What Percentage of Southern Families Owned Slaves Before the Civil War?

The claim: Simply 1.6% of U.S. citizens endemic slaves in 1860

As more Confederate monuments were existence removed in the South this month, an old claim seeking to downplay the extent of slave ownership began to recirculate online.

On July 11, a Facebook user shared a screenshot of a 2019 tweet that claims simply 1.six% of U.S. citizens owned slaves in 1860. The post came a day after a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert Eastward. Lee was removed in Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of a violent white supremacist rally in 2017.

"So you can stop basing your hate for an entire race for the actions of a mere 1.6%," the 2019 Twitter mail says. "Am I right?"

Not exactly. PolitiFact and Snopes have previously evaluated similar claims that popped upwards in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

More:How an adventitious run across brought slavery to the United States

Information archived from the 1860 census shows the 1.6% is slightly off. But historians say the bigger issue is that measuring slaveholders as a percent of the full population is misleading because slavery was illegal in most states past that signal. Where information technology was nonetheless legal, slavery was far more widespread than the number in the mail service indicates, they said.

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"You can use statistics to demonstrate a lot of things that aren't relevant or true," said Calvin Schermerhorn, a history professor at Arizona Country University. "When you lot search for context the context very quickly arrives in terms of what was actually going on."

The user who posted the original tweet and the Facebook user who shared it on July 11 did not respond to requests for comment.

Number minimizes extent of slavery

In 1860, slavery was withal legal in xv of the 33 U.South. states, and slaves represented nearly a tertiary of the population in those slaveholding states.

At the time, the total U.South. population was nigh 31.iv million, including more than 3.ix million slaves. That left nearly 27.5 million free people in the U.S., co-ordinate to 1860 data from the U.South. Census Bureau.

The U.S. had 395,216 slaveholders at that time, so about 1.4% of complimentary people were classified as slave owners in the 1860 demography, according to data archived by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Serial at the Academy of Minnesota. That's slightly different from the 1.6% in the July 11 Facebook mail service.

Historians, though, say that statistic is hugely misleading since it both wrongly factors in the entirety of the non-slave-owning states and ignores that families owned and had power over slaves, not merely one individual adult.

Using total population as a reference point also includes babies and children, for example, said Stephanie McCurry, history professor at Columbia University. Doing and so is "conspicuously designed to make that form of property seem marginal. It wasn't," she said.

Evaluating the share of households that owned slaves in seceding states is "a much more effective means," said Joseph Glatthaar, history professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. In 1860, nearly 20% of households in seceding states owned slaves, he said.

"To break it down virtually how many U.Southward. citizens owned slaves is absurd," Glatthaar said in an electronic mail.

If you but focus on who technically owned slaves, though, a improve metric would be to evaluate the proportion of slave owners in the 15 states where slavery was yet legal in 1860, Arizona State's Schermerhorn said.

More:Court clears mode for removal of Confederate statue at the center of deadly Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally

About 5% of people in those states were considered slaveholders, the data shows. That's about iii times higher than the number shared in the mail.

But Schermerhorn said fifty-fifty that minimizes the number of white people who benefitted from slavery. For example, the patriarch of a family unit might have been counted as the slave possessor in the census, but other members of the household had dominance to commit "violence with impunity" on enslaved people, he said.

Slaves too were rented out. So while a slave possessor was simply counted once, other people and businesses, including railroad companies, could do good from slavery also, Schermerhorn said.

Our rating: Missing context

The claim that simply 1.6% of U.S. citizens owned slaves in 1860 is MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research. The stat itself is slightly off: Census Bureau data from that catamenia shows almost 1.four% of free people owned slaves in 1860. Historians, though, say that grossly underrepresents the extent of slavery in the U.Southward. earlier the Civil War because information technology includes babies, children and people in states where slavery was illegal in the calculation. Slavery was illegal in all merely xv states by 1860. A more accurate manner to portray the extent of slavery would be to note xx% of households in seceding states owned slaves, even though the private owner was counted as only 1 person in that household.

Our fact-bank check sources:

• United states of america TODAY, July nine, Charlottesville removes Confederate statues, including one that sparked mortiferous far-right rally
• Snopes, Aug. 7, 2019, Did Only 1.iv Per centum of White Americans Ain Slaves in 1860?
• Politifact, Aug. 24, 2017, Viral post gets it wrong about extent of slavery in 1860
• Library of Congress, accessed July fifteen, Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860 Copy 1
• U.S. Census Bureau, accessed July 15, 1860 Decennial Population
• IPUMS NHGIS, University of Minnesota, accessed July xv, About
• Stephanie McCurry, Columbia Academy, July 13, electronic mail interview
• Calvin Schermerhorn, Arizona State University, July 13, phone interview
• Joseph Glatthaar, University of North Carolina-Chapel Colina, July 13, email interview
• U.South. Census Bureau, accessed July 15, 1850 Statistics of Slaves
• U.South. Census Bureau, accessed July 15, Decennial Census Official Publications - 1860

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/16/fact-check-social-media-post-underrepresents-slave-ownership-1860/7980243002/

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