Though much of the historical data (such as census records), facts (such as the burning of a courthouse in 1912), and academic reports, as well as the county of Manchester, were created by Jones, the basic premise of the book is based in truth: Some free blacks did own other blacks as slaves in pre-Civil War America. In 1830, census figures show that free blacks owned slaves in at least four states: Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia. These free blacks owned at least 10,000 slaves in total, with most concentrated in Louisiana. Thirty years later, while the vast majority of the approximately 385,000 people identified as slave owners were white, free blacks continued to own slaves. In the states where slavery was legal in 1860, there were about four million black people, and only about 270,000 were free.

Some of the free blacks who were listed...