It's Claimed that Only 1.6% of US Citizens Owned Slaves In 1860. We Ran the Numbers

Snopes ^ | April 4, 2024 | Alex Kasprak

[where's_the_Outrage?]

On April 2, 2024, the claim that "only 1.6% of US citizens owned slaves in 1860" went viral on X (formerly Twitter):

Though the 3.3 million people who viewed this statement (at the time of this reporting) may not be aware, this claim is part of an long-standing genre of online memes that use a misleading statistic to minimize the importance of slavery to antebellum America.

The actual percentage reported in these memes varies, Snopes has observed, from 1.3 percent to the present 1.6 percent. As Snopes reported in August 2019, the statistic to which these memes refer is most accurately conveyed as 1.4 percent.......

The year 1860 was a census year. Officials collected detailed information on slave ownership and distribution in the Southern states, and this data, while far from perfect, is likely the most reliable source of information for the state of slavery directly preceding the Civil War......

Adam Rothman, a historian at Georgetown University and an expert in the history of slavery who spoke to us via email, told us that the percentage of slaveholding families is "the better measure of the extent of slaveholding." One reason this is true, according to historian Adam Goodheart in an interview with Politifact in August 2017, is that a person could be (and often was) a "slave master" but not technically a "slave owner":

"Many non-slaveholding whites in the South rented slaves from wealthier slaveholders ... so it was very common for a white Southerner to be a 'slave master' but not technically a 'slave owner.'"

[Bull Snipe]

“Which helped them be able to save money to buy their freedom.

Would seem to me that if I rented one of my slaves to you, that you would pay me the rent money, not the slave. So how would this help the slave to save money to buy his freedom?

[marktwain]

Slaves often received "tips" or amounts more than the agreed on contract.

This was their own money. Some saved up a fair amount.

[Bull Snipe]

“You can’t put a slave to work in a factory and get any meaningful production out of them and they will sabotage your machinery whenever they can.”

Every Southern Manfacturing operations employed slave labor to some extent. The largest industrial operation in the Confederacy was the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, VA. In 1860, over 40% of their work force were slaves. Not only were the slaves’ manual laborers, or coal heavers, but they were also skilled pattern makers, foundry men and machinists. Tredegar provided most of the iron rail used in the South, they built locomotives, and cast 50% gun barrels for the artillery of Confederate Army.

[Bull Snipe]

ok, thanks

[daniel1212]

The number 1.4% is [a real problem if we want to demonize a non-PC race] likely derived by taking the number of "slaveholders" (393,975) as a fraction of the "total free population" (27,233,198), which yields 1.4%. For several reasons enumerated below, that number grossly downplays the number of whites who were involved and who benefited directly from slavery.

Why stop at benefited directly in order make the non-PC race guilty? Who does not benefit directly or indirectly from Communism, esp, when many items cannot be has apart from at least some chicom parts? Does that make all guilty? Future reparations?

(Additionally, the premise behind each of these types of calculations betrays a false assumption that non-slaveholding whites had no role in supporting or benefiting from the institution of slavery in the 1860s.)

Yet Jack Phillips was condemned by the Left for arguing that making a custom cake for an immoral and illegal wedding would render him complicit in it.

[ifinnegan]

“ Would seem to me that if I rented one of my slaves to you, that you would pay me the rent money, not the slave. So how would this help the slave to save money to buy his freedom?”

You are correct.

How it worked was the slave did get paid and the owner took his cut also.

[discostu]

Like I told the other guy: making the hypocrisy bigger doesn’t make it better. They put the high ideal out there and FAILED it from day 1. They said all men created equal thrn let some be property. They said all men had an unalienable right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then made a list of aliened.

Most every problem this country has ever had grows from that seed. The failure to even try to live up to the stated ideals. They compromised them. And when you compromise ideals it’s setting spark to flash paper. Poof, they’re gone.

[marktwain]

Lincoln absolutely did not want them to leave. They were paying 72% of all the Federal government's bills, and without them, he would have to raise taxes massively in the North just to meet the budget.

This is false logic.

The Southern states also benefited from a federal government as much as the Northern states did.

It would take some effort to determine how much of the 72% (probably a disputed number, depending on how it was calculated) went to benefit the South.

This was almost all tariffs.

Are you counting tariffs to be revenue produced by slaves?

"Yup. Cotton made up most of it, (over 50%) but with tobacco, hemp, indigo, sugar and so forth made up 72% of all us trade with Europe."

There were no U.S. tariffs on those items. It does not make sense to say the South paid the tariffs and list items which were sold to other countries.

The proper calculation is how much the South paid in tariffs for things like manufactured goods.

Tariffs were paid by everyone, not just the South. Sure, the South used more of some things and less of others, than the North. But just because you export more doesn't mean you are paying more in tariffs.

[marktwain]

Pretending the bad stuff didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen just enables it. Taking credit for the good and ignoring the bad ALLOWS the bad. You can’t learn from mistakes you won’t acknowledge. That kind of deliberate ignorance is why history repeats itself.

Show me a country which is perfect.

The correct comparison is not to an impossible utopia, but to practical alternatives.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Slaves cost about $1,000.00 in the 1850s.
They are roughly equivalent to $100,000.00 today.
How many people around today could afford $100,000.00 servants?
Not many, I think."

central_va: "Or more."

More.
Much more.

Depending on how you calculate it, $1,000 in 1860 is easily $250,000 today and arguably $500,000 based on today's wages.

Comparing GDP grown from then to now, $1,000 in 1860 is financially equivalent to nearly $6,000,000 today.
Think of it as asking your bank to loan you $1,000 in 1860 was equivalent to asking for a $6,000,000 loan today.

Yes, prices were also relatively higher in 1860, so you could also argue that based on other prices, for examples, food or clothing, $1,000 in 1860 is only circa $50,000 today.
However, by measures of the cost of labor and the price of money, $1,000 in 1860 was much higher today.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

This was in grade school in Delaware but we were taught the northern part of the state was Union and the Southern part was Confederate, hence the title “The Diamond State.”

I don’t remember the woman’s name but a show on the History Channel had a story about a wealthy black woman slave trader who was the toast of Charleston society all through the Civil War. She even had a letter of introduction from the Governor of Georgia, a big deal in those days.

Here’s a horrible story from Delaware history.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/patty-cannon

Patty Cannon’s house was built on the Delaware/Maryland border. She was able to get away with her crimes for so long because when the Delaware authorities would come to arrest her, she would get over to the Maryland side and vice versa for the Maryland cops. Both states law enforcement eventually decided to coordinate their efforts and hit her place at the same time. They got her. In all of the accounts of this story I can’t find the part of the border ruse mentioned even though I think it’s a large part of the story. We were taught all of this story in Delaware history.

[Brass Lamp]

A slave owner has the legal power to dispose, by selling or freeing, the slave in question. Anyone who does not possess such a power is proven, therefore, to not be a slave owner. There was no such 'familial' power, a near-relation did not have a legal right to sell or free a slave, and a non-slave owning relation could hardly be condemned for a moral crime he could not have vacated through inaction. This is matter of definition and is not really subject to the emotionally-weighted word piling of the Continental methodology. There is no real argument among peers, because dissenters are not peers.

Story tellers like McPherson aren't writing for the approval of educated historians or truthseekers, he writes specifically for the approval of non-historians who hate the idea of objective history.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Slavery was producing 72% of the total revenue for the Federal government in 1860.
It had been producing the bulk of the tax revenue since the 1820s.
Pretty much everything connected to government during this era was paid for by the slaves."

Or so it was claimed by pro-Southerners at the time, based on the value of Southern exports in relation to Federal tariff revenues.

But a truer picture is much more complicated because, for starters, Southern exports were not 100% based solely on slavery.
Southern exports also depended on massive "imports" from the North of everything from capital (bank loans) to industrial products like railroad and telegraph equipment, to ships for freight, to farm tools, household goods, clothing and some food.

Because of this, foreign imports (and so Federal tariff revenues) did not flow into the South in proportion to their exports, but rather were sold everywhere in the US, depending on each region's relative incomes.
Wealthier cities imported more foreign goods, and so paid more of Federal tariffs, while poorer areas imported less.

Which brings us to the question of where, exactly, was the nation's wealth, per capita -- North, South, East or West?
The answer may surprise you, it did me.

As reported here, the average annual per capita income (APCI) in 1860 of various regions was:

1. West South Central (Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma) = $189 APCI X
   Population = 1,802,667 = $331,690,728 = 8% of US GDP

2. Northeast (from PA to Maine) = $183 APCI X
   Population = 10,594,000 = $1,938,751,044 = 49% of US GDP

3. East South Central (MS, AL, TN, KY) = $89 APCI X
   Population = 5,203,003 = $463,067,267 = 12% of US GDP

4. North Central (Ohio to Iowa) = $89 APCI X
   Population = 7,773,820 = $691,869,980 = 18% of US GDP

5. South Atlantic (Florida to Delaware) = $84 APCI X
   Population = 5,289,623 = $444,328,332 = 11% of US GDP

So the Midwest and Southeast had roughly half the per capita income as the Southwest and Northeast.
Overall, we see 31% of national GDP in the South, 69% in the North and West, and that is likely also the distribution of tariffed imports, and therefore of Federal revenues in 1860.

We should also notice, the claim of "72% of Federal revenues" allegedly "paid for" by "Southern Products" can only be made by exaggerating Southern exports and minimizing exports from the North and West, especially by not counting California gold or Nevada silver as Northern exports.

[x]

+1

[discostu]

Not saying anybody is perfect. But you always have to own your @$#^. It’s just part of life. You can’t learn from mistakes you won’t acknowledge. You can’t fix mistakes you won’t acknowledge.

I’m not comparing anything. I’m saying to stop putting blinders on and pretending we ever were perfect. Taking credit for the good and ignoring the bad is evil and stupid.

[DiogenesLamp]

Not the case. Dent, Julias father, gave Grant a slave. Grant kept the young man for about a year than gave him his freedom. Julia, on the other hand, never owned slaves. The four female slaves that attended Julia, the household and children were the property of her father. She never had legal title to them. Dent would never allow the four female slaves to accompany Julia when she left the State of Missouri.

Splitting hairs. You said Grant "Kept the young man for about a year", which meant he let him go, but it doesn't mean he didn't "own" him for a year.

So therefore, "Grant owned slaves, past tense, is still correct.

Additionally, legal ownership versus defacto ownership is another nit pick. Grant's wife had slaves do her bidding, so whether or not she owned them is immaterial to the fact they were still slaves under the control of the Grant family.

[DiogenesLamp]

Wrong. Workers were paid a small pittance for each item they produced. No Mississippi cotton plantation slave was paid a cent for the cotton he produced. In addition, the textile worker had the option of quitting and moving on. Something a Mississippi field slave could only dream of.

You are telling me that I am "Wrong" about textile mills in the North being dependent upon slaves?

I think you miss my meaning. Without the slaves producing cotton, the textile mills in the North cannot produce fabric. The mills are literally dependent upon the cotton the slaves produced.

I wasn't making any reference to their workers, I was making reference to the origins of their raw material.

[DiogenesLamp]

In either case you seem determined to defend the Party of slavery and the KKK.

I think I was pointing out that it is a mistake to make sweeping generalizations.

I also think it is eroneous to equate modern parties with 19th century parties. The ideology of both the Republican and Democratic parties has greatly changed since the 1860s.

In the 1860s, the Republicans were the big city liberals intent on big government projects, high taxes, high spending, protectionism, etc.

Also they lived in the very same areas of the country that today are dominated by Liberal Democrats.

Boston was a liberal area in 1860, and it's still a liberal area today. The names may have changed, but the regional attitudes, ideology and philosophy of those areas are still relatively unchanged.

[Skooz]

This article seems to be jumping through all kinds of hoops and playing with word definitions just so that it can “fact check” and prove that all white people are super bad.

Pretty much.

[Bull Snipe]

Sorry, misunderstood your statement.