5fish
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Something has been lost in this conversation... I have on issue of Free Black men buying their wives or children and owning them as slaves to keep their families together. I have no issue in whatever combination it takes to keep one's family together.black man bought his wife
You always want to imitate those in charge for that is the role model... If you read about Empires when a new rising empire supplants an old empire they tend to emulate the old empire in selective ways...they still wanted to be like the pinkskins (the better pinkskins, that is)
The Free people of color can think what they want to think once their state joined to the union. They were considered to be black in the eye of most American white people... I argue you read through Andrew Durnford stuff he knew he was black but was ambiguous about his treatment of slaves in the name of self interest. He was no better than white slave owners and worst in other...An arm of my ancestors were enslaved by Free People of Color in Lousiana. They certainly didn't see themselves as Black -- and would spit at anyone who claimed they were.
Another point they knew the People of color knew inside them selves look at Ellison son... fleeing the south...
As public opinion turned against free blacks, William Ellison, Jr., a free mulatto whose father owned dozens of slaves, attempted to leave South Carolina in 1860. The agents for a Philadelphia steamer refused Ellison and his children passage, claiming that if they turned out to be escaped slaves, anyone found guilty of helping them leave the South could be executed. They suggested instead that Ellison declare his children slaves—though they were not—and put them in the charge of a white passenger. Sensing danger, he obtained passage for them on another ship by using his influence and financial resources. Clearly even the wealthy mulatto caste had come to feel threatened by the eve of the Civil War.
Its all self interest... Blacks owning Blacks...
Anthony Johnson and his spiritual descendants remind us that however much we may generalize, the experience of individuals ranges from the heights of human compassion to the depths of profound greed—and all variations therein. As Andrew Durnford wrote in his will, “I also hereby emancipate and order to be emancipated, the boy of my servant Wainy born the 2d of January 1857 and when the Said boy shall be ten years old I hereby give him two thousand dollars to contribute to give Said boy a good education.” The boy, it turns out, wasn’t just anyone: He was Durnford’s son by a slave mistress. Even after death Durnford was looking out for his own. As the planter himself had once put it in a letter to McDonogh, “self interest is al la mode.