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.

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 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).

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.

This data collection contains information about the population of each county, town, and city of the United States in 1850 and 1860. Specific variables include tabulations of white, black, and slave males and females, and aggregate population for each town. Foreign-born population, total population of each county, and centroid latitudes and longitudes of each county and state were also compiled. (Source: downloaded from ICPSR 7/13/10)

Please Note: This dataset is part of the historical CISER Data Archive Collection and is also available at ICPSR -- https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09424.v2. We highly recommend using the ICPSR version as they made this dataset available in multiple data formats.

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.

These data were drawn from three separate U.S. censuses--1860, 1870, and 1880--for the state of Missouri, and pertain to six Missouri townships. The data were linked to form a pooled cross-section time-series, in which multiple observations for individuals are linked together. There is one record for each enumerated person in the sample from the population schedules, and each slave and farm has its own record as well. Agricultural data in the collection provide information on a variety of topics, such as the amount and dollar value of livestock, including cows, sheep, and pigs, agricultural commodities, such as wheat, oats, and barley, and dairy products like cheese and butter. Information about the value of orchards, farm land, and equipment is also included. Part 1, the agricultural census data for 1860, also provides information on the number of slaves in households, giving the number of male and female slaves in specific age groups (adults, teens, children, and babies). The agricultural census data for 1870 in Part 2 supply additional demographic variables, including U.S. citizen status, voting status, parents' birthplaces, and whether the person could write. Part 3, the agricultural census data for 1880, provides more in-depth information on livestock, including the number of sheep and cattle that were sold, slaughtered, born, or died. Other variables relate to the acreage of crops planted in corn, rice, wheat, and barley. Demographic variables common to all three agricultural censuses include age, sex, race, occupation, birthplace, literacy, and number of males and females in the household for all age groups (adults, teens, children, and babies). The U.S. Census population manuscript data offer demographic information similar to the demographic variables from the agricultural census data, and also include whether the person attended school. In addition, Part 6, Population Manuscript Data, 1870, covers citizen status, voting status, parents' birthplaces, and whether the person was deaf, dumb, blind, or insane. The 1880 population data in Part 7 provide variables for various health conditions: sick, blind, deaf, idiocy, insanity, and whether the person was maimed. Parents' birthplace and the person's relationship with the head of the household and head of the family are also included. Part 4, Panel Data: Farms Reported in Two or More Census Years, and Part 8, Panel Data: Household Heads and Other Males Enumerated in Two or More Census Years, supply data on farms and individuals who were enumerated in two or more census years. These two files provide information similar to that presented above.

Abstract (en): 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. ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Created variable labels and/or value labels.. All amnesty oaths signed by persons in the Confederacy and kept in the Diplomacy Branch, Record Group #59, Entries 466 and 467 in the National Archives. Random sample of about 3 percent of all amnesty oaths signed by persons in the Confederacy. 2009-06-11 SAS and Stata setups have been added to this data collection. Funding insitution(s): Ohio State University. University of Chicago. Booth School of Business. Center for Population Economics. The data contain alphabetic codes.

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.

PLEASE NOTE: This is an index of a historical collection that contains words and phrases that may be offensive or harmful to individuals investigating these records. In order to preserve the objectivity and historical accuracy of the index, State Archives staff took what would today be considered archaic and offensive descriptions concerning race, ethnicity, and gender directly from the original court papers. For more information on appropriate description, please consult the Diversity Style Guide and Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia: Anti-Racist Description Resources.

The Litchfield County Court African Americans and Native Americans Collection is an artificial collection consisting of photocopies of cases involving persons of African descent and indigenous people from the Files and Papers by Subject series of Litchfield County Court records. This collection was created in order to highlight the lives and experiences of underrepresented groups in early America, and make them more easily accessible to researchers.

Collection Overview

The collection consists of records of 188 court cases involving either African Americans or Native Americans. A careful search of the Files for the Litchfield County Court discovered 165 on African Americans and 23 on Native Americans, about one third of the total that was found in Files for the New London County Court for the period up to the American Revolution. A couple of reasons exist for this vast difference in numbers. First, Litchfield County was organized much later than New London, one of Connecticut's four original counties. New London was the home of four of seven recognized tribes, was a trading center, and an area of much greater wealth. Second, minority population in the New London County region has been tracked and tabulated by Barbara Brown and James Rose in Black Roots of Southeastern Connecticut.¹ Although this valuable work does not include all of Negro or Indian background, it provides a wonderful starting point and it has proven to be of some assistance in tracking down minorities in Litchfield County. In most instances, however, identification is based upon language in the documents and knowledge of surnames or first names.² Neither surname nor first name provides an invariably reliable guide so it is possible that some minorities have been missed and some persons included that are erroneous.

In thirteen of 188 court cases, the person of African or Native American background cannot be identified even by first name. He or she is noted as "my Negro," a slave girl, or an Indian. In twenty-three lawsuits, a person with a first name is identified as a Negro, as an Indian in two other cases, and Mulatto in one. In the remaining 151 cases, a least one African American or Native American is identified by complete name.³ Thirteen surnames recur in three or more cases.⁴ A total of seventy surnames, some with more than one spelling, are represented in the records.

The Jacklin surname appears most frequently represented in the records. Seven different Jacklins are found in eighteen cases, two for debt and the remaining sixteen for more serious crimes like assault, breach of peace, keeping a bawdy house, and trespass.⁵ Ten cases concern Cuff Kingsbury of Canaan between 1808 and 1812, all involving debts against Kingsbury and the attempts of plaintiffs to secure writs of execution against him. Cyrus, Daniel, Ebenezer, Jude, Luke, Martin, Nathaniel, Pomp, Titus, and William Freeman are found in nine cases, some for debt, others for theft, and one concerning a petition to appoint a guardian for aged and incompetent Titus Freeman.⁶ Six persons with the surname Caesar are found in seven court cases.

Sixty-one of 188 cases concern debt.⁷ Litchfield County minorities were plaintiffs in only about ten of these lawsuits, half debt by book and half debt by note. The largest single category of court proceedings concern cases of crimes against person or property. They include assault (32 cases), theft (30), breach of peace (5), and breaking out of jail (1). In cases of assault, the Negro or Indian was the perpetrator in about two thirds of the cases and victim in one third. In State v. Alexander Kelson, the defendant was accused of assaulting Eunice Mawwee.⁸ Minority defendants in assault cases included Daniel K. Boham, William Cable, Prince Comyns, Adonijah Coxel, Homer Dolphin, Jack Jacklin, Pompey Lepean, John Mawwee, Zack Negro, and Jarvis Phillips. One breach of peace case, State v. Frederic Way, the defendant, "a transient Indian man," was accused of breach of the peace for threatening Jonathan Rossetter and the family of Samuel Wilson of Harwinton.⁹

In cases of theft, African Americans appeared as defendants in 27 of 30 cases, the only exceptions being two instances in which Negroes were illegally seized by whites and the case of State v. William Pratt of Salisbury. The State charged Pratt with stealing $35 from the house of George Ceasor.¹⁰ More typical, however, are such cases as State v. Prince Cummins for the theft of a dining room table and State v. Nathaniel Freeman for the theft of clothes.¹¹

Another major category of lawsuits revolves around the subject of slaves as property. The number and percentage of such cases is much lower than that for New London County due to the fact that the county was only organized one generation before the American Revolution and the weaker grip the institution of slavery had in that county. The cases may be characterized as conversion to own use (4), fraudulent contract (3), fraudulent sale (3), runaways (3), illegal enslavement (2), and trespass (2).¹² The Litchfield County Court in April 1765 heard George Catling v. Moses Willcocks, a case in which Willcocks was accused of converting a slave girl and household goods to his own use.¹³ In the 1774 fraudulent contract case of Josiah Willoughby v. Elisha Bigelow, the plaintiff accused Bigelow of lying about York Negro's age and condition. Willoughby stated that York Negro was twenty years older that he was reputed to be, was blind in one eye, and "very intemperate in the use of Speretuous Lickor." He sued to recover the purchase price of £45, the court agreed, and the defendant appealed.¹⁴ Cash Africa sued Deborah Marsh of Litchfield in 1777 for illegal enslavement. He claimed that he was unlawfully seized with force and arms and compelled to labor for the defendant for three years.¹⁵ In another case, David Buckingham v. Jonathan Prindle, the defendant was accused of persuading Jack Adolphus to run away from his master. The plaintiff claimed that Adolphus was about twenty years old and bound to service until age twenty-five, when he would be freed under terms of Connecticut's gradual emancipation law.¹⁶

Other subjects found in Litchfield County Minorities include defamation, gambling, keeping a bawdy house, and lascivious carriage. The defamation cases all included the charge of sexual intercourse with an Indian or Negro. In one such case, Henry S. Atwood v. Norman Atwood, both of Watertown, the defendant defamed and slandered the plaintiff by charging that he was "guilty of the crime of fornication or adultery with [a] Black or Negro woman," the wife of Peter Deming.¹⁷ Three cases, two from 1814 and one from 1821, accuse several Negroes accuse Harry Fitch, Polly Gorley, Violet Jacklin, Betsy Mead, and Jack Peck alias Jacklin, of running houses of ill repute.¹⁸

The records on African Americans and Native Americans from Litchfield County are relatively sparse, but they do provide some indication of the difficulties encountered by minorities in white society. They also provide some useful genealogical data on a handful of families in northwestern Connecticut.

1. Barbara W. Brown and James M. Rose, joint authors, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1980).
2. The court cases often identify minorities by the words Negro, mulatto, colored, or Indian.
3. Two or more African Americans or Native Americans are found in 27 lawsuits, but a maximum of two people are included in the Litchfield County Minorities database.
4. Surnames with spelling variations: Boston (3), Botsford (4), Caesar (7), Coxel (3), Freedom (3), Freeman (9), Gauson (5), Jacklin (17), Kingsbury (10), Leopen (4), Mawwee (5), Quomenor (4), and Smith (3).
5. George, Harvey, Isaac, Jack, Philip, Violet, and William Jacklin. Also included is Jack Peck, alias Jack Jacklin.
6. For the last case, see Conservators and Guardians, Box 2, folder 42.
7. Fifty-seven suits for debt, the vast majority of which a minority was plaintiff or defendant, and four concerning writs of execution to recover debt owed.
8. Dec. 1836, Box 3, folder 16.
9. Sep. 1796, Box 3, folder 6.
10. David King v. Stephen Walton, Mar. 1791, Box 1, folder 17;Simon Mitchel v. Edward Hinman, Dec. 1793, Box 1, folder 18; State v. William Pratt, Oct. 1848, Box 2, folder 37.
11. Apr. 1828, Box 2, folder 23; Oct. 1837, Box 2, folder 29.
12. Three additional conversion cases concern livestock and hay.
13. Apr. 1765, Box 1, folder 5.
14. Dec. 1774, Box 1, folder 9.
15. Sep. 1777, Box 1, folder 9.
16. Dec. 1813, Box 1, folder 49.
17. Dec. 1814, Box 2, folder 2.
18. Sep. 1814, Box 2, folder 3, Sep. 1814, Box 2, folder 4; Sep. 1821, Box 2, folder 15.

If a record of interest is found, and a reproduction of the original record is desired, you may submit a request via <a

This collection contains five modified data sets with mortality, population, and other demographic information for five American cities (Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; New Orleans, Louisiana; New York City (Manhattan only), New York; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) from the early 19th century to the early 20th century. Mortality was represented by an annual crude death rate (deaths per 1000 population per year). The population was linearly interpolated from U.S. Census data and state census data (for Boston and New York City). All data sets include variables for year, total deaths, census populations, estimated annual linearly interpolated populations, and crude death rate. The Baltimore data set (DS0001) also provides birth and death rate variables based on race and slave status demographics, as well as a variable for stillbirths. The Philadelphia data set (DS0005) also includes variables for total births, total infant deaths, crude birth rate, and infant deaths per 1,000 live births.

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.

Prior to the American Civil War, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio were the most populous states in the Union, each with between two and four million inhabitants. Industrialization in the north was one of the key drivers of population growth during this period, through both internal and external migration, and Illinois saw the largest population growth during the 1860s largely due to the expansion of industry around Chicago. The gradual industrialization of the north in the early 1800s also contributed to the decline of slavery in the Union states, and the economic differences between the Union and Confederacy was a key factor in both the build-up to the Civil War, as well as the Union's eventual victory in 1865.

Human Trafficking Statistics: Human trafficking remains a pervasive global issue, with millions of individuals subjected to exploitation and abuse each year. According to recent statistics, an estimated 25 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking, with the majority being women and children. This lucrative criminal industry generates profits of over $150 billion annually, making it one of the most profitable illegal trades globally. As market research analysts, it's imperative to understand the scale and impact of human trafficking to develop effective strategies for prevention and intervention. Efforts to combat human trafficking have intensified in recent years, driven by increased awareness and advocacy. However, despite these efforts, the problem persists, with trafficking networks adapting to evade law enforcement and exploit vulnerabilities in communities. Through comprehensive data analysis and research, we can uncover trends, identify high-risk areas, and develop targeted interventions to disrupt trafficking networks and support survivors. In this context, understanding human trafficking statistics is crucial for informing policy decisions, resource allocation, and collaborative efforts to combat this grave violation of human rights. Editor’s Choice Every year, approximately 4.5 billion people become victims of forced sex trafficking. Two out of three immigrants become victims of human trafficking, regardless of their international travel method. There are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1000 people worldwide. An estimated 40.3 million individuals are trapped in modern-day slavery, with 24.9 million in forced labor and 15.4 million in forced marriage. Around 16.55 million reported human trafficking cases have occurred in the Asia Pacific region. Out of 40 million human trafficking victims worldwide, 25% are children. The highest proportion of forced labor trafficking cases occurs in domestic work, accounting for 30%. The illicit earnings from human trafficking amount to approximately USD 150 billion annually. The sex trafficking industry globally exceeds the size of the worldwide cocaine market. Only 0.4% of survivors of human trafficking cases are detected. Currently, there are 49.6 million people in modern slavery worldwide, with 35% being children. Sex trafficking is the most common type of trafficking in the U.S. In 2022, there were 88 million child sexual abuse material (CSAM) files reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) tip line. Child sex trafficking has been reported in all 50 U.S. states. Human trafficking is a USD 150 billion industry globally. It ranks as the second most profitable illegal industry in the United States. 25 million people worldwide are denied their fundamental right to freedom. 30% of global human trafficking victims are children. Women constitute 49% of all victims of global trafficking. In 2019, 62% of victims in the US were identified as sex trafficking victims. In the same year, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) grantees reported that 68% of clients served were victims of labor trafficking. Human traffickers in the US face a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison. In France, 74% of exploited victims in 2018 were victims of sex trafficking. You May Also Like To Read Domestic Violence Statistics Sexual Assault Statistics Crime Statistics FBI Crime Statistics Referral Marketing Statistics Prison Statistics GDPR Statistics Piracy Statistics Notable Ransomware Statistics DDoS Statistics Divorce Statistics

New York was the most populous state in the union in the year 1900. It had the largest white population, for both native born and foreign born persons, and together these groups made up over 7.1 million of New York's 7.2 million inhabitants at this time. The United States' industrial centers to the north and northeast were one of the most important economic draws during this period, and states in these regions had the largest foreign born white populations. Ethnic minorities Immigration into the agricultural southern states was much lower than the north, and these states had the largest Black populations due to the legacy of slavery - this balance would begin to shift in the following decades as a large share of the Black population migrated to urban centers to the north during the Great Migration. The Japanese and Chinese populations at this time were more concentrated in the West, as these states were the most common point of entry for Asians into the country. The states with the largest Native American populations were to the west and southwest, due to the legacy of forced displacement - this included the Indian Territory, an unorganized and independent territory assigned to the Native American population in the early 1800s, although this was incorporated into Oklahoma when it was admitted into the union in 1907. Additionally, non-taxpaying Native Americans were historically omitted from the U.S. Census, as they usually lived in separate communities and could not vote or hold office - more of an effort was made to count all Native Americans from 1890 onward, although there are likely inaccuracies in the figures given here. Changing distribution Internal migration in the 20th century greatly changed population distribution across the country, with California and Florida now ranking among the three most populous states in the U.S. today, while they were outside the top 20 in 1900. The growth of Western states' populations was largely due to the wave of internal migration during the Great Depression, where unemployment in the east saw many emigrate to "newer" states in search of opportunity, as well as significant immigration from Latin America (especially Mexico) and Asia since the mid-1900s.

Brazil conducted its first nationwide census in 1872; this census gave total populations of 4.2 million free non-whites, 1.5 million slave non-whites, and 3.8 million whites. Indigenous people and those of mixed indigenous descent were largely excluded from the census, although an overall figure of 0.4 million was given for the entire country. These figures combined to give a total of 9.9 million (modern UN estimates put the total at 10.3 million in 1872; likely due to the census' exclusion of many non-white infants).

The state of Minas Gerais had the largest population, at over two million people, with the neighboring states of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro with the second and third largest populations respectively. East Brazil was the region with the largest population, followed by the northeast and then south. In terms of ethnicity, non-whites outnumbered white people in every region except for the south, and free people of color outnumbered slaves in every state except for Rio de Janeiro.

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.

Between 1628 and 1860, it is estimated that almost 390 thousand Africans were transported as slaves to European colonies in Mainland North America. This figure refers only to those who survived the journey, as it is also thought that over 470 thousand captives embarked on these ships at African ports, however 84 thousand died en route (giving a mortality rate of 17.7 percent). The transportation of African slaves to the Thirteen Colonies was highest in the mid-18th century (although there was some fluctuation), before an observable decline around the time of the American Revolutionary War. Following independence, the importation of slaves remained lower than in previous decades, until it saw a sharp increase in the five years leading up to the slave trade's abolition. In 1807 alone, the year before the U.S. abolished the slave trade, almost 29 thousand slaves were imported from Africa into the U.S. Following this, activity declined greatly; the relatively small number of slaves imported from Africa to the U.S. were most likely into the Spanish territory of Florida. Smuggling also existed on a smaller scale; this accounts for the entries in 1858 and 1860.

From the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, Portuguese and Brazilian traders were responsible for transporting the highest volume of slaves during the transatlantic slave trade. It is estimated that, of the 12.5 million African slaves captured during this time, more than 5.8 million were transported in ships that sailed under the Portuguese and, later, Brazilian flags. British traders transported the second-highest volume of slaves across the Atlantic, totaling at almost 3.3 million; over 2.5 million of these were transported in the 18th century, which was the highest volume of slaves transported by one nation in one century.