About What Proportion of Southern White Families Owned No Slaves

The claim: Only 1.6% of U.S. citizens owned slaves in 1860

As more Confederate monuments were being removed in the Due south this month, an old claim seeking to downplay the extent of slave ownership began to recirculate online.

On July 11, a Facebook user shared a screenshot of a 2019 tweet that claims only 1.6% of U.South. citizens owned slaves in 1860. The post came a day later on a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed in Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of a violent white supremacist rally in 2017.

"So yous can stop basing your detest for an entire race for the actions of a mere 1.6%," the 2019 Twitter mail says. "Am I right?"

Non exactly. PolitiFact and Snopes have previously evaluated similar claims that popped up in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

More:How an accidental come across brought slavery to the The states

Data archived from the 1860 census shows the 1.vi% is slightly off. Merely historians say the bigger issue is that measuring slaveholders equally a percent of the total population is misleading because slavery was illegal in most states by that point. Where it was withal legal, slavery was far more widespread than the number in the post indicates, they said.

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"Y'all tin utilize statistics to demonstrate a lot of things that aren't relevant or truthful," said Calvin Schermerhorn, a history professor at Arizona State University. "When you search for context the context very quickly arrives in terms of what was actually going on."

The user who posted the original tweet and the Facebook user who shared information technology on July eleven did not respond to requests for annotate.

Number minimizes extent of slavery

In 1860, slavery was still legal in 15 of the 33 U.S. states, and slaves represented well-nigh a third of the population in those slaveholding states.

At the time, the total U.S. population was about 31.4 meg, including more than than three.9 million slaves. That left about 27.five one thousand thousand free people in the U.South., according to 1860 data from the U.Due south. Census Agency.

The U.S. had 395,216 slaveholders at that time, so about 1.four% of free people were classified every bit slave owners in the 1860 census, according to data archived by the Integrated Public Utilize Microdata Series at the University of Minnesota. That'south slightly different from the 1.six% in the July 11 Facebook post.

Historians, though, say that statistic is hugely misleading since it both wrongly factors in the entirety of the non-slave-owning states and ignores that families endemic and had power over slaves, not just i individual developed.

Using total population as a reference point also includes babies and children, for example, said Stephanie McCurry, history professor at Columbia University. Doing so is "clearly designed to make that grade of property seem marginal. Information technology wasn't," she said.

Evaluating the share of households that endemic slaves in seceding states is "a much more effective means," said Joseph Glatthaar, history professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Colina. In 1860, nearly twenty% of households in seceding states owned slaves, he said.

"To break information technology down most how many U.S. citizens owned slaves is absurd," Glatthaar said in an electronic mail.

If you only focus on who technically owned slaves, though, a amend metric would be to evaluate the proportion of slave owners in the fifteen states where slavery was still legal in 1860, Arizona State'south Schermerhorn said.

More than:Court clears way for removal of Confederate statue at the center of mortiferous Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally

Nigh 5% of people in those states were considered slaveholders, the data shows. That's nearly three times higher than the number shared in the post.

Only Schermerhorn said even that minimizes the number of white people who benefitted from slavery. For example, the patriarch of a family might have been counted every bit the slave possessor in the census, simply other members of the household had authority to commit "violence with dispensation" on enslaved people, he said.

Slaves also were rented out. So while a slave owner was only counted one time, other people and businesses, including railroad companies, could benefit from slavery every bit well, Schermerhorn said.

Our rating: Missing context

The claim that just 1.six% of U.S. citizens owned slaves in 1860 is MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research. The stat itself is slightly off: Census Agency data from that period shows about i.4% of free people owned slaves in 1860. Historians, though, say that grossly underrepresents the extent of slavery in the U.S. earlier the Civil State of war because information technology includes babies, children and people in states where slavery was illegal in the calculation. Slavery was illegal in all but 15 states by 1860. A more authentic manner to portray the extent of slavery would be to note xx% of households in seceding states endemic slaves, even though the individual possessor was counted as only 1 person in that household.

Our fact-check sources:

• USA TODAY, July 9, Charlottesville removes Amalgamated statues, including one that sparked deadly far-correct rally
• Snopes, Aug. vii, 2019, Did Only 1.4 Percent of White Americans Own Slaves in 1860?
• Politifact, Aug. 24, 2017, Viral mail gets it wrong about extent of slavery in 1860
• Library of Congress, accessed July 15, Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. Compiled from the demography of 1860 Re-create 1
• U.S. Census Bureau, accessed July xv, 1860 Decennial Population
• IPUMS NHGIS, University of Minnesota, accessed July 15, Virtually
• Stephanie McCurry, Columbia University, July thirteen, e-mail interview
• Calvin Schermerhorn, Arizona State Academy, July thirteen, telephone interview
• Joseph Glatthaar, University of N Carolina-Chapel Hill, July xiii, email interview
• U.S. Census Agency, accessed July 15, 1850 Statistics of Slaves
• U.S. Census Bureau, accessed July 15, Decennial Census Official Publications - 1860

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/16/fact-check-social-media-post-underrepresents-slave-ownership-1860/7980243002/

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