It is widely believed that slavery in 19th-century America
was the exclusive province of whites. However, as historian Larry Kroger reveals
in Black Slaveowners, free black people in the United States owned
slaves, fought for their right to do so and had little sympathy for abolition.
A five-year investigation of federal census data, wills,
mortgages, bills of sale, tax returns and newspaper ads from 1790 to 1860
provided the foundation for Koger's examination of black slave masters in the
Palmetto state, culminating in his illuminating book, Black
Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (McFarland,
1985). Charleston City, in which 72.1% of African-America households owned
slaves, was a valuable primary documentation source. Records that survived the
Civil War indicated the existence of 260 black slave masters.
This well-sourced book, which contains lengthy appendices
of federal census data and well over 600 citations, represents an earnest
attempt to examine a difficult and complex topic that too few have addressed:
the phenomenon of black slaveowners.
According to Kroger's comprehensive and well-researched
volume, black slave owners lived in every Southern state that allowed slavery
and even Northern states, including Maryland. The practice of black slave ownership
was widespread and stretched from New York to Florida to Missouri, Kentucky,
Louisiana and Mississippi. According to the 1830 federal census, free blacks
owned 10,000 slaves, including in New York City eight free blacks who
reportedly owned 17 slaves. Many black slave owners were large planters who
raised cotton, rice, and sugar cane. Many inherited slaves from relatives or
white kinsfolk who transported them from Africa to the New World.
As the economy of Charleston City expanded in the early
19th century, many free blacks were able to buy slaves, making the city the
center of black slave holding in South Carolina. Between 1820 and 1840, most
free black heads of households in Charleston owned slaves. Freed slaves in
business customarily used slave labor, hired slaves out for a fee to non-slave
owners or used slaves as collateral to secure loans. Former slaves bought
slaves for economic benefit in a society in which slavery was an acceptable
form of labor. They had no qualms about using slaves and were well assimilated
into the white slaveowner culture. Often, free blacks purchased enslaved
kinfolk to buy their freedom.
It was common in 19th-century South Carolina for the
mulatto offspring of a white slave owner to be manumitted, educated, and made
beneficiaries in a father-child relationship with the master. They were
perceived as the legitimate heirs of the slave owner and thought of themselves
as slave masters who legitimately used the labor of their father's slaves.
Kroger explains how divisions in the black community were delineated by skin
tone, with lighter-skinned blacks enjoying higher socioeconomic status. He
cites documented evidence from the state census of 1850 that indicated that
93.1 % of Negro slave owners were mulattos and 90% of their slaves were
dark-skinned blacks.
During slavery in South Carolina, a clear distinction
existed between artisan and house slaves and slaves who worked the fields. The
former had better food, clothing, and housing and tended to identify with white
slaveowners rather than sympathize with the plight of fellow blacks. Field
slaves worked from sunup to sundown, endured harsh conditions, and were more
likely to feel abused and oppressed.
Although many free blacks devoted their lives to earning
enough money to free family members, many purchased slaves themselves as a path
to financial security or to produce greater wealth. In other words, they
typically owned two sets of slaves: family members and slaves for profit.
Economic self-interest overrode any moral concerns about slavery. This practice
continued as the Union Army began its invasion of South Carolina in
1864.
In Black Slaveowners, the commercial aspect of
slave owning by blacks is extensively documented and represents most cases of
slaveowning. Like white slave masters, black slaveowners used flogging,
incarceration, and workhouse confinement to punish unruly bondsmen. When they
transferred slaves out of the area, they often placed the auctioned slaves in
the workhouse as a precaution against their running away. Like their white
counterparts, many black slave owners bequeathed their slaves to their family
members at the time of their death.
Free rural blacks who owned farms or plantations typically
made use of slave labor to produce crops on a commercial scale. The revenue
made by cultivating staple crops led free black planters to invest in slaves to
increase production and profits. Landowners of African descent were some of the
largest slaveowners in South Carolina. A couple of African slave traders even
established themselves as slave-owning planters in South Carolina. The black
rice planters of South Carolina used slaves to plant and harvest rice -- a crop
for the wealthy -- and later, cotton.
Numerous black artisans – carpenters, bricklayers,
blacksmiths, mechanics, millwrights, seamstresses, shoemakers, caterers,
butchers, and others – used slave workers. Without the assistance of slave
labor, it would have been impossible for them to remain competitive and
participate in growing markets. Excess slave labor was available for hire to
the community with the owner benefiting from the slaves' wages. In Charleston,
widows and spinsters were the primary suppliers of hired-out slaves within the
black community. Their way of life committed these women to the institution of
slavery, as it was often the only way they could support themselves. By the
1850s as the anti-slave movement intensified, black slave owners chose, upon
their deaths, to sell their slaves and bequeath the proceeds to heirs rather
than give their bondsmen to kinfolk.
A slave rebellion planned for 1822 by free black, Denmark
Vesey, demonstrated the deep divisions within the 19th-century Charleston black
community and illustrated how free blacks served as a buffer between slaves and
white masters. Free blacks and mulattos, the privileged offspring of white
masters and slaves, had an interest in preserving slavery, while poor, free
blacks and most rural slaves, who knew slavery’s cruelty, were determined to
gain control over their own destinies. The free black elite regarded slave
ownership as a privilege and status symbol and valued their ties to the white
community. Many lived in white neighborhoods, attended white-dominated churches
and shunned the slave community.
The insurrection, which Vesey kept from elite blacks and
the white community for four years, was thwarted by this fragmentation within
the black community. Free blacks believed they had much to lose and nothing to
gain from a slave rebellion. Vesey's plan unraveled when a contented mulatto slave,
approached to join the uprising, told his master about the plot. Remarkably,
when 35 black slaves were summarily executed, the disclosure conferred great
respect and financial rewards on free blacks who had warned of the planned
insurrection.
When the Civil War began in 1861, free black slaveowners
took the Confederate side. In the Antebellum South, urban slaveowners fared
better than their rural counterparts. With the abolition of slavery, black
planters found that they could not recover and rebuild their plantations.
Former slaveowners from the cities, who identified with white aristocrats, were
more able to adjust from slave labor to wage labor. Generally, they were
educated, of a higher socioeconomic status, and had invested their profits in
income-producing real estate.
Historian Larry Kroger is to be commended for tackling this
difficult and complex topic that extends the purview of slavery in pre-Civil
War America beyond its usual focus of white enslavement of blacks. His
exploration of free black participation in this exploitation of human beings
represents a courageous examination of an aspect of slavery, not well known. It
reveals how the oppression of others can be a race-neutral proposition borne of
an accepted, societal institution.
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