I had to dig a little on this one, statistics being what they are. Turns out, this one's misleading, so context is important.

1. 1.6% is calculated by taking the number of slave-owning citizens in 1860 and dividing it by the population of the US. There were 395K slave owners and 31.4M people. 395/31400 = ~1.6%. It's closer to 1.4%, but I'm rounding so it's inexact, but still illustrates how the number is calculated.

2. This is also 1860. Slavery was outlawed in most states by this point. It legal in 15 of 33 states. If we want to get a real sense of the social impact where slavery actually was, in the Antebellum South, we have to use only the population in only those states. Do it that way, and you get closer to 5%.

3. This is still the wrong method. It includes all citizens, including children, and ~3.9 million slaves who obvious didn't own themselves. A better assessment would be to divide free adults, or better yet, heads of household, since slaves were typically held by the family, not individually. Husbands and wives didn't typically have their own slave accounts, for example. Do it that way, and you get closer to 20% of households in the South owned slaves.

4. Lastly, it is portrayed as if WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) citizens were the only ones to own slaves. That's false too. Getting the data to evaluate this is far more difficult, but it is clear that black freedmen and Native Americans also owned slaves, as well as a particular ethnic group that looks white but likes to separate themselves off when politically expedient. The group in particular represented a very small fraction of the overall population but a large per capita rate of slave ownership since guess who was in the merchant class which would have taken on slaves as a business "necessity"?

Ultimately, he is right that slavery is talked about as if it were a universal thing, an original sin only white people committed. Even when we make an effort to get a very accurate statistical picture, we still find that 80% of households in the South owned no slaves, as well as all of the residents of the states where slavery was illegal. Slavery was a business decision. Those who owned and operated what was Big Ag back then owned slaves the way farmers own combines and other tractors today - as a business expense. Their arguments for it very strongly focused on the economic necessity in order to compete with other growers worldwide who also used slave labor. That doesn't make it moral, but it does help explain the mentality was very different from what it alleged by today's Leftists. As is their SOP, they take the exception and try to portray it as if it were the rule. They want to tar and feather an entire country and an entire race. My ancestors worked their own damn farms and never owned a slave. They would have been repulsed by the idea given their religious views.

I had to dig a little on this one, statistics being what they are. Turns out, this one's misleading, so context is important.

1. 1.6% is calculated by taking the number of slave-owning citizens in 1860 and dividing it by the population of the US. There were 395K slave owners and 31.4M people. 395/31400 = ~1.6%. It's closer to 1.4%, but I'm rounding so it's inexact, but still illustrates how the number is calculated.

2. This is also 1860. Slavery was outlawed in most states by this point. It legal in 15 of 33 states. If we want to get a real sense of the social impact where slavery actually was, in the Antebellum South, we have to use only the population in only those states. Do it that way, and you get closer to 5%.

3. This is still the wrong method. It includes all citizens, including children, and ~3.9 million slaves who obvious didn't own themselves. A better assessment would be to divide free adults, or better yet, heads of household, since slaves were typically held by the family, not individually. Husbands and wives didn't typically have their own slave accounts, for example. Do it that way, and you get closer to 20% of households in the South owned slaves.

Ultimately, he is right that slavery is talked about as if it were a universal thing. Even when we make an effort to get a very accurate statistical picture, we still find that 80% of households in the South owned no slaves, as well as all of the residents of the states where slavery was illegal. Slavery was a business decision. Those who owned and operated what was Big Ag back then owned slaves the way farmers own combines and other tractors today - as a business expense. Their arguments for it very strongly focused on the economic necessity in order to compete with other growers worldwide who also used slave labor. That doesn't make it moral, but it does help explain the mentality was very different from what it alleged by today's Leftists. As is their SOP, they take the exception and try to portray it as if it were the rule. They want to tar and feather an entire country and an entire race. My ancestors worked their own damn farms and never owned a slave. They would have been repulsed by the idea given their religious views.