I'm grinning because that's too often how online discussions end. I suppose my point is that race did not always trump class, so there's no reason to assume black slaveholders in DC did not get paid for freeing their slaves. Slavers and antislavers were both very concerned with what was legal. If black slaveholders had been treated worse than white slaveholders by the law, the abolitionist press would have cited that as the latest injustice done to black people.