18th-century colonial Louisiana had a completely different slave-trade pattern than that of the Thirteen Colonies. First, the slaves originated from French, and later Spanish, colonies (principally from Senegal), rather than from British colonies. After the Louisiana Purchase, an influx of slaves and free blacks from the United States occurred.[5]
Secondly, Louisiana's slave trade was governed by the French Code Noir, and later by its Spanish equivalent the Código Negro, [6] As written, the Code Noir gave unparalleled rights to slaves, including the right to marry. Although it authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against slaves under certain conditions, it forbade slave owners to torture them or to separate married couples (or to separate young children from their mothers). It also required the owners to instruct slaves in the Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, an idea that had not been acknowledged until then.[7][8][9]
Together with a more permeable historic French system related to the status of gens de couleur libres (free people of color), often born to white fathers and their mixed-race concubines, a far higher percentage of African Americans in the state of Louisiana were free as of the 1830 census (13.2% in Louisiana compared to 0.8% in Mississippi, whose population was dominated by white Anglo-Americans. [10]) The free people of color were on average exceptionally literate, with a significant number of them owning businesses, properties, and even slaves.[11][12]
The Code Noir also forbade interracial marriages, but interracial relationships were formed in New Orleans society. The mulattoes became an intermediate social caste between the whites and the blacks, while in the English colonies the mulattoes and blacks were considered equal and discriminated against equally.[13][14]
When control of Louisiana shifted to the United States, the Catholic social norms were deeply rooted in Louisiana; the contrast with predominantly Protestant parts of the young nation, where English norms prevailed, was evident. The Americanization of Louisiana resulted in the mulattoes being considered as black, and free blacks were regarded as undesirable.[15][16]