A case more amusing than pathetic was that of Betsy Fuller, a free Negro huckstress of Norfolk, and her slave husband.  The colored man’s legal status was that of property belonging to his wife.  Upon the approach of the Civil War he was blatant in his advocacy of Southern views, thus evincing his indifference to emancipation.[17]

Feeble efforts were made by the legislature for a score of years before the war to limit the power of free Negroes to acquire slaves for profit.  By an act of 1832 free Negroes were declared incapable of purchasing or otherwise acquiring permanent ownership, except by descent, of any slaves other than husband, wife, and children.  Contracts for the sale of a slave to a black man were to be regarded as void.[18] But even this attempt at limitation was passed by a bare majority of one.[19] Within three years of the beginning of the War the law was revised to read:  “No free negro shall be capable of acquiring, except by descent, any slave.” [20] In the opinion of a judge who passed upon this law, its object was “to keep slaves as far as possible under the control of white men only, and to prevent free negroes from holding persons of their own race in personal subjection to themselves.  Perhaps also it is intended to evince the distinctive superiority of the white race.” [21]

Whatever may have been their object these acts are of more significance because of the story they tell than they ever were in accomplishing the emancipation of slaves from masters of the black race.  The period of the existence of the black master was conterminous with the period of the existence of slavery.  By the same immortal proclamation which broke the shackles of slaves serving white masters were rent asunder, also, the bonds which held slaves to masters of their own race and color.

JOHN H. RUSSELL, PH.D., (Professor of Political Science, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington.)

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Acknowledgments are due to the Johns Hopkins Press for permitting the use in this article of data included in the author’s monograph entitled “The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865.”

[2] Hening’s Statutes at Large of Virginia, Vol.  II, p. 280 (1670).  Italics my own.

[3] Hening, Vol.  V, p. 550.

[4] Original MS. Records of the County Court of Northampton.  Orders, Deeds and Wills, 1651-1654, p. 20.

[5] Original MS. Records of the County Court of Northampton.  Orders, Deeds and Wills, 1651-1654, p. 10.

[6] Original MS. Records of Northampton Co., 1651-1654, p. 200.

[7] MS. Land Patents of Virginia, 1643-1651, 326.

[8] MS. Court Records of Northampton Co., 1651-1654, p. 161.

[9] J. C. Hotten, “Lists of Emigrants to America,” pp. 218-258.

[10] MS. Deeds of Henrico County, No. 5, p. 585.

[11] MS Legislative Petitions, Dinwiddie County, 1833, A 5123, Virginia State Library.