Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (2024)

FAQs

What was the free black population in the South in 1860? ›

Consequently, there were two broad groups of Southern free blacks, Berlin writes. Not only did the vast majority live in the Upper South (224,963 in 1860 versus 36,955 in the Lower South in 1860), they were on average darker-skinned and more rural than their Lower South counterparts.

A Free Black Town

The people became Catholics and adopted Spanish names and Spanish culture with an African flavor. This settlement, Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, or Fort Mose, (mo-say) became the first legally-established free African settlement in North America.

As African Americans built lives as free people in a free society during Reconstruction, they eagerly sought opportunities to learn. Before Emancipation, whites generally denied or restricted African Americans' access to education in an effort to justify and maintain slavery.

Free African Americans were rarely accepted into white society. Some states applied their slave codes to free African Americans as well. Perhaps the most horrifying prospect was kidnapping. Slave catchers would sometimes abduct free African Americans and force them back into slavery.

Men, women, and children were captured to such a devastating extent that vast numbers of sea coast towns were abandoned. According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries.

The Atlantic passage, or Middle Passage, usually to Brazil or an island in the Caribbean, was notorious for its brutality and for the overcrowded unsanitary conditions on slave ships, in which hundreds of Africans were packed tightly into tiers below decks for a voyage of about 5,000 miles (8,000 km) that could last ...

Although some planters manumitted elderly slaves who could no longer work, most elderly slaves remained on plantations with their families, and their masters were expected to provide for them until they died.

Dec 18, 1865 CE: Slavery is Abolished. On December 18, 1865, the 13th Amendment was adopted as part of the United States Constitution. The amendment officially abolished slavery, and immediately freed more than 100,000 enslaved people, from Kentucky to Delaware.

Historical Context. With the end of slavery, newly freed people needed jobs. A majority of freedmen and women drew up contracts with the plantation owners and became employees of their former owners.

Evidence of slavery predates written records; the practice has existed in many cultures and can be traced back 11,000 years ago due to the conditions created by the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution. Economic surpluses and high population densities were conditions that made mass slavery viable.

Why did white southerners who were not enslavers support slavery? ›

Final answer: The South remained loyal to slavery due to economic benefits that enabled cheaper production of goods like cotton, a social hierarchy that provided a sense of superiority for white Southerners, and a cultural ideology that promoted slavery as a foundational aspect of society.

While accurate numbers are hard to come by, the American population at the time was approximately 2.1 million; free blacks comprised 2.4 percent of the overall population, and slaves formed 21.5 percent.

In the southern colonies during the Revolution, free blacks served in colonial regiments and militias, but were more likely to assist the British. At war's end, almost all black loyalists were transported to Canada, Britain, the West Indies, or Sierra Leone, reducing the South's already small free black population.

Free Blacks in Virginia numbered 58,042 on the eve of the American Civil War (1861–1865), or about 44 percent of the future Confederacy's free Black population. Of the slave states, only Maryland had a larger population, with 83,942.