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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
You can’t say stuff like that. Even hardcore conservatives like Mark Levin will absolutely freak out and shut you up.
The descendants of these black slave owners need to pay reparations!
It is perfectly true that most southern whites did not own slaves, and that, among the slave owners, most owned very few slaves. The idea of often benign domestic servitude, with slaves and their owners living in close quarters on reasonably friendly terms and working side by side in the field or home, is a natural reflection of this demographic reality.
But the reverse perspective is also true. The vast majority of blacks in the south were enslaved. And the great majority of slaves were owned by the larger landowners with big plantations. For blacks, the slave gang, slave quarters, and overseer driven, large scale agricultural production for export were the dominant realities.
150 years later, the descendants of the typical riflemen in Lee's army look back at slavery and say, "we didn't own any, and that's not what my great great grandfather was fighting for." Or "My great great grandfather owned a slave family, and treated them well, and stayed on good terms after the war." And all that is probably true.
150 years later, the descendants of the typical slave look back and think Simon Legree. And that is true as well.
The two camps have opposite perceptions, and both can be right.
So according to census data, in 1860 there were 160,007 free people of all races in Orleans Parish and a total of 4,169 slave holders. So you expect us to believe that free blacks, who made up 6.6% of the total population of New Orleans and its Parish, also comprised over 72% of all slave holders? Really?
You wants a fact check, you gets a fact check.
The facts given are true, but quite arguably misleading.
Title to property is vested in an individual, but we normally speak of a family owning their home, not the individual holding the title.
Similarly, it doesn’t really make sense to talk about title ownership only for slavery. By that definition Scarlett O’Hara wasn’t a slave owner.
So what percentage of families owned slaves?
Here is a table with the 1860 census details. In slave states, it varied from 3% in DE to 49% in MS.
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html
In the seven states that seceded first, 36.7% of white families owned slaves. In the states that seceded after Sumter, the percentage was 30.8%. In the slave states that stayed in the Union, it was 15.9%. Across all slave states in 1860, it was 26%.
The implication behind articles like this is generally that slavery was not central to the life of most southerners, that it was a peripheral thing involving only the most wealthy.
That implication is quite simply untrue. It was utterly central to the southern economy and the basis of their way of life, as they themselves repeatedly said. Which is why they were willing to fight to protect it.
Interesting account of one former slave’s personal experience. Educated with the master’s family, went to church with the master and even stolen and taken to another plantation only to run away and return to the original master.
http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/html/pagecc75.html?ID=13935
Obviously all accounts weren’t so benign.
http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/html/mss/gr7999.html