History of the United States I / Unit 12 USH1 1684 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Free Black Slaveholders
Captions available
The idea
Andrew Durnford, born in New Orleans in eighteen hundred, became a Louisiana sugar planter and slaveholder.
In practice
William Ellison, born enslaved in South Carolina in seventeen ninety, buying his family's freedom and manufacturing cotton gins.
Where people slip
Ellison became one of South Carolina's largest slaveholders by the Civil War. Such wealth was exceedingly rare.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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