On the Persistent Belief that Black Slaveowners In the Antebellum South Were Acting In a Mostly Benevolent Manner In that the Lion's Share of Their Slaves Were Friends and Family Members Who Were Either Immediately Manumitted (Not Always Feasible In South Carolina After 1820 Due to Laws that Made the State Sole Decider On Manumissions) or Allowed to Live as Nominal Slaves Among the Free Black Populace

Yeah, it's not true. As Larry Koger pointed out in his seminal work, "Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters In South Carolina, 1790 - 1860" - "The survey of the local documents could not demonstrate the dominance of the benevolent or kinship aspect of black slaveowning. Indeed, the census of 1850 demonstrated  that 83.1 perecnt of the negro masters were mulattoes, while nearly 90 percent of their slaves were of dark skin. Where was the kinship? Since mulattoes primarily married mulattoes, the black folk owned by light-skinned Afro-Americans were seldom kin and were overwhelmingly held as laborers. By and large, Negro slaveowners were darker copies of their white counterparts." To Be Continued