A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves.  Thus Lucinda who had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state petitioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband “from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering as they are, could not induce her to be separated."[68] On other grounds William Bass petitioned the South Carolina general assembly in 1859, reciting “That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whom he comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodied man, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not, committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and lives a thousand times harder and in more destitution than the slaves of many planters in this district.”  He accordingly asked permission by special act to become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receive him if he could lawfully do so.[69] To provide systematically for such occasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enacted laws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color at their own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case to enslave themselves to such masters as they might select.[70] The Virginia law, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of any creditors against the negro by requiring a month’s notice during which protests might be entered, and it also required the prospective master to pay to the state half the negro’s appraised value.  Among the Virginia archives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widely scattered localities.[71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from $300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuations of $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy years old suggest that some of these undertakings were of a charitable nature.  An instance in the general premises occurred in Georgia, as late as July, 1864, when a negro freeman in dearth of livelihood sold himself for five hundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his free wife.[72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surer escape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appears to be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratio than among the whites.

[Footnote 68:  Plantation and Frontier, II, 161, 162.]

[Footnote 69:  Ibid., II, 163, 164.]

[Footnote 70:  In the absence of permissive laws the self-enslavement of negroes was invalid.  Texas Supreme Court Reports, XXIV, 560.  And a negro who had deeded his services for ninety-nine years was adjudged to retain his free status, though the contract between him and his employer was not thereby voided.  North Carolina Supreme Court Reports, LX, 434.]