From 1525 to 1866 12.5 million slaves were shipped from Africa to the West, 10.7 million of which survived the Middle Passage, only 388,000 of which were imported to North America, just 305,326 of that 388,000 to what is now U.S. territory, in addition to 60-70,000 later shipped from the Caribbean and imported to Spanish colonies in the North, that’s 3-4%, while 96-97% were imported to South America and the Caribbean, 4.86 million alone to Brazil, that’s 45% from 1525 to 1866 and 40% by 1888. 90% of African slaves were captured and sold by fellow Africans, the remainder by Portuguese and Arabs, the Arab slave trade lasting over 1,200 years from 650-700 CE well into the 1900s, and sold disproportionately to brown, not white, African slaves who very often went on to become slaveholders themselves, like Marie Metoyer of Louisiana, where 40% of slaveholders were black, owning more slaves than Thomas Jefferson when he signed the Declaration of Independence, or William Ellison, the largest of 171 black slaveholders in South Carolina, where 44% of slaveholders were black and where he operated a successful cotton gin business and plantation before later purchasing the Keith and Hickory Hill plantations and expanding, both of a country where even at slavery’s peak in 1860 76.1% of the total population never actually owned slaves, while 17.2% owned 1-9, which was typically closer to 1 than 9, 6.6% owned 10-99, which was typically closer to 10 than 99, and just 0.1% owned 100 or more, with slavery being far worse in the East than in the West. These percentages also included native slaveholders, like the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Comanche, Wichita, Osage, Shawnee, Seneca and Quapaw, ending when we negotiated the manumission of their slaves at the Fort Smith Conference of 1865 and agreed to 1866 treaties pardoning them for fighting alongside the Confederates to keep blacks in bondage, and yet racists pretend the Transatlantic slave trade was an exceptionally or exclusively white slave trade, or worse, that slavery itself was an exceptionally or exclusively white practice, ignoring virtually all of human history. Additionally, the total U.S. population upon our very first census taken in 1790 was 3.9 million with a total world population of 600-700 million, today it’s 326 million with a total world population of 7.6 billion, we’ve grown by over 147 million in just the last 54 years since segregation ended alone, because while our species goes back 200,000 years, as recent as 3,500-4,000 years ago the total world population was a mere 25-50 million, we didn’t hit 1 billion until 1890-1900, it wasn’t until the 20th that we exploded in number. Only an infinitesimaly small sliver of those living in the U.S. can actually trace their roots back to our founding, even fewer can trace their roots back to a slaveholder. Lastly, in 1860 the North had over 110,000 manufacturing establishments, the South 18,000. The North produced 94% of the country’s iron, 97% of it’s coal and 95% of it’s firearms. It owned 90% of the country’s ship tonnage and contained 22,000 miles of railroad, compared with the South’s 9,280 miles. The North outperformed agriculturally as well, accounting for 75% of the country’s farm acreage, 60% of it’s livestock, 67% of it’s corn and 81% of it’s wheat. All in all, the North held 75% of the nation’s taxable wealth. As for the remaining 25% of taxable wealth generated in the South, there were 200,000 more indentured servants imported than slaves and 1/2 to 2/3 of all immigrants to arrive here did so as indentured servants, resulting in millions more indentured servants than slaves; considering few were ever able to afford slaves as they were obscenely expensive, the equivalent today of tens of thousands of dollars with inflation, while indentured servants were a cheap and expendable alternative, guess which was likely more responsible for generating the bulk of that wealth. It wasn’t until Whitney’s cotton gin in 1793, which wasn’t patented until 1807, the year importation of slaves was abolished, that mass production of cotton became viable, and most economists agree slavery stunted long-term growth, impeded innovation and hindered diversification in Southern industry, that it ultimately did more harm than a short-lived good, but regardless, it wasn’t what “built America” as many commonly and baselessly claim.