[T. P. Pole]

I am puzzling over these two consecutive paragraphs.

Relative to their numbers in the population (27 million according to the 1860 census), a miniscule number of whites owned slaves. Eight million whites lived in the South, but of these, fewer than 325,000 owned slaves. What this means is that only 1.4 percent of the total white population consisted of slave owners, and only 4.8 percent of the white Southern population did so.

In glaring contrast, in this same year, there were 4.5 million blacks living in America, and 500,000 blacks in the South. Over half of these—261, 988—were freed men. In the city of New Orleans alone, more than 3,000 blacks owned slaves. That is, 28 percent of the free black population consisted of slave holders.

If I am reading this right, there were 325k slave owners, but only 250k slaves (500k in south, 261k freed men)?

[Ellendra]

Not all slaves were black.

[hirn_man]

I kind of question those numbers myself. It doesn’t make sense.

[gleeaikin]

Yes, there does seem to be something wrong with the math.