hich recited that in the preceding year she had bought her daughter and
grandchild at a cost of $700; that a lawyer had now told her that in view
of her lack of free relatives to inherit her property, in case of death
intestate her slaves would revert to the state; that she had become alarmed
at this prospect; and she accordingly begged permission to manumit them
without their having to leave Louisiana. The magistrates gave their consent
on condition that the petitioner furnish a bond of $500 to insure the
support and education of the grandson until his coming of age. This was
duly done and the formalities completed.[37]

[Footnote 35: _List of the Taxpayers of Charleston for 1860_(Charleston,
1861), part 2.]

[Footnote 36: Many of these are filed in the record books of manumissions
in the archive rooms of the New Orleans city hall. Some were denied on the
ground that proof was lacking that the slaves concerned were natives of
the state or that they would be self-supporting in freedom; others were
granted.]

[Footnote 37: For the use of this MS. petition with its accompanying
certificates I am indebted to Mr. J.F. Schindler of New York.]

Evidence of slaveholdings by colored freemen occurs also in the bills of
sale filed in various public archives. One of these records that a citizen
of Charleston sold in 1828 a man slave to the latter's free colored sister
at a price of one dollar, "provided he is kindly treated and is never sold,
he being an unfortunate individual and requiring much attention." In the
same city a free colored man bought a slave sailmaker for $200.[38] At
Savannah in 1818 Richard Richardson sold a slave woman and child for $800
to Alex Hunter, guardian of the colored freeman Louis Mirault, in trust for
him; and in 1833 Anthony Ordingsell, free colored, having obtained through
his guardian an order of court, sold a slave woman to the highest bidder
for $385.[39]

[Footnote 38: MSS. in the files of slave sales in the South Carolina
archives at Columbia.]

[Footnote 39: MSS. among the county archives at Savannah, Ga.]

It is clear that aside from the practice of holding slave relatives as a
means of giving them virtual freedom, an appreciable number of colored
proprietors owned slaves purely as a productive investment. It was
doubtless a group of these who sent a joint communication to a New Orleans
newspaper when secession and war were impending: "The free colored
population (native) of Louisiana