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“During the half century after the legal end of slave importation, the slave population of the United States surpassed not only that of any other country in the New World, but, after abolition of slavery in the British colonies in the 1830s, that of all of them combined.”
Dr. Peter Kolchin, American Slavery 1619-1877 at 94 (Hill and Wang, 2003).
“Out of an estimated 12.5 million Africans who had been transported forcibly toward the New World, including but not limited to America, an estimated 10.7 million survived the process of transportation, known as the ‘Middle Passage.’ Thus, an estimated 1.8 million died from disease, brutality, murder or suicide during the ‘Middle Passage’.”
Dr. Henry Gates, “Slavery by the Numbers” published at www.theroot.com/slavery-by-the-numbers-1790874492, accessed Sept. 20, 2020.
Dr. Marcus Rediker states that, during the Middle Passage, “1.8 million of [the African captives] died, their bodies cast overboard to the sharks that followed the ships.” Adding to that number estimates of deaths during the period when Africans were captured and moved to the African coast to await the slave ships and the period shortly after arrival in the New World when the captives faced new diseases and “seasoning” abuses, Dr. Rediker provides a “conservative” total estimate that “roughly 5 million men, women, and children died” in the international slave trade:
“A conservative estimate of 15 percent – which would include those who died in transit [from the African interior to the West African coast] and held in barracoons and factories on the coast-suggests another 1.8 million deaths in Africa. Another 15 percent ( or more, depending on region), a million and a half would expire during the first year of laboring life in the New World. From stage to stage – expropriation in Africa, Middle Passage, initial exploitation in America –roughly 5 million men, women, and children died. Another way to look at the loss of life would be to say that an estimated 14 million people were enslaved to produce a “yield” of 9 million longer-surviving enslaved Atlantic workers.”
To be clear, that is a “conservative” estimate. Other estimates rise to many tens of millions of deaths.
M. Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History at 5 (Penguin Books, 2007). Emphasis added.
“[I]t has been documented that slaves built the U.S. Capitol building, as well as the White House.”
“Twelve American Presidents owned slaves, and eight of them, starting with George Washington, owned slaves while in office.”
The Slaves Who Built Washington DC at zmblackhistorymonth2012.blogspot.com/2012/02/slaves-who-built-washington-dc.html, accessed Sept. 25, 2020.
“[B]y 1860, the nation’s black population had jumped from 400,000 to 4.4 million, of which 3.9 million were slaves.”
Dr. Henry Gates, “Slavery by the Numbers” published at www.theroot.com/slavery-by-the-numbers-1790874492, accessed Sept. 20, 2020.