But I'm going to help you understand what pre-Civil War Americans often euphemistically referred to as the peculiar institution. INTRO Slavery is as old as civilization itself, although it's not as old as humanity, thanks to our hunting and gathering foremothers. But the numbers involved in the Atlantic slave trade are truly staggering. From 1500 to 1880 CE, somewhere between 10 and 12 million African slaves were forcibly moved from Africa to the Americas, and about 15% of those people died during the journey. I know you're saying, that looks like a very nice ship, I mean my god, it's almost as big as South America. Yeah, not to scale. And those who didn't die became property, bought and sold like any commodity.