1For a more extended but less intensive treatment of the free negro,
see Harold Schoen's "The Free Negro in the Republic of Texas," in the
Southwestern
Historical
Quarterly,
XXXIX, 292-308; XL, 26-34, 85-113,
169-199, 267-289; XLI, 83-108. The principal defects of this work are its
limitation to the Republic and its failure to utilize county archives. It is
undoubtedly a mistake to view admission of Texas into the United States
as a legitimate terminus for any other than purely political and diplomatic
studies. County archives, collections of prosaic legal documents, portray
the free negro in a more normal and domestic light than that indicated in
the proceedings of Congress.
