Talk:Slavery in the United States/Archive 5

Native Americans were enslaved in large numbers
In recent years increasing amounts of scholarship have surfaced asserting that Native Americans were enslaved in the millions, up to 5 million. An example of the scholarship was cited. While most estimates for African slavery are at 12 million, 5 million is a substantial amount. If the 'primary' designation for Africans remains, there should be a mention of Native Americans shortly after it. My wording of 'as well as' offers this recognition but provides separation, and I think preserves the primary-ness of Africans as an enslaved group. User reverted the edit. I have undone the reversion and wish to open a dialogue with him and other users before further reversions by are considered.

There is currently no mention of Native Americans being enslaved in the lengthy article intro or in subsequent sections, only of Native Americans enslaving others. My version must not stand, but we need to acknowledge native slavery. For comparison, in the article on the Holocaust, all non-Jewish groups who were targeted are mentioned in the first paragraph. 2601:80:C100:210:D9B7:E8E4:119C:E982 (talk) 04:03, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Please stop edit warring and wait until you are able to establish consensus for that addition. You need to better demonstrate that there is a shift in the historiography. El_C 04:24, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Please read WP:LEAD. The opening section is supposed to summarize the article which, as you write, doesn't discuss enslavement of Native Americans at any length. Maybe that's an oversight that needs to be corrected. Please cite reliable sources, preferably books published by reputable publishers, about the enslavement of Native Americans. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 04:29, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Take a few days to present the scholarship, here, on the talk page. You've already violated the 3 revert rule, but I decided it was more productive to have the page semiprotected than have you blocked from editing altogether. In the future, please don't edit war, or you are likely to face sanctions. Thanks and goodluck. El_C 04:42, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

There are multiple scholars who assert multi-million indigenous totals. Linford Fisher 2-5.5 million: https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article/64/1/91/63354/Why-Shall-Wee-Have-Peace-to-Bee-Made-Slaves-Indian. Brett Rushforth 2-4 million: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/01/native_american_slavery_historians_uncover_a_chilling_chapter_in_u_s_history.html. Rushforth's book: https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Alliance-Indigenous-Slaveries-University/dp/1469613867. If you want to include the low range as well, e.g. Resendez at 150,000, ('estimates vary between 150,000 and 5.5 million') that's fine by me.2601:80:C100:210:D9B7:E8E4:119C:E982 (talk) 04:41, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * You say "[i]n recent years increasing amounts of scholarship have surfaced asserting that Native Americans were enslaved in the millions"—again, you need to demonstrate that there has been a shift in the historiography. El_C 04:45, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually Resendez has revised his estimate to 2-5 million n his recent book. https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/events/the-other-slavery-new-book-delves-into-history-of-native-enslavement/. In the article on Native American slavery, Resendez and Fisher are the only scholars presented, and they are both in the 2-5 million range. As for historiography, that relates to the writing of history. These are works of history, and they assert 2-5 million. The works of history that establish the 12.5 million were written in the late 20th century. 19th century histories and earlier do not hazard any guess at the numbers; very little was written on the particulars of African slavery before the 1960s. 04:49, 27 January 2018 (UTC)2601:80:C100:210:D9B7:E8E4:119C:E982 (talk)


 * That's interesting, but it doesn't really respond to my point. What is the scholarly consensus regarding the enslavement of Native Americans, is what I, myself, am most interested in. El_C 04:52, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

As far as scholars featured on the Native American slavery Wikipedia article, and who appear in any search on the subject, you have Resendez, Rushforth, and Fisher, who are estimating 2-5 million. I'm not seeing other prominent voices with other estimates. 2601:80:C100:210:D9B7:E8E4:119C:E982 (talk) 04:55, 27 January 2018 (UTC) -- My suggestion to you is to start by drafting (here, on the talk page) something for the body of the article, and only then have it summarised in the lead. El_C 04:58, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

That's fine, as long as there's agreement from the other editor.

In the meantime, I'd like to make an edit request that I am not able to make: that the text above the article read 'for slavery of and among Native Americans' (or 'of and by'). Saying 'among Native Americans' implies the holding of slaves by Native Americans in Native American communities, rather than the enslavement of Native Americans. The confusion can be compounded by the fact that this article currently only mentions enslavement by Native Americans. 05:03, 27 January 2018 (UTC)2601:80:C100:210:D9B7:E8E4:119C:E982 (talk)


 * Slavery among Native Americans in the United States is the title of the article. If you want to propose a title change please do so on that article's talk page. El_C 05:16, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree that more needs to said on the enslavement of Native Americans in this article even though there is a main page. Not mentioning that enslavement for them continued in the 1800s in the south does a disservice and fuels the misconception that African Americans and Africans were the only ones enslaved in the south.  I slightly disagree with the intro even though it say Africans were the primary race enslaved.  It would be more accurate in my opinion to say that by the late 1700s Africans became the primary race enslaved but that natives were also still targets and enslaved.  Those are my thoughts on improving this.Mcelite (talk) 06:27, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

This is somewhat off-topic for this article, but the fact is that most of the slaves in Canada were Native Canadians being held captive by other Native Canadians. Black slavery was much less common than Native slavery in Canada, and was abolished shortly after, and as an indirect consequence of, the American Revolution. The Slavey Indian tribe of northwestern Canada is called that because they were often captured and held as slaves by their neighbours, the Cree. The name "Slavey" derives from a translation of the Algonkian Cree term awahkaan, meaning "captive, slave." The name of Great Slave Lake came from the Slavey Indians, who lived on its southern shores. The names of the Slave River, Lesser Slave River, Great Slave Lake and Lesser Slave Lake also derive from this Cree name. The town of Slave Lake, Alberta, was a centre of the Cree slave trade in other Indians. Now, some white people may object to that, but these Native people do know what their history is, and it wasn't all peace, love, and holding hands among them. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:54, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * To the IP editor:
 * First, I think we should add appropriate material to this article about the enslavement of Native Americans, but I remain skeptical that you will be able to establish that reputable historians say that "slavery in the United States" was not primarily about the enslavement of Africans and their descendants. I don't question that there were Native American slaves (although I don't know how many) and I've heard some fringe historians assert that there were white slaves. None of that changes the fact that when people talk about American slavery, they're talking about black slaves, not white slaves or Native American slaves. If you'll pardon the expression, those were side shows to the main circus. See WP:WEIGHT.
 * Second, above you refer to me as "the other editor". This article has had thousands of editors, and although I have made the most edits to it, almost two thirds of my edits are minor edits, primarily repairing vandalism. You need to convince not only me, but the other editors of this page, that the material you'd like to include belongs.
 * Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 00:09, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Adding the appropriate material I think will be the easy part because a lot of information is already listed in the main article. I think we should consider making it clear that African Americans were the main target group for a TIME PERIOD but so were Native Americans especially since the recent estimates put the number of Native American slaves into the low millions over time.  I would think it would be an improvement to establish that slavery should not only be a subject matter that heavily effected the African American pop. but also the Native American pop because it did.  I have no interests taking away the impact it had on African Americans I just want to establish that they were not the only ones in chains during the 1800s.Mcelite (talk) 00:39, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't understand this primary obsession. Why must Africans be held up and everyone else be marginalized? As editors have said, we're talking about millions. The Irish are a red herring because they were never chattel. Native people were inter-generational chattel until 1848, and effectively beyond. Look at the Negro Law of SC 1740: it reads:
 *  'The Status of the Negro^ his Rights and Disabilities.
 * Section 1. The Act of 1740, sec. I, declares all negroes and Indians, (free Indians in amity with this Govcrment, negroes, mulattoes and mestizoes, who now are free, excepted - to be slaves - the offspring to follow the condition of the mother: and that such slaves are chattels personal. So basically, no one was excepted since there were no treaties honored and no one was in amity, and they had to actively have been granted freedom by whites to be exempt. And they were the exact same status as Africans until just before the Civil War.
 * Notice that Indians are defined as negro, and chattel like negro. This law held until around 1850. Every other state had similar treatment up until close to the start of the Civil War, at which point most Indians were classified as negro anyway and those who weren't were in Oklahoma so it didn't matter if Indians were excepted from slavery at that point; there were no recognized Indians left. There were more natives being shipped out of SC into the Caribbean and elsewhere in South than there were coming in until the late 1700s. SC was the hub of Southern slave trade. And other Southern states had similar/same laws. Here's the Negro Law of 1848: The Status of the Negr, his Rights and Disabilities. Section 1. The Act of 1740, sec. I, declares all negroes and Indians, (free Indians in amity with this Govcrnmcat, negroes, mulattoes and mestizoes, who now are free, excepted- to be slaves, the offspring to follow the condition of the mother: and that such slaves are chattels personal. Sec. 2. Under this provision it has been uniformly held that color is prima facie evidence, that the party bearing the color of a negro, mulatto or mestizo, is a slave: but the same prima facie result does not follow from the Indian color. See, at this point they had separated out the dark-skinned Indians and branded them negro, and them mixing with whites was a felony. So you only had the non-black tribes left, who were lightened from mixing with whites. So the color of Indian had changed in the public eye.
 * And the Indians of the North, they were defined as negro once the towns/reservations were turned over to white settlers. Otherwise they had to flee past the frontier. You weren't allowed to be Indian or you were forced to live on a reservation, you had to be colored or negro to stay, other choice was to go to frontier Indian lands and beyond. That was in the North; in the South you had to flee or be captured on sight. There's another problem: from the time of European contact you had people calling Indians negroes. And there's massive evidence that there were black people, not Africans but black, here before Columbus (Von WUthenau, Von Winning, JCB library; thousands of pieces of evidence). And a lot of the so-called Africans being shuffled around the Caribbean and Latin America were in fact dark-skinned kinky-haired natives, they were not straight-haired Plains people and not Africans. So you had Indians being defined as negro, Indians living with Africans, Indians being confused for Africans today. The two issues can never be separated, or one said to be primary and the other not. Doing this amounts to burying an important history. As for DNA, there are many major tribes that no longer exist (Guale, Yamasee, Timucua, Tequesta, Apalachee, Calusa, Cusabo, Yuchi, Powhatan, Saponi, Chickahominy, Roanoke, Croatan, Pequot, Narragansett, the Mississippian tribes, many others; who were a different ethnicity than the Plains, Southwest, and Arctic natives) and are not a reference population (which were created by testing modern non-black natives, many of whom are half-plus white now anyway) in the DNA company databases. They are still here but 'extinct as tribe,' so they can never show up as native on a test since they are presumed extinct, there's nothing to match against in the database, and black Americans as a general group aren't and won't anytime soon be a reference population; the next closest is African. CoosaGA (talk) 05:47, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Welcome to Wikipedia, CoosaGA. Citing a primary source and DNA is pointless when editors are asking for works by historians in support of your argument. — MShabazz Talk/Stalk 15:35, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * And see here to confirm my point: [Sec. 4] In the second proviso of sec. 1, of the Act of 1740, it is declared that " every negro, Indian, mulatto and mestizo is a slave unless 174. the contrary can be made to appear" — yet, in the same it is immediately thereafter provided — the Indians in amity with this government, excepted, in which case the burden of proof shall lie on the defendant," that is, on the person claiming the Indian plaintiff to be a slave. This latter clause of the proviso is now regarded as furnishing the rule. The race of slave Indians, or of Indians not in amity to this government, (the State,) is extinct, and hence the previous part of the proviso has no application.  Extinct = stripped of Indian tribal identity, converted to generic colored or negro. I will go about finding secondary sources that discuss this; have already found one.CoosaGA1 (talk) 16:36, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Maybe I missed it in your message, but what's the name of the historian who wrote that? — MShabazz Talk/Stalk 16:43, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm having trouble with these claims of "millions" .. example 1) Linford Fisher 2-5.5 million: https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory/article/64/1/91/63354/Why-Shall-Wee-Have-Peace-to-Bee-Made-Slaves-Indian. I just read the article and it deals with about 2000 slaves: hundreds of surrendering natives were sold “out of the country,” and many other hundreds—if not well over a thousand—were enslaved locally,  (text at note 55. -- Fisher points out that West Indies islands refused to allow entry of captured Indians from North America); example 2) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/01/native_american_slavery_historians_uncover_a_chilling_chapter_in_u_s_history.html we have this quote: "Brett Rushforth recently attempted a tally of the total numbers of enslaved, and he told me that he thinks 2 million to 4 million indigenous people in the Americas, North and South, may have been enslaved over the centuries that the practice prevailed"  This is a private conversation NOT a published estimate --not a RS--and it deals with the entire western hemisphere, not the United States--which is the topic here.  So let's get a published reliable source that refers to USA.  Rjensen (talk) 16:57, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * The estimates were for the Americas. Most of the enslavement in what is now the United States took place before the establishment of the country and they were removed to other places.  While it may have a place in this article, it has to be presented accurately.  The claim that 5.5 million Native Americans were enslaved is certainly too  high, since there were never more than 3 million Native Americans from the time of English settlement.  TFD (talk) 16:58, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Anyway, I'm done with you clown cover-up artists. I know I'm not going to get find many establishment-funded hack academics covering anything controversial, and if I do you'll say its unreliable. Wikipedia is designed to protect the establishment viewpoint, period. I'm just going to lay it out since I've already shown where to find the proof: the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was largely a hoax manufactured in the late 1960s, after they got rid of all the radical activists. Why do you think that's when they started 'discovering' all the slave memoirs and records? Then you had Alex Haley's plagiarism, the Goree lie, Messy Jesse's 'African-American' speech. It's all a fabrication. They still haven't found one slave ship relic. See Lonnie Bunch of Smithsonian re: Sao Jose. Oh I'm sorry they found a few iron bars from a wreck off Cape Town, out of Mozambique (that was linked to Arab trade if slave-related at all). Few things more pathetic than black people defending it. The deception was first meant to prevent slave revolts, and then to steal the land of the sedentary agriculturalist black tribes who were the large majority group of the Eastern US, Eastern Brazil, and the Caribbean basin (with nomadic 'mongoloid' tribes the minority there and majority in the Plains): the allegedly extinct 'race of slave Indians' otherwise known as negroes (and sometimes praying Indians, Christian Indians). And the exact coincidence with Civil Rights Act was no accident; it was to prevent blacks from re-asserting any sovereignty over the land. Africans were a tiny percentage of slaves and came in very small numbers.CoosaGA1 (talk) 17:15, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That theory was promoted by B.o.B last year but AFAIK has no other noted adherents. It's not what your sources conclude.  Policy therefore says we cannot include it.  TFD (talk) 18:49, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Hey everyone I hope you're having a great day. Can we move towards a vote on deciding what more to add in the article in regards to making it more clear that Africans and African Americans WERE NOT the only minorities enslaved in the United States during the 1800s. I DO NOT disagree with it stating African Americans were the primary race enslaved because it's true, and by this time it's near impossible to determine how many of those slaves actually had Native American descent as well.  I can add a few more sentences to the Native American section that are relevant, but my main focus is the opening paragraphs. Take careMcelite (talk) 22:49, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * My vote is yes; while I think the body should be expanded, there already is a section on it, so it can receive coverage in the intro without much work on the section in the body, though I think the body needs to be expanded considerably. The main points that I submit should be included [in the intro and/or body]: A) That the majority of the early colonial chattel slave population were native Americans, and the ancestors of these natives carried over into US slavery, comprising much of the slave population ca. 1776, perhaps even a majority at that time. The numbers can only be estimated since there were no censuses, and slaves were generally considered personal property (though some states changed the status to real property at later points). B) That, as you noted above, natives were abducted and enslaved in the South well into the 19th century, and indiscriminately mixed with African slaves, both being called the N word, negro, and colored during enslavement and upon emancipation. The key point I would like conveyed is that, in the South and also in states of the North into the 19th century, Africans did not have a special legal status that did not also apply to natives and mulattoes (which at the time most often applied to native American and African mix, not black and white). I'm OK with the 'primary' wording, but a few sentences in the intro with regards to natives is in order. As suggested above, I'll attempt to draft some preliminary changes to the intro and body, and post here for feedback 2601:80:C201:1910:1C5C:7801:CBA1:F73 (talk) 15:51, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Prose vs Bullet Points
I am 98.220.157.243, I posted the original post with Bullet Points to reflect the table from the book correctly. To recreate the table would have taken up too much space so I put the data in bullet points. Malik Shabazz edited my original post to Prose three times. I did take his suggestions to add secession and his concern over state abbreviations by including the full state names at least once. He is the one that by changing it to prose is changing my original post. He said that "This is an encyclopedia article, not a table" I responded "Encyclopedias including Wikipedia have bullet points! The Wiki Article "History of Slavery" uses bullet points in two places. Prose does not work when citing specific data in a specific order" Just because I am not a registered user like Malik Shabazz does not mean I should be the one singled out for reverting to my original post, when it was Malik Shabazz who changed my original post three times? Do I have to become a registered user to be treated equally? If I see Bullet points used in other wikipedia articles in the same way, what gives Malik Shabazz the right to change it to prose?

This is the data using Bullet points based off my original posting


 * Per the 1860 census, the % of slaveholding families was as follows:


 * 26% in the 15 Slave states- Alabama (AL), Arkansas (AR), Delaware (DE), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Kentucky (KY), Louisiana (LA), Maryland (MD),
 * Mississippi (MS), Missouri (MO), North Carolina (NC), South Carolina (SC), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Virginia (VA)


 * 16% in the 4 Border states that did not secede (DE, KY, MD, MO)


 * 31% in the 11 Confederate states that did secede (AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA)


 * 37% in the 1st 7 Confederate states that seceded before Lincoln's Inauguration (AL, FL, GA, LA, MS, SC, TX)


 * 25% in the 2nd 4 Confederate states that seceded after Fort Sumter (AR, NC, TN, VA)


 * Mississippi was the highest at 49% followed by South Carolina at 46%

I included the state names with there abbreviation after Malik Shabazz expressed concern over "postal codes" (they are state abbreviations), I saw his concern as some people are clueless on state abbreviations, so I added the full names in the 15 Slave states but that necessitated a second line98.220.157.243 (talk) 23:03, 4 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Repeating a lie in multiple places doesn't make it the truth. I changed the material you added to prose once. I reverted you once, and another editor reverted you once. In the meantime, you have restored your material three times. I recommend you read WP:3RR.
 * I rewrote the garbage you added because this is an encyclopedia, not a picture book. If you'd like to create a table, please create a table. But please don't dump half-baked trash into an article section of prose. Why did you use—and why are you still using—state postal abbreviations? You may do that on an envelope, but we don't do that in an encyclopedia article. Why can't you format the material correctly? Why can't you spell out the word "percentage"?
 * Respect for copyright law prevents Wikipedia from copying Edward Bonekemper's table as it appears in his book and reusing it. We have to summarize it. But we don't have to butcher it. Or the English language. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 00:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Malik, I saw you changed it to prose then you reverted to prose so that is twice not once that you changed what I posted, I missed that Smurphy did once so I am sorry for for saying you did it three times.

How is my original post garbage? How is it half-baked trash? You are making a personal attack because you do not like the format I present the data in? I used abbreviations so that I would not clutter up the post with repeating the state names so that it would be cleaner. Where are your formatting rules? They are obviously not used in wikipedia as I find bullet points and abbreviations used in other articles. Where is the rule that you cannot use state abbreviations as long as the abbreviation meaning is noted in the article? If you had a concern about the abbreviations in my original post, why did you not message me with suggestions? Instead you went ahead and changed a post that is not yours and is a perfectly legitimate post. On my last post in the 15 slave states section, I showed the state and it's abbreviation so that it acts as a primer for those that do not know state abbreviations. You say "Why can't you spell out the word "percentage"?" well where is the rule that says you have to spell it out? 36% is the same as 36 percent and it takes up less space. I did not "Copy" the table from Mr Bonekemper, I pulled some of the data from it and summarized as bullet points with the hierarchy of the 15 slave states in relation to the civil war, so I did not violate any copyright. I used 5 data points of the 40 in the table. If I had created close to an exact copy of the table then yes it would be a copyright violation, but it is not. If you want me to do a table then why not message me to suggest it?

You are allowed to Abbreviate state names when used in (1) datelines on stories, (2) photo captions, (3) lists, (4) tables. The bullet points are definitely a list and you could argue a form of a table.

There are two tables in the "prose" Distribution of slaves section why is this okay but not bullet points in Distribution of slaveholders?98.220.157.243 (talk) 02:06, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * What the fuck are you talking about? "Instead you went ahead and changed a post that is not yours"? Do you think you own what you contribute to Wikipedia? Did you read the language above the edit box: "Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions." ANYONE. Nothing about asking your permission to improve on the material you dumped into the article. And, yes, like most publications, we have a style manual that editors are expected to follow, and like every other style manual, it prohibits the use of postal abbreviations. See MOS:POSTABBR. My question about spelling out the word percentage has nothing to do with "36", but everything to do with "the % of slaveholding families". And I think you answered your own question about why, in a section of prose, you should have added more prose. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 02:42, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * While I don't share Malik Shabazz's penchant for strong language, I heartily agree that the edits by 98.220.157.243 are disruptive. The issue in November was that their edits were not reliably sourced, were not written to fit into the flow of the article, and were misleading or false. In this case, the source is again not a reliable source (Regnery Publishing is a vanity press), the text is again not written to fit into the flow of the article, and while the additions aren't so misleading, they don't seem to contribute anything. I strongly recommend 98.220.157.243 not continue trying to add this type of material. On the other hand, if you are interested in help or advice and are willing to start more modestly, feel free to ask for help at the WP:VILLAGE PUMP or even asking nicely to the people who have been reverting you (many will have lost their patience with you and will not be willing to help, but you can try). Smmurphy(Talk) 03:26, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Malik (Mr Little), I am aware that anyone can edit and improve upon a wikipedia article. If you had a problem with the State abbreviations you could have messaged me to suggest changes pointing out the wiki policy with them. I would have gladly complied. Instead you treat me like a second class person. I explained why I used state abbreviation to save space and from seeing that in the literary world you are allowed use state abbreviations in lists and tables, the bullet points are a list. I have said that I have seen Tables and Bullet points used in several articles in wikipedia, including this article, so it seemed okay the data in a list of bullet points where I did. In wikipedia I have see a fair amount of tables and bullet points mixed with prose. When you change it to prose you change the effect of seeing fact 1, fact 1, etc in the hierarchy it is in.

Malik, You said "If you'd like to create a table, please create a table." I will do so and then post that. Is that okay? I explained that I thought the table would take up more room than bullet points that is why I used bullet points to save space. The reason I was posting it after the second * is it expands upon the "Only 8% of all US families owned slaves, while in the South, 33% of families owned slaves." by looking at it in the hierarchy of the slave states in relation to the civil war because there is a correlation between the percentage of families owning slaves and whether a state seceded, and if they seceded, when they did. Smurphy that is why this contributes to the article. If you want I can include all 15 slave states in the table? I thought that as too detailed, as breaking it into 5 groups (15 Slave, 4 Border, 11 Confederate, 1st 7 Confederate and 2nd 4 Confederate) serves the purpose and reduces the space needed substantially.

Smurphy you say that Regnery Publishing is not a reliable source when you should be looking at the Author Mr Bonekemper who was a respected Civil War historian in the civil war historical community, writer of 7 civil war books. Mr Bonekemper is a reliable source. Smmurphy you you say that Regnery Publishing is not a reliable source when you say that Tom Blake is a reliable source for his not credible claim, when Tom Blake is a genealogist (not a historian) who only posted to his personal blog (that does not exist anymore) an estimate of slaveholders from his small sample size, from his limited research. You trust him but not Mr Bonekemper? Either you are not thinking straight or you have an agenda like those people who want to minimize the historical facts about slavery so that the wool can be pulled over their eyes. There is nothing misleading about this post and it contributes to the article by showing the correlation between the percentage of families owning slaves and secession. Are you a protector of the lost cause?

My agenda are the facts. I have used the 1860 census to prove Tom Blake's claim is False and Mr Bonekemper's as True. I am asking wikipedia in a separate posting to review blake's claim for credibility using the 1860 census posted online at census.gov,to get it deleted as it does not pass a review with the 1860 census, and I want to post Mr Bonekemper's claims as they are factual, expand upon the correlation between the percentage of families owning slaves and secession, and he is published, not on some personal blog that does not exist anymore.98.220.157.243 (talk) 04:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Malik said to do a table so I did. How is this?


 * Per the 1860 census, the % of slaveholding families was as follows:

I am open to any suggestions for improving this table before posting to the article98.220.157.243 (talk) 21:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I do not think you should add this to the article. The material doesn't make any sense, the source isn't reliable, and there is no attempt in the proposal to integrate it into the existing article. Smmurphy(Talk) 22:03, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Looking up the Bonekemper book, it seems it isn't published by the main Regnery imprint, but by Regnery History, which seems to be an ok publisher of popular history. I wouldn't say it is a preferred source, but it isn't as problematic as the main imprint. That said, it isn't particularly reliable and the other issues remain. Smmurphy(Talk) 01:39, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Smurphy, I am combining my response with what was written on the Plantation Economy Article Talk page as well.

You Said "I disagree that Bonekemper's book is reliable. I do not think Blake's website is particularly reliable either, but there are reliably published sources which use Blake. While some individuals may be unreliable regardless of where they publish, I don't think that it is the case that some individuals are so wonderful that anything they say should be considered reliable regardless of where published. When a subject is heavily covered in peer reviewed sources (such as the pre-war US slave economy), it doesn't make much sense to use something published in an unreliable publishing house or a blog as a source. I do want to acknowledge that the Bonekemper book isn't published by the main Regnery imprint, but by Regnery History, which seems to be an ok publisher of popular history. I wouldn't say it is a preferred source, but it isn't as problematic as the main imprint. "

I respond with, I learned in High school and College and studying History, to watch out for people citing the same source over and over that it appears to be good today, but if that source is later proofed wrong, then all the later citations and uses are worthless. That is why people are supposed to check the credibility of the source before they cite it. That is why you trust but verify. That is what I think has happened with Tom Blake's Estimate. Many people probably saw it on his website in a search and used it as a citation without checking the 1860 census. If I can proof it false in less than 5 minutes why can other people not did so as well? If Tom Blake is cited for other genealogical work that is accurate it may true, but it should not make him a good historian and most important if his estimate does not stand up to a credibility check vs the 1860 census then it does not matter what is reputation is,or how many times he is cited, his estimate is false. In studying History and military history as a hobby I have seen instances where many people cite the one particular source over and over, but when that source is proofed against other contemporary sources, it is found false or not as good as another source.

I never said Mr Bonekemper was so wonderful, but in the civil war community of roundtables and historians, I am not aware to any challenges to his work that I am citing. If he had a reputation as not being accurate, being controversial, or stretching the truth, then I would be cautious. As it is I am able to proof his work that I am citing using the 1860 US census data at Civil war.net (a cited source in this article) and more importantly using the actual 1860 census data online at census.gov as it has the number of slaveholders by state in several schedules and the number of dwellings/families per state in other schedules. How can I use a other sources published earlier if they did not tabulate the percentage of Slaveholding families by state and then tabulate them into the 5 common groups that the Slave states are looked at in history, in relation to the civil war? You acknowledge that the the publisher is an ok publisher, but that is not the issue. It is the credibility of the author and the credibility of the claim he is making. If there is no substantial disagreement, and it can be validated as credible by using the original data source of the 1860 census, then Mr Konekemper is a reliable source for this claim and there is nothing to question.

I would integrate it into the article in the Distribution of slaveholders section as the last bullet point so it does not interfere with the flow of the prose before it. I would ask that bullet point number 2 and 3 be swapped in place, as this table expands upon the "Only 8% of all US families owned slaves, while in the South, 33% of families owned slaves." that is in the current bullet point number 2.

You Said " More to the point, why do you want to add this material? It doesn't seem to me to contribute anything to the page."

I respond,

1) It expands upon and clarifies the "Only 8% of all US families owned slaves, while in the South, 33% of families owned slaves." that is in the current bullet point number 2. Looking at that there are issues with the brief generality of what is said. The "Only 8% of all US families owned slaves" is an irrelevant fact. It is a fact as if you take the number of slaveholding families and divide it by the total number of families in the US you get 8%. It is irrelevant to the discussion of slavery in the US, as to properly calculate the percentage of slaveholding families you have to divide it by the number of families in the 15 slave states where slavery is legal and you get 26%. To count families in free states where slavery is illegal is like counting children 14 and under who cannot drive in a study on the percentage of drivers in the US population, it would be wrong and irrelevant. Next "while in the South, 33% of families owned slaves." What is the definition of the south? is it the 15 Slave states? The 11 Confederate states? The 1st 7 states to secede that were called the "deep south"? "The south" is too ambiguous and the 33% is wrong no matter which of the 3 definitions that I suggested are. So this needs to be expanded upon and clarified to properly present an accurate view of the extent of slavery in the united states in 1860 on the eve of the civil war, and since slavery is the main cause of the civil war, looking at the percentage of families owning slaves in the slave states in the 5 groups shows not only an accurate view of slavery but the correlation between the extent of slavery and secession. This is the contribution to the article about Slavery in the US.

2) There are a lot of myths and lies out there about the extent of slavery. I have had people cite the only "8% of US families owned slaves" to me and had to explain why that is an irrelevant fact and what the truth is. I am an accountant and have studied history and military history, especially the civil war since I was a young boy. In all cases I want the facts and the context of those facts to be presented so that they can counter and win against the "supposed facts", myths and lies of people with agendas whether it is from the right or the left. I identify as a centrist, as the facts and context of facts are what is important to me. Just because I want the facts of the extent of slavery to be shown does not mean I want to demonize normal slaveholders, as I point out to people that slavery was legal in the US, under the constitution and the US flag until 1865. I have argued with people on the left who said that Lincoln went to war to free the slaves. He did not, he went to war to preserve the Union after Fort Sumter was attacked. Escaped slaves as Contraband of war and the Emancipation proclamation were war tactics both tactically and strategically to help the Union win the war. To Lincoln's credit he used the opportunity of the impending Union victory to push the 13th amendment thru congress to end slavery in the US.98.220.157.243 (talk) 08:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Malik, Thank you for the edit it looks great, and the pun is appropriate!98.220.157.243 (talk) 03:51, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Slavery was not "abolished" in the North
Slavery was outlawed by northern states, but the laws emancipated slaves with such long transition periods that there were still slaves in the northern states on the eve of the Civil War. According to Slavery in New York, a 2005 exhibit by the New-York Historical Society, there were 2,000 slaves in New York City alone in 1820. Caesar, pictured here, was enslaved outside Albany, New York, until his death in 1852 at the age of 115.

Keep that face in mind the next time somebody tells you that the northern states abolished slavery before the South. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 22:56, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, you do have to think what would have happened if ALL states had done something like what New York did -- there was a real material difference between a dying or relict institution and a vital one, wasn't there? Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:33, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * the legal status of being a slave ended. After that there was required labor but the many laws re slaves did NOT apply.  Rjensen (talk) 23:58, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

This makes no sense
“Statistical data shows that 7% of the slaves (680,000 total in 1790 of 720,000 blacks) were in the North, population of 2 million.”

deisenbe (talk) 18:53, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Growth of free population
"From 1770 until 1860, the rate of natural growth of North American enslaved people was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, and it was nearly twice as rapid as that of England."

Wasn't that true of the free whites as well? I.e. the rate of growth of colonial white population was much higher than the rate of population growth in Europe.

What the writer may have meant is that growth of enslaved people in the U.S. exceeded the rate of growth of the white people, but that isn’t what it says. deisenbe (talk) 09:57, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

The "white" population was also increasing at a rapid rate. According to Historical racial and ethnic demographics of the United States. the "white" population in 1770 consisted of 1,688,254 people. By 1860, the "white" population consisted of 26,922,537 people.

If you want to compare it to a 21st-century state, the "white" population was larger than the current population of Madagascar or North Korea. Dimadick (talk) 18:57, 29 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The sentence makes sense in the context of the paragraph. The expectation was that the slave population would decline without the importation of more slaves, but in fact increased. TFD (talk) 19:35, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Updating the opening paragraph.
Hi everyone I finally have some free time to bring up this topic. I wanted to upgrade a section of the opening paragraph for more clarity on the topic. I believe this section of the head paragraph gives the view that only Africans and African Americans were the targets of slavery which is not true. I believe the rest of the sections of the opening paragraphs are fine as they are.Mcelite (talk) 19:43, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

The current paragraph is: Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days, and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It lasted in about half the states until 1865, when it was prohibited nationally by the Thirteenth Amendment. As an economic system, slavery was largely replaced by sharecropping. By the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. When the United States Constitution was ratified (1789), a relatively small number of free people of color were among the voting citizens (male property owners). During and immediately following the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. Most of these states had a higher proportion of free labor than in the South and economies based on different industries. They abolished slavery by the end of the 18th century, some with gradual systems that kept adults as slaves for two decades. However, the rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation; Southern leaders also wanted to annex Cuba as a slave territory. The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, split into slave and free states, in effect divided by the Mason–Dixon line which delineated (free) Pennsylvania from (slave) Maryland and Delaware.

Change I'm proposing: Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, and also to a lesser degree Native Americans that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days, and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It lasted in about half the states until 1865, when it was prohibited nationally by the Thirteenth Amendment. As an economic system, slavery was largely replaced by sharecropping. By the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry, and sometimes Native American ancestry. When the United States Constitution was ratified (1789), a relatively small number of free people of color were among the voting citizens (male property owners). During and immediately following the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. Most of these states had a higher proportion of free labor than in the South and economies based on different industries. They abolished slavery by the end of the 18th century, some with gradual systems that kept adults as slaves for two decades. However, the rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation; Southern leaders also wanted to annex Cuba as a slave territory. The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, split into slave and free states, in effect divided by the Mason–Dixon line which delineated (free) Pennsylvania from (slave) Maryland and Delaware.

--Mcelite (talk) 19:43, 5 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Does it? I think it just puts the emphasis on where sources put it ("primarily"). (See also, WP:LEAD the lead overviews the body of the article) The current is also sourced to a source that talks about African slavery (For some reason you did not include the sources).  So, it can't just be changed this way. Also note, the focus of this article is post-1776.  Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:41, 5 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I think is does only make it appear that Africans and African Americans were the sole targets of slavery. The way it is worded.  If you want a source included that's no problem, and being post 1776 doesn't change that Native Americans were still being enslaved after that time period along with Africans and African Americans.Mcelite (talk) 02:57, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I only removed the sources so people wouldn't be distracted by the numbers. That was just my thinking I'm NOT saying to remove any of the sources.Mcelite (talk) 02:23, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
 * So, perhaps begin, here, with laying-out what sources you would want to use and what do they say, and then how you would summarize them? Then move to whether changes in Slavery in the United States are needed before tackling the lead? Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:50, 7 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Okay, sorry I've been busy so I didn't get to do this as fast as I wanted. Here are the proposed changes with citations.Mcelite (talk) 03:05, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Current version: Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days, and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It lasted in about half the states until 1865, when it was prohibited nationally by the Thirteenth Amendment. As an economic system, slavery was largely replaced by sharecropping.

By the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. When the United States Constitution was ratified (1789), a relatively small number of free people of color were among the voting citizens (male property owners). During and immediately following the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. Most of these states had a higher proportion of free labor than in the South and economies based on different industries. They abolished slavery by the end of the 18th century, some with gradual systems that kept adults as slaves for two decades. However, the rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation; Southern leaders also wanted to annex Cuba as a slave territory. The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, split into slave and free states, in effect divided by the Mason–Dixon line which delineated (free) Pennsylvania from (slave) Maryland and Delaware.

Proposed changes: Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans, African Americans, and also to a lesser degree Native Americans that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days, and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It lasted in about half the states until 1865, when it was prohibited nationally by the Thirteenth Amendment. As an economic system, slavery was largely replaced by sharecropping.

By the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry, and sometimes Native American ancestry. When the United States Constitution was ratified (1789), a relatively small number of free people of color were among the voting citizens (male property owners). During and immediately following the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. Most of these states had a higher proportion of free labor than in the South and economies based on different industries. They abolished slavery by the end of the 18th century, some with gradual systems that kept adults as slaves for two decades. However, the rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation; Southern leaders also wanted to annex Cuba as a slave territory. The United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, split into slave and free states, in effect divided by the Mason–Dixon line which delineated (free) Pennsylvania from (slave) Maryland and Delaware.


 * Are others fine with this minor change to the lead paragraphs.Mcelite (talk) 20:29, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay does no one really have an issue with these minor changes since sources are provided? The passivity doesn't help I don't want to change this and then someone say we need to discuss this when I'm trying to discuss this.Mcelite (talk) 01:44, 13 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Can I please get other editors input on improving the lead paragraph. I have provided proper reliable sources. The only person that seems to want to interact is MShabazz…..Mcelite (talk) 04:15, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Slavery in the united states
Why doesn't the article on slavery in the USA talk or mention the fact that the democratic party was the party of slaves and the republicans were anti slavery ? Omarnflorida (talk) 00:38, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Please update your web browser to one that allows you to search the page you're visiting. At least five separate sections of the article mention the Democratic Party and its support of slavery or the Republican Party and its opposition to slavery. — MShabazz Talk/Stalk 15:03, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Please note that, while there were (probably) no pro-slavery Republicans, there were numerous anti-slavery Democrats in the north, and even some anti-slavery Democrats (and anti-slavery Whigs) in the south. 82.176.221.176 (talk) 05:43, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Weird sentence
This sentence reads very wierd: “Northern states depended on free labor and all had abolished slavery by 1805.”

As an example, it reads to me as “John depends on his car and got rid of his car” with no explanation as to why he got rid of the car he relies on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.133.120.168 (talk) 22:48, 22 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it wouldn't seem so weird if you understood what free labor was. I've added a link to that article. I think it's more like "John depends on the metro and got rid of his car." — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 02:09, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

New Spain?
The introduction of this article seems to want to include the history of the entire area that is currently known as the United States, but there is little mention about slavery in the Spanish New World colonies. If you are going to include the pre-statehood history of the Eastern part of the country, doesn't it make sense to also include the pre-statehood history of slavery in the American Southwest? Rpotance (talk) 21:17, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The article is primarily about slavery within the legal boundaries of the U.S., not areas that were later incorporated. Slavery in areas not yet part of the U.S. is only important to the extent that it helps to understand the topic. Hence the emphasis on the 13 colonies and to a lesser extent Louisiana. TFD (talk) 21:55, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I have thought for a long-time that we should cut down the colonial section for this article, leaving that to other articles. So I don't think it should be expanded.  Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:55, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with TFD. Rjensen (talk) 04:08, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that if the article is about slavery under American rule (not British, French and Spanish) then the colonial section is far too long. A simple introductory note explaining that slavery in the U.S. began under foreign control and continued in some states and territories after they were admitted to the county followed by a link to the articles explaining the colonial history in more detail would make the article more focused. Rpotance (talk) 22:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Material on fancy ladies removed
I would like to record here material removed from the article by @Kablammo yesterday:


 * References to Sally Hemings removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slavery_in_the_United_States&diff=869415616&oldid=869298914


 * At the very top, like the case of Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson's now-famous and very light-skinned (3/4 white) slave concubine, some type of relationship other than the merely sexual could exist between master and slave. There is a parallel in the non-sexual friendship, affection, and a grudging, limited respect, that sometimes occurred between owner and slave.


 * A master could control a slave's body — her actions and words — but not her thoughts. Plantation owners were often isolated and lonely, and there was a surplus of single white men. Antebellum society was not known for happy marriages, and life for white women on plantations was often boring; not many wanted to live in what then were often remote areas. There were occasional cases of manumission of a female slave followed by marriage, which were grudgingly accepted, at least in more liberal areas (cities and upper South). There were a larger number in which the father/owners legally recognized the children as theirs. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slavery_in_the_United_States&diff=prev&oldid=869415980)


 * The sexual use of female slaves by white men was an open secret. Abolitionists often touched on it, though in the context of more serious abuses, such as splitting up families. White women had usually heard of it, but generally were not in a position to do anything about it. So it was swept under the rug and ignored. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slavery_in_the_United_States&diff=next&oldid=869415980)


 * The need to "protect Southern women" constantly appears in the discourse of white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, trying to justify violence against African Americans. In the Antebellum South any sexual contact between a black man and a white woman was automatically deemed rape, and the slave was immediately killed. In fact, it remained prohibited in many states until Loving v. Virginia (1967), and remains on the books in some Southern states, such as Alabama. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slavery_in_the_United_States&diff=next&oldid=869416347)

I today ran across quite a bit on sexual use of female slaves in the first published female slave narrative, ''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself'' (1861, https://www.docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/jacobs.html)

deisenbe (talk) 05:05, 20 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Is this (https://blackthen.com/pregnancy-during-slavery/) truly a valid source in the Fancy Ladies section? It doesn't seem to constitute itself as a valid source.2601:49:1:5316:E5B9:E6DE:D762:E9EB (talk) 20:30, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Slavery In the United States - the American Prison System
Hello all,

I recently made an edit to this page to reflect how slavery has been replaced as an economic system through sharecropping and the American Prison System. My edit was removed with no explanation. My edit read as follows: "As an economic system, slavery was largely replaced by sharecropping and the American Prison System."

I would like to refer you all to the text of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. The amendment reads as follows:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Please refer to the line "...except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted..."

This line in itself supports the claim that as an economic system, slavery was replaced with the American Prison System. Below are some references that support this claim.

1. Plantation to Prison (The New York Times) In this article, it discusses how a "loophole" in the 13th Amendment (the lines I provided above) allowed for a shift of the practice of slavery from servitude to the prison system. Prisoners are forced to do work and receive little to no pay for their services. This work has extended past the physical prison/holding facility, and past community service. Bilal Chapman, a prisoner in the state of California, worked a 12 hour shift fighting California wild fires, as is stated in the article. Surely this can be seen as conditions that mirror Americanized slavery of the 18th and 19th century, and sharecropping practices of the 20th century.

2. The Origins of Prison Slavery This article, similar to the first article, details how prisoners are forced to do labor for little to no pay.

There are plenty of articles that support my claim and say the same things. I think it is imperative to the Community for my edit to be reversed, and to include my original statement. People's knowledge of the 13th Amendment and slavery in the United States needs to reflect the fact that you can still legally be a slave if you are convicted of a crime in this country.

BenjaminButler123 (talk) 20:43, 23 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Pinging who reverted--SharabSalam (talk) 20:47, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I could support "and in some areas convict leasing." but the rest seems too attenuated for economic replacement. The articles have some discussion of convict leasing and then go on to talk about other things that are not slavery, but things like sentencing  imbalances in the war on drugs, and denials of social services when leaving prison, or things like work in running a prison, which is not part of the larger economy.  One article says California firefighters from prisons are volunteers and the other talks about poor pay, which is not slavery but poor pay. --   Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:44, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

Colonial America
The first few paragraphs in this section pre-date the Colonial American period and likely belong in a different section, presumably one about Spanish conquest. For example, San Juan was never part of a British colony. Rklawton (talk) 13:39, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * , I have said this before on this page and someone agreed with me, but someone has to step up and be bold.  That entire section should be edited down per basically per WP:SPLIT, WP:PAGEDECIDE and mostly better focus.  It should be a brief background section so we get soon to the main subject of this article: (US slavery 1776-1865) with after effects.
 * Would you do it? Please. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:51, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Will do. I'll have time later in the week. Rklawton (talk) 01:08, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Will do. I'll have time later in the week. Rklawton (talk) 01:08, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Sexual Exploitation
Hello all. I've read the sexual exploitation section of the article and I feel that it's lacking in its coverage of the dual roles enslaved women were forced to endure. I like how historical context is provided on how the dual roles came to exist, but then the section seems to drop off. I think this section could be improved by including how women were sexually exploited, with slave breeding being mentioned here. It would also be good to include how enslaved women tried to reject sexual exploitation, as well as mention how sexual exploitation ruined the joys of motherhood for enslaved women. I know this is a long article already, but I feel like it's lacking in discussing the realities of enslaved women. Please check my sandbox, where I am proposing to write an article on this, but I would like to develop this section further and link the two together. Mgregg21 (talk) 03:16, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Unique features of American slavery
The folliwing, which I added, was promotly deleted:

Unique features
Slavery in the United States developed a number of features that distinguished it, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively, from slavery as practiced in other countries and time periods. deisenbe (talk) 16:23, 26 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Although there wrre no such restrictions in 1776, before the Civil War 13 of the 15 slave states enacted legislation prohibiting teaching slaves to read and write. No other example of prohibition of slave education has come to light; rather, in medieval Spain, for example, a promising slave might well be educated, because he, or occasionally she, would gain in value and be able to carry out highly-paid work, such as correspondence, poetry-writing, or bookkeeping. Behind the prohibition is the relative cheapness of printed communication.
 * In no other country was the possession of abolitionist literature made illegal. Thus indicates how vulnerable Southern slave-owners felt.
 * Nowhere else was slavery debated from a religious point of view.
 * In most places the children of free men with slaves were free. There were many more "children of the plantation" in the United States than in other countries
 * Nowhere else was slavery be defended at length as a positive good, that a slave society was both more just, cultured, and prosperous.
 * No other country has fought a civil war over slavery.
 * Finally, while the United States was of course not the first country to eliminate slavery, it produced by far the largest body of writing attacking slavery and documenting its evils.
 * It was deleted because it has no citations, see, WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV. The entire section makes sweeping unverified claims. If good and substantial RS exist asserting and analyzing claimed "unique features" they need to be provided, so proper policy-compliant writing can continue. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:43, 27 October 2019 (UTC)


 * A further rider to the above point: The sociologist Will Guy has claimed that Slavery in Romania was a "unique case", though to debate whether slavery in the USA was more unique than that suffered there would reflect a poor understanding of the term "unique". Even without much research, I know that the claim that "Nowhere else was slavery debated from a religious point of view" is incorrect as this was very pertinent as regards slavery within the British Empire. Using phrases like "No other example of prohibition of slave education has come to light" are not very helpful – all they imply is that the writer has done little to research what is, sadly, a considerable subject.Leutha (talk) 16:38, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Number of illegally imported slaves 1808-1865
I was rather proud of finding some contemporary estimates of this, which you can read here:


 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slavery_in_the_United_States&diff=928191647&oldid=928191100

My contribution was promptly removed by, and when I asked for an explanation, this was his reply:

"The edit reverted made a contentious claim using a primary source from the 1800s in the WP:LEAD of a prominent article, no less. (and on top, the claim is vague, how long did such a thing happen). The subject of the article is extensively covered in academic secondary sources. It is a likely failure of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR to not use modern research that analyses primary sources on such claims, and not just take a single primary source's word because a Wikipedia editor thinks it makes their point. We are not here to convey our views, we are here to convey the survey of scholarship. Now if you would answer, did you do research across the breadth of modern scholarship on the issue to find out what modern scholarship has to say about such numbers? Or are you just putting in the factoid because you like it? Alanscottwalker (talk) 9:06 am, 27 November 2019, last Wednesday (4 days ago) (UTC−5)


 * Why do you call it contentious? deisenbe (talk) 2:32 pm, Yesterday (UTC−5)


 * Because it is a contention, someone in the 1800s contended something. Alanscottwalker (talk) 6:26 pm, Yesterday (UTC−5)"

I don't feel I have to "research across the breadth of modern scholarship" to use this figure. I'm reasonably familiar with the scholarship around this already. If someone has another estimate or someone took issue with it then bring it up. Barring this, it's a legitimate source. And since the lede already talks about illegal importing and mentions Clotilda and Wanderer, I believe it's appropriate where I put it. I believe I made the article better and this reversion is unwarranted.

I wasn't trying to make a point, and I neither like nor dislike the figure. I have no personal view on the topic.

What do others think? deisenbe (talk) 13:37, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
 * You have now stated you are familiar with modern scholarship on the subject, then why are you not using modern secondary sources? Also, the comments I made actually linked the policies WP:NPOV and WP:NOR.  Your using of this source, does mean you are promoting this primary source number, whether you choose to call it liking it or not, but what in modern scholarship leads to the conclusion that this figure should be promoted and is reliable? Also are you relying on the footnote on page 27, which asserts several different people said different things at different (mostly unknown) times, and said them on unknown bases (expressly, just "belief" for one of the people), but also contains the assertion that the U.S. Navy has prevented importation?  -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:58, 1 December 2019 (UTC)


 * May I refer you to WP:CIV? "Stated simply, editors should always treat each other with consideration and respect." deisenbe (talk) 02:22, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Nothing I have said or done is uncivil. Will you answer the questions? Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:45, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Slavery in New Jersey
From the map on this page, one would reasonably conclude that slaves were emancipated in New Jersey in 1804; but the last slaves weren't emancipated until 1865. What's the process for changing the map?

The article states: "All Northern states had abolished slavery in some way by 1805, sometimes gradually; hundreds of people were still enslaved in the Northern states as late as the 1840 Census." - perhaps a quicker and more accurate way to convey this is to say 'All Northern states had, at a minimum, begun the abolishment of slavery in some way by 1805.'?

Eljamoquio (talk) 02:44, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
 * legally they were not slaves after 1804--could not be bought/sold, their children not slaves etc. Rjensen (talk) 03:44, 22 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I don't think it is required that all aspects possible under slave law be met for slavery to exist. Did person A control basically all aspects of person B, including forcing them to work without pay, forcing them to live where you say, etc, etc?  Merriam-Webster says the standard to be met is "a person held in servitude as the chattel of another" which is a standard that is clearly met here.
 * In addition, the Act in 1804 - which did not end slavery even by it's own definition - was called "An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery." That process was so gradual it had not been completed by the end of the Civil War.  Perhaps we can create a new map with an additional color or shade for 'began gradual abolition' and also change the text Eljamoquio (talk) 15:24, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
 * So, the system of slavery was abolished in New Jersey in 1804, with a gradual plan. If all slave states in 1804 adopted that statute, there would have been almost no enslaved and no institution of slavery in the entire nation in the coming years. The fundamental policy difference remains, either the institution of slavery could flourish in a state or it could not. The policy in New Jersey was that it could not, slavery could no longer be instituted, the institution was abolished. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:56, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, Alanscottwalker has it right. In NJ the ex-slave was no longer "chattel" ("A chattel slave is an enslaved person who is owned for ever and whose children and children's children are automatically enslaved. Chattel slaves are individuals treated as complete property, to be bought and sold." from "the Abolition Project" http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_40.html ) Lets's be careful here. the pro-slavery forces ridiculed NJ and the anti-slavery forces worked hard to get it. the uncompensated labor was a way fore the state to reimburse the ex-owners financially and force them to provide food, shelter, clothing & medical care. Apart from plantation workers (few in NJ) indentured servants cost more in upkeep than the services were worth. Rjensen (talk) 16:53, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * From your reference: "Slavery refers to a condition in which individuals are owned by others, who control where they live and at what they work."  The condition in which New Jersey 'indentured servants' were placed from 1804 to 1865 was abolished in 1865 when slavery was abolished.  In a very, very narrow definition of slavery (requires ability to sell a person) they could possibly not-be-considered-slaves... but by the definition of the site you cite, they were slaves.  What purpose does it serve to use a narrow definition (chattel) of slavery?   Eljamoquio (talk) 21:09, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
 * the pro-slavery element made the argument that 1804 law it made little difference, and the anti-slavery element defeated them after great effort. Be clear what side you are on.  Rjensen (talk) 21:05, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Drake 1579
Should Francis Drake's arrival in the future USA with four freed slaves in 1579 be noted? These were African slaves. One had been freed years earlier (Diego) and had traveled from the Spanish Main back to England with Drake, then embarked on the circumnavigation with Drake as Drake's manservant -- a free man. Three had been freed from Spanish enslavement along the Spanish Pacific Coast. One (Maria) was a woman. Thus, four freed African slaves were in the future USA for five weeks. Should the be added? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MikeVdP (talk • contribs) 02:13, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I think it’s worth adding. Offers some perspective. FTIIIOhfive (talk) 00:33, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE material on slavery and the revolution
I've removed the long subsection that elaborates a WP:FRINGE thesis on slavery and the American Revolution:. The subsection elaborates the 1619 Project's claim that defense of slavery was a central motivation for the revolution. This view is widely rejected by historians. The events that the NY Times Magazine Editor used to try to defend this theory - Lord Dunmore's Proclamation and the 1772 Somerset decision, are already described outside of the subsection that I removed. We do not need to include a separate subsection dedicated to a fringe interpretation of these events. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:18, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Why do you feel that this fringe historical interpretation deserves elaboration in this article? The mainstream interpretation of Dunmore's Proclamation and the Somerset Decision are already given. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:19, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * What is your basis for saying that it's fringe? It may be a minority viewpoint, but it has been covered pretty extensively in the media. The Dunmore Proclamation is only a relatively small part of the material. I think it should be condensed to a paragraph or two, but should remain as a separate subsection. - MrX 🖋 12:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I've explained in the section below this. In short, this claim was given an airing by the 1619 Project, but that inclusion was heavily criticized, not least by the project's own fact-checker, who was apparently ignored. The NY Times Magazine officially "corrected" the claim to weaken it considerably ("some" colonists, which could mean anything more than zero, and which is therefore unfalsifiable). This is not just a minority viewpoint. It's a viewpoint pushed by a tiny fringe, without any documentary evidence, and explicitly rejected as counter-factual by leading experts on early US history (such as Gordon Wood, James McPherson and Sean Wilentz). Coverage in the media isn't what's important - the views of historians and documentary evidence are important. The fact that the 1619 Project's claim about the cause of the revolution sparked coverage in the media is unquestioned, but that's not a topic for this article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:13, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Slavery and the American Revolution
I object to the removal of the longstanding section Slavery and the American Revolution. One editor believes it's fringe, but that's not consistent with my understanding of the material. I do think the content can be trimmed somewhat for proportionate weight. - MrX 🖋 12:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The claim that defense of slavery was a motivation for the revolution is certainly fringe. After the 1619 Project made the claim, it was widely criticized by historians. Gordon S. Wood, who is one of the (probably the) foremost experts on the American Revolution, said, "I don't know of any colonist who said that they wanted independence in order to preserve their slaves [...] No colonist expressed alarm that the mother country was out to abolish slavery in 1776." It later came out that a historian who served as a fact-checker for the 1619 Project, Leslie Harris, had warned the authors about the claim but had been ignored. That prompted a correction by the 1619 Project, which weakened the claim to the extremely vague and unfalsifiable statement that "some" colonists were motivated by a desire to defend slavery.
 * There is a very well established and widely accepted view on the causes for the American Revolution (at least the proximate causes in the 1760s-70s), and desire to defend slavery is not among them. The problems are that among all the many writings and speeches from the 1760s-70s, a desire to defend the institution of slavery is never articulated as a motivation. The major political crises that led to the revolt, such as the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Intolerable Acts, etc., do not involve a desire to defend slavery. You can read Common Sense and Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania and search in vain for any hint that desire to defend slavery motivated opposition to Britain. There's simply no evidence that this motivated any of the revolutionaries. Moreover, the revolution broke out in Boston, which was one of the strongest centers of the anti-slavery movement anywhere in the world, at the time, and the revolution actually directly led to a wave of abolitionist legislation throughout the former colonies.
 * This is very much a fringe theory, and it should not be presented here. The two events that the NY Times Magazine editor tried to use to defend the claim, the Dunmore Proclamation (which came after the outbreak of the revolution, and can therefore not be its cause) and the Somerset decision (which did not affect the colonies, and which was actually supported by many of the leaders of the revolution) are already described outside of the subsection I removed. Adding in a separate subsection to describe a fringe interpretation of those events is not necessary. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:41, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * We disagree whether this is fringe or a minority viewpoint. I assert that WP:NPOV requires that it be covered briefly in this article because of the amount of coverage in reliable source that it has received. I'm not particularly interested in your own analysis of the subject, only reliable sources. - MrX 🖋 13:30, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I disagree characterizing it as 'long-standing', it was oddly inserted as an undue whole section, unduly focused on the partially retracted claims of a journalist not a historian, and an editor, not historian (Per WP:SOURCETYPES, we are suppose to go to "academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks" for history articles.) If there is any addition that should be made it should not be made with that unscholarly focus, it should work in what historians actually wrote, not a gloss from any journalism. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:01, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's worth noting that WP:SOURCETYPES says "However, Try to cite current scholarly consensus when available, recognizing that this is often absent. "
 * That said, I'm not going to invest a lot of time defending this content since I'm not an expert on Revolutionary War era American history and have I bigger fish to fry. Hopefully other editors will weigh in. Pinging who originally added the material more than seven months ago. - MrX 🖋 13:30, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * From what I have seen, it is a recent fringe view--held by few of the hundreds of scholars who work on the Am Revolution. Much more common is Nash's argument that black Americans' quest for freedom during the Revolution "marked the first mass slave rebellion in American history" most blacks supported the American Revolution [Gary B. Nash., The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution.  (Harvard University Press, 2006). Rjensen (talk) 13:41, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Citing one journalist and one editor (in long quotation, no less) in a historic area that has scores of modern unretracted scholarship is plainly bad encyclopedia writing. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I have nothing to add. You know more about it than I do. deisenbe (talk) 14:13, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Legal institution
On 21 Aug, 2020, deleted text about Native American enslavement from, saying "the slavery discussed here is the legal institution". Could you explain the intention? Native Americans were enslaved under Native American legal systems, before they were enslaved under European ones. Is there some reason to privilege European legal systems over Native American ones? Furthermore, that concept excludes even enslaved Africans in English colonies until those colonies passed slave laws starting in 1641. Kim9988 (talk) 22:15, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem, I suspect, is that most Native American legal systems were not written down and existed only in people's minds. I'm not sure it's correct even to speak of a Native American "legal system" at all. Just what are we talking about? The few exceptions, like the Five civilized tribes, are from those who Europeans had taught to read and write, and about government. deisenbe (talk) 22:42, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * See also Slavery among Native Americans in the United States, Slavery among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, History of unfree labor in the United States, and perhaps others too. Each one is a long article. Every topic can't be included in every article. But short (or very short) summaries of overlapping topics are appropriate, IMO. (Already covered in Slavery in the United States ). Mobi Ditch (talk) 00:25, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Native Americans
Since this article reaches back before 1776, should the practice of slavery among native Americans also be mentioned? I am not just talking about the Cherokees apparently having black slaves in the 19th century but also the practice among various tribes of having slaves due to war capture and becoming slaves after having gambled aware one's freedom (or having one's father doing so). 213.109.220.252 (talk) 02:55, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Certainly, and there is already some coverage in the subsection titled Slavery_in_the_United_States, which can expand. The entire first quarter of the article covers periods before 1776. On August 8 put a starting date of 1776 in the lede (it had said "from early settlement"). There are multiple articles which address the current area of the US, while titled "in the US", such as Colonial_history_of_the_United_States or Slavery among Native Americans in the United States. Similarly for History of France, History of Indonesia, History of Nigeria, and Slavery in Nigeria, they include history inside the current boundaries, before those boundaries or names were established. I wouldn't mind changing the article title to Slavery in present borders of the United States, but that's not the style throughout Wikipedia. I'd oppose removing the pre-1776 material, or splitting into 2 articles, since the material belongs together. Kim9988 (talk) 17:08, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No. The starting point of 1776 has long been the focus of this article - the United States did not exist before that. The WP:SPLIT on Wikipedia happened long ago, the Main Article for pre-1776 is and long has been Slavery in the colonial history of the United States -- while we should summarize that Main Article here in the Origin section (and we should do a better job of summarizing than we currently do), we should not duplicate it, as it makes for an unreadable article and a mess of conflicting information across articles. --  Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree with your point, but that the U.S. came into existence in 1776 is at least debatable. What the declaration refers to is "free and independent states". Some would date it back to the First Continental Congress, or you can say that the United States came into existence with the ratification of the Constitution in 1787. Before that the U.S. was a confederation, not a country. deisenbe (talk) 14:00, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * United states is used in the declaration of independence of 1776 and 1776 is when they asserted they were no longer colonies of anyone else so would be independent in law and government (states). The First Continental Congress always referred to themselves as colonies, not states (so by definition could not be united states, because united states did not exist). Whether united states were one country or group of confederated states that in the next few years defeated their colonial power seems a quibble. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:58, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I beg to differ. When the United States came into existence is not a quibble, as I see it. If you look at the handwritten original of the Declaration, the document that was actually signed, it does not refer to the "United States of America", but to the "united States of America". It's all about "Free and Independent States", not about a new country. Actually, it occurs to me that to identify a date, you have to say what the United States was. What are the characteristics that, when they were present and not before, meant the United States of America had come into existence? Have to think about that. If you asked Jefferson, Hamilton, or Madison when the colonies united, forming a new nation, I'm pretty sure they would have said with the Constitution. That brought the country into existence. That's why all lists of U.S. presidents begin with George Washington, not Henry Laurens. deisenbe (talk) 18:13, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I am sure they would not. You agree that they became States in 1776 and you're quibbling about United, although that's when the first collectively referred to themselves as united states and you agree that United States did not exist before 1776, which is all that matters, here. It is absolutely certain that the "United States" existed from 1776. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:59, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * 4 July 1776 is a widely accepted date for the founding of the United States (give or take a few days, given that not all signers signed on the same day). Just how "united" the United States was (or were) under the Second Continental Congress or the Articles of Confederation is an interesting question, but it's too much of a detail to discuss in this article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Illustration
The section "Distribution" should contain more map diagrams like this. TGCP (talk) 12:45, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , Hi, such maps are generally created by people like you -- that is, Wikipedians -- you may want to look and talk to people at Maps for Wikipedia and the related project or directly seek out some map creators by seeing who created maps you like.  Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:11, 25 August 2020 (UTC)