Map of the Last U.S. Slave Census 1860

The first image is zoomable. See the icons in the bottom right-hand corner.

The 1860 Census was the last time the federal government took a count of the South’s vast slave population. The map uses what was then a new technique in statistical cartography: each county not only displays its slave population numerically, but is shaded (the darker the shading, the higher the number of slaves) to visualize the concentration of slavery across the region.

The cotton-belt counties along the Mississippi River and in coastal South Carolina are almost black, while Kentucky and the Appalachians are nearly white. Beaufort County, South Carolina, has over 80% of the population enslaved.

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Thank you to The New York Times