[STONEWALLS]

"Some were free, educated, owned businesses and were part of the economy in the South."

..much of the high-skill labor in the ante-bellum South was black....some were free; some were slave..they did excellent work..our church was built in 1835 and a lot of slave labor went into it....I know this to be true because my g.g.grandfather's slaves dug the foundation and laid it up in granite....168 years later that church is still plumb, level and in square...

[Amelia]

I've found several wills, in just one small county in SC, where the slaveholders left their slaves not only their freedom, but some property and money so that they wouldn't be helpless in their freedom.