African American slaveowners response

We've been quite busy these days working on many of our projects. But it is very important to address this comment which needs to be done before more time goes by.

Bill Hand who is assisting us on The Freedom Lost Project, gave me permission to post this article he wrote on the blog in response to the question about African Americans owning slaves. Bill has a good understanding of the history of New Bern and we are grateful to have him as a part of this important project.

Some Cololnial Blacks Owned Slaves, But Not in James City
By Bill Hand

I am assisting Tom, a friend of mine, on a documentary about the founding of James City. Recently an article about his project appeared in the Sun Journal, and it prompted an interesting letter:

"Please remember that New Bern and James City have a VERY RICH HISTORY OF BLACK SLAVE OWNERS. They, I believe, owned more slaves than the white owners in the rest of the county. Please look into the published, but not too popular, history of the true old south. Although it may not get votes it will inform the masses of the truth of New Bern!"

This topic is one that is, unfortunately, more debated by activists than by historians. You rarely read a commentary that does not include lines full of UPPER CASE SHOUTING.

Our letter writer is partially right: some free blacks owned slaves. Some of them lived in New Bern. This is especially true around the early-to-mid 1800s. But James City? It didn't exist until 1863 for runaway blacks seeking freedom during the Civil War. I have serious doubts any of them had slaves.

The fact that blacks owned slaves is not in question, though why they did is a hot-button topic. One prevalent view is that blacks purchased slaves for the purpose of either freeing them (their wives and children, for instance) or to benevolently give them a better life. Carter G. Woodson was the founder of this theory, promoted in his 1923 book "Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States." It is a pretty notion, but history is what things were, not what we wish things had been.

New Bern's best-known Negro slave owner was John Caruthers Stanly, the black son of the white privateer John Wright Stanly. Born a slave, he earned his freedom, became relatively wealthy and was generally accepted by the white society, so long as they believed he "knew his place." He freed his wife, Kitty, and a few others - such as the barbers who worked under him, after years of service, and a woman who had cared for Kitty in her dying days.

John owned more slaves than any of his white contemporaries at the height of his career: 200 is the figure usually cited, though I've not personally seen the official source. He owned most of his slaves for the same reason that whites did: he needed their labor.

He had more slaves than any other Craven County man of his day, but whites before and after him owned more: New Bernian George Pollock was reported to have some 1,500.

Stanly was not the only black who owned slaves, of course.

John Whitford referred to black slave owners he knew:

"Some of the free negroes were slave owners themselves, and were not slow to so traffic when their means would allow it. Too they were alway[s] rigid and, in some instances, cruel task masters. One fellow sold his own father at New Bern, the writer was personally acquainted with him, and though seemingly heartless by such an inhuman act was not vicious in disposition. Yes, sold his father to the negro speculator from Long Island, New York, John Gildersleeve, to go south in the corn fields."

Stephen Miller, in his "New Bern 50 Years Ago" (written in the 1870s), mentions one Donum Mumford, a "copper-colored" bricklayer and plasterer "with slaves, a number whom he owned."

Still, if we take Mr. Miller's words, it appears that slaves owned by blacks were the exception more than the rule here. He mentioned other black business owners but only listed J. C. Stanly as another slave owner. His general view of New Bern's colored race?

"There was quite a large population of the free negro class, who lived chiefly to themselves in the outskirts of town. Some of them were industrious and inoffensive; but the greatest number ... picked up a precarious living, honest or otherwise, as circumstances permitted." Even allowing for prejudicial exaggeration that does not leave many blacks in a financial condition to purchase slaves.

You can be sure we'll speak of the Peculiar Institution again.

Bill Hand is the author of two books about New Bern, Remembering Craven County and A Walking Tour of Historic New Bern. Both books are available at local stores or through Amazon.com.