During the American Civil War, not only was the Confederacy made up of fewer states than the Union, but these states were also much less populous than many in the North. For example, in the final census before the war in 1860, the five largest states in the South had around one million inhabitants each, while the largest states in the North had three to four million. In addition to the Union's larger population, the fact that European immigration into urban and industrial centers in the North was much higher also gave the Union a steady supply of recruits that were drafted as the war progressed, which was vital to the Union's victory in 1865.

This graph shows the total number of soldiers who were enlisted in the Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War, between 1861 and 1865. The total population of the Union states was 18.9 million in 1860, and the Confederate states in the south had a population of 8.6 million. The Border States, who primarily supported the Union but sent troops to both sides, had a population of 3.5 million. From the graph we can see that over the course of the war a total of 2.1 million men enlisted for the Union Army, and 1.1 million enlisted for the Confederate Army. The Union Army had roughly double the number of soldiers of the Confederacy, and although the Confederacy won more major battles than the Union in the early stages of the war, the strength of numbers in the Union forces was a decisive factor in their overall victory as the war progressed.

There were almost 700 thousand slaves in the US in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in every 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 0.5 million free African Americans in all of the US. Of the 4.4 million African Americans in the US 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 sixteenth century, when the Portuguese and Spanish forcefully brought captured African slaves to the New World, in order to work for them. 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 (apart from some very rare cases) were born into a life of slavery. Abolition and the American Civil War In the years that followed independence, the Northern States began gradually prohibiting slavery, and 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) were victorious 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 abolishment 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 has taken the spotlight in recent years.

This data collection was designed to compare the heights of southern whites with those of slaves and northern white males between 1863 and 1866. Information provided includes month, day, and year of amnesty, county and state, age, color of skin, eyes, and hair, occupation, last name, first name, oath administrators, feet component in height, inch component in height, and height in inches.

The Border states were the five slave states who did not secede from the Union and did not declare allegiance to either side. Their name comes from the fact that they bordered the free states of the Union to the north, and the slave states of the Confederacy to the south. Generally speaking, the border states supported the Union more often than the Confederacy, however this changed throughout the war. For example, Missouri sent 39 regiments to fight in the siege of Vicksburg: 17 to the Confederacy and 22 to the Union. The involvement of men from these states was also complicated, as family members quite often found themselves on opposing sides of the battlefield. From the graph we can see that, while all states' populations grew, the smaller states had a lower growth rate, as they saw a higher proportion of conflict. Missouri had, by far, the highest growth rate during this decade, due to an increase in westward migration, as well as a lower rate of conflict.

This statistic shows the population of the United States in the final census year before the American Civil War, shown by race and gender. From the data we can see that there were almost 27 million white people, 4.5 million black people, and eighty thousand classed as 'other'. The proportions of men to women were different for each category, with roughly 700 thousand more white men than women, over 100 thousand more black women than men, and almost three times as many men than women in the 'other' category. The reason for the higher male numbers in the white and other categories is because men migrated to the US at a higher rate than women, while there is no concrete explanation for the statistic regarding black people.

This data collection describes the organization of agriculture and the operation of the Southern economy following the Civil War, with emphasis on the relationship between race and tenure status of farm operators. Economic and agricultural data were compiled from the 1880 Census of Agriculture. Information provided includes the location of the farm (region, state, county, and enumeration district), tenure of the farm operator, number of acres in tillage, meadows, woodland, and other uses, type of crops being farmed and production figures, and the number of various livestock (horses, mules, oxen, cows, sheep, and swine). Additionally, data are presented on the value of the farm, farm implements, livestock, and farm products, and costs associated with fences, fertilizer, and wages. Demographic information drawn from the 1880 Census of Population includes the race, literacy, age, and birthplace of the farm operator, number of people living in the house, and number of people working on the farm.

The issue of race and slavery was arguably the largest cause of the American Civil War, with the southern states seceding from the Union as the practice of slavery became increasingly threatened. From the graph we can see that roughly 16.5 percent of the entire US population at this time was black, and the vast majority of these were slaves. In 1860 there were almost 27 million white people, four and a half million black people, and less than one hundred thousand non-black or white people (mostly of Native/Latin American or East-Asian origin).

Note: Explore this map with the activity The Underground Railroad.This map shows which states and territories in 1850 permitted the enslavement of people, and which did not. Slavery had been practiced in North America since well before the United States was founded in 1776, and by 1850 it was a key part of the agricultural economy of the southern states. Large cotton plantations operated on the labor of enslaved people, particularly Black Africans. Meanwhile, the northern United States had a more industrial economy, and by 1850 had mostly prohibited slavery for economic, political, and moral reasons. Though these states were considered “free” states, in many cases this meant that slavery wasn’t widespread. Even in states and territories where slavery was technically illegal, there were many loopholes that kept people enslaved and restricted free Black people.

In the years before the American Civil War, which began in 1861, the question of whether new states would allow slavery caused a lot of disagreement and tension between the North and South. The United States was carefully balanced to have as many "slave" states as "free" states, giving both sides an equal number of senators. The South was worried that if more free states were added, this balance would be upset, and the North would be able to pass legislation banning slavery in the United States. The North didn't want slavery to spread to new areas, both for moral reasons and because they didn’t think it was fair that enslaved people couldn’t vote but counted as part of the population when assigning congressional delegates. They argued that this gave the South an unfair advantage when voting for new laws. To try to keep the peace, a series of compromises, such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 were proposed to determine what states and territories would or would not permit slavery.

Another issue that caused tension between abolitionists in the North and slave owners in the South was the ongoing trade of enslaved people. The United States government had banned foreign slave trade in 1800, but this did nothing to free the people who were already enslaved in the United States. States in the upper South, such as Virginia, now profited from selling enslaved people to new states in the Deep South.

To escape enslavement, some enslaved people used an informal network of routes, places, and people known as the Underground Railroad to travel in secret to the Northern United States and into Canada, where slavery was illegal. The Underground Railroad was not a literal underground railroad, but because escaping from slavery and helping enslaved people escape was illegal, the network operated in secret. The “conductors” were the people leading enslaved people to freedom and the “station masters,” those who hid enslaved people on the way north. According to some estimates, between 1810 and 1850, the Underground Railroad helped to guide 100,000 enslaved people to freedom.

This map was made through the process of digitization, or tracing historical maps using modern geographic information system (GIS) software. These maps don’t always line up perfectly with modern boundaries, for many reasons. Over time, natural landmarks, such as rivers, can shift their paths, and human landmarks, such as buildings and roads, can be abandoned and demolished. There are also differences in the accuracy of hand-drawn maps compared to computer-drawn maps.

The original maps are published in Harper’s Atlas of American History, and are available through the Library of Congress:

Slavery and Slave Trade 1830-1850

Routes of the Underground Railroad 1830-1865

Fox, Dixon Ryan. Harper's atlas of American history, selected from "The American nation series," with map studies, by Dixon Ryan Fox. [New York, London, Harper & Brothers, 1920] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/32005827/

This statistic shows the number of black men and women in the US from 1820 until 1880. Slavery was legal in the Southern States of the US until 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was added to the US Constitution after the American Civil War. Until that time all of the slaves included in this statistic were registered as living in the South, whereas the majority of the free, black men and women lived in the Northern States. From the data we can see that, while the slave experience was very different for men and women, there was relatively little difference between their numbers in each respective category. While female slaves were more likely to serve in domestic roles, they were also more likely to be working in the lowest and unskilled jobs on plantations, whereas men were given more skilled and physically demanding roles. As slavery was abolished in 1870, all black people from this point were considered free in the census data. It is also worth noticing that in these years the difference in the number of men and women increased, most likely as a result of all the black male soldiers who fell fighting in the American Civil War.

The study was conducted between January and March 2010, within an area covering about 70,456 km2 of the Sudd Wetland in South Sudan, the distribution, population status and threats to the Nile lechwe were examined. Using systematic flight and questionnaires, results showed that Nile lechwes were distributed at the periphery of the Sudd Wetland.57.6 % of the population occurred outside protected areas, while 42.4% were observed inside Zeraf Game Reserve. The population was estimated to be 11,043 ( 7,839), there appears to be a significant decline between 1980 and 2010 Nile lechwe’s population estimates (χ2 = 33.7; Df =1; P = 0.00) and there was no significant difference between 2007 and 2010 population estimate on the lower side (χ2 =2.585; Df=1; P =0.108). A significant correlation was also observed between the Nile lechwe’s distribution and human activity signs (r2= 0.688 (69%); P=0.00).
The civil war was perceived as the greatest threat to the Nile lechwe followed by firearms used during hunting. Among other perceieved threats were hunting, wildfire, increase in livestock densities, agricultural expansion, floods, diseases, Jonglei canal reconstruction, drought, oil exploration and dykes.
Over 38.9% of the population were aware of the existence of a game reserve, 53.3% knew the existence of Wildlife laws and 65.6% had cultural values associated with the Nile lechwe, these were seen as indirect threats to the Nile lechwe and its habitat. If these activities continues uncontrolled, the future of Nile lechwe will be in jeopardy. To conserve the Nile lechwe an integrated management strategy addressing the threats would be need.

We present a comprehensive assessment of genomic diversity in the African-American population by studying three genotyped cohorts comprising 3,726 African-Americans from across the United States that provide a representative description of the population across all US states and socioeconomic status. An estimated 82.1% of ancestors to African-Americans lived in Africa prior to the advent of transatlantic travel, 16.7% in Europe, and 1.2% in the Americas, with increased African ancestry in the southern United States compared to the North and West. Combining demographic models of ancestry and those of relatedness suggests that admixture occurred predominantly in the South prior to the Civil War and that ancestry-biased migration is responsible for regional differences in ancestry. We find that recent migrations also caused a strong increase in genetic relatedness among geographically distant African-Americans. Long-range relatedness among African-Americans and between African-Americans and European-Americans thus track north- and west-bound migration routes followed during the Great Migration of the twentieth century. By contrast, short-range relatedness patterns suggest comparable mobility of ∼15–16km per generation for African-Americans and European-Americans, as estimated using a novel analytical model of isolation-by-distance.

Just before the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 Union states had approximately five times as many factories as the Confederacy, and ten times the amount of factory workers. This level of industrialization is reflective of the economies at the time, with the Confederate and Border states depending more heavily on agriculture for their economic output, whereas the more industrialized cities of the northern states had many more factories. This also ties in with the issue of slavery at the time, which was arguably the most influential factor in the cessation of the southern states. The rural farm owners of the south depended on slave labor to maintain their output, and did not have large concentrations of population to pull workers from, whereas the factory owners of the north had a large supply of workers from more urbanized areas.

Sear-B South-East Asia with low child and low adult mortality [Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand]Estimated mid year population for 2003**Since a ceasefire was in effect for the civil war during this period, all deaths due to bombs and shootings were included under Violence rather than War.

In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth 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. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).

Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.

The Colony of Virginia, the location of the Jamestown Settlement (the first permanent English settlement in the Americas), was the most populous southern colony or state in the region until it was partitioned into Virginia and West Virginia during the American Civil War. Virginia was also the most populous of the Thirteen Colonies throughout most of the Colonial Era. In terms of ethnicity, the southern colonies had the largest relative Black populations, with South Carolina even becoming majority-Black in the 1710s.

The term "lynching" is believed to derive from the name of Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter who presided over an irregular and unofficial court during the Revolutionary War. Lynch's use of extralegal measures to punish those loyal to the British crown, helped to inspire mobs in later years to administer their own form of vigilante justice outside of the courts. Eventually, the term came to describe cases where supposed offenders were executed through mob violence without a proper trial and outside of legal jurisdiction. The most famous examples of these executions in the U.S. were those where the victim was hanged (due to the relatively large amount of photographic evidence); however, there were also cases where the victims were shot, burned or tortured and dismembered, among others. Lynching before Jim Crow In the early years of U.S. independence, lynching was most common along the frontier and in western territories, due to the lack of established or immediate judicial systems, and most studies suggest that these victims were mostly white and Mexican. Possibly the largest case of lynching (and largest case of mass hanging) in the United States, was in Texas in 1862, in what is known as the "Great Hanging at Gainsville"; this was where local slaveholders organized the mob hanging of 41 white men and shot three others, due to their supposed allegiance to the Union. Following the American Civil War, however, lynching became inextricably linked with racial inequality and white supremacy in the southern states of the U.S., and black Americans comprised the vast majority of lynching victims from 1886 onwards. Lynching of black Americans The Compromise of 1877 coincided with the emergence of the Jim Crow era in the southern states; it saw the removal of Union troops from the south and established political structures based on white supremacy and the oppression of minorities. Gradually, many of the rights and protections that were granted to black Americans following emancipation were stripped away. This period also saw a vast increase in the number of lynchings in the country, with the majority of these cases taking place in the south. Within ten years of Reconstruction's end, the number of black lynchings exceeded those of white lynchings, and over the next century it is estimated that there were over 4,700 lynchings across the country. Of the 4,740 lynchings estimated to have taken place between 1882 and 1965, 3,445 of the victims were black; this equates to over 72 percent of the total victims of lynching, despite black Americans making up just 10 to 13 percent of the total population. Of these 4,700 lynchings, around 3,500 took place in former Confederate states, where the share of black victims increased to 86 percent. As the years progressed, organized lynchings became more infrequent and were publicized less, and the implementation of the death penalty is thought to have replaced the sense of justice that lynching brought to its perpetrators. Nonetheless, it was not until 1952 where the U.S. went a full year without any known cases of lynching, and the final lynching cases were recorded in 1964 (although some have classified a number of murders after 1964 as lynchings, due to their connections with race and civil rights).

At the beginning of the 19th century, the U.S. labor force was approximately 1.9 million people, with slaves making up over half a million (28 percent) of this number. The share of slaves then increased to almost one third of the overall workforce in the next decade, but dropped to roughly one fifth by 1860; the year before the American Civil War. While the total number of slaves grew by several hundred thousand in each decade, their share of the U.S. labor force decreased due to the high levels of European migration to the U.S. throughout the 19th century. This wave of mass migration was an influential factor in slavery's eventual abolition, as Europeans met the labor demands that had previously been fulfilled by slaves, and those fleeing persecution and oppression in Europe were often sympathetic to the plight of slaves. Nonetheless, the majority of European migrants arrived in the industrialized, northern states, most of which had already abolished slavery in the 18th century, and slave labor was concentrated in the agricultural south at this time; this divide would prove fundamental in the outbreak of the American Civil War.

Lynching in the United States is estimated to have claimed over 4.7 thousand lives between 1882 and 1968, and just under 3.5 thousand of these victims were black. Today, lynching is more commonly associated with racial oppression, particularly in the south, however, in early years, victims were more commonly white (specifically Mexican), and lynchings were more frequent in western territories and along the southern border. It was only after Reconstruction's end where the lynching of black people became more prevalent, and was arguably the most violent tool of oppression used by white supremacists. Nationwide, the share of the population who was black fluctuated between 10 and 13 percent in the years shown here, however the share of lynching victims who were black was almost 73 percent. North-south divide Of the 4.7 thousand victims of lynching between 1882 and 1968, over 3.5 thousand of these were killed in former-Confederate states. Of the fourteen states where the highest number of lynching victims were killed, eleven were former-Confederate states, and all saw the deaths of at least one hundred people due to lynching. Mississippi was the state where most people were lynched in these years, with an estimated 581 victims, 93 percent of whom were black. Georgia saw the second most lynchings, with 531 in total, and the share of black victims was also 93 percent. Compared to the nationwide average of 73 percent, the share of black victims in former-Confederate states was 86 percent. Texas was the only former-Confederate state where this share (71 percent) was below the national average, due to the large number of Mexicans who were lynched there. Outside of the south Of the non-Confederate state with the highest number of lynching victims, most either bordered the former-Confederate states, or were to the west. Generally speaking, the share of white victims in these states was often higher than in the south, meaning that the majority took place in the earlier years represented here; something often attributed to the lack of an established judiciary system in rural regions, and the demand for a speedy resolution. However, there are many reports of black people being lynched in the former border states in the early-20th century, as they made their way northward during the Great Migration. Between 1882 and 1968, lynchings were rare in the Northeast, although Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were the only states** without any recorded lynchings in these years.

In 1800, the population of Yemen was just under 2.6 million, and would gradually grow to just 3.2 million by the end of the 18th century. Between the mid-1800s and early-1900s, the north and south regions of present-day Yemen had been split into territories of the British and Ottoman empires respectively; the north became independent in 1918, during Ottoman dissolution, while the British did not withdraw from the region until 1967. Yemen would experience an exponential growth in population in the years beginning in the 1970s, following the discovery of petroleum in the country, though this would slow somewhat in the 1990s, in part the result of food shortages and instability throughout the country years following the unification of South Yemen and the Yemen Arab Republic. In 2020, the population of Yemen is estimated to be just under thirty million people, however, the country has been experiencing a civil war in since 2015, which has resulted in one of the most severe humanitarian crises in recent history, with over 100,000 deaths (mostly children, due to famine) as well as the displacement of millions of people, and one of the most severe cholera outbreaks in recent decades.