Unfortunately, I could not get the link to work, but I somehow managed to copy the map onto this blogpost with its timed loop (all that’s needed is to press the play button)!
This loop displays two different topics:1. The amount of female slaves under 10 years old 2. The amount of male slaves under 10 years old. I did not create this map to show the contrast in numbers between these two groups, instead I wanted to show just how many young children were forced into slavery. With evidence shown on my map, we can see that thousands of children were already identified as slaves before they were even categorized as teens. Not only is this horrifying, it completely proves just how dehumanizing slavery was for Africans forced into American slavery. During this time, black children had no childhoods in the United States, instead they were seen as property needed to make money. These children were most likely taken from their parents, beaten, and worked nearly to death. I decided to focus this map on the 1840s because the 1840s is described as the peak of slavery in the United States. Thus, with this information, I will be able to see the highest recorded number of children forced under slavery. Looking at the map, there were no children under the age of 10 who were slaves in the northeastern area of the United States. We can assume that this is because the North was less dependent on slavery, therefore, did not need more slaves or children to do work. However, as the map moves more towards the south, there is a sudden rise to the thousands in numbers of children slaves (the most alarming numbers being 8,021 female slaves and 7,290 male slaves). With this information, we can assume this is because slavery was at its peak and southerners did not care about how old their slaves were, they just wanted more of them. Though this map does not show where many slaves lived or the comparison between different groups, I believe this topic is important to speak about as well because because children are not mentioned very often when slavery is talked about, the trauma and damage they faced at such a young is immeasurable and deserves to be talked about more.
This is an amazing data map and I really appreciate the amount of work you put into building this visualization as well as your analysis. I think your observations and interpretations are spot-on and point to some incredibly important, yet understudied lines of inquiry regarding the history of slavery. To me, it is especially striking to see how South Carolina illuminates in green even without a state boundary line. This type of visual also gives us insight into the prevalence of enslaved children populations, and while I know your intention was not to compare male to female children, it is interesting to see the higher numbers of female children in many counties of the map. I think your emphasis on WHY there might be such high numbers on enslaved children and how that connects to enslavers’ desires to commodify children is also significant. Thank you so much for sharing this map and your thoughts, excellent work!