Of the 4.5 million blacks in the 1860 Census in the United States, 4 million lived in the south. Of those, there were 261,988 were free Negroes living in the south. The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In New Orleans in 1860 for example, over 30% of free Negroes owned black slaves. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slave-holding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).

In "Slavery in History", Adam Gurowski wrote -- "The Jews were the common mediators and factors in this traffic, as well as the most expensive slave-traders all over Europe, both then and in subsequent times; and a considerable part of the hereditary hatred of the European masses toward the Jews is to be ascribed to this historic fact."