The 1830 U.S. census documented 3,600 "Negro slaveholders," but like so many racial ironies and contradictions, the figure is deceptive. The vast majority of those "owners" were holding as slaves spouses or relatives they were forbidden by their state's law from formally setting free. 

Free blacks who worked scores of slaves on their own plantations often bought, sold and employed them -- like their white counterparts -- for other than economic reasons. 
Coincoin's eldest son, Augustin Metoyer, bought his first slave from a neighbor to help clear his plantation. But his second purchase was his wife's 8-year-old sister. His third was the young daughter of his still-enslaved brother Louis, and his fourth was a 15-year-old who would marry his brother Pierre. The last three he immediately set free. 



Keep trying there PP...NO moral equivalence is sad indeed.