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It's Claimed that Only 1.6% of US Citizens Owned Slaves In 1860. We Ran the Numbers
Snopes ^ | April 4, 2024 | Alex Kasprak

Posted on 04/05/2024 4:36:06 AM PDT by 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.'"

(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Conspiracy; Society
KEYWORDS: slaveowners; slaves; snopes
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To: mewzilla
And this one goes back to 1688...

Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery

41 posted on 04/05/2024 5:49:14 AM PDT by mewzilla (Never give up; never surrender!)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

https://www.unz.com/freed/are-white-men-gods-ii/

‘nuf said.


42 posted on 04/05/2024 5:50:43 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
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To: mewzilla

Additional food for thought on the subject...

https://contemporarythinkers.org/thomas-sowell/book/black-rednecks-white-liberals/


43 posted on 04/05/2024 5:52:33 AM PDT by mewzilla (Never give up; never surrender!)
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To: catnipman
snopes is a super-hard-core leftist propaganda organ

Incorect!

There is ample proof that Snopes is a collection of the sphincters that show up an inch or two behind the organ. And that their "fact checking" is the typical product.

44 posted on 04/05/2024 5:52:55 AM PDT by 70times7 (Serving Free Republic's warped and obscure humor needs since 1999)
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To: carcraft
The FIRST chattel slave owned was a Black ex-slave named Anthony Johnson.

I respectfully disagree. Johnson was black, and he is the first chattel slave owner we know the name of (here in what we today call the United States). But there were whites who were chattel slaves before Johnson owned Castor, we just don't have the names of those slave owners or slaves. Basically it was a while before it was feasible for whites to go buy slaves from Africa (that the Africans themselves were catching and transporting to the coasts).

When I'm talking about white slaves I'm not talking about voluntary servitude, though that did exist. I'm talking about whites being captured in Europe and brought against their will to America, unable to escape, they were abused, and worked, and their babies born in slavery. Mixed in that were some voluntary servitude whites, and some that were a mixed story. (i.e. In debtors prison in Europe but granted leave if he "voluntarily" signed up for slavery in America.)

And before the whites were chattel slaves here, the indigenous Americans treated each other as slaves. Basically, before blacks or whites were slaves here, the indigenous Americans were slaves here. Plus, during the centuries of black slavery here in which there were 300K to 500K black slaves brought to what we today call the U.S., there were a million white slaves taken to Africa.

Frankly it's ridiculous for blacks to talk like slavery is all about them.

45 posted on 04/05/2024 5:53:51 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: BroJoeK

¡Ay caramba! ¡No esa mierda otra vez!


46 posted on 04/05/2024 5:55:18 AM PDT by x
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

the first slave owner in virginia was black, as a recall.


47 posted on 04/05/2024 5:57:59 AM PDT by teeman8r (Armageddon won't be pretty, but it's not like it's the end of the world or something )
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

The selling of africans, by other africans, into slavery started in the 1460s by Portugal not in 1619 as CRT has everyone conditioned.


48 posted on 04/05/2024 5:59:45 AM PDT by 100%FEDUP
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To: brookwood

Feed your friends and starve your enemies.


49 posted on 04/05/2024 6:03:25 AM PDT by Labyrinthos
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

More slaves today than at any time in history.
Mostly in moose limb countries


50 posted on 04/05/2024 6:08:47 AM PDT by Joe Boucher (Kimber .45 Be Kind.)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

My 4 greats grandfather owned slaves. I am sure his family was enriched by that. The Civil War wiped away the wealth except for the land.

My great grandfather did not inherit the land. He left school after fourth grade and farmed and drove a vegetable cart to support his family. He worked hard and honestly at a manual trade the rest of his life.

I wonder how a black man in that time and place would have done with the same qualities, hard-working, honest, highly-skilled, prudent, sober, frugal, devoted to his wife and family, valuing education for his children. The best I can figure is he would have done pretty well but he would not have all the opportunities my great grandfather did.

And two or three generations later when he would have had those opportunities, the windows were closing for the blue-collar man, because of mass immigration and massive off-shoring screwed the blue-collar guy.

And that is the work of the elites who lecture us.


51 posted on 04/05/2024 6:14:38 AM PDT by heartwood (Someone has to play devil's advocate.)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

1.6% of mostly southern democrats.


52 posted on 04/05/2024 6:14:58 AM PDT by logi_cal869 (-cynicus the "concern troll" a/o 10/03/2018 /!i!! &@$%&*(@ -)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

All of them democrat relations ?


53 posted on 04/05/2024 6:15:28 AM PDT by butlerweave
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

And yet the fascists in da gubmint want 100% of Americans, none of whom ever owed a slave, to pay reparations to the clowns who never picked a cotton ball? Weirder than sh**. I knew this would happen once the politicians legalized drugs to keep the little people happy.


54 posted on 04/05/2024 6:18:55 AM PDT by FlingWingFlyer (I can't wait until the "media" is printing headlines like, "Trump Reverses Biden-era Policy.")
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To: catnipman

“ snopes should be banned from FR”
No kidding, nothing from that site should be posted.
Had a former coworker who made the mistake of posting a snopes article thinking he was smart.
“Jerry, you stupid idiot, don’t post that crap on company emails!”
Very glad when he was terminated.


55 posted on 04/05/2024 6:23:43 AM PDT by 9422WMR
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To: mewzilla
...A History of World Societies documents a total of 6,000 Negro slave owners in the U.S. for the year 1840 [p. 846]. The 1850 and 1860 Slave Schedules do not identify slave owners by race; the individual names of slave owners must be searched in the U.S. Federal Census to identify the individual's race...

"How does that make you feel," Henry Louis Gates, he of beer summit fame, and who asks every honky when shocked and shamed to discover a link to slavery in their family tree.

56 posted on 04/05/2024 6:36:22 AM PDT by Lovely-Day-For-A-Guinness (Jesus rides beside me, He never buys any smokes)
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To: Tell It Right

My great-grannies sister was taken as a ‘slave’ when she vanished after logging in at Ellis Island fresh off a ship from Ireland.


57 posted on 04/05/2024 6:39:22 AM PDT by Lovely-Day-For-A-Guinness (Jesus rides beside me, He never buys any smokes)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

Now fact check that 95% of us citizens slave owners were Democrat. And 0% Republicans

How is slavery America orginal sin... but not Democrat Party orginal sin? ...


58 posted on 04/05/2024 6:42:44 AM PDT by tophat9000 (Tophat90000)
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To: catnipman
snopes should be banned from FR ... snopes is a super-hard-core leftist propaganda organ ...

We all are aware of that, and we more than capable of seeing through their propaganda. Picking apart leftwing narratives is what we do here, its part of the fun that make FR informative and such a good source of information.

59 posted on 04/05/2024 6:45:08 AM PDT by usurper (AI was born with a birth defect.)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

And this is why blacks must not be punished for any crimes, however heinous.


60 posted on 04/05/2024 6:49:38 AM PDT by nwrep
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