Many of the Black Slaveowners of South Carolina Were Former Slaves; the Attitudes and Actions of Colored Masters Appeared to be Similar to Those of the White Slaveowners

Because the history of black slaveholding has been almost ignored by scholars, the literature on the slaveholding of free blacks is lacking in quantity. Most of the studies examining black slaveowning are written in the form of articles, although numerous other works mention the existence of black masters. So far as the author is aware, the subject of black slaveholding has not been explored on a general or a statewide level in a monograph. Such studies are needed, and it is hoped that this book will, so far as South Carolina is concerned, supply this need.

Although South Carolina may not have been the typical Southern state where free blacks owned slaves, it provided the unique setting of being the bridge between the Upper and the Deep South, thus embracing elements of both societies. In the Palmetto State, there were blacks who owned scores of slaves and large tracts of land like the black slaveowners of Louisiana. Primarily, however, South Carolina's black masters were small slaveholders who owned one or two slaves, like the black slaveowners of Maryland and Virginia. Many of these small slaveholders owned family members who could not be emancipated because the state legislatures prohibited private manumission unless the freed slave left the state.

This book is a study of black slaveholders who were diverse in background and character. Many of the black slaveowners of South Carolina were former slaves who rose from the shackles of bondage to the ranks of slave masters. Still others were one or two generations removed from slavery, and their parents and grandparents were slave masters who passed their human chattel from parent to child. Yet the ranks of the colored masters were not all from the elite class of black society. In the Palmetto State, free blacks who worked as draymen, stable keepers, and washerwomen acquired the money to purchase slaves. Within the community of slaveholders, there were free blacks who bought slaves for humanitarian reasons and broke the laws of South Carolina to maintain the freedom they granted their slaves. Yet black slaveholding in South Carolina was primarily a commercial venture, and the attitudes and actions of colored masters appeared to be similar to those of the white slaveowners. In essence, free black masters embraced many of the attitudes of the white community even while they remained on the fringe of the society.

--Larry Koger, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1985), e-book.