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Can You Handle the T***h?
Jul 18, 2015 19:12:27   #
Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone
 
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***es. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million w****s in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the s***eholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned s***es (1). Even if all s***eholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of w****s in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern w****s owning one or more s***es).

In the rare instances when the ownership of s***es by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black s***e masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white s***eholder 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 b****s who owned s***es. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 s***es in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro s***e masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more s***es; 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 s***eholding states. Of the b****s residing in the South, 261,988 were not s***es. Of this number, 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 s***es, 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 w****s and less than 4.8 percent of southern w****s. The statistics show that, when free, b****s disproportionately became s***e masters.

The majority of s***eholders, white and black, owned only one to five s***es. 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 s***es were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as s***e magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more s***es The largest number, 152 s***es, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro s***e magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 s***es, 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).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned s***es; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented s***e holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were s***e owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro s***eowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a s***e to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former s***e would become a magnate s***e master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among s***es of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white s***e-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, b****smithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly s***es of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the s***e he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the s***e's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent s***eholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under s***ery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become s***es; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of s***es. Black s***e masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free b****s were encouraged to sell themselves into s***ery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired s***e workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other b****s, free and s***e, and poor w****s sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring s***es in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap s***e labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that w****s dealt only with other w****s. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conf**gration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free b****s owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg b****s each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-s***e b****smith, owned two s***es, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as b****smiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 b****s owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and s***es. In 1840 he owned 30 s***es, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine s***es. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a s***e 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for w****s. And Ellison owned more s***es than 99 percent of the South's s***eholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "s***e breeder." S***e breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of s***es under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited s***es (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began s***e breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female s***es at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His s***es were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem s***es.

As with the s***es of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's s***es ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a s***e catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable s***e. Andrews caught the s***e in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the s***e daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro s***e magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 s***es, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of s***ery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_s***eowners.htm

Reply
Jul 18, 2015 19:42:11   #
JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida
 
Excellent information. I have said before almost every country has owned s***es. In that respect we are like all other countries. Only one country lost hundreds of thousands of citizens to end s***ery. The U.S. In that respect we are unlike any other country. Instead of being told by a minority we are evil because a minuscule number owned s***es we should celebrate the sacrifice by Americans to abolish it.
Pennylynn wrote:
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***es. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million w****s in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the s***eholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned s***es (1). Even if all s***eholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of w****s in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern w****s owning one or more s***es).

In the rare instances when the ownership of s***es by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black s***e masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white s***eholder 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 b****s who owned s***es. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 s***es in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro s***e masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more s***es; 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 s***eholding states. Of the b****s residing in the South, 261,988 were not s***es. Of this number, 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 s***es, 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 w****s and less than 4.8 percent of southern w****s. The statistics show that, when free, b****s disproportionately became s***e masters.

The majority of s***eholders, white and black, owned only one to five s***es. 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 s***es were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as s***e magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more s***es The largest number, 152 s***es, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro s***e magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 s***es, 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).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned s***es; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented s***e holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were s***e owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro s***eowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a s***e to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former s***e would become a magnate s***e master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among s***es of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white s***e-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, b****smithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly s***es of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the s***e he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the s***e's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent s***eholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under s***ery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become s***es; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of s***es. Black s***e masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free b****s were encouraged to sell themselves into s***ery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired s***e workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other b****s, free and s***e, and poor w****s sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring s***es in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap s***e labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that w****s dealt only with other w****s. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conf**gration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free b****s owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg b****s each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-s***e b****smith, owned two s***es, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as b****smiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 b****s owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and s***es. In 1840 he owned 30 s***es, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine s***es. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a s***e 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for w****s. And Ellison owned more s***es than 99 percent of the South's s***eholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "s***e breeder." S***e breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of s***es under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited s***es (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began s***e breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female s***es at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His s***es were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem s***es.

As with the s***es of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's s***es ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a s***e catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable s***e. Andrews caught the s***e in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the s***e daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro s***e magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 s***es, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of s***ery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_s***eowners.htm
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***... (show quote)

Reply
Jul 18, 2015 19:46:13   #
no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun
 
Pennylynn wrote:
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***es. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million w****s in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the s***eholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned s***es (1). Even if all s***eholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of w****s in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern w****s owning one or more s***es).

In the rare instances when the ownership of s***es by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black s***e masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white s***eholder 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 b****s who owned s***es. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 s***es in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro s***e masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more s***es; 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 s***eholding states. Of the b****s residing in the South, 261,988 were not s***es. Of this number, 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 s***es, 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 w****s and less than 4.8 percent of southern w****s. The statistics show that, when free, b****s disproportionately became s***e masters.

The majority of s***eholders, white and black, owned only one to five s***es. 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 s***es were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as s***e magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more s***es The largest number, 152 s***es, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro s***e magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 s***es, 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).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned s***es; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented s***e holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were s***e owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro s***eowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a s***e to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former s***e would become a magnate s***e master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among s***es of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white s***e-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, b****smithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly s***es of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the s***e he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the s***e's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent s***eholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under s***ery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become s***es; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of s***es. Black s***e masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free b****s were encouraged to sell themselves into s***ery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired s***e workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other b****s, free and s***e, and poor w****s sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring s***es in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap s***e labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that w****s dealt only with other w****s. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conf**gration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free b****s owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg b****s each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-s***e b****smith, owned two s***es, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as b****smiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 b****s owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and s***es. In 1840 he owned 30 s***es, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine s***es. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a s***e 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for w****s. And Ellison owned more s***es than 99 percent of the South's s***eholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "s***e breeder." S***e breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of s***es under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited s***es (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began s***e breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female s***es at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His s***es were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem s***es.

As with the s***es of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's s***es ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a s***e catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable s***e. Andrews caught the s***e in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the s***e daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro s***e magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 s***es, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of s***ery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_s***eowners.htm
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***... (show quote)


Great information. Thank you for presenting the history of s***ery in America in a way that can be understood by all who care to learn.

Reply
 
 
Jul 18, 2015 20:07:35   #
DamnYANKEE
 
Pennylynn wrote:
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***es. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million w****s in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the s***eholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned s***es (1). Even if all s***eholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of w****s in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern w****s owning one or more s***es).

In the rare instances when the ownership of s***es by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black s***e masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white s***eholder 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 b****s who owned s***es. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 s***es in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro s***e masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more s***es; 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 s***eholding states. Of the b****s residing in the South, 261,988 were not s***es. Of this number, 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 s***es, 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 w****s and less than 4.8 percent of southern w****s. The statistics show that, when free, b****s disproportionately became s***e masters.

The majority of s***eholders, white and black, owned only one to five s***es. 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 s***es were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as s***e magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more s***es The largest number, 152 s***es, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro s***e magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 s***es, 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).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned s***es; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented s***e holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were s***e owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro s***eowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a s***e to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former s***e would become a magnate s***e master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among s***es of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white s***e-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, b****smithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly s***es of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the s***e he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the s***e's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent s***eholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under s***ery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become s***es; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of s***es. Black s***e masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free b****s were encouraged to sell themselves into s***ery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired s***e workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other b****s, free and s***e, and poor w****s sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring s***es in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap s***e labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that w****s dealt only with other w****s. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conf**gration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free b****s owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg b****s each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-s***e b****smith, owned two s***es, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as b****smiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 b****s owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and s***es. In 1840 he owned 30 s***es, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine s***es. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a s***e 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for w****s. And Ellison owned more s***es than 99 percent of the South's s***eholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "s***e breeder." S***e breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of s***es under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited s***es (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began s***e breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female s***es at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His s***es were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem s***es.

As with the s***es of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's s***es ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a s***e catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable s***e. Andrews caught the s***e in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the s***e daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro s***e magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 s***es, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of s***ery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_s***eowners.htm
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***... (show quote)


:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: You just K**LED , ALL LIB/DEMS and KNEEGROWS ANTI-GOP Talking points :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: good job

Reply
Jul 18, 2015 20:18:48   #
gynojunkie
 
Excellent information. Thanks.

Virtually all Western countries eliminated s***ery via the mechanism of "compensated emancipation."

Lincoln started the Civil War instead. Because, you see, it was not about s***ery or emancipation.

It was about power and money. Power--to the fedgov. Money--to the fedgov, as the South was an enormously rich source of wealth that filled the coffers.

We as Americans refuse to accept the concept that the EP did not free all s***es in the U.S.

An inconvenient t***h.




Pennylynn wrote:
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***es. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million w****s in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the s***eholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned s***es (1). Even if all s***eholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of w****s in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern w****s owning one or more s***es).

In the rare instances when the ownership of s***es by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black s***e masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white s***eholder 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 b****s who owned s***es. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 s***es in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro s***e masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more s***es; 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 s***eholding states. Of the b****s residing in the South, 261,988 were not s***es. Of this number, 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 s***es, 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 w****s and less than 4.8 percent of southern w****s. The statistics show that, when free, b****s disproportionately became s***e masters.

The majority of s***eholders, white and black, owned only one to five s***es. 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 s***es were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as s***e magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more s***es The largest number, 152 s***es, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro s***e magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 s***es, 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).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned s***es; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented s***e holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were s***e owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro s***eowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a s***e to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former s***e would become a magnate s***e master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among s***es of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white s***e-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, b****smithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly s***es of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the s***e he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the s***e's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent s***eholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under s***ery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become s***es; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of s***es. Black s***e masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free b****s were encouraged to sell themselves into s***ery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired s***e workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other b****s, free and s***e, and poor w****s sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring s***es in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap s***e labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that w****s dealt only with other w****s. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conf**gration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free b****s owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg b****s each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-s***e b****smith, owned two s***es, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as b****smiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 b****s owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and s***es. In 1840 he owned 30 s***es, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine s***es. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a s***e 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for w****s. And Ellison owned more s***es than 99 percent of the South's s***eholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "s***e breeder." S***e breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of s***es under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited s***es (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began s***e breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female s***es at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His s***es were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem s***es.

As with the s***es of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's s***es ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a s***e catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable s***e. Andrews caught the s***e in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the s***e daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro s***e magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 s***es, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of s***ery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_s***eowners.htm
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***... (show quote)

Reply
Jul 18, 2015 22:40:35   #
J Anthony Loc: Connecticut
 
And? More people than you think know that there were b****s as involved and complicit in the s***e trade as w****s, this is not a revelation. What does that change? How does it help the problems we're dealing with today?

Reply
Jul 19, 2015 09:43:43   #
Kachina
 
Pennylynn wrote:
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***es. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million w****s in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the s***eholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned s***es (1). Even if all s***eholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of w****s in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern w****s owning one or more s***es).

In the rare instances when the ownership of s***es by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black s***e masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white s***eholder 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 b****s who owned s***es. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 s***es in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro s***e masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more s***es; 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 s***eholding states. Of the b****s residing in the South, 261,988 were not s***es. Of this number, 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 s***es, 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 w****s and less than 4.8 percent of southern w****s. The statistics show that, when free, b****s disproportionately became s***e masters.

The majority of s***eholders, white and black, owned only one to five s***es. 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 s***es were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as s***e magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more s***es The largest number, 152 s***es, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro s***e magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 s***es, 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).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned s***es; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented s***e holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were s***e owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro s***eowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a s***e to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former s***e would become a magnate s***e master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among s***es of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white s***e-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, b****smithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly s***es of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the s***e he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the s***e's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent s***eholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under s***ery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become s***es; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of s***es. Black s***e masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free b****s were encouraged to sell themselves into s***ery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired s***e workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other b****s, free and s***e, and poor w****s sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring s***es in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap s***e labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that w****s dealt only with other w****s. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conf**gration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free b****s owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg b****s each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-s***e b****smith, owned two s***es, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as b****smiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 b****s owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and s***es. In 1840 he owned 30 s***es, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine s***es. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a s***e 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for w****s. And Ellison owned more s***es than 99 percent of the South's s***eholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "s***e breeder." S***e breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of s***es under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited s***es (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began s***e breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female s***es at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His s***es were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem s***es.

As with the s***es of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's s***es ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a s***e catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable s***e. Andrews caught the s***e in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the s***e daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro s***e magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 s***es, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of s***ery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_s***eowners.htm
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***... (show quote)




Excelent post pennylyn. Very informative.

Reply
 
 
Jul 19, 2015 11:40:30   #
Artemis
 
Pennylynn wrote:
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***es. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million w****s in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the s***eholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned s***es (1). Even if all s***eholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of w****s in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern w****s owning one or more s***es).

In the rare instances when the ownership of s***es by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black s***e masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white s***eholder 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 b****s who owned s***es. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 s***es in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro s***e masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more s***es; 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 s***eholding states. Of the b****s residing in the South, 261,988 were not s***es. Of this number, 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 s***es, 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 w****s and less than 4.8 percent of southern w****s. The statistics show that, when free, b****s disproportionately became s***e masters.

The majority of s***eholders, white and black, owned only one to five s***es. 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 s***es were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as s***e magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more s***es The largest number, 152 s***es, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro s***e magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 s***es, 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).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned s***es; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented s***e holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were s***e owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro s***eowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a s***e to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former s***e would become a magnate s***e master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among s***es of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white s***e-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, b****smithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly s***es of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the s***e he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the s***e's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent s***eholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under s***ery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become s***es; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of s***es. Black s***e masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free b****s were encouraged to sell themselves into s***ery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired s***e workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other b****s, free and s***e, and poor w****s sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring s***es in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap s***e labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that w****s dealt only with other w****s. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conf**gration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free b****s owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg b****s each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-s***e b****smith, owned two s***es, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as b****smiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 b****s owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and s***es. In 1840 he owned 30 s***es, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine s***es. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a s***e 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for w****s. And Ellison owned more s***es than 99 percent of the South's s***eholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "s***e breeder." S***e breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of s***es under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited s***es (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began s***e breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female s***es at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His s***es were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem s***es.

As with the s***es of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's s***es ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a s***e catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable s***e. Andrews caught the s***e in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the s***e daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro s***e magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 s***es, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of s***ery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_s***eowners.htm
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***... (show quote)



Though this editorial is interesting I cannot equate having this assumption that s***ery would have ended in a short enough time span. It more probably gone on for many more years.

If you see the example used Ellison himself a s***e, when he had become affluent farmer/ businessman he also resigned to retaining s***es himself. With this thought in mind why would one believe s***ery would end shortly at that time?

This is a good parallel to the companies of today not having s***es but instead hiring i*****l a***ns.

It always comes down to the money/profit which was the real issue of the civil war. The powers that be who want the masses to engage in war always attach some virtuous issue to get the people supporting the war, that has never changed.

Until people wise up the manipulation will continue.

Reply
Jul 19, 2015 18:07:08   #
Ricktloml
 
Pennylynn wrote:
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***es. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million w****s in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the s***eholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned s***es (1). Even if all s***eholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of w****s in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern w****s owning one or more s***es).

In the rare instances when the ownership of s***es by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black s***e masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white s***eholder 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 b****s who owned s***es. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 s***es in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro s***e masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more s***es; 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 s***eholding states. Of the b****s residing in the South, 261,988 were not s***es. Of this number, 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 s***es, 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 w****s and less than 4.8 percent of southern w****s. The statistics show that, when free, b****s disproportionately became s***e masters.

The majority of s***eholders, white and black, owned only one to five s***es. 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 s***es were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as s***e magnates.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more s***es The largest number, 152 s***es, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro s***e magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 s***es, 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).

In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned s***es; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented s***e holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were s***e owners (6).

In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro s***eowner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a s***e to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former s***e would become a magnate s***e master.

At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among s***es of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white s***e-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, b****smithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.

On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly s***es of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the s***e he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the s***e's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."

Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent s***eholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.

Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under s***ery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become s***es; this because they were unable to support themselves.

Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of s***es. Black s***e masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free b****s were encouraged to sell themselves into s***ery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."

In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired s***e workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.

On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.

In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other b****s, free and s***e, and poor w****s sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring s***es in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.

Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap s***e labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that w****s dealt only with other w****s. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.

In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conf**gration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free b****s owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg b****s each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."

Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-s***e b****smith, owned two s***es, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as b****smiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 b****s owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.

The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.

In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.

By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and s***es. In 1840 he owned 30 s***es, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine s***es. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.

In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a s***e 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for w****s. And Ellison owned more s***es than 99 percent of the South's s***eholders.

Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "s***e breeder." S***e breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of s***es under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited s***es (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began s***e breeding.

While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female s***es at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His s***es were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem s***es.

As with the s***es of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's s***es ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a s***e catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable s***e. Andrews caught the s***e in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.

William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the s***e daughter he had sold.

Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.

The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."

Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro s***e magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 s***es, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).

A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of s***ery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_s***eowners.htm
In 1860 only a small minority of w****s owned s***... (show quote)


Very interesting history. S***ery was an institution worldwide, America did a far better job of dealing with this ugly fact than most other countries. It's a shame these t***hs aren't taught

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