There were almost 700 thousand slaves in the U.S. in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in six people. By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were four million slaves in the South, compared with less than 500,000 free Black Americans in all of the U.S.. Of the 4.4 million Blacks in the U.S. before the war, almost four million of these people were held as slaves; meaning that for all African Americans living in the US in 1860, there was an 89 percent* chance that they lived in slavery. A brief history Trans-Atlantic slavery began in the early 16th century, when the Portuguese and Spanish forcefully brought enslaved Africans to the New World. The British Empire introduced slavery to North America on a large scale, and the economy of the British colonies there depended on slave labor, particularly regarding cotton, sugar, and tobacco output. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the number of slaves being brought to the Americas increased exponentially, and at the time of American independence it was legal in all thirteen colonies. Although slavery became increasingly prohibited in the north, the number of slaves remained high during this time as they were simply relocated or sold from the north to the south. It is also important to remember that the children of slaves were also viewed as property, and were overwhelmingly born into a life of slavery. Abolition and the American Civil War In the years that followed independence, the Northern States gradually prohibited slavery, it was officially abolished there by 1805, and the importation of slave labor was prohibited nationwide from 1808 (although both still existed in practice after this). Business owners in the Southern States however depended on slave labor in order to meet the demand of their rapidly expanding industries, and the issue of slavery continued to polarize American society in the decades to come. This culminated in the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, who promised to prohibit slavery in the newly acquired territories to the west, leading to the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Although the Confederacy (south) took the upper hand in much of the early stages of the war, the strength in numbers of the northern states including many free, Black men, eventually resulted in a victory for the Union (north), and the nationwide abolishment of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Legacy In total, an estimated twelve to thirteen million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, and this does not include the high number who did not survive the journey (which was as high as 23 percent in some years). In the 150 years since the abolition of slavery in the US, the African-American community have continuously campaigned for equal rights and opportunities that were not afforded to them along with freedom. The most prominent themes have been the Civil Rights Movement, voter suppression, mass incarceration, and the relationship between the police and the African-American community.

There were almost 700 thousand slaves in the U.S. in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in six people. By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were four million slaves in the South, compared with less than 500,000 free Black Americans in all of the U.S.. Of the 4.4 million Blacks in the U.S. before the war, almost four million of these people were held as slaves; meaning that for all African Americans living in the US in 1860, there was an 89 percent* chance that they lived in slavery. A brief history Trans-Atlantic slavery began in the early 16th century, when the Portuguese and Spanish forcefully brought enslaved Africans to the New World. The British Empire introduced slavery to North America on a large scale, and the economy of the British colonies there depended on slave labor, particularly regarding cotton, sugar, and tobacco output. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the number of slaves being brought to the Americas increased exponentially, and at the time of American independence it was legal in all thirteen colonies. Although slavery became increasingly prohibited in the north, the number of slaves remained high during this time as they were simply relocated or sold from the north to the south. It is also important to remember that the children of slaves were also viewed as property, and were overwhelmingly born into a life of slavery. Abolition and the American Civil War In the years that followed independence, the Northern States gradually prohibited slavery, it was officially abolished there by 1805, and the importation of slave labor was prohibited nationwide from 1808 (although both still existed in practice after this). Business owners in the Southern States however depended on slave labor in order to meet the demand of their rapidly expanding industries, and the issue of slavery continued to polarize American society in the decades to come. This culminated in the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, who promised to prohibit slavery in the newly acquired territories to the west, leading to the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Although the Confederacy (south) took the upper hand in much of the early stages of the war, the strength in numbers of the northern states including many free, Black men, eventually resulted in a victory for the Union (north), and the nationwide abolishment of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Legacy In total, an estimated twelve to thirteen million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, and this does not include the high number who did not survive the journey (which was as high as 23 percent in some years). In the 150 years since the abolition of slavery in the US, the African-American community have continuously campaigned for equal rights and opportunities that were not afforded to them along with freedom. The most prominent themes have been the Civil Rights Movement, voter suppression, mass incarceration, and the relationship between the police and the African-American community.

Portuguese and Brazilian traders were responsible for transporting the highest volume of slaves during the transatlantic slave trade. Portugal held a near-monopoly on the transatlantic slave trade in the 16th century, due to their network of factories along the African coast, and also imported hundreds of thousands of slaves into Brazil and the Caribbean in the 19th century.

Emergence of other powers The rise of the British, French and Dutch empires in the 17th century was also fueled by profits made from slave labor, and, to a lesser extent, the slave trade. Throughout the 1700s especially, British ships transported more slaves across the Atlantic, as the empire expanded across the Caribbean and North America. Similarly to Britain, ships flying under the flag of the Thirteen Colonies or the U.S. saw relatively large growth from the mid-1700s onwards (apart from a brief disruption caused by the American Revolutionary War), with the number of slave imports peaking in the early years of the 1800s. However, both Britain and the U.S. abolished the slave trade in 1807 and 1808 respectively, which ended their official participation in the widespread importation of slaves. French imports of slaves peaked in the late 1780s, however the numbers then plummeted from 1790 onwards, due to the instability and turmoil caused by the French Revolution and Haitian Revolution.

The largest empire was one of the smallest slave importers While a significant number of slaves eventually ended up in the Spanish Americas, Spanish merchants did not explicitly transport slaves in the same quantities as other powers' merchants. The was rooted in the Spanish legacy of importing slaves through foreign powers (namely Portugal, largely due to the Treaty of Tordesillas), and the forced labor of indigenous societies. However this changed drastically in the 19th century, as independence movements swept across Spain's mainland colonies in the Americas, and Spain then invested heavily into its Caribbean colonies (particularly Cuba).

Between 1501 and 1866, it is estimated that over 12.5 million people were forced onto ships in Africa, and transported to the Americas as slaves. Furthermore, it is estimated that only 10.7 million of these slaves disembarked on the other side of the Atlantic, meaning that roughly 1.8 million did not survive the journey. The transatlantic slave trade was a part of the triangular trade route between Europe, Africa and the Americas, during the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Generally speaking, this route saw European merchants bring manufactured products to Africa to trade for slaves, then transport the slaves to the Americas to harvest raw materials, before taking these materials back to Europe where they would then be consumed or used in manufacturing. Slavery was an integral part in funding the expansion of Europe's colonial empires, which shaped the modern and highly globalized world in which we live today.

The Middle Passage As with trade, the slave journey was also broken into three parts; the First Passage was the stage where slaves were captured and transported to African ports, the Middle Passage was the journey across the Atlantic, while the Final Passage was where the slaves were transported to their place of work. The death toll in the First Passage is thought to be the highest of the three stages, as millions were killed or fatally wounded as they were captured, however a lack of written data and historical evidence has made this number difficult to estimate. In contrast, shipping records from the time give a much more accurate picture of the Middle Passage's death toll, and this data suggest that roughly 14.5 percent of slaves did not survive the journey. The reason for this was the harsh and cramped conditions on board; slave ships were designed in such a way that they could fit the maximum number of slaves on board in order to maximize profits. These conditions then facilitated the spread of diseases, such as smallpox and dysentery, while malnutrition and thirst created further problems. Generally, slavers aimed to keep slaves as healthy (therefore; profitable) as possible, although there are countless examples of mistreatment and punishment of slaves by their captors, and several cases where slaves were exterminated by the crew as provisions ran low.

Rise and fall of the transatlantic slave trade

The European arrival in the Americas also saw the introduction of virgin soil epidemics (new diseases being introduced to biologically defenseless populations) which decimated the indigenous populations. The abundance of natural resources, but lack of available labor led to the rise of the transatlantic slave trade. Until the mid-1600s, Portuguese traders had a near-monopoly on this trade, supplying slaves to the newly expanding Spanish and Portuguese empires in South America. As other European powers began to expand their empires in the Caribbean and North America, the slave trade grew dramatically, and during the eighteenth century, the number of slaves being brought to the New World increased from an annual average of thirty thousand in the 1690s to 87 thousand in the 1790s. The transatlantic slave trade reached its peak between the 1750 and 1850, and an average of 74 thousand slaves were brought to the Americas each year between these dates. The largest decline came as the slave trade was disrupted during the American War of Independence (1775-1783), although the trade became weakened as the abolitionist movement gained momentum in Europe and the Americas around the turn of the century. The most significant impacts came as the slave trade was abolished in Britain and the U.S. in 1807 and Brazil in 1831, and Britain then used its position as the global superpower to impose abolition on other nations and used the Royal Navy to enforce these measures. While most nations abolished the slave trade in the early 1800s, it would take decades before the actual practice of slavery would be abolished; today, slavery is illegal in almost every country, however modern slavery in the forms of forced labor, human trafficking and sexual exploitation continues to be prevalent across the globe.

Regarded by early Georgetown historians and residents as one of the wealthiest men in Maryland during the colonial and early American periods, Robert Peter enslaved hundreds of people in Montgomery County, Maryland, during his lifetime and left a legacy of enslavement continued by his children. This dataset contains information from two lists of enslaved people connected to Robert Peter approximately twenty years apart (1790 and ca. 1807) and attempts to connect these individuals to their families based on each lists’ groupings, acknowledging the humanity of the people named and bringing awareness to their existence.

Knowledge regarding the prices paid for slaves during the transatlantic slave trade is quite scarce, however the data that does exist provides some insight into the financial value given to slaves during this period. The study shown here indicates that at certain intervals between 1638 and 1775, the average price paid for slaves in the Thirteen Colonies ranged from 16.5 to 44.08 pounds sterling for slaves from Britain's colonies in the Americas, and between 1.87 and 17.43 pounds for slaves transported from West Africa. It is important to note that the average prices given are from sample sizes of ranging between just one and 29 sales, therefore the numbers may be more reliable in some years than in others.

Despite these limitations, the data does show a clear difference between the prices for slaves who were born in the Americas or accustomed to its climate (known as "seasoned"), compared to those who had travelled from West Africa, as those were often weakened from the journey and susceptible to tropical disease, and therefore deemed less valuable. For example, in the period between 1713-17 (the group with the largest sample size), the average value of unseasoned slaves from West Africa was just 38.5% the value of seasoned slaves.

Chattels records housed at the Maryland State Archives contain recorded sales of property for other than real estate from 1790 to 1862 for twenty-one of the state’s counties; the “Chattels” dataset utilizes information from four counties in central Maryland: Anne Arundel, Dorchester, Kent, and Prince George’s. The “Chattels” dataset is currently composed of 8,691 records that enumerate transactions regarding the purchase and sale of enslaved people in central Maryland between 1790 and 1862. The dataset is derived from lists of sales of property (“chattels”), which included crops, livestock, farm implements, furniture, and wagons. Prior to the Civil War, the sale of enslaved individuals was also recorded in the chattel sales records. Archival records may include bills of sale, chattel mortgages, and releases; additionally some manumission records are included.

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It is estimated that the Haitian Revolution had a total death toll of approximately 345 thousand. The majority of these deaths were among the former slaves, who rose up in protest against poor working conditions in St. Domingue, before the rebellion escalated and became a revolution. The high death toll is not only a result of conflict, but also disease (including severe yellow fever and smallpox epidemics) and widespread massacres on both sides. As a result of the revolution, St. Domingue's slaves won their freedom; establishing Haiti as just the second independent nation in the Americas, and the only nation in history to have been founded by former slaves.

Petition subject: Support for individuals Original: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:12208676 Date of creation: 1790-06-10 Petition location: [Boston?] Selected signatures:Daphne Total signatures: 1 Females of color signatures: 1 Female only signatures: Yes Identifications of signatories: an African, a negro woman [crossed out], [females of color] Prayer format was printed vs. manuscript: Manuscript Additional non-petition or unrelated documents available at archive: additional documents available Additional archivist notes: Africa, purchased as a slave by Henry Barnes Esq., absentee, estate, confiscation, discharged agent from that trust, debts, allowance, Joseph Hosmer Location of the petition at the Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth: Resolves 1790, c.127, passed March 9, 1791 Acknowledgements: Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-5105612), Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University, Institutional Development Initiative at Harvard University, and Harvard University Library.

In 1789, on the eve of the Haitian (and French) Revolution, the French colony of St Domingue had an estimated population of 556 thousand people. Of these, 500 thousand are thought to have been African slaves (approximately half of the entire Caribbean's slave population at the time), while just over ten percent of the population were whites or free people of color. Following the Haitian Revolution's conclusion in 1804, Haiti would become just the second nation in the Americas to gain its independence, and was the first (and only) country in the world to have been established by former slaves.

From the time of Columbus' arrival on the island in 1494, until British annexation in 1655, the island of Jamaica was largely under Spanish control. During this time, Jamaica was not colonized as extensively as other areas of the Americas (due to the lack of precious metals, which had become the focus of Spanish expansion in the 16th) and was mostly used as a supply base for other colonization efforts. Because of this, the number of slaves brought to the island was relatively low, until Britain took control of the island and began planting on a much larger scale. Jamaica as the world's largest sugar exporter For most of the 18th century, Jamaica was Britain's most valuable colony in the Caribbean, as the British plantations focused largely on the production of cash crops; especially sugar. In the 1700s, Jamaica was the second largest sugar exporter in the world, behind the French colony of St. Domingue (Haiti); however, Haiti lost this position during the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, at which point Jamaica emerged as the global leader. Jamaica held this title for almost three decades until the slave trade and slavery were abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807 and 1833 respectively, during which time which point Cuba quickly overtook it as the global leader. Demographic impact The vast majority of Jamaica's population at this time were African-born slaves or their ancestors; the high mortality rates and low fertility rates on Jamaica's plantations meant that slave owners had to import a high number of African captives into the colony in order to meet the output levels demanded by European consumers. There were sizeable numbers of white indentured servants, white planters, free people of color and maroons (former slaves who escaped and formed their own communities in Jamaica's interior) living in Jamaica during this century, however enslaved people made up the vast majority of Jamaica's population. Between 1607 and 1842, an estimated 1.02 million African captives disembarked in Jamaican ports, while an unknown number of slaves were imported from other areas of the Americas. The slave trade was abolished in 1807, yet the practice of slavery was not abolished until 1833 (and came into effect the following year); although no slave arrivals were recorded in these years, it is very likely that slaves continued to be smuggled into Jamaica until the mid-1800s. Today, it is estimated that approximately 98% of Jamaica's population is of African or mixed descent, the primary reason for this was the Atlantic slave trade.

Annual cotton production in the United States grew from just a few thousand tons at the turn of the 19th century, to fluctuating between 1.6 million and 4.3 million tons throughout most of the 20th century. The amount of space used to produce cotton also grew from three to almost 18 million hectares of land between 1866 and the 1920s, before dropping to around four or five million hectares between the 1960s and 1980s. Despite this drop in land usage, advancements in agricultural technology meant that output remained relatively constant in the 20th century, meaning that output per hectare actually increased significantly.

The mechanical cotton gin's invention in 1793 revolutionized the U.S. cotton industry, which grew exponentially in the early 19th century. Cotton was the U.S.' primary export in these years, and its production was driven by slave labor in the southern states (particularly South Carolina). For the first time, output exceeded one million tons in 1859, and again in 1861, however, the disruption of the American Civil War caused cotton output to drop by over 93 percent in the next three years, to just 68 thousand tons by 1864. Production resumed upon its previous trajectory following the war's end, and many of the former-slaves forced to work on cotton plantations continued to work in the cotton industry, but as sharecroppers who worked the land in exchange for a share of the harvest, as well as housing and facilities (this was similar to tenant farming, although sharecroppers received a smaller share of the crop and had fewer legal protections).

The 45 men who have served as the President of the United States (officially there have been 46 as Grover Cleveland is counted twice) have fathered, adopted or allegedly fathered at least 190 children. Of these 190, 169 were conceived naturally, eleven were adopted and there are ten reasonable cases of alleged paternity (possibly more). Today, there are 34 living presidential children; the oldest of which is Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, daughter of Lyndon B. and Lady Bird Johnson; the youngest is Barron Trump, son of Donald and Melania Trump. John Tyler is the president who fathered the most children, having fifteen children over two marriages (and allegedly fathering more with slaves), while his successor, James K. Polk, remains the only U.S. president never to have fathered or adopted any known children. Coincidentally, as of November 2020, the U.S.' tenth president, John Tyler, has two grandsons who are still alive today, despite the fact that he was born in 1790.

The First Family

The president, their children and spouse are collectively known as the First Family of the United States; the current first family is made up of President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, as well as their children, Hunter and Ashley. Two of President Biden's children died before he was elected to office; his son Beau died of cancer in 2015, while his one year old daughter Naomi was killed in a car accident in 1972, along with Biden's wife, Neilia (who was also Beau and Hunter's mother). Two presidents' sons have gone on to assume the presidency themselves; these were John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush respectively, while one presidential grandson, Benjamin Harrison, later became president.

Alleged children

Three U.S. presidents have allegedly fathered illegitimate children with slaves. The most well-known and substantial of these allegations relates to Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings; who was also the half-sister of Jefferson's wife Martha (with whom he had already fathered six children). Following Martha's passing in 1782, its is believed that the future-president would then go on to have a relationship with Hemings that spanned four decades and saw the birth of as many as eight children between 1790 and 1808. Hemings, thought to have been 14 years old at the beginning of the relationship (Jefferson was 44), and her children remained enslaved to Jefferson until his death in 1826. DNA tests conducted in recent years have confirmed a genetic connection between the Hemings and Jefferson families, and the majority of historians accept that Thomas Jefferson was the father of at least six of Hemings' children. Less substantial claims have also been levelled at John Tyler, with political opponents claiming that he fathered several children with slaves in the years following his first wife's death; although these claims have been widely disregarded by historians, with little investigation into their validity. It is alleged that William Henry Harrison also fathered at least six children with one of his slaves, Dilsia, however these claims are anecdotal and have been disregarded or ignored by historians. In spite of this, to this day, there are some African-American families in the U.S. who claim to be the descendants of both Harrison and Tyler.

It is generally accepted that two other presidents, Grover Cleveland and Warren G. Harding, fathered children through extramarital affairs. It is likely that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock in 1874; even paying child support to the mother, acknowledging that he could have been the father. When the child's mother accused Cleveland of rape, he had her institutionalized to discredit these accusations, and the child was taken away and raised by Cleveland's friends. The issue came to light nationally during the 1884 election campaign, but Cleveland still emerged victorious. In 1927, four years after his death in office, it came to light that Warren G. Harding had fathered a child out of wedlock a year before winning the 1920 election. The child was conceived during one of his two long-term, extramarital affairs, and Harding did pay the mother child support, although he kept the affair and child a secret. Harding died before the child's fourth birthday, his family dismissed these claims as rumors, claiming that he was infertile; however, DNA tests confirmed that the child was his in 2015. While there have been numerous accusations of presidents' infidelity in the past century, particularly relating to John F. Kennedy and Donald Trump; Trump is the only president since Harding to have had a child out of wedlock (although the couple did get married two months after the birth of their daughter, Tiffany).

In the past four centuries, the population of the Thirteen Colonies and United States of America has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony in Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 346 million in 2025. While the fertility rate has now dropped well below replacement level, and the population is on track to go into a natural decline in the 2040s, projected high net immigration rates mean the population will continue growing well into the next century, crossing the 400 million mark in the 2070s. Indigenous population Early population figures for the Thirteen Colonies and United States come with certain caveats. Official records excluded the indigenous population, and they generally remained excluded until the late 1800s. In 1500, in the first decade of European colonization of the Americas, the native population living within the modern U.S. borders was believed to be around 1.9 million people. The spread of Old World diseases, such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, to biologically defenseless populations in the New World then wreaked havoc across the continent, often wiping out large portions of the population in areas that had not yet made contact with Europeans. By the time of Jamestown's founding in 1607, it is believed the native population within current U.S. borders had dropped by almost 60 percent. As the U.S. expanded, indigenous populations were largely still excluded from population figures as they were driven westward, however taxpaying Natives were included in the census from 1870 to 1890, before all were included thereafter. It should be noted that estimates for indigenous populations in the Americas vary significantly by source and time period. Migration and expansion fuels population growth The arrival of European settlers and African slaves was the key driver of population growth in North America in the 17th century. Settlers from Britain were the dominant group in the Thirteen Colonies, before settlers from elsewhere in Europe, particularly Germany and Ireland, made a large impact in the mid-19th century. By the end of the 19th century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. It is also estimated that almost 400,000 African slaves were transported directly across the Atlantic to mainland North America between 1500 and 1866 (although the importation of slaves was abolished in 1808). Blacks made up a much larger share of the population before slavery's abolition. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily since 1900, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. Since WWII, the U.S. has established itself as the world's foremost superpower, with the world's largest economy, and most powerful military. This growth in prosperity has been accompanied by increases in living standards, particularly through medical advances, infrastructure improvements, clean water accessibility. These have all contributed to higher infant and child survival rates, as well as an increase in life expectancy (doubling from roughly 40 to 80 years in the past 150 years), which have also played a large part in population growth. As fertility rates decline and increases in life expectancy slows, migration remains the largest factor in population growth. Since the 1960s, Latin America has now become the most common origin for migrants in the U.S., while immigration rates from Asia have also increased significantly. It remains to be seen how immigration restrictions of the current administration affect long-term population projections for the United States.

Although the founding fathers declared American independence in 1776, and the subsequent Revolutionary War ended in 1783, individual states did not officially join the union until 1787. The first states to ratify the U.S. Constitution were Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in December 1787, and they were joined by the remainder of the thirteen ex-British colonies by 1790. Another three states joined before the turn of the nineteenth century, and there were 45 states by 1900. The final states, Alaska and Hawaii, were admitted to the union in 1959, almost 172 years after the first colonies became federal states. Secession in the American Civil War The issues of slavery and territorial expansion in the mid nineteenth century eventually led to the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 until 1865. As the U.S. expanded westwards, a moral and economic argument developed about the legality of slavery in these new states; northern states were generally opposed to the expansion of slavery, whereas the southern states (who were economically dependent on slavery) saw this lack of extension as a stepping stone towards nationwide abolition. In 1861, eleven southern states seceded from the Union, and formed the Confederate States of America. When President Lincoln refused to relinquish federal property in the south, the Confederacy attacked, setting in motion the American Civil War. After four years, the Union emerged victorious, and the Confederate States of America was disbanded, and each individual state was readmitted to Congress gradually, between 1866 and 1870. Expansion of other territories Along with the fifty U.S. states, there is one federal district (Washington D.C., the capital city), and fourteen overseas territories, five of which with a resident population (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). In 2019, President Trump inquired about the U.S. purchasing the territory of Greenland from Denmark, and, although Denmark's response indicated that this would be unlikely, this does suggest that the US may be open to further expansion of it's states and territories in the future. There is also a movement to make Washington D.C. the 51st state to be admitted to the union, as citizens of the nation's capital (over 700,000 people) do not have voting representation in the houses of Congress nor control over many local affairs; as of 2020, the U.S. public appears to be divided on the issue, and politicians are split along party lines, as D.C. votes overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee in presidential elections.