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).

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.

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.

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.

Estimates of captives carried in the Atlantic slave trade by decade, 1650s to 1860s. Data: routes of voyages and recorded numbers of captives (10 variables and 33,345 cases of slave voyages). Data are organized into 40 routes linking African regions to overseas regions. Purpose: estimation of missing data and totals of captive flows. Method: techniques of Bayesian statistics to estimate missing data on routes and flows of captives. Also included is R-language code for simulating routes and populations

Scan of 3 Federal Slave Census from June 16, 1860

This study presents 1860 data on population and farm production in 5,228 farms located in 405 major cotton-producing counties in the South. The data was compiled from the agriculture, slave, and population schedules of the 1860 United States manuscript Census. For each farm, variables describing farm land, machinery, crops, and livestock are included, as well as production figures for specific crops and types of livestock on the farm. The population variables tabulate the free and slave residents of each farm by sex, race, and age in five- or ten-year categories. This data set contains information of farm production and population residing on farms in the major cotton producing counties of the southern United States. Variables include: county code number; soil type in county; no. farms sampled in county; detailed commodity production of each farm, including acreage, value of farm and machinery, numbers of head of livestock, value of livestock, production of field crops, value of orchard products, wine production, value of market garden products, production of dairy products, production of 'textile' crops, value of home manufactures, value of animals slaughtered; numbers of farm residents by age categories, sex, and status, including free, slave, farm laborer, overseer, non-farm worker.

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.

Between the 17th and mid-19th centuries, almost 400 thousand slaves arrived in mainland North America, after embarking on slave ships in Africa. The most common disembarking regions were in the Carolinas and Georgia, where more than half of these slaves disembarked. The majority of the remaining slaves disembarked in the Chesapeake region, which stretched from Virginia to New York, while a smaller number disembarked further to the north, or in the states along the Gulf of Mexico. It may also be of note that very few slaves disembarked in Chesapeake or the northern U.S. in the nineteenth century, as slavery began to be abolished in some northern states and regions in the late 1700s.

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.

Lincoln's election produced Southern secession, war, and abolition. Using a new dataset on slave sales, we examine connections between news and slave prices for the period 1856-1861. By August 1861, slave prices had declined by roughly one-third from their 1860 peak. That decline was similar for all age and sex cohorts and thus did not reflect expected emancipation without compensation. The decision to secede reflected beliefs that the North would not invade and that emancipation without compensation was unlikely. Both were encouraged by Lincoln's conciliatory tone before the attack on Fort Sumter, and subsequently dashed by Lincoln's willingness to wage all-out war. (JEL D72, D74, D83, G14, H77, N31, N41)

This dataset provides four estimates of captive embarkations by region and by decade, 1650s to 1860s, using multiple-methods and Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. Calculations performed by Yun Zhang, June - August 2013. One of five appendices to the source article.

The dataset transcribes the information of over 300 enslaved people documented in the Slave Account Book of Charles Benedict Calvert of Prince George’s County, Maryland, which can be found in Special Collections at the University of Maryland library. Calvert was an enslaver and politician and one of the founders of what is now the University of Maryland, then called the Maryland Agricultural College. The account book documents enslaved people primarily in contemporary Prince George’s County, Calvert County, and Montgomery County, Maryland. There is no specific date recorded in the account book, but it is assumed to be written between 1831 and 1864.

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.

Analysis of ‘Waffles and divorce rates’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/tylerbonnell/waffles on 13 February 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

Context

This dataset comes from the book Statistical Rethinking: A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan

Content

Location : State name

Loc : State abbreviation

Population : 2010 population in millions

MedianAgeMarriage: 2005-2010 median age at marriage

Marriage : 2009 marriage rate per 1000 adults

Marriage.SE : Standard error of rate

Divorce : 2009 divorce rate per 1000 adults

Divorce.SE : Standard error of rate

WaffleHouses : Number of diners

South : 1 indicates Southern State

Slaves1860 : Number of slaves in 1860 census

Population1860 : Population from 1860 census

PropSlaves1860 : Proportion of total population that were slaves in 1860

Acknowledgements

All credit should go to Richard McElreath: https://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

As part of the Telling All of Our Stories project, Oatlands created a dataset to record every reference to a named enslaved person. The goal was to provide a source for locating ancestors or certain individuals and learning more about the people who were enslaved at Carter plantations Oatlands and Bellefield in Virginia. The first phase consists of names extracted from George Carter's will, written in 1842, and Elizabeth O. Carter's diary, kept from 1860 through 1873. The database contains over 900 entries, and there are approximately 120 distinctly different names. Information from or questions raised by Oatlands researchers are recorded in the Notes column. “List of slave expenditures kept by B. Grayson,” part of a Works Progress Administration Historical Inventory Project conducted in 1937, also provided some details for the dataset.

The nullification of slave wealth after the U.S. Civil War (1861-65) was one of the largest episodes of wealth compression in history. We document that white Southern households holding more slave assets in 1860 lost substantially more wealth by 1870, relative to Southern households that had been equally wealthy before the war. Yet, their sons almost entirely recovered from this wealth shock by 1900, and their grandsons completely converged by 1940. Marriage networks and connections to other elite families may have aided in recovery, whereas transmission of entrepreneurship and skills appear less central.

Petition subject: Against slave hunting Original: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:11858665 Date of creation: (unknown) Petition location: Douglas Legislator, committee, or address that the petition was sent to: John Abbott, Douglas; committee on federal relations Selected signatures:H.H. DarlingCharles A. HuntLuther Wing Actions taken on dates: 1860-02-10 Legislative action: Received in the House on February 10, 1860 and referred to the committee on federal relations Total signatures: 113 Legislative action summary: Received, referred Legal voter signatures (males not identified as non-legal): 113 Female only signatures: No Identifications of signatories: citizens, ["legal voters"] Prayer format was printed vs. manuscript: Manuscript Additional non-petition or unrelated documents available at archive: no additional documents Location of the petition at the Massachusetts Archives of the Commonwealth: Senate Unpassed 1860, leave to withdraw 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.

Brazil conducted its first nationwide census in 1872, just 16 years before slavery's official abolition in 1888. Modern estimates place Brazil's total population in 1872 at approximately 10.3 million; the exclusion of non-white infants and indigenous populations from the census is likely the cause of this deficit. The 1872 census showed that non-whites made up the majority of Brazil's population at this time, at roughly 5.75 million, compared to the white population of 3.79 million. Of these 5.75 million, over 4.2 million were free, compared to 1.5 million living in slavery; this gives a ratio of almost three free non-whites for every one slave. To compare, in the United States in 1860, there were at least eight slaves for every one free person of color in the years leading up to slavery's nationwide abolition.

The election of Abraham Lincoln in November of 1860 brought to a head the issue of slavery in the United States. In direct response to Lincoln's election as president, seven southern states seceded from the Union rather than continue to negotiate and compromise over the issue of slavery, which had been the norm for so many decades.This story map locates most of the major battles of the American Civil War. It was developed in partnership with the American Battlefield Trust.Many of the descriptions for individual sites include links to excellent battlefield maps, articles and in-depth analysis from the American Battlefield Trust. The Trust is America's largest non-profit organization devoted to the preservation of our nation's endangered battlefields. The Trust also promotes educational programs and heritage tourism initiatives to inform the public of the war's history and the fundamental conflicts that sparked it. See additional story maps at esri.com/arcgisstorymaps.