It is widely believed that slavery in 19th-century America was the exclusive province of whites. However, as historian Larry Kroger reveals inBlack 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
It is widely believed that slavery in 19th-century America was the exclusive province of whites. However, as historian Larry Kroger reveals inBlack 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
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.
