According to the Census of 1860 there were in the slave-holding States altogether 261,918 free colored persons, 106,770 being mulattoes.  In Charleston there were 887 free blacks and 2,554 mulattoes; in Mobile, 98 free blacks and 617 mulattoes; in New Orleans, 1,727 blacks and 7,357 mulattoes.  As will be seen, nearly one-half of the entire number of free colored persons were mulattoes, while in the leading Southern cities seventy-five per cent. of the free colored people were put in this class.  The percentage of mulatto slaves to the total slave population at that time was 10.41, and in the same cities which showed seventy-five per cent, of all the free colored persons mulattoes, the percentage of mulatto slaves was but 16.84.  Mulatto in this classification includes all colored persons who are not put down as black.

In New Orleans the free mulattoes were generally French, having come into the Union with the Louisiana purchase, and among them were to be found wealthy slave-holders.  They much resembled the class of mulattoes which obtained in St. Domingo at the beginning of the century, and had but little sympathy with the blacks, although they were the first to acquiesce in emancipation, some of them actually leading their own slaves into the army of liberation.  It is possible, however, that they had not fully realized the trend of the war, inasmuch as New Orleans was excepted from the effects of the Proclamation.  It is certain that the free colored people of that city made a tender of support to the Confederacy, although they were among the first to welcome the conquering “Yankees,” and afterward fought with marked gallantry in the Union cause.  The free mulattoes, or browns, as they called themselves, of Charleston, followed much the same course as their fellow classmen of New Orleans.  Here, too, they had been exclusive and to some extent slave-holders, had tendered their services to the Confederacy, and had hastily come forward to welcome the conquerors.  They were foremost among the colored people in wealth and intelligence, but their field of social operations had been so circumscribed that they had exerted but little influence in the work of Americanizing the slave.  Separated from the slave by law and custom they did all in their power to separate themselves from him in thought and feeling.  They drew the line against all blacks as mercilessly and senselessly as the most prejudiced of the whites and were duplicates of the whites placed on an intermediate plane.  It was not unusual to find a Charleston brown filled with more prejudice toward the blacks than were the whites.

     [Transcriber’s Note:  This footnote appeared in the text
     without a footnote anchor:  “Census of 1860.”]

The colored people of the North in 1860 numbered 237,283, Pennsylvania having the largest number, 56,849; then came New York with 49,005; Ohio, 36,673; New Jersey, 25,318; Indiana, 11,428; Massachusetts, 9,602; Connecticut, 8,627; Illinois, 7,628; Michigan, 6,799; Rhode Island, 3,952; Maine, 1,327; Wisconsin, 1,171; Iowa, 1,069; Vermont, 709; Kansas, 625; New Hampshire, 494; Minnesota, 259; Oregon, 128.