[moo]

What can we infer from that? Did the black slave owners own whites? For a short period, whites were even indentured servants. Are you going to equate white slavery experience with black slavery? How many blacks owned slaves, were they really black or mulatto, did ruling whites only accept that practice during a short early colonial period or did that practice proliferate until the Civil War? Could freemen be buying slaves to free a family member, where they actually were not subsequently treated as slaves?

[ChemicalWarfare]

The only question of yours that is not answered by the Wikipedia link I provided is the timing (although I'm sure you can google that ) - this went on from the very beginning of the transatlantic slave trade in the U.S. all the way through the civil war.

And the point of course is that the civil war wasn't fought to abolish "the right of whites to own blacks" as things were a bit more complex than that. Cherokee Indians for example owned thousands of slaves too. There's a pretty interesting issue that goes on right now with descendants of Cherokee-owned slaves suing the Chetokee nation for the right to be a part of the Cherokee nation.

[moo]

I still don't get the point you are trying to make. In 1830, 3,776 free blacks owned 12,907 slaves, out of a total of 2,009,043 slaves owned in the entire United States. Many of those slaves owned by blacks may have been treated as slaves but many were also bought to be freed, as they were family members. Whites could be indentured servants but they were not slaves for life. By the 1700s indentured servants were scarce.

[ChemicalWarfare]

The point I'm trying to make is that the statement I originally replied to (with a quote so not sure what's not clear exactly) inaccurately states that the civil war was fought to abolish the system of ownership of blacks by whites.