1860 Census

[thea_447]

Re: 1860 Census, in particular the free blacks in the north, south, and border states and the number of families holding slaves, etc.:

Concerning the number of free blacks listed by a previous poster, this appears to be basically correct. However, the border states you
included are slave states, so in reality, at the start of the war,
there were more free blacks in the slave states than there were in the border states.

Something else worth noting about this:
you'll find free blacks concentrated in certain areas in both
north and south, primarily around the major ports.
Oddly, in the major slaveholding states of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, S.Carolina, other than the same penchant for living in
seaport towns such as Charleston or Mobile, free blacks show a
real tendency to actually live in the counties with the highest
numbers of slaves. A best guess for this is that they were either
emancipated blacks, or that work was available to them
in these areas. Of course, it may be that they had family connections, etc.

The thing the previous poster said that interests me most, and I don't feel is correct, concerns the numbers of families
holding slaves. To the best of my knowledge, the 1860 Census,
while providing numbers for families and for slaveholders,
does not at any point tie the two together. Because of that, I feel it is impossible to simply assume that because there are X
number of families in an area, with X number of slaveholders
in the same area, that the percentage of slaveholders
compared to the number of families is in any way indicative of
the number of slaveholding families. The numbers themselves don't seem to bear this out.

For instance, the 1860 census for Dallas County AL, gives us a total number of 711 farms, 1,506 families, 25,760 slaves, 1,280 slaveholders, and 80 free blacks. At face value, this means that
over 85% of Dallas County families must have owned slaves, yet
we can dig into the census and find that between
10,000 and 12,500, or to half of these slaves were owned by 338 slave owners.
Only 125 slave owners are listed as owning a single slave, and it is common knowledge that wives and husbands, sons and brothers
within the same family held slaves not under common family
ownership. Considering that Dallas county had a rather high
number of manufacturing established for a cotton growing
county at the time, I'd tend to believe that slaveholder numbers do not directly correlate with the numbers of families.

I might be looking at this incorrectly...anyway, it's just a thought.}}}