You’ve heard it before: we are living in divided times. Disagreement is part of being a citizen of a democracy, but in today's indisputably hot political climate, young people have stepped up into ...

A map shows the distribution of the slave population in the Southern states of the United States, based on the 1860 census. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division As the 2016 election ...

As more Confederate monuments were being removed in the South this month, an old claim seeking to downplay the extent of slave ownership began to recirculate online. Data archived from the 1860 census ...

Confederate-themed posts are cropping up on social media in the wake of the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Va. The march was sparked by efforts to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert ...

Editor's note: Please see our updated and expanded coverage of this topic published in June 2025. On April 2, 2024, the claim that "only 1.6% of US citizens owned slaves in 1860" went viral on X ...

In early and mid-2025, a claim that "only 1.6% of US citizens owned slaves in 1860" resurfaced and circulated widely online, including on X, Reddit and Facebook. As we previously reported, this claim ...

AMERICA'S FOUNDATION: In his March 16, 1860 address to the U.S. House of Representatives, Zebulon Vance argued that slavery was an essential component of American life and economic well-being. "The ...