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...[T]he chief importers of African slaves to the Americas were Brazil and the Caribbean, not the U.S. According to Encarta Encyclopedia, the total number of slaves transported from Africa to the Western Hemisphere was approximately 10 to 11 million; however, out of that total number, only about 6 percent (i.e., 600,000 to 650,000 people) were brought to what became the United States¹.

Slavery in America was finally brought to a halt in the 1860s as the result of a tumultuous Civil War that cost the lives of over 600,000 men from both North and South. Coincidentally, the combined total of soldiers from the Union and the Confederacy who were killed during the Civil War is roughly equal to the number of slaves imported from Africa to the United States (although there were nearly twice as many casualties on the Union side as there were on the side of the Confederacy.

I ran across these little tidbits on the subject lately:

Slaves were introduced to new diseases and suffered from malnutrition long before they reached the new world. It is suggested that the majority of deaths on the voyage across the Atlantic - the middle passage - occurred during the first couple of weeks and were a result of malnutrition and disease encountered during the forced marches and subsequent interment at slave camps on the coast. Conditions on the slave ships were terrible, but the estimated death rate of around 13% is lower than the mortality rate for seamen, officers and passengers on the same voyages.