According to the Census of 1860 there were in the slave-holding States
altogether 261,918 free colored persons, 106,770 being mulattoes. In
Charleston there were 887 free blacks and 2,554 mulattoes; in Mobile,
98 free blacks and 617 mulattoes; in New Orleans, 1,727 blacks and
7,357 mulattoes. As will be seen, nearly one-half of the entire number
of free colored persons were mulattoes, while in the leading Southern
cities seventy-five per cent. of the free colored people were put in
this class. The percentage of mulatto slaves to the total slave
population at that time was 10.41, and in the same cities which showed
seventy-five per cent, of all the free colored persons mulattoes, the
percentage of mulatto slaves was but 16.84. Mulatto in this
classification includes all colored persons who are not put down as
black.
In New Orleans the free mulattoes were generally French, having come
into the Union with the Louisiana purchase, and among them were to be
found wealthy slave-holders. They much resembled the class of
mulattoes which obtained in St. Domingo at the beginning of the
century, and had but little sympathy with the blacks, although they
were the first to acquiesce in emancipation, some of them actually
leading their own slaves into the army of liberation.
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