Actually that statistic is misleading and those figures cannot be true. If one looks at the 1860 census figures for Orleans Parish, subtract the free black male and female children (on the assumption that they wouldn't be slave holders), assume that most black male adults were married to one of the black female adults, and for the 3000 black slaveholder figure to be true virtually every black family in the city owned a slave. And that 72% of all slaveholders were black, in spite of the fact that free blacks comprised less than 7% of the total population. In short, those statistics don't make any sense whatsoever.
Best tell him them.
At the moment I’ll accept his report as accurate, given his credentials and the liklihood that, if he had let a personal race-based bias bend his conclusions, they should have gone the other way.
http://jhfc.duke.edu/johnhopefranklin/
Oops, he’s dead. So go ahead and attack his research and conclusions, since he can’t rise up and defend them.
Given what I've been learning on the subject, I chouldn't be at all surprised to find that, in as cosmopolitan a town an New Orleans, every free household had at least one domestic slave, and anyone with a business two or more (being much cheaper than hired help).
Yes, I looked at the census link you provided. Doesn't contradict Dr. Franklin, by me.
Thank you for your participation. I will ask, but not demand, that you at least acknowledge that Black agriculture, Black business, Black enterprise of all kinds existed and throve during the slavery era, in part at least because they participated in the institution, and that they voluntarily lent material and personnel support, for pay, to the CSA and its armed forces.