The First Legal Slave Owner in What Would Become the United States was a Black Man
Today I found out the first legal slave owner, in what would eventually become the United States, was a black man.
The man was Anthony Johnson. Johnson first came over to America as
an indentured servant, arriving in 1620 in the Colony of Virginia. He
did not come over willingly, as many did, agreeing to become indentured
servants in exchange for passage to the New World. Rather, Johnson was
captured in Angola by neighboring tribesmen and eventually sold to a
merchant who transported him to Virginia, where he was then sold to a
tobacco farmer.Despite this, Johnson was not technically a slave, as most think of it. He was simply required to serve the farmer for a time in exchange for room and board. However, like slaves, indentured servants could be sold or lent out to someone else, and, for the most part, they could be punished how those that owned their contracts saw fit.
One of the biggest differences between slaves and indentured servants was that once the indentured servant’s contract was up, depending on the agreement made with the person paying for transport, often the former servant would be given some small compensation for their services to help them get their start as free individuals. This might include some amount of land, food (often a year’s worth), clothing, and tools.
During their time serving, indentured servants also typically learned some trade as they worked, which was significant for many who chose to make the journey to the Americas as indentured servants- often poor, uneducated individuals, lacking a trade, and in search of the promise of a better life. Because of this, in the early days, most indentured servants in the British colonies in America were actually Irish, English, German, and Scottish, rather than African.
Johnson, of course, didn’t choose to come over. Nevertheless, once in America, he toiled away as a tobacco farmer for the duration of his contract. During this time, he also met a woman (soon to be his wife) named simply “Mary”, who had been brought over to America about two years after Johnson, with her contract also being purchased by the same man who owned Johnson’s contract.
In 1635, after working on the tobacco farm for about 14 years, Johnson was granted his freedom and acquired land and the necessaries to start his own farm. Sources are conflicting on whether he purchased the remaining years on his wife’s contract or whether she completed it, but in the end, the two, with their lives now their own, began working for themselves.
They soon prospered and took advantage of the “headright” system in place for encouraging more colonists, where if you paid to bring a new colonist over, whether purchasing them at the docks or arranging it before hand with someone, you’d be awarded 50 acres of land. Similarly, those who paid their own passage would be given land under this system.
This leads us to 1654. One of Johnson’s servants, John Casor who was brought over from Africa, claimed he was under a “seaven or eight yeares” contract and that he’d completed it. Thus, he asked Johnson for his freedom.
Johnson didn’t see things this way, and denied the request. Despite this, according to Casor, Johnson eventually agreed to allow him to leave, with pressure supposedly coming from Johnson’s family who felt that Casor should be free. Thus, Casor went to work for a man by the name of Robert Parker.
Either Johnson changed his mind or he never said Casor could go, because he soon filed a lawsuit against Parker claiming that Parker stole his servant, and that Casor was Johnson’s for life and was not an indentured servant.
Johnson ultimately won the case, and not only did he get his servant back, but Casor became Johnson’s slave for life as Johnson had said he was. This officially made Johnson the first legal slave owner in the colonies that would eventually become the United States. (There were other slaves before this, just not ones that were legal in the British colonies under common law).
The judge’s decision on the matter was announced as follows:
This daye Anthony Johnson negro made his complaint to the court against Mr. Robert Parker and declared that hee deteyneth his servant John Casor negro under the pretence that said negro was a free man. The court seriously consideringe and maturely weighing the premisses, doe fynde that the saide Mr. Robert Parker most unjustly keepeth the said Negro from Anthony Johnson his master … It is therefore the Judgement of the Court and ordered That the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of the said master Anthony Johnson, And that Mr. Robert Parker make payment of all charges in the suit.About 7 years later, Virginia made this practice legal for everyone, in 1661, by making it state law for any free white, black, or Indian, to be able to own slaves, along with indentured servants, as they’d been able to have before.
While Johnson’s temporarily gain of being granted the services of one of his indentured servants for life no doubt had a positive affect on his thriving business, ultimately the gradual changing of attitudes in the colonies concerning slavery and race came back to hurt Johnson’s family, with slavery slowly becoming less about one’s original financial situation and more about where you or your ancestors were originally from.
When he died in 1670, rather than his thriving plantation going to his children, the court declared that “as a black man, Anthony Johnson was not a citizen of the colony” and awarded the estate to a white settler. Quite a contrast to the declaration in 1654 by the court that Johnson and his wife were “…inhabitants in Virginia (above thirty years) [and respected for] hard labor and known service.”
Bonus Facts:
- While most of the land in Johnson’s estate was taken away, his children were allowed a small portion of Johnson’s former property to use to provide for themselves, but even that 40 acres was lost by Johnson’s grandson, John Jr., when he was unable to pay his taxes one year.
- While Johnson is generally considered by most historians to be the first legal slave owner in what would become the United States, there was one person who preceded him in 1640 who owned a slave in all but name. The virtual slave was John Punch, ordered to be an indentured servant for life, though by law was still considered an indentured servant with all the rights that went with that. In Punch’s case, he was made a lifelong indentured servant owing to the fact that he tried to leave before his contract was up. When he was captured and brought back, the judge in the matter decided a suitable punishment was to have Punch’s contract continue for the rest of his life.
- What makes Punch’s case even more interesting (and unfair) is that when he ran away, he ran away with two white indentured servants who were also seeking to get out of their contract. The punishment for the white indentured servants was not a lifetime of servitude, though. Rather, they were given 30 lashes with a whip and a mere additional 4 years on their contracts.
- The average price for bringing an indentured servant over to America in the 17th century was just £6. Meaning that under the headright system, as long as you could afford to feed, clothe, and house them, you could acquire 50 acres of land for just over £1 per 10 acres.
- The first Africans to be imported to the Americas were brought over in the 1560s, primarily in areas controlled by Spain. The English colonies didn’t start importing Africans until much later, around 1619, just a couple years before Anthony Johnson was brought over. The first group to the British colonies were imported to Jamestown and comprised of 20 Africans who had been aboard a Spanish ship that was attacked by a Dutch vessel. After the Dutch crew successfully took over the Spanish ship, they were left with 20 Africans who they took to Jamestown and declared were indentured servants, trading them for supplies.
- In Virginia, in 1662, legislatures enacted a law stating that if you owned a slave, not only were they yours for life, but any children of a slave mother would also be a slave, regardless of whether the father was a slave or not. Before this, the father’s status was typically what was used to determine the child’s status, regardless of race or the mother.
- A further change of the laws came in 1670 when a law was passed forbidding those of African or Indian descent from owning any “Christian” slaves. In this case, this did not necessarily mean literal Christian slaves; if you had a black or Indian slave who was a Christian, that was fine, as they were black or Indian, and thus “heathen”, regardless of what they said or believed or even if they were baptized.
- A further hardening of the laws came in 1699. In an attempt to get rid of all the prominent free black people, Virginia enacted a law requiring all free black people to leave the colony, to further cement the majority of free people in the colonies as non-black, and allow the tyranny of the majority with respect to those of African descent to progress unhindered. Many did not have the funds to actually leave, and some chose to ignore the decree, as relationships between whites and free blacks tended to be as you’d expect humans to act towards one another, namely somewhat friendly in many cases; this included some intermarrying, despite the fact that to some extent this was discouraged even then, primarily because Africans were considered “heathens”. Obviously those either from Africa or of African descent who had married someone of European descent weren’t inclined to leave their spouses and homes. In fact, it’s estimated that about 80% of all those non-slaves of African descent in the United States between 1790 and 1810 were a product of this intermarrying in the Virginia colony.
In an 1856 letter to his wife Mary Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee
called slavery "a moral and political evil." Yet he concluded that
black slaves were immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally,
socially and physically.
The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned
black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their
representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of
whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last
year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the
country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.
The
census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals
who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that
would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8
percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).
In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history
books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were
simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a
white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although
this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the
majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on
blacks who owned slaves. These include
individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton
District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in
1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10
or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).
According
to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5
million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of
them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing
in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of 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 slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes
in that city.
To
return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly
impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American
whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show
that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.
The
majority of slaveholders, white and black, owned only one to five
slaves. More often than not, and contrary to a century and a half of
bullwhips-on-tortured-backs propaganda, black and white masters worked
and ate alongside their charges; be it in house,
field or workshop. The few individuals who owned 50 or more slaves were
confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as slave
magnates.
In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana
who owned 65 or more slaves The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned
by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large
sugar cane plantation. Another Negro slave magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 slaves, was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter whose estate was valued at (in 1860 dollars) $264,000 (3). That year, the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978 (4).
In Charleston, South Carolina
in 1860 125 free Negroes owned slaves; 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 slave holdings (5). In North
Carolina 69 free Negroes were slave owners (6).
In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro slaveowner. 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 slave to his death
at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own
speculation, as to why a former slave would become a magnate slave
master.
At
birth he was given the name April. A common practice among slaves 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 slave-owner
named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of
carpentry, blacksmithing 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 slaves 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 slave he sought to
free. Also required was evidence of the slave'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 slaveholders from freeing individuals who would become a
burden on the general public.
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 slaves. Black slave masters owned
members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free blacks were encouraged to sell themselves into slavery 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 slave 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 blacks, free and slave, and poor whites 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 slaves 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 slave labor, that
many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit
impressions that whites dealt only with other whites. 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 conflagration
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 blacks 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 blacks each
owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the
war."
Jordan
offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-slave blacksmith, owned
two slaves, 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 blacksmiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oystermen and day
laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 blacks 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 slaves. In 1840 he owned 30 slaves,
and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property,
owned an additional nine slaves. 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
slave 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 whites. And Ellison owned more slaves than 99 percent of the
South's slaveholders.
Although
a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of
income derived from being a "slave breeder." Slave breeding was looked
upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern
states forbade the sale of slaves under the age of 12. In several states
it was illegal to sell inherited slaves (9). Nevertheless, in 1840
Ellison secretly began slave 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 slaves at an average price of $400. Ellison had a
reputation as a harsh master. His slaves 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 slaves.
As
with the slaves of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's
slaves 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 slave 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 slave. Andrews caught the slave 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 slave 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 slave 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
slaves, 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 slavery would have disappeared. The nation would have
been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.
NOTES
1. The American Negro: Old World Background and New World Experience, Raymond Logan and Irving Cohen New York: Houghton and Mifflin, 1970), p.72.
2. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South, Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak New York: Norton, 1984), p.64.
3. The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color, Gary Mills (Baton Rouge, 1977); Black Masters, p.128.
4. Male inheritance expectations in the United States in 1870, 1850-1870, Lee Soltow (New Haven, 1975), p.85.
5. Black Masters, Appendix, Table 7; p.280.
6. Black Masters, p. 62.
7. Information on the Ellison family was obtained from Black Masters; the number of slaves they owned was gained from U.S. Census Reports.
8. In 1860 South Carolina had only 21 gin makers; Ellison, his three sons and a grandson account for five of the total.
9. Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States, Carl N. Degler (New York, Macmillan, 1971), p.39;
Negro Slavery in Louisiana, Joe Gray Taylor (Baton Rouge, 1963), pp. 4041.
Negro Slavery in Louisiana, Joe Gray Taylor (Baton Rouge, 1963), pp. 4041.
10. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, Eric Foner (New York; Harper & Row, 1988), p. 47; pp. 353-355.
Kindle Available
Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860
An analysis of all aspects and particularly of the commercialism of black slaveowning debunks the myth that black slaveholding was a benevolent institution based on kinship, and explains the transition of black masters from slavery to paid labor.
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