How Many Families in the South Owned a Slave
The claim: Only 1.6% of U.S. citizens endemic slaves in 1860
As more Confederate monuments were beingness 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.vi% of U.S. citizens endemic slaves in 1860. The post came a day later on a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed in Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of a violent white supremacist rally in 2017.
"Then yous tin can end basing your hate for an unabridged race for the actions of a mere 1.six%," the 2019 Twitter mail says. "Am I right?"
Not exactly. PolitiFact and Snopes have previously evaluated similar claims that popped up in 2017 and 2019, respectively.
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Data archived from the 1860 census shows the one.6% is slightly off. Merely historians say the bigger event is that measuring slaveholders as a percent of the total population is misleading because slavery was illegal in most states by that point. Where information technology was even so legal, slavery was far more widespread than the number in the post indicates, they said.
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"You lot tin can employ statistics to demonstrate a lot of things that aren't relevant or true," said Calvin Schermerhorn, a history professor at Arizona State Academy. "When yous search for context the context very chop-chop 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 still legal in 15 of the 33 U.South. states, and slaves represented nearly a third of the population in those slaveholding states.
At the time, the total U.Southward. population was near 31.iv one thousand thousand, including more than iii.ix million slaves. That left about 27.five million free people in the U.S., according to 1860 information from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The U.S. had 395,216 slaveholders at that time, so about one.4% of free people were classified every bit slave owners in the 1860 demography, according to data archived by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series at the University of Minnesota. That'south slightly different from the 1.vi% in the July 11 Facebook post.
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 just ane private adult.
Using total population as a reference point also includes babies and children, for example, said Stephanie McCurry, history professor at Columbia University. Doing so is "clearly designed to make that course of holding 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 Due north Carolina-Chapel Loma. In 1860, nearly 20% of households in seceding states owned slaves, he said.
"To break information technology down about how many U.S. citizens endemic slaves is absurd," Glatthaar said in an electronic mail.
If you only focus on who technically owned slaves, though, a ameliorate metric would be to evaluate the proportion of slave owners in the 15 states where slavery was however legal in 1860, Arizona State'due south Schermerhorn said.
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About 5% of people in those states were considered slaveholders, the data shows. That's most three times higher than the number shared in the mail.
But Schermerhorn said even 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, only other members of the household had authority to commit "violence with dispensation" on enslaved people, he said.
Slaves also were rented out. So while a slave owner was simply counted once, other people and businesses, including railroad companies, could do good from slavery besides, Schermerhorn said.
Our rating: Missing context
The claim that only one.6% of U.Due south. citizens endemic slaves in 1860 is MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research. The stat itself is slightly off: Census Agency data from that menstruum shows about 1.4% of gratis people owned slaves in 1860. Historians, though, say that grossly underrepresents the extent of slavery in the U.S. before the Ceremonious State of war because it includes babies, children and people in states where slavery was illegal in the calculation. Slavery was illegal in all but 15 states past 1860. A more than accurate way to portray the extent of slavery would be to note 20% of households in seceding states owned slaves, fifty-fifty though the individual owner was counted as simply i person in that household.
Our fact-bank check sources:
- United states of america TODAY, July 9, Charlottesville removes Confederate statues, including one that sparked deadly far-right rally
- Snopes, Aug. 7, 2019, Did Simply 1.4 Percent of White Americans Own Slaves in 1860?
- Politifact, Aug. 24, 2017, Viral mail gets information technology incorrect about extent of slavery in 1860
- Library of Congress, accessed July 15, Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. Compiled from the demography of 1860 Copy one
- U.Southward. Census Bureau, accessed July 15, 1860 Decennial Population
- IPUMS NHGIS, University of Minnesota, accessed July 15, About
- Stephanie McCurry, Columbia Academy, July thirteen, e-mail interview
- Calvin Schermerhorn, Arizona Land Academy, July 13, telephone interview
- Joseph Glatthaar, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, July 13, electronic mail interview
- U.S. Census Bureau, accessed July fifteen, 1850 Statistics of Slaves
- U.S. Demography 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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