Re: the article's statement that
' The Code Noir stated that "slaves can have no right to any kind of
property," but this apparently was ignored.'
Louisiana's Code Noir is a complex subject - the laws themselves have many
internal contradictions, on this property matter and many other details, and
their application varied (after all we're talking about a nearly 3 centuries
and 3 different national administrations). In short, both elements of the
sentence - what WAS the law? and how was it applied - were variable in time
and place and specific situation.
Coincoin and Cane River are fascinating - and btw the adjacent town of
Natchitoches is a wonderful place to visit - Melrose Plantation and other
sites are well preserved - the B&Bs are plentiful and the food superb. Its 4
hours NW of New Orleans (close the Shreveport) but well worth the trip.
Jon Kukla
Patrick G Wamsley wrote:
> 2.) Can anyone provide any additional material on free black ownership
> of slaves.
>
> *** Here's an article from today's Washington Post. ***
>
> "Up Through Slavery" by Ken Ringle, at F1, F3
>
> Marie Therese Coincoin was in bondage for 44 years. Yet she freed her
> children and became a slave owner herself . . .
>
> "It's a very American story," says Elizabeth Shown Mills, the uncredited
> co-author of her late husband Gary Mills's "The Forgotten People" (LSU
> Press), the still-definitive and meticulously documented 1977 study of
> Coincoin and her descendents . . . As University of Maryland historian
> Ira Berlin notes in his masterful 1998 slavery study "Many Thousands
> Gone" (Harvard University Press), the differences were not merely from
> plantation to plantation, but from region to region . . . Slavery in
> Louisiana, however, was unique . . .
>
> Louisiana's Code Noir specified that slave families were to be kept
> together when possible and all slaves instructed in the Catholic church .
> . . [A]ny master who fathered children by his own slave was to lose both
> slave and child . . . [Coincoin] caught the eye of a well born Frenchman
> . . . Metoyer was so taken with her beauty that he arranged with her
> owner to live with her for 19 years in defiance of church and political
> censure. He fathered 10 children by her and ultimately set her free with
> 68 acres of land . . . In 1796, Coincoin's second son was granted 912
> acres . . . [even though] he was still a slave at the time. The Code
> Noir stated that "slaves can have no right to any kind of property," but
> this apparently was ignored. It would be five more years before his
> father set him free . . .
>
> The 1830 U.S. Census documented 3600 "Negro slaveholders" . . . [but] the
> vast majority of those "owners" were holding as slaves spouses or
> relatives they were forbidden by their state's law from formally setting
> free . . . By 1810 Coincoin's seven sons had accumulated 58 slaves,
> according to Mills's census research in "The Forgotten People" . . . The
> only families [in the census area] to own more slaves than Coincoin's
> sons were the families of Metoyer's white children . . .
>
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