land that was once part of the Boone Tract, granted to Squire Boone and later owned by

. The location is marked by a state historic marker. It is a -story structure, with a central log structure at the core, and later frame additions to the side and rear. Its exterior is finished in clapboard siding. The gabled roof extends over the front porch, which is supported by posts, and there is a historic shed roof extension to the rear, with a modern kitchen ell added. The front parlor of the house shows exposed log construction, and some doorway thresholds are original split logs. It was here that author Hinton Rowan Helper (1829-1909) spent the first twenty years of his life, living in an area where he experienced directly the impact of slavery, not just on the slaves, but also on the white lower classes. In 1857 he published ''

'', a reasoned polemic arguing that slavery was economically bad for most Southern whites, because it concentrated power and money in the slaveowning plantation elites and suppressed wages and drives to industrialize the region. The work was met with fury in the South, where it was banned, and was used by the Republican Party as campaign material in the 1860 United States election.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina National Historic Landmarks in North Carolina Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Houses in Davie County, North Carolina Houses completed in 1821 National Register of Historic Places in Davie County, North Carolina

Description and history

See also

References