History of slavery in Louisiana

The institution was maintained by the Spanish (1763–1800) when the area was part of New Spain, by the French when they briefly reacquired the colony (1800–1803), and by the United States following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

The enslavement of natives, including the Atakapa, Bayogoula, Natchez, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Taensa, and Alabamon peoples, would continue throughout the history of French rule.

Alejandro O'Reilly re-established Spanish rule in 1768, and issued a decree on December 7, 1769, which banned the trade of Native American slaves.

[4] A group of maroons led by Jean Saint Malo resisted re-enslavement from their base in the swamps east of New Orleans between 1780 and 1784.

The German Coast Uprising ended with white militias and soldiers hunting down black slaves, peremptory tribunals or trials in three parishes (St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, and Orleans), execution of many of the rebels, and the public display of their severed heads.

In some of these establishments negroes attractively attired were exhibited in show windows or on verandahs, precisely as one might offer any other kind of merchandise for public inspection.

In 1842 there were 185 persons listed in the city directory as engaged in the business, not counting 349 brokers and 25 auctioneers, who probably also sold slaves whenever the opportunity offered.

Louisiana had a markedly different pattern of slave trading compared to other states in the American South as a result of its French and Spanish heritage.

It also required the owners to instruct slaves in the Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, an idea that had not been acknowledged until then.

[10][11][12] Together with a more permeable historic French system related to the status of gens de couleur libres (free people of color), often born to white fathers and their mixed-race partners, a far higher percentage of African Americans in the state of Louisiana were free as of the 1830 census (13.2% in Louisiana, compared to 0.8% in Mississippi, whose dominant population was white Anglo-American[10]).

The free people of color were on average exceptionally literate, with a significant number of them owning businesses, properties, and even slaves.