NEGROES WHO OWNED SLAVES 489 



he felt. He replied : " 0, I am feeling poorly. I am getting old. 

 The)'' all tell me it was a good thing to free the negroes, but I wish I 

 had my ' niggers ' back once more." 



There were instances in which free negroes became the purchasers 

 and masters of transported white people, redemptioners. An example 

 of the purchase by free negroes of two families of Germans who had not 

 been able to pay their passage from Amsterdam to Baltimore and were 

 sold for their passage money to a term of labor, is given in a volume 

 issued in 1818 in Stuttgart. It contains letters written in 1817 ad- 

 dressed from Baltimore to the Baron von Gagern, Minister Plenipoten- 

 tiary to the diet in Frankfort-on-the-Main. The Germans of Balti- 

 more were so outraged by this action that they immediately got together 

 a purse and bought the freedom of these immigrants. An early law of 

 Virginia is aimed at the same thing, and forbids negroes or Indians to 

 buy " Christian servants," but permits them to purchase those of their 

 own " nation/' 



A colored man now living in Pensacola, Fla., by name John Pous, 

 is the son of a white father and a negro mother. They owned many 

 slaves. When the father died the family continued to own them until 

 the civil war. John fought in the union army. Some of his slaves are 

 with him yet — to be supported by him. 



One free negro in North Carolina became the purchaser though not 

 the owner of his family. The circumstances were touching. He was 

 a blacksmith and had married a slave woman, by whom he had several 

 children. His shop was on his former master's farm, where he was 

 liked and kindly treated. But finally this man got involved in debt 

 and all his slaves, among them the blacksmith's family, were seized by 

 the creditors and sold to a speculator, who resold them in Mississippi. 

 The husband went desperately to work and in a few years got together 

 sufficient money, placed it in their first owner's hand and got him to 

 repurchase and bring back from the terrible south the loved ones; he 

 was content that they should remain slaves — for the temper of the 

 neighborhood was at the time hostile to manumission — so that he need 

 not be separated from them. 



There are other sources of information on this theme than personal 

 reminiscences, though certain of these are difficult of access. If, for 

 instance, all of the census of the United States for 1790 were in print, 

 doubtless a very large number of data of this kind could be obtained. 

 The census of only three states, New Hampshire, Vermont and Mary- 

 land, has been printed. That of Maryland furnishes interesting facts 

 concerning negro slaveholders. In the volume called " Heads of Fam- 

 ilies, First Census of the United States; 1790; State of Maryland," 

 issued by the government in 1907, the white and black population is 

 given by counties. The report indicates in different columns free white 



