Urban freemen had on the average a somewhat higher level of attainment than their rural fellows, for among them was commonly a larger proportion of mulattoes and quadroons and of those who had demonstrated their capacity for self direction by having bought their own freedom.  Recruits of some skill in the crafts, furthermore, came in from the country, because of the advantages which town industry, in sharp contrast with that of the plantations, gave to free labor.  A characteristic state of affairs is shown by the official register of free persons of color in Richmond County, Georgia, wherein lay the city of Augusta, for the year 1819[49].  Of the fifty-three men listed, including a planter and a steamboat pilot, only seven were classed as common laborers, while all the rest had specific trades or employments.  The prosperity of the group must have been but moderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workers at washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; and although an African church in the town had an aged sexton, its minister must have drawn most of his livelihood from some week-day trade, for no designation of a preacher appears in the list.  At Charleston, likewise, according to the city census of 1848, only 19 free colored men in a total of 239 listed in manual occupations were unclassified laborers, while the great majority were engaged in the shop and building trades.  The women again were very numerous in sewing and washing employments, and an appreciable number of them were domestic servants outright.[50]

[Footnote 49:  Augusta Chronicle, Mch. 13, 1819, reprinted in Plantation and Frontier, II, 143-147.]

[Footnote 50:  Dawson and DeSaussure, Census of Charleston for 1848, summarized in the table given on p. 403 of the present work.]

In the compendium of the United States census of 1850 there are printed in parallel columns the statistics of occupations among the free colored males above fifteen years of age in the cities of New York and New Orleans.  In the Northern metropolis there were 3337 enumerated, and in the Southern 1792.  The former had 4 colored lawyers and 3 colored druggists while the latter had none of either; and the colored preachers and doctors were 21 to 1 and 9 to 4 in New York’s favor.  But New Orleans had 4 colored capitalists, 2 planters, 11 overseers, 9 brokers and 2 collectors, with none of any of these at New York; and 64 merchants, 5 jewelers and 61 clerks to New York’s 3, 3 and 7 respectively, and 12 colored teachers to 8.  New York had thrice New Orleans’ number of colored barbers, and twice as many butchers; but her twelve carpenters and no masons were contrasted with 355 and 278 in these two trades at New Orleans, and her cigar makers, tailors, painters, coopers, blacksmiths and general mechanics were not in much better proportion.  One-third of all New York’s colored men, indeed, were unskilled laborers and another