"In these and a number of other areas, legislative petitions show the complex and ambiguous nature of race and slavery in the South. They demonstrate how some blacks remained loyal to the South, even to the institution of slavery, while some whites criticized the South's treatment of slaves and stood against the "peculiar institution." There are petitions from free persons of color who owned slaves, controlled large tracts of land, and attempted to conceal their African heritage; there are petitions from slaves who, in economic terms, were better off than their white neighbors; there are even petitions from free blacks who wished to return to slavery. In short, these documents portray, in vivid and personal terms, the contrasts, ambivalences, contradictions, ironies, and ambiguities that comprise southern history."
The truth is always stranger (and more interesting) than fiction.