[Footnote 37:  For the use of this MS. petition with its accompanying certificates I am indebted to Mr. J.F.  Schindler of New York.]

Evidence of slaveholdings by colored freemen occurs also in the bills of sale filed in various public archives.  One of these records that a citizen of Charleston sold in 1828 a man slave to the latter’s free colored sister at a price of one dollar, “provided he is kindly treated and is never sold, he being an unfortunate individual and requiring much attention.”  In the same city a free colored man bought a slave sailmaker for $200.[38] At Savannah in 1818 Richard Richardson sold a slave woman and child for $800 to Alex Hunter, guardian of the colored freeman Louis Mirault, in trust for him; and in 1833 Anthony Ordingsell, free colored, having obtained through his guardian an order of court, sold a slave woman to the highest bidder for $385.[39]

[Footnote 38:  MSS. in the files of slave sales in the South Carolina archives at Columbia.]

[Footnote 39:  MSS. among the county archives at Savannah, Ga.]

It is clear that aside from the practice of holding slave relatives as a means of giving them virtual freedom, an appreciable number of colored proprietors owned slaves purely as a productive investment.  It was doubtless a group of these who sent a joint communication to a New Orleans newspaper when secession and war were impending:  “The free colored population (native) of Louisiana ... own slaves, and they are dearly attached to their native land, ... and they are ready to shed their blood for her defence.  They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana....  They will fight for her in 1861 as they fought in 1814-’15....  If they have made no demonstration it is because they have no right to meddle with politics, but not because they are not well disposed.  All they ask is to have a chance, and they will be worthy sons of Louisiana."[40] Oral testimony gathered by the present writer from old residents in various quarters of the South supports the suggestion of this letter that many of the well-to-do colored freemen tended to prize their distinctive position so strongly as to deplore any prospect of a general emancipation for fear it would submerge them in the great black mass.

[Footnote 40:  Letter to the editor, signed “A large number of them,” in the New Orleans Daily Delta, Dec. 28, 1860.  Men of this element had indeed rendered service under Jackson in the defence of the city against Pakenham, as Louisianians well knew.]