When Americans think of African-Americans in the DEEP SOUTH before the Civil War, the first image that invariably comes to mind is one of slavery. However, many African-Americans were able to secure their freedom and live in a state of semi-freedom even before slavery was abolished by war. FREE BLACKS lived in all parts of the United States, but the majority lived amid slavery in the American South. According to the 1860 U.S. Census, there were 250,787 free blacks living in the South in contrast to 225,961 free blacks living everywhere else in the country including the Midwest and the Far West; however, not everyone, particularly free blacks, were captured by census takers. In the upper south, the largest population of free blacks were in Maryland and Virginia; in the mid-Atlantic, the largest population of free blacks was in Philadelphia.
