in the South. The general status of these people was better in Louisiana
than anywhere else in the country, North or South; at the same time
their situation was such as to call for special consideration. In
Louisiana the "F.M.C." (Free Man of Color) formed a distinct and
anomalous class in society.[1] As a free man he had certain rights, and
sometimes his property holdings were very large.[2] In fact, in New
Orleans a few years before the Civil War not less than one-fifth of the
taxable property was in the hands of free people of color. At the same
time the lot of these people was one of endless humiliation. Among some
of them irregular household establishments were regularly maintained by
white men, and there were held the "quadroon balls" which in course of
time gave the city a distinct notoriety. Above the people of this group,
however, was a genuine aristocracy of free people of color who had a
long tradition of freedom, being descended from the early colonists,
and whose family life was most exemplary. In general they lived to
themselves. In fact, it was difficult for them to do otherwise. They
were often compelled to have papers filled out by white guardians, and
they were not allowed to be visited by slaves or to have companionship
with them, even when attending church or walking along the roads.
Sometimes free colored men owned their women and children in order that
the latter might escape the invidious law against Negroes recently
emancipated; or the situation was sometimes turned around, as in
Norfolk, Va., where several women owned their husbands. When the name
of a free man of color had to appear on any formal document--a deed of
conveyance, a marriage-license, a certificate of birth or death, or
even in a newspaper report--the initials F.M.C. had to be appended. In
Louisiana these people petitioned in vain for the suffrage, and at the
outbreak of the Civil War organized and splendidly equipped for the
Confederacy two battalions of five hundred men. For these they chose
two distinguished white commanders, and the governor accepted their
services, only to have to inform them later that the Confederacy
objected to the enrolling of Negro soldiers. In Charleston thirty-seven
men in a remarkable petition also formally offered their services to the
Confederacy.[3] What most readily found illustration in New Orleans or
Charleston was also true to some extent of other centers of free people
of color such as Mobile and