From: jsanders@phys.ksu.edu (Justin M. Sanders)
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Subject: Re: Plantation Population
Date: 2 Sep 1992 06:20:27 GMT
Organization: Department of Physics, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: bohr.phys.ksu.edu

Rich Rath writes:

>jsanders@phys.ksu.edu (Justin M. Sanders) writes:
>
>>Another interesting table in Campbell's book compares the age distribution
>>of the slave and the white populations.  The distributions are almost
>>identical, which indicates that the slaves had a life expectancy that was
>>just a little less than that of the white population.

[financial importance of slaves to slaveholders deleted]

>Whites, who kept the
>records from which Campell's reconstruction were done, were only concerned, 
>in most cases, at least as far as record keeping goes, with value
>in the case of slaves.

Campbell's tables are taken from the census of living individuals, so
they don't rely on the slaveholders' records of mortality, but rather
rely on the slaveholders' knowledge of the approximate age of the
slaves (passing that info to the census taker).

>A slave child was of little value.  The child could do no work until 
>several years old, and only a partial load then.  The child also reduced 
>the work which could be extracted from the mother for a while, thus reducing
>the value of the mother as well.  Slaveowners provisioned children on a level
>among the lowest in recorded history.

If one makes an analogy between the slaveholder and a rancher, it 
would seem that the slaveholder would take some reasonable care of the
children, as a rancher cares for his calves.  However, I really don't 
know about this point and would abandon this position if I were to be
shown reasonable data to refute it.

>  Infant and youth mortality
>was among the highest in the world.

Here is the table that started this.  It is from R.B. Campbell, "An 
Empire for Slavery", Table 13.
[percentage of population in various age groups (Texas)]
1850          slaves            whites
  0-9           32.8              32.6
 10-14          14.1              12.9
 15-49          48.3              50.0
 50-65           3.6               4.3
   65+           1.2               1.3

1860
  0-9           32.7              33.0
 10-14          13.6              12.8
 15-49          48.8              48.1
 50-65           3.6               4.7
   65+           1.2               1.4
  
One would think that if the mortality rates of the slaves and the free 
whites differed greatly, then the age distributions would not be 
essentially identical as they are.  For a comparison with infant 
mortality rates, I got the following age distributions and infant
mortality rates from "Phillips Geographical Digest 1992-93"

            0-4   5-14   15-59   60+    infant mort(*)
Belgium       6    12      62    21         8
U.S.          7    14      62    17         8
Bangledesh   17    27      52     5       108
Ethopia      19    27      50     5       122
Kenya        20    30      45     4        64
Texas 1860 (**)
      slave  18    28      52     2   
 free white  18    29      52     2

(*) deaths less than 1 yr. old per 1000 (1990 U.N. est.)
(**) my computation from the "Population of the United States in 1860"
     (Washington:Govt. Printing Office, 1864)

Note the considerable similarity of the age distributions for
Bangledesh and Ethopia to those for the 1860 Texas free white and
slave populations.  As a caution, however, note also that while
Kenya's distribution is also similar, the infant mortality rate is
half that of Ethopia (Kenya's is 8 times that of the U.S. or Belgium
and the age distributions are quite different).  From this admittedly 
limited sample, it would appear that there is *some* correlation
between the age distribution and the infant mortality rate.  And this
correlation seems to support the contention that similar age
distributions have similar infant mortality rates (within a factor of
two).

I therefore must conclude that the data we've seen thus far indicates 
that the slave infant mortality rate (in Texas, at least) was not
radically different from that of free whites.

Rich concludes:
>A slave who survived the most hellish upbringing on earth, in the midst of 
>prosperity all around, could expect to live almost as long as a
>white child's birthright.  Sound about even to you?

My intention in pursuing this point is not to minimize the repugnance
of slavery but rather to attempt to understand the institution as
accurately as possible from a vantage point more than 100 years
removed.
--
Justin M. Sanders    "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance"
Dept. of Physics        --last words of Gen. John Sedgwick
Kansas State Univ.
Organization: University/Publications & Printing, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA