In 1860, Approximately ________ Percent of White Southerners Belonged to Families That Owned Slaves.
The claim: Just 1.6% of U.Due south. citizens owned slaves in 1860
Equally more than Amalgamated monuments were existence removed in the South this calendar month, an old claim seeking to downplay the extent of slave ownership began to recirculate online.
On July 11, a Facebook user shared a screenshot of a 2019 tweet that claims merely 1.6% of U.S. citizens endemic slaves in 1860. The postal service came a day afterward a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed in Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of a violent white supremacist rally in 2017.
"So you can terminate basing your detest for an entire race for the actions of a mere one.half-dozen%," the 2019 Twitter mail says. "Am I right?"
Non exactly. PolitiFact and Snopes have previously evaluated similar claims that popped up in 2017 and 2019, respectively.
More:How an adventitious encounter brought slavery to the Us
Information archived from the 1860 demography shows the 1.6% is slightly off. But historians say the bigger issue is that measuring slaveholders as a percent of the full population is misleading because slavery was illegal in nigh states by that point. Where it was yet legal, slavery was far more widespread than the number in the mail indicates, they said.
Fact check:Decades-one-time essay about Announcement of Independence signatories is partly simulated
"Y'all tin can employ statistics to demonstrate a lot of things that aren't relevant or true," said Calvin Schermerhorn, a history professor at Arizona State University. "When yous search for context the context very quickly arrives in terms of what was actually going on."
The user who posted the original tweet and the Facebook user who shared it on July 11 did non respond to requests for annotate.
Number minimizes extent of slavery
In 1860, slavery was even so legal in 15 of the 33 U.S. states, and slaves represented most a tertiary of the population in those slaveholding states.
At the time, the total U.Due south. population was virtually 31.iv million, including more than 3.ix million slaves. That left about 27.v million free people in the U.Due south., according to 1860 information from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The U.South. had 395,216 slaveholders at that time, so virtually ane.four% of gratuitous people were classified every bit slave owners in the 1860 census, according to data archived by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series at the University of Minnesota. That'due south slightly different from the 1.6% in the July 11 Facebook post.
Historians, though, say that statistic is hugely misleading since it both wrongly factors in the entirety of the non-slave-owning states and ignores that families owned and had power over slaves, not just ane individual adult.
Using total population as a reference point also includes babies and children, for example, said Stephanie McCurry, history professor at Columbia Academy. Doing so is "clearly designed to make that form of property seem marginal. It wasn't," she said.
Evaluating the share of households that endemic slaves in seceding states is "a much more constructive means," said Joseph Glatthaar, history professor at the University of Northward Carolina-Chapel Hill. In 1860, nearly 20% of households in seceding states endemic slaves, he said.
"To interruption it down well-nigh how many U.S. citizens owned slaves is absurd," Glatthaar said in an e-mail.
If you only focus on who technically owned slaves, though, a ameliorate metric would exist to evaluate the proportion of slave owners in the 15 states where slavery was however legal in 1860, Arizona State'southward Schermerhorn said.
More than:Court clears way for removal of Amalgamated statue at the center of deadly Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally
About 5% of people in those states were considered slaveholders, the data shows. That's nigh three times college than the number shared in the mail.
Simply Schermerhorn said even that minimizes the number of white people who benefitted from slavery. For example, the patriarch of a family unit might have been counted equally the slave owner in the census, but other members of the household had authorization to commit "violence with impunity" on enslaved people, he said.
Slaves too were rented out. And then while a slave owner was only counted one time, other people and businesses, including railroad companies, could benefit from slavery likewise, Schermerhorn said.
Our rating: Missing context
The claim that only 1.6% of U.Southward. citizens owned slaves in 1860 is MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research. The stat itself is slightly off: Census Bureau data from that period shows about one.four% of complimentary people endemic slaves in 1860. Historians, though, say that grossly underrepresents the extent of slavery in the U.South. before the Civil State of war because it includes babies, children and people in states where slavery was illegal in the calculation. Slavery was illegal in all but 15 states past 1860. A more than accurate manner to portray the extent of slavery would be to note 20% of households in seceding states owned slaves, even though the private owner was counted as but one person in that household.
Our fact-check sources:
- USA TODAY, July nine, Charlottesville removes Confederate statues, including 1 that sparked deadly far-correct rally
- Snopes, Aug. 7, 2019, Did Only one.4 Percentage of White Americans Own Slaves in 1860?
- Politifact, Aug. 24, 2017, Viral mail service gets it wrong about extent of slavery in 1860
- Library of Congress, accessed July 15, Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860 Re-create 1
- U.S. Demography Agency, accessed July 15, 1860 Decennial Population
- IPUMS NHGIS, Academy of Minnesota, accessed July 15, About
- Stephanie McCurry, Columbia University, July thirteen, electronic mail interview
- Calvin Schermerhorn, Arizona Country University, July 13, phone interview
- Joseph Glatthaar, University of North Carolina-Chapel Colina, July thirteen, email interview
- U.S. Census Bureau, accessed July 15, 1850 Statistics of Slaves
- U.South. Census Bureau, accessed July xv, Decennial Census Official Publications - 1860
Thank you for supporting our journalism. You tin can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.
Our fact-bank check work is supported in function past a grant from Facebook.
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/16/fact-check-social-media-post-underrepresents-slave-ownership-1860/7980243002/
Belum ada Komentar untuk "In 1860, Approximately ________ Percent of White Southerners Belonged to Families That Owned Slaves."
Posting Komentar