In the 1860 Census, which is on the eve of the Civil War, there were 393,975 slave owners in the United States out of a total population of 31,183,582, or 1.26 percent of the population. [However,] the figure is the population of the entire U.S. At the time, there were 33 states in the Union, 15 were slave states and 18 were free states.

Looking just at the slave states then, there were 393,975 slave owners in the slave states out of a population of 12,240,293. As only free people owned slaves, thus that the total population of the slave states included enslaved people themselves, so we have to adjust our numbers to reflect only free people. Therefore, the 393,975 slave owners were out of a free population of 8,289,782, or 4.75 percent of the free population of the slave states being slave owners.

The confederacy’s 11 states had 316,632 slave owners out of a free population of 5,582,222. This equals 5.67 percent of the free population of the confederacy were slave owners.

That, however, does not tell us the extent of slave ownership. To better understand the extent of slavery’s impact, we need to realize a slave owner was the one person in a family who legally owned slaves. That person was usually the patriarch. There would be a spouse and sons and daughters who directly benefited from the family’s slave ownership <...>

[Taking that into account], according to the Census of 1860, 30.8 percent of the free families in the confederacy owned slaves.