Statistics: Slaves and Slaveholdings
| Slaveholding, 1860 | |
| Non-slaveholders | 76.1 percent |
| 1-9 slaves | 17.2 percent |
| 10-99 | 6.6 percent |
| over 100 | 0.1 percent |
| Distribution of Slaves | ||||
| Number of slaves held | ||||
| 0 | 1-6 | 7-39 | 40+ | |
| Percent of white families | 75 | 15 | 9 | 1 |
| Percent of slaves held | 0 | 16 | 53 | 31 |
| Growth of the African American Population | ||
| 1820 | 1.77 million | 13 percent free |
| 1830 | 2.33 million | 14 percent free |
| 1840 | 2.87 million | 13 percent free |
| 1850 | 3.69 million | 12 percent free |
| 1860 | 4.44 million | 11 percent free |
Questions to Think About
1. How many slaves did a typical white Southerner own?
2. On what size farm or plantation did a typical slave live? How many slave families might have lived on such a plantation? How likely was it that a slave could find a spouse on a plantation of that
size?
3. How rapidly was the slave population growing? Why do you think the U.S. slave population grew while the slave populations elsewhere in the New World failed to naturally reproduce their numbers?