lar petitions to the Legislature for
special acts of relief tell the story of how black men and women who owned
members of their families neglected too long to remove from them the status
of property.

A case more amusing than pathetic was that of Betsy Fuller, a free Negro
huckstress of Norfolk, and her slave husband. The colored man's legal
status was that of property belonging to his wife. Upon the approach of the
Civil War he was blatant in his advocacy of Southern views, thus evincing
his indifference to emancipation.[17]

Feeble efforts were made by the legislature for a score of years before the
war to limit the power of free Negroes to acquire slaves for profit. By an
act of 1832 free Negroes were declared incapable of purchasing or
otherwise acquiring permanent ownership, except by descent, of any slaves
other than husband, wife, and children. Contracts for the sale of a slave
to a black man were to be regarded as void.[18] But even this attempt at
limitation was passed by a bare majority of one.[19] Within three years of
the beginning of the War the law was revised to read: "No free negro shall
be capable of acquiring, except by descent, any slave." [20] In the opinion
of a judge who passed upon this law, its object was "to keep slaves as far
as possible under the control of white men only, and to prevent free
negroes from holding persons of their own race in personal subjection to
themselves. Perhaps also it is intended to evince the distinctive
superiority of the white race." [21]

Whatever may have been their object these acts are of more significance
because of the story they tell than they ever were in accomplishing the
emancipation of slaves from masters of the black race. The period of the
existence of the black master was conterminous with the period of the
existence of slavery. By the same immortal proclamation which broke the
shackles of slaves serving white masters were rent asunder, also, the bonds
which held slaves to masters of their own race and color.

JOHN H. RUSSELL, PH.D.,
(_Professor of Political Science, Whitman College, Walla Walla,
Washington._)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Acknowledgments are due to the Johns Hopkins Press for permitting the
use in this article of data included in the author's monograph entitled
"The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865."

[2] Hening's Statutes at Large of Virginia, Vol. II, p. 280 (1670). Italics
my own.

[3] Hening, Vol. V, p. 550.

[4] Original MS. Re