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In United States history, a free negro or free black was the legal status in the territory of the United States of an African American person who was not a slave. The term was in use before the independence of the Thirteen Colonies and elsewhere in British North America until the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, which rendered this distinction irrelevant. ==Background== Slavery was legal and practiced in each of the Thirteen Colonies at various times. Not all African Americans came to America as slaves; a few came even in the 17th century as free men, sailors working on ships. In the early colonial years, some Africans came as indentured servants, as did many of the immigrants from the British Isles. Such servants became free when they completed their term of indenture; they were also eligible for headrights for land in the new colony in the Chesapeake Bay region, where indentured servants were more common. As early as 1619, a class of free black people existed in North America. The free negro population increased in a number of ways: # children born to colored free women (cf. ''Partus sequitur ventrem'') # mulatto children born to white indentured or free women # mixed-race children born to free Native American women (enslaving Native Americans was prohibited from the mid-18th century, but did continue until Emancipation) # freed slaves # slaves who escaped In most places black workers were either house servants or farm workers. Black labor was of economic importance in the export-oriented tobacco plantations of Virginia and Maryland, and the rice and indigo plantations of South Carolina.〔Betty Wood, ''Slavery in Colonial America, 1619–1776'' (2013) ( excerpt and text search )〕 About 287,000 slaves were imported into the Thirteen Colonies, or 2% of the 12 million slaves brought across from Africa. The great majority went to sugar colonies in the Caribbean and to Brazil, where life expectancy was short and the numbers had to be continually replenished. Life expectancy of slaves was much higher in the U.S. Combined with a very high birth rate, the numbers grew rapidly as the number of births exceeded deaths, reaching nearly 4 million by the 1860 census. From 1770 until 1860, the rate of natural growth of North American slaves was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, and was nearly twice as rapid as that of England. This was sometimes attributed to very high birth rates: "U.S. slaves, then, reached similar rates of natural increase to whites not because of any special privileges but through a process of great suffering and material deprivation". The southern colonies imported more slaves, initially from established English colonies in the West Indies. Like them, the mainland colonies rapidly increased restrictions that defined slavery as a racial caste associated with African ethnicity. In 1663 Virginia (followed by others) adopted the principle in slave law of ''partus sequitur ventrem:'' that children were born into the status of their mother, rather than taking the status of their father, as was then customary for English subjects under English common law. This meant that children of slave mothers were also slaves, regardless of their fathers and ethnicity. In some cases, this also could result in a person being legally white under Virginia law of the time, although born into slavery. According to Paul Heinegg, most of the free black families established in the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution were descended from unions between white women, whether indentured servant or free, and African men, whether indentured servant, free, or slave. These relationships took place mostly among the working class, reflecting the more fluid societies of the time. Because the mixed-race children were born to free women, they were free. Through use of court documents, deeds, wills, and other records, he traced such families as the ancestors of nearly 80 percent of the free Negroes or free blacks recorded in the censuses of the Upper South from 1790–1810.〔(''Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, and Maryland and Delaware'' ), Generations Publishing, 1995–2005〕 In addition, slaveholders manumitted some slaves for various reasons: to reward long years of service, because heirs did not want to take on slaves, or to free slave concubines and/or their children. Slaves were sometimes allowed to buy their freedom; they might be permitted to save money from fees paid when they were "hired out" to work for other parties.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Freed In the 17th Century (reprint) )〕 In the mid-to-late 18th century, Methodist and Baptist evangelists in the first Great Awakening encouraged slaveholders to free their slaves, in their belief that all men were equal before God. They converted many slaves to Christianity and approved black leaders as preachers; blacks developed their own strain of Christianity. Prior to the American Revolutionary War, few slaves were manumitted. The war greatly disrupted the slave societies. Beginning with Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, the British colonial governments recruited slaves of rebels to the armed forces and promised them freedom in return. The Continentals gradually also began to allow blacks to fight with a promise of freedom. Tens of thousands of slaves escaped from plantations or other venues during the war, especially in the South.〔Peter Kolchin, ''American Slavery, 1619–1865,'' 1993〕 Some joined British lines or disappeared in the disruption of war. After the war, when the British evacuated New York, they transported more than 3,000 Black Loyalists and thousands of other Loyalists to resettle in Nova Scotia and Ontario. A total of more than 29,000 Loyalists refugees were eventually evacuated from New York City alone. The British evacuated thousands of other slaves when they left southern ports, resettling many in the Caribbean and others to England. In the first two decades after the war, the number and proportion of free Negroes in the United States rose dramatically: northern states abolished slavery, some on a gradual basis. But also many slaveholders, in the Upper South especially, manumitted their slaves, inspired by the war's ideals. From 1790 to 1810, the proportion of free blacks in the Upper South rose from less than 1% to overall, and nationally, the proportion of free blacks among blacks rose to 13%. The spread of cotton cultivation to the Deep South drove up the demand for slaves after 1810, and the number of manumissions dropped after this period. In the antebellum period, many slaves escaped to freedom in the North and Canada by running away through networks like the Underground Railroad, assisted by former slaves and abolitionist sympathizers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「free negro」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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