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In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.
The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).
In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).
According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of thisnumber, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.
To return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.
The majority of slaveholders, white and black, owned only one to five slaves. More often than not, and contrary to a century and a half of bullwhips-on-tortured-backs propaganda, black and white masters worked and ate alongside their charges; be it in house, field or workshop. The few individuals who owned 50 or more slaves were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as slave magnates.
In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more slaves The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro slave magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 slaves, was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter whose estate was valued at (in 1860 dollars) $264,000 (3). That year, the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978 (4).
Reality does not fit the narrative
That points to a very high percentage of blacks being slaves, and as the article mentions previously, a small ruling class of whites. The oppression, while highly egregious, is considerably smaller than currently inflicted by Margaret Sanger and her followers.
I might add the first legally owned slave in this country was owned by a black man....
and the first to legally own a slave (via the courts) was none other then a black man..........Anthony Johnson
When I was growing up we had one car titled in my father's name. So legally speaking only 25% of the family had a car. But all the people in the family received benefit from his car ownership.
Same with slavery. Maybe 4.8% of the people in the South owned slaves. But those people had spouses and children who all gained from that person owning the slave. So the better statistic for determining how important slavery was is to compare the total number of slave owners with the total number of families shown in the census. And if you look at it that way then throughout the South somewhere between one-quarter and one-fifth of all families were slaveowners. In states like Mississippi it approached 50%.
The Federal Government presently owns more slaves than the Old South ever had.
I am not sure what the point is?
Are we supposed to be happy because there WAS slavery, but it was too expensive for most people?
What am I supposed to take away from this article?
The truth is, Progressive Leftists are opposed to individual liberty as defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The only real complaint they have about chattel slavery in America two hundred years ago is that the slaves were privately owned.
But they get orgasmic over the idea of slavery to the state.
Democrats never pass up on opportunity to tell us why enslavement by the state is for our own protection and our own safety, because life under the anarchy that conservatives want to impose is just too risky and dangerous. We can't have any of that inhumane "on-your-own economics" that conservatives advocate.
Thereby proving that you no longer have to be black to be an Uncle Tom.
My family picked cotton on plantations next to slaves. They saw slaves as people who took jobs away from them. Kind of like companies that use illegal aliens and foreign labor today; they do so to cut out Americans and get cheap labor. They were happy to end slavery but the issue of what to do with all the slaves wasn’t answered. On one hand freeing slaves into the general population scared them and free slaves would present even more of a labor competition. Taking them back to Africa wasn’t going to be practical, either. The issue of slavery was a massive headache no matter how it was addressed.
Irrespective of what percentage of American families owned slaves. The fact is it was legal in this nation for sometime. So where do we go from here? If historical slavery is the ultimate evil. What do we do about most of the founders? What about the American flag that flew over legal slavery much longer than the Confederate flag? Do we just eradicate our history?
Does it matter what the percentage was, we were still considered less than human. They once said that we were born with tails! Different restrooms, three of our votes equaled one white man’s vote, separate water fountains, back of the bus and etc and this was until the 60’s!
And today, around the world, the largest slave owners and slave traders are the wonder religion of peace, MUSLIMS!!! But, since they are not whites, living in the southern USA, never mind.
The degree of cant with regard to slavery and segregation is staggering. I’ll bet there is not one person today who has lost one meal or one minute of sleep over the facts of negro chattel slavery and/or Jim Crow laws.
To hear our white liberal elites talk we all want illegals in the US... but in fact that illegal 'servant class' only services white liberal elites.
Elites get the gold - we get the shaft. Just like slavery - slavery only serviced white liberal elites in the South.
The rest of us paid for that with reduced wages then - and massive debt now.
And for that - to this day - blacks blame most of their problems on slavery... idiots. We all paid - well, except liberal elites.
THIS is the type of data that makes Free Republic the best site for conservatives to visit to get FACTS. Bravo for posting this most informative piece!