Page:W. E. B. Du Bois - The Gift of Black Folk.pdf/67

Rh middle passage. This, with the Asiatic trade, cost black Africa a hundred million souls. Bancroft places the total slave population of the continental colonies at 59,000 in 1714, 78,000 in 1727, and 293,000 in 1754.

In the West Indies the whole laboring population early became Negro or Negro with an infiltration of Indian and white blood. In the United States at the beginning of our independent national existence, Negroes formed a fifth of the population of the whole nation. The exact figures are: