The exact breakdown of black slaveowners by category does
not yet exist; for some insights into the life of at least one black master,
Johnson and Roark's book provides a fairly detailed examination of what
are necessarily incomplete records. William Ellison was born a slave
in 1790, and developed a skill as a master craftsman, a cotton gin maker.
He bought himself out of slavery, apparently with the active encouragement
of his master -- who may well have been his father -- and became, in turn,
a slaveowner himself -- and wealthier than 90% of white Southerners.
Indeed, he owned more slaves "than all but the richest white planters."
[pp. xi-xii]
As it examines the status of William Ellison, his relationships
with white masters, and the social milleu of Charleston, this book also
paints an interesting portrait of the three race system of South Carolina
life. While whites considered free mulattoes (those of mixed white
and black race) in the same category as pure blacks, the mulattoes insisted
on keeping distinctions, one of their "attempts to shape social reality
to their sense of themselves as an intermediate class, to give repeated
public demonstrations that their social niche had clear racial boundaries
and that their racial niche had equally crisp social limits." [pp. 225-226]
The chapter "Masters or Slaves" wanders far afield from
William Ellison and his family, but provides some interesting insights
into the manner in which working class free whites regarded free blacks
and slaves who directly contracted their labor (sometimes with little or
no involvement by their masters) as a threat to their economic status,
and vigorously sought laws on the eve of the Civil War to prevent blacks
from competing on an equal basis in what was essentially a color-blind,
free market economy.
Perhaps the most startling part of the book is the extent
to which the Ellison family identified with the slaveowners of the Confederacy.
His sons invested heavily in Confederate war bonds, and his grandson John
Wilson Buckner was allowed to enlist in the South Carolina Artillery because
of "personal associations and a sterling family reputation...." [pp. 305-307]
Of course, once the Civil War was over, this identification with their
class, not their race, paid bitter rewards. The bonds were defaulted,
and the Ellison family slaves freed. Without slaves, and in the subsequent
depression, the Ellison family's land became worth far less -- broken as
much as many white slaveowners.
Clayton's rating: Well-written, filled with fascinating
and at times astonishing information. Aimed at a well-educated and
scholarly audience.
You can order it from amazon.com
Black slaveowners? Most people are shocked and
amazed to discover that there were black slaveowners. While always
an anomaly, there were 10,000 to 12,000 black slaveowners in 1860, though
many of them had purchased family members and continued to hold them in
slavery because their state of residence did not allow masters to free
slaves.