re: Only 1.5% of Americans owned slaves at the height of chattel slavery.

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Primary Data Source • U.S. Census of 1860 — “Population of the United States in 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns” • This census included slave schedules listing the number of enslaved persons per owner. • Historians calculate the percent of slaveholding households by dividing the number of slaveholders by the number of free white households in each state. • The full tables are available in the National Archives and have been digitized by several research institutions (e.g., IPUMS USA, University of Minnesota). ? ?? Key Scholarly Analyses 1. “Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970” (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1975) ? Provides aggregated data directly derived from the 1860 census, including household and slaveholding breakdowns. 2. Kenneth M. Stampp – The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (1956) ? Estimates that about 25% of white Southern families owned slaves, emphasizing class divisions and economic concentration. 3. Ira Berlin – Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (2003) ? Confirms regional variation: roughly half of white families in Mississippi and South Carolina owned slaves, while ownership dropped below 20% in upper southern states. 4. U.S. Census Office Report (1864) – “Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census” ? Lists 395,216 slaveholders out of 1.6 million white families in the 15 slave states, yielding roughly 24.7% overall. 5. Historical Atlas of the United States (National Geographic, 1993) ? Maps show slaveholding percentages by county and state, visually confirming the census-based figures.

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Only 1.5% of Americans owned slaves at the height of chattel slavery.
Bass Tiger
Someone make a legitimate and logical argument for black Americans today asking/demanding and believing they are entitled to some form of reparations (even though 360k Union soldiers died ending chattel slavery) when only 1.5% of Americans owned slaves at the heights of chattel slavery.

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Even more revealing was their attachment to slavery. Among the enlistees in 1861, slightly more than one in ten owned slaves personally. This compared favorably to the Confederacy as a whole, in which one in every twenty white persons owned slaves. Yet more than one in every four volunteers that first year lived with parents who were slaveholders. Combining those soldiers who owned slaves with those soldiers who lived with slaveholding family members, the proportion rose to 36 percent. That contrasted starkly with the 24.9 percent, or one in every four households, that owned slaves in the South, based on the 1860 census. Thus, volunteers in 1861 were 42 percent more likely to own slaves themselves or to live with family members who owned slaves than the general population.

The attachment to slavery, though, was even more powerful. One in every ten volunteers in 1861 did not own slaves themselves but lived in households headed by non family members who did. This figure, combined with the 36 percent who owned or whose family members owned slaves, indicated that almost one of every two 1861 recruits lived with slaveholders. Nor did the direct exposure stop there. Untold numbers of enlistees rented land from, sold crops to, or worked for slaveholders. In the final tabulation, the vast majority of the volunteers of 1861 had a direct connection to slavery. For slaveholder and nonslaveholder alike, slavery lay at the heart of the Confederate nation. The fact that their paper notes frequently depicted scenes of slaves demonstrated the institution's central role and symbolic value to the Confederacy.

More than half the officers in 1861 owned slaves, and none of them lived with family members who were slaveholders. Their substantial median combined wealth ($5,600) and average combined wealth ($8,979) mirrored that high proportion of slave ownership. By comparison, only one in twelve enlisted men owned slaves, but when those who lived with family slave owners were included, the ratio exceeded one in three. That was 40 percent above the tally for all households in the Old South. With the inclusion of those who resided in nonfamily slaveholding households, the direct exposure to bondage among enlisted personnel was four of every nine. Enlisted men owned less wealth, with combined levels of $1,125 for the median and $7,079 for the average, but those numbers indicated a fairly comfortable standard of living. Proportionately, far more officers were likely to be professionals in civil life, and their age difference, about four years older than enlisted men, reflected their greater accumulated wealth.

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The Historical Census Browser from the University of Virginia Library allows users to compile, sort and visualize data from U.S. Censuses from 1790 to 1960. For Glatthaar's purposes and ours, the 1860 census, taken a few months before the outbreak of the war, is crucial. It records basic data about the free population, including names, sex, approximate age, occupation and value of real and personal property of each person in a household. A second, separate schedule records the name of each slaveholder and lists the slave he or she owns. Each slave is listed by sex and age; names were not recorded. The data in the UofV online system can be broken down either by state or counties within a state, and make it possible to compare one data element (e.g., households) with another (slaveholders) and calculate the proportions between them.

In the vast majority of cases, each household (termed a "family" in the 1860 document, even when the group consisted of unrelated people living in the same residence) that owned slaves had only one slaveholder listed, the head of the household. It is thus possible to compare the number of slaveholders in a given state to the numbers of families/households, and get a rough estimation of the proportion of free households that owned at least one slave. The numbers varies considerably, ranging from 1 in 5 in Arkansas to 1 in 2 in Mississippi and South Carolina. In the eleven states that formed the Confederacy, there were in aggregate just over 1 million free households, which between them represented 316,632 slaveholders—meaning that just under one-third of households in the Confederate States counted among its assets at least one human being.

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