At the height of slavery in 1860, the U.S. Census showed that out of a population of 27 million Whites in the country, only 1.4% of this population owned slaves. It was in the South the majority of slave owners existed and was 4.8% of the entire population of the United States.

Census records of the period also recorded blacks who owned slaves. These records include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. That's a pretty extraordinary number, but the historical records present an even more astounding revelation. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2). The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.

To return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.

In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more slaves. The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro slave magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 slaves, was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter whose estate was valued at (in 1860 dollars) $264,000 (3). That year, the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978 (4). In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned slaves; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented slave holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were slave owners (6). In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro slave owner.

Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring slaves in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. The article, "SELLING POOR STEVEN", also deals with the U.S. Census of 1830, which showed that 3,775 Free Negro’s owned 12,760 slaves. Some women owned their husbands (You’ve come a long way, baby?), and vice versa. Free Negro parents sold their children into slavery for fun and profit.

Thomas Young, a free Negro of Chatham Co. GA owned 302 slaves. He leased them out to plantation owners. Many others did likewise. Many others did likewise. This is outlined in the book “FREE NEGRO OWNERS OF SLAVES IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1830,” by Carter G. Woodson, a Negro historian. On top of all of this, there were White Slaves in America. Up to one-half of all the arrivals in the American colonies were Whites slaves and they were America's first slaves. These Whites were slaves for life, long before Blacks ever were. This slavery was even hereditary. White children born to White slaves were enslaved too. The Establishment has created the misnomer of "indentured servitude" to explain away and minimize the fact of White slavery. But bound Whites in early America called themselves slaves. Nine-tenths of the White slavery in America was conducted without indentures of any kind but according to the so-called "custom of the country," as it was known, which was lifetime slavery administered by the slave merchants themselves.

In George Sandy’s laws for Virginia, Whites were enslaved "forever." The service of Whites bound to Berkeley's Hundred was deemed "perpetual."

And there is much more to the story.