“The largest black slaveholder in the South, John Carruthers Stanly of North Carolina, faced
a number of problems in the 1820s in dealing with a slave labor force on his three
turpentine plantations in Craven County. With a total of 163 slaves, Stanly was a harsh,
profit-minded taskmaster, and his field hands would run away. Stanley dealt with this
through his two white overseers and with a spy network that included a few trusted
slaves. Brister, his slave barber in New Bern, was responsible for relaying to his owner
rumors of planned escapes …Nor did Stanly have any pangs of conscience about selling
children away from their parents or holding free blacks in bondage.”
“Free black slave owners who lived in urban areas – Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Natchez, and
New Orleans – also faced difficulties with their slave property. Free mulatto barber William
Johnson of Natchez was not certain what had happened to his recently purchased slave,
Walker, when he disappeared in 1835. He had either been stolen or had run away to
Kentucky to rejoin his wife. When on 4 July 1833, authorities in Ascension Parish,
Louisiana, jailed the twelve- or fourteen-year-old black boy named Isaac taken off
the steamer Watchman, he admitted he was owned by a ‘free woman of color in
New Orleans named Jane’.”[38]