They where called the "Free Blacks" they lived in different states down south. They stayed in the south raging year of Lincoln’s election the Southern secession, there were 488,070 free blacks living in the United States, about 10 percent of the entire black population. Of those, 226,152 lived in the North and 261,918 in the South, in 15 states
A "free Negro" (or "free black"), was the term used prior to the abolition
of slavery in the United States to describe African Americans who were
not slaves. Almost all African Americans came to the United States as
slaves, but from the onset of American slavery, slaveholders freed both
male and female slaves for various reasons. Sometimes the heirs of
deceased slave owners did not want slaves. In other instances, slaves
were freed as a reward for good service, and others still were able to
pay slaveholders money in exchange for their freedom. Free blacks during
the antebellum
era—which began with the formation of the Union (1781) and ended with
the outbreak of the Civil War (1860)—were very outspoken about the
injustice of slavery.
