During the transatlantic slave trade, more than 90% of enslaved Africans were brought to be sold, live, and work in Brazil and the Caribbean. The Caribbean and South American colonies had massive sugar plantations with high labor demands, so there was a large market for the purchase of captured Africans in these regions. 

Only about 6% of enslaved Africans were brought to North America and the British colonies, and those who were primarily lived in the Southern Colonies working on cotton, tobacco, sugar, or indigo plantations. The Southern Colonies of Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina held the most slaves. By far, Virginia held the largest number of enslaved Africans during the period before Emancipation- almost 500,000 in the year 1860! Jamestown, Virginia was where the Colonial slave trade began and remained a common port for the sale of captured Africans into slavery. 

Where did most enslaved Americans live in North America?

In 1860, the state of Virginia had the largest number of enslaved Americans, at 490,850, followed by the states of Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, each of which had more than 400,000 slaves. These were all states with a strong base of cotton-growing, a labor-intensive form of farming that relied on slave labor to enrich the plantation owners.

The explosion of cotton growth after the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 dismayed those Americans who had hoped that the institution of slavery would gradually wither away, especially after the relatively new country of the United States failed to abolish it. It would take the Civil War to finally sweep away an institution many had objected to since the founding of the United States.