Slavery by the Numbers

Published:December 1, 2011 by Brendan Wolfe

80: The approximate percentage of enslaved Africans among the total number of people who embarked for the Americas between 1500 and 1820. (Source)

12.5 million: The approximate number of enslaved Africans transported to the Americas between 1500 and 1866. (Source)

35,000: The maximum number of enslaved Africans brought to the area that was or would be the United States in any single year between 1619 and 1865. (Source)

15: The percentage of enslaved Africans who died, on average, during the Middle Passage. (Source)

“They loved this”: How an Alabama public school teacher describes his/her class’s reenactment of the Middle Passage. (Source)

Less than 4: The percentage of the total number of enslaved Africans transported to the New World who were imported to the area that became the United States. (Source)

90: The percentage of the total number of enslaved Africans transported to the New World who were imported to Brazil and the Caribbean. (Source)

33: The percentage of South Carolina’s enslaved labor force early in the 1700s made up of American Indians. (Source)

4 to 1: The ratio of white servants to enslaved Africans in Virginia late in the 1670s. (Source)

4 to 1: The ratio of enslaved Africans to white servants in Virginia early in the 1690s. (Source)

1 in 7: Chance that a New York State resident in 1776 was enslaved. (Source)

25: The approximate percentage of the total number of enslaved Africans transported to the Americas who came after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807. (Source)

$97,100,000,000,000: Estimated value of the labor performed by black slaves in America between 1619 and 1865, compounded at 6 percent interest through 1993. (Source)

1: Votes by which eighteenth-century lawmakers in the United States rejected outlawing slavery in all future states beyond the original thirteen. (Source)

55: The number of white people killed in Southampton County, Virginia, during Nat Turner’s rebellion in August 1831. (Source)

15: Votes by which Virginia lawmakers rejected outlawing slavery in the commonwealth on January 25, 1832. (Source)

500: Estimated number of anti-slavery petitions sent to the United States Congress between 1835 and 1836. (Source)

7.5: Percentage of all free blacks in the United States in 1830 who owned slaves. (Source)

12: Percentage of all free blacks in Virginia in 1830 who owned slaves. (Source)

1 to 1: Ratio of the average 1850 price in Texas of a healthy male slave to that of 200 acres of prime farmland. (Source)

490,865: Total number of slaves in Virginia in 1860. (Source)

30.7: Percentage of slaves among total Virginia population in 1860. (Source)

52.2: Percentage of slaves among total Albemarle County, Virginia, population in 1860. (Source)

$15: Price an Indiana historical museum charged in 1999 for visitors to spend 90 minutes as a runaway slave. (Source)

2 to 1: Estimated ratio of white to black runaways in an Indiana historical museum’s slavery reenactments in 1999. (Source)

2: Number of months after the Civil War ended that slaves in Texas were told of their emancipation. (Source)

IMAGE: Middle Passage by Robert Claiborne Morris

19 Comments

Discussion

19 Comments on “Slavery by the Numbers”

  1. Heather

    Regarding the fact that slaves in Texas did not learn of their emancipation until two months after the war (and 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation)– see the significance of “Juneteenth”. As a native Virginian, I learned this when I lived in Texas.

    Reply
    1. Katherine

      FYI Gen Granger and 2000 federal troops landed on Galveston Island on June 18th The next day Gen. Granger stated with the emancipation that “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” On June 23 the last Confederate General surrendered in Oklahoma. Communication was slow back in the day

      Reply
  2. Brendan Wolfe Post author

    Thanks for your comment, Heather. You are correct: the origins of the Juneteenth holiday date to the day, two months after the end of the war, when slaves in Texas were informed that they actually were former slaves. Which is to say, free men and women.

    Reply
  3. Alan Glover

    What was the total American population of Black slaves from 1619 to 1865, including those born here?

    Reply
    1. andrei lampkin

      I would like to know the answer to this question. I would also like to know the percentage of native Americans who owned slaves in America.

      Reply
      1. James

        Interesting family history- paternal great grand fathers in Mississippi were married to wealthy native american women. The picture of these 4 GP is very obvious. My father, born in 1905 could speak Choctaw in at least one song that he was taught as an infant. Yes, these native american women had slaves.

        Reply
      2. Brendan Wolfe Post author

        Thanks for your comment. I wish you luck in finding that information. We are currently at work on an entry about the enslavement of Indians in Virginia that includes context on the longstanding Indian practice of enslaving others and trading in those slaves. For more information on Indian slavery in general, these sources might be a helpful starting place:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States

        http://bit.ly/1VXOYaD

        http://williamlkatz.com/africans-indians-only-america/

        http://african-nativeamerican.blogspot.com/2012/04/abolitionist-newspapers-discuss-slavery.html

        Reply
    2. Brendan Wolfe Post author

      Thanks for the comment, Mr. Glover. I have no idea and it would be challenging, to say the least, to come up with such a number. You could add up all the census data, but you would need to tweak it so as not to count individuals more than once. That is very difficult without knowing more specific information about slaves’ identities (names, ages, etc.). And the domestic slave trade created more demographic challenges by moving many enslaved people from one part of the United States to another.

      Most historians tend to focus on numbers associated with a specific place and period in time.

      Reply
    1. Gary Herpst

      At the peak of black slavery in the South, only 6 percent of Southern whites owned slaves. If you include the white people in the North, it means that only 1.4 percent of white Americans owned black slaves at the HEIGHT of slavery.

      General Grant owned slave during the Civil War, but General Lee set his slaves free in the 1840s

      An estimated 3,000 blacks owned a total of 20,000 black slaves in the year 1860.

      Reply
  5. tkdrown

    I would like to see articles about numbers of native americans who were murdered tortured and used as slaves along with all other races who were slaves in this nation as well…..we do not hear much in reference to the Irish and Chinese Japanese etc.

    Reply
    1. Brendan Wolfe Post author

      Re “articles about numbers of native americans who were murdered tortured and used as slaves”: we have an entry on the enslavement of Virginia Indians you can read here: http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Indian_Enslavement_in_Virginia

      Re the Irish as slaves: they were not, at least not in the same legal sense as African slaves in Virginia and elsewhere in America. They often were indentured servants, and in the early years of the Virginia colony, indentured servitude included some Africans and African Americans and was sometimes indistinguishable from slavery. (Read about that here: http://bit.ly/1S4hDcl.) However, the popular Internet meme that suggests that the Irish were slaves just like African Americans is wrong. You will find a debunking of it here, along with links to other correctives: http://bit.ly/22mmkD5

      Reply
  6. Tim

    The Lee family did not free their slaves in 1840. That was the year Virginia made it a crime to educate slaves. RE Lee only allowed a few slaves to be freed and kept the insitution of slavery at his plantation til the emancipation proclimation and Union forces overran the plantation early in the war. Slaves were allowed to learn to read to allow them to study the bible but RE Lee tho a legendary general and often spoken of with awe and kindness was a slaveholder. I believe after the war he ‘saw the light’ on the evil of slavery.

    Reply
  7. john blanchard

    I am interested in how many people were born into slavery in the usa between 1620 and 1865? I want to know how many were actually enslaved and not just how many were transported here.

    Reply
    1. Pojimogo

      “Do you know the number of enslaved Africans that were sold to Europeans by other Aficans (sic)”

      By the mid 1500’s nearly all Africans sold into the Afro-Euro slave trade were victims of other Africans. For Europeans themselves, the attempt to procure slaves in the numbers needed to fuel this inhuman form of labor was not only logistically impractical, it was a highly dangerous endeavor as well. It was the Africans that made possible the European/Atlantic slave trade. In all probability, had Africans not chosen to enslave their countrymen and neighbors in an unquenchable thirst for power and profit, the European/American slave trade with Africa would never have existed … at least not in measure and to the extent it had evolved during its historical peak.

      Reply

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