If memory serves, I linked to this page http://www.civilwarcauses.org/stat.htm and asked fellow Facebookers if they knew how the slave holding family figures were calculated.
Out of the blue, I got a private message from James Epperson, the owner of that site:
Ms. Chastain, if you go to the website in question, click on a year (say, 1860), you will get a list of hot links for variables, one of which is "slaveholders," and this is how I arrived at my figures. I no longer see an obvious way to look at individual states, but I assure you that option existed when I constructed the table.I asked how the number of slave holding families was calculated, and he replied,
Each slaveholder in the census is assumed to represent his own family. Some of these would be individuals, some would be extended families (patriarch/ matriarch, children and spouses, etc.), some would be nuclear families. I don't see a problem with this.Me:
It seems to me that a figure of 26% looks much more weighty and impressive than 13.8% -- particularly to people who won't take the time to discern the difference in what the two figures represent. The term "slave holding families" could be construed by some to mean all members of the family were slaveholders; to such people, that means 26% of the Southern population, not 13.8%, owned slaves. I think it gives a false impression.Him:
The point of the exercise is to discern how many people were affected by or benefitting (sic) from or exposed to slavery. It would be more than the individuals who legally owned the slaves---it would include their wives and children. I am not the originator of this, it is the standard metric used by historians.
So people who didn't own slaves can be considered the same as if they did -- and thus swell the number of Southern white slave owners (or, at least, appear to swell them).
Aside from having a problem with counting family members as slave owners who likely were not, I have a real problem with the point of the exercise being to find out how many people were affected by or benefiting from or exposed to slavery -- but ignoring a great many people who fit that criteria.
If that's the point, "slave holders" would include nearly everyone in the New England maritime industry, whose ships carried cargoes, and whose crews were paid to carry cargoes, of slave-grown cotton to markets in Europe. It would include New England's textile mill owners and workers who milled Southern, slave-grown cotton It would include northern bankers and their employees, which financed the purchase of slaves and plantations. It would include northern insurance companies that made profits insuring slaves....
They were all affected by, benefited from and were (indirectly) exposed to slavery. If the point of the exercise is to discern how many people benefited from slavery, why is the benefit to these northerners ignored?
We know why, don't we? Because acknowledging it would be of absolutely no use in demonizing white Southerners.
_________________________________
Illustrations by C. Ward
So you are wanting historians to widen the criteria from; number of families that had a direct benefit of slavery, to everyone that had any type of benefit from slavery?
ReplyDeleteBasically, in your argument, you are suggesting that the entire world owned African slaves because of their indirect connection to that economy. This would render only the African slaves themselves as having the only claim of non-beneficiary. Unless, of course,you are going to imply slaves benefited from slavery.
Honestly Connie, you are reaching pretty far with this argument.
For the truth on African slavery, the place to look is Africa, not Alabama. A recent United Nations report on contemporary slavery singles out West Central Africa -- where most American slaves originated -- as the top slave economy of the contemporary world, with approximately 25 million people in bondage, STILL WORKING ON PLANTATIONS!!! Now if Obama and the Left were REALLY concerned about the effects of black slavery, then there wouldn't BE ANY END TO THEIR CONDEMNATION OF WEST CENTRAL AFRICA, BUT INSTEAD, THERE'S NO MENTION OF IT WHATSOEVER........WHY?????..............
ReplyDeleteRob, your argument is soooo typical of you. What I am suggesting is (and it's plain as the nose on your face), if you SAY you are counting "slave owners," don't count non-slave owners in the owner's family because they "benefited" from slavery. And if you're going to count who benefited from slavery, (1) don't call all of those you're counting "slave owners," and (2) count everyone who benefited, not just the people who happened to be related to slave owners.
ReplyDeleteJesse, a couple of reasons occur to me that explain why west African slavery, past and present, is ignored in the PC world today: (1) any criticism of blacks, anywhere for any reason, even legitimate and deserved, is considered "racist" and thus to be avoided and (2) recognizing black slavery in Africa is of absolutely zero usefulness in demonizing white Southerners, which is the focus of "civil war historians" -- their primary motive for becoming civil war historians, IMO.
ReplyDeleteA better analogy is modern-day home ownership.
ReplyDeleteI own my home but four people 'benefit' from it and the builder and construction workers are not inmcluded in the 4.
so a ratio of home-owners and families is apropos in 2010 as is slave-owners and families in 1860...
Excellent point, Hank c. Now, I'm not saying there's no usefulness in knowing how many families included a slave-owner (thus, a "slave owning family). I'm just saying counting and emphasizing those, as a percentage of the population, while simultaneously downplaying the actual number of those who held title to slaves (all but ignoring it) is probably motivated by something other than a desire to know and promote truth, facts and the whole picture.
ReplyDeleteI’d not say the ‘actual number’ is being downplayed as it *is* the numerator in the percentage ratio (slaveholders/families) and hence a main player in the analysis.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you have it inverted - percentage is typically a superior indicator than raw numbers by providing greater context and comparison.
After all, Virginia had twice as many slave-holders as South Carolina, but a much smaller percentage of slave-holding families and was much cooler to secession than their Palmetto state cousins...
Interesting, HankC. Thanks for the analysis.
ReplyDelete@ Connie,
ReplyDeleteSo kids today that drive a car that their parents own should not be counted as having a direct benefit from that car....
Of course, your logic dictates that the shieks of the middle east also benefit from that car. Which the do though nearly unnoticed and indirectly.
Connie, this is such a weak argument from you. I usually see better.
Rob: "So kids today that drive a car that their parents own should not be counted as having a direct benefit from that car..."
ReplyDeleteThey should not be counted as a car-owner -- nor should it be implied that they are a car-owner just because they benefit from a car owned by somebody else.
If somebody wants to make a list of non-car-owners who benefit from the use of a car somebody else owns, put 'em on that list.
It's not a weak argument, Rob. There is an attempt to conflate non-slave owners with slave-owners, to make the numbers look bigger, and thus have more "ammo" for evilizing white Southerners. That's why it is done; that's why I disapprove of it.
Actually they should be counted Connie. Given the number of teens that use a car daily that is designated to them by their parents, yet still owned by the parents.
ReplyDeleteAgain, there is no agenda to "evilize [sic] white southerners" Connie. Every historian recognizes the impact of slavery on the South as well as its contributions to the Northern economy. To say otherwise is simply misleading in order to build an unneeded argument.
"Actually they should be counted Connie."
ReplyDeleteCounted as what, Rob? Car-owners? No, they shouldn't. If they don't hold the title to the car, they do not own it and should not be counted among car-owners.
"Given the number of teens that use a car daily that is designated to them by their parents, yet still owned by the parents."
What part of THEY DO NOT OWN THE CAR do you not understand? Count them as a non-car owner who benefits from the use of a car owned by someone else, but do not count them as car owners, because it is neither factual nor true.
"Again, there is no agenda to "evilize [sic] white southerners" Connie.
Yes, there is. You have to be blind to miss it.
"Every historian recognizes the impact of slavery on the South as well as its contributions to the Northern economy."
No, they don't. Not only do many of them not recognize how the north benefited from slavery -- they ignore it, gloss it over and sanitize/perfume it with the "righteous-north-fought-to-free-slaves" (and thus "shed their sins") meme.
"To say otherwise is simply misleading in order to build an unneeded argument."
It's as plain as the nose on your face, Rob. You don't recognize it because you've bought into it.
I think your agenda Connie is to limit the definitions of history in order to "perfume" the existence of slavery in the South. That is the real agenda. There is no "Historian" agenda, and historians do recognize the benefits of slavery on the North.
ReplyDeleteThe Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0131_030203_jubilee2_2.html
Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and 'Race' in New England 1780-1860
Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Studies in Early American Economy and Society...
Slavery And American Economic Development (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History)
(Above are different selections proving my point) These were found in a 1 minute internet search on Amazon.
Why do people focus primarily on the south? Because the dominant population of slavery existed in the south. This is because the south as a people chose the path of slave society. It fit their agricultural foundations.
So, refusing to call somebody a slave-owner if they didn't own slaves is "limiting the definition."
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome to copy-paste anything I've written that you construe as an attempt to perfume slavery in the South. If it's "the real agenda" I'm not doing much to advance it, because you won't find any perfuming of slavery from me.
Yes, there is a historian agenda, and it is entirely possible to "recognize" something by giving it one's own mental assent while downplaying it publicly, academically, etc.
Slavery could not possibly have existed in the South without the enabling and complicity (not to mention the financing) of the north.
No when asserts that they were all "slave owners" the term is "slave owning families" or "families that owned slaves." The primary reason this is done is because all property was listed under the patriarch of the residence/house depending on the census.
ReplyDeleteActually slavery was introduced into the Southern states in the beginning without the impact of the northern merchant economy. Which, that in itself, is attempting to perfume the history of slavery in the South. it is also an attempt to reroute attention away from Southern slavery.
If there is such an agenda, why then are there so many articles and peer reviews proving otherwise?
Rob,
ReplyDeleteI also think that people focus on the south because its people decided to fight a war to protect slavery.
Plus, most of the segregation laws were enforce at a higher level in the south.
IMHO!
Rob, the term "slave owning families" implies that everyone in the family shared ownership of the slaves. They didn't. Usually, one person held title, not the whole family or everyone in the family.
ReplyDeleteWhen or where or how it was "introduced" into the South, and by whom, does not change the fact that it could not have *existed* without the enabling and complicity (not to mention the financing) of the north. Acknowledging that is just a fact, no perfume to it.
I don't know that there are so many articles and peer reviews proving otherwise. A lot of what I've seen supports my contention.
Corey, the people of the South didn't "decide" to fight a war to protect slavery. Some states seceded to protect slavery, among other reasons, but as I have pointed out to you numerous times (and you're still too blind to see it) secession is not war.
ReplyDeleteSECESSION IS NOT WAR.
The South had the war forced on them by an invading army. The South it did not send an army swarming over the northern states to pick a fight and burn towns and kill people to "protect slavery." The South fought a defensive war because a barbaric military force had invaded its territory.
Most of the segregation laws were enforced at a higher level in the South because that's where the vast majority of blacks lived -- and still do. There weren't enough black people in the north to make SOME segregation laws necessary in most places.
However, there was segregation in the north, even for the extremely small black population (as opposed to the South's large black population). The difference is that you don't hear it hammered over and over and over in the media and elsewhere.
Ever read about racially restrictive neighborhood covenants in northern cities that kept neighborhoods white and that lasted for decades into the 20th century? When entire neighborhood were kept basically white, that resulted in basically white neighborhood schools, making school segregation laws unnecessary.
But in some northern cities, there was segregation -- and resistance to de-segregation. Remember Boston's busing riots in the late 1960s? Most northern segregation didn't get that kind of publicity.
Urban riots in the 20th century USA were usually race riots. (This list includes riots outside the USA.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_riots
Cities where race riots occurred: East St. Louis, Chicago, Tulsa, Harlem, Rochester, NY, Philadelphia, Watts, Hough/Cleveland, OH, Newark, NJ, Plainfield, NJ. Detroit, Minneapolis, Washington DC, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Toledo. The only "Southern" city on that list is Miama, FL and we know it is full of yankees -- it is not a Southern town.
Your statement, "Plus, most of the segregation laws were enforce at a higher level in the south," that fails to note not only de facto if not de jure segregation in northern cities, but trouble between blacks and police, political exclusion of blacks, substandard housing, unemployment, poverty, gang activity, drugs, and so forth.
Ignoring or downplaying this is part of the ongoing campaign to evilize Southern whites and sanitize, cleanse and perfume non-Southern whites by ignoring enormous race problems that existed outside the South, despite such a small black population there. Imagine how bad it would be if the black population had been evenly distributed across the nation, rather than highly concentrated in the South -- http://www.census.gov/geo/www/mapGallery/images/black.jpg
LOL...it is so easy to put you on a offensive rant.
ReplyDeleteLOL. To Corey, truth = offensive rant....
ReplyDeleteActually you are wrong again Connie. Prior to the Erie canal, America's largest port city was New Orleans. So did the north's merchant industry play a part? Yes. Would it have existed otherwise? Most definitely. Hooray for historical facts!!!
ReplyDeleteRob, please.
ReplyDelete===================
Excerpted from http://www.etymonline.com/cw/economics.htm
Southern New England was the first section of America to become overcrowded. At the end of the Revolution, it had too many families, not enough farmland, and too few jobs. The federal government set out deliberately to encourage there the commercial trades, especially ship-building and shipping, to save the region from sinking into poverty. The raw material for Northern factories, and the cargoes of Northern merchantmen, would come from the South.
The July 4, 1789, tariff was the first substantive legislation passed by the new American government. ... Navigation acts in the same decade stipulated that foreign-built and foreign-owned vessels were taxed 50 cents per ton when entering U.S. ports, while U.S.-built and -owned ones paid only six cents per ton. Furthermore, the U.S. ones paid annually, while foreign ones paid upon every entry.
This effectively blocked off U.S. coastal trade to all but vessels built and owned in the United States. The navigation act of 1817 made it official, providing "that no goods, wares, or merchandise shall be imported under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port in the United States to another port in the United States, in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power."
The point of all this was to protect and grow the shipping industry of New England, and it worked. By 1795, the combination of foreign complication and American protection put 92 percent of all imports and 86 percent of all exports in American-flag vessels. American shipowners' annual earnings shot up between 1790 and 1807, from $5.9 million to $42.1 million.
New England shipping took a severe hit during the War of 1812 and the embargo. After the war ended, the British flooded America with manufactured goods to try to drive out the nascent American industries. They chose the port of New York for their dumping ground, ... the dumping bankrupted many towns, but it assured New York of its sea-trading supremacy. ... New Yorkers made the most of the chance.
Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on "packet lines" -- groups of vessels offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became the way to do business across the pond.
The trick was to have a good cargo going each way. The New York packet lines succeeded because they sucked in all the eastbound cotton cargoes from the U.S. The northeast didn't have enough volume of paying freight on its own. So American vessels, usually owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton (or occasionally naval stores or timber) for Europe.
Since this "triangle trade" involved a domestic leg, foreign vessels were excluded from it (under the 1817 law), except a few English ones that could substitute a Canadian port for a Northern U.S. one. And since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be the only game in town.
By creating a three-cornered trade in the 'cotton triangle,' New York dragged the commerce between the southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy toll upon it. This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way. To clinch this abnormal arrangement, moreover, New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable."[2]
(Continued next comment)
ReplyDeleteEven when the Southern cotton bound for Europe didn't put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.
As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool. Yet New York by the mid-1850s could claim sixteen lines to Liverpool, three to London, three to Havre, two to Antwerp, and one each to Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Marseilles. Subsidized, it must be remembered, by the federal post office patronage boondogle.
U.S. foreign trade rose in value from $134 million in 1830 to $318 million in 1850. It would triple again in the 1850s. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of those imports entered through the port of New York. Which meant that any trading the South did, had to go through New York.
Turner's image of ante-bellum America was an empire like the British, whose "sections" took the place of "individual kingdoms." The role of the South was to devote itself to pouring out the raw material for New England's looms and for the bulk of America's export trade. This was laid out by Alexander Hamilton's "Report on the Subject of Manufactures" (1791, the blueprint for young America's economic program), and enshrined in Henry Clay's "American System," enacted in the mid-1820s with the support of Midwestern farmers as well as North Atlantic manufacturers.
That this was done most effectively by slave labor plantations was, after about 1800, no secret to anyone -- North, South, American, British. Robert Russell, the observant British traveller, wrote that slavery was "a necessary evil attending upon the great good of cheap cotton."
The shift of so much land and effort into cotton-growing meant that the people of the South relied on the West for much of their food and livestock, and on the North Atlantic states for most of their clothing and machinery. In turn, they provided more than two-thirds of the entire nation's exports, which brought in the specie that allowed commerce and growth in all sections.
"After 1830 the industrial North had become wedded, not only to the South's production of cotton, but to the institution of slave labor which made such valuable production possible." Northern factories based their profits on a steady flow of cotton.[6] The price of raw cotton was low during this period, and lagged behind the price of cotton goods. Northern bankers grew rich by extending liberal (but risky) credit to Southern planters against next year's crop. Cotton was already America's leading export by 1821. By 1850, Southern cotton accounted for nearly 60 percent of the nation's total exports, and was a major factor in Northern shipping prospects. While the looms of Lawrence and Lowell sucked up raw cotton, the ships of Boston bulged with it as they crossed the Atlantic, and their owners looked forward to increasing production on the slave plantations, which meant increased profit for them.
===================
Um, did you say something about, um, New Orleans?
Thanks for proving my point. google the years of the American system, Erie canal, and the rapid growth of the new York harbor.
Deletealso, thanks for copy and pasting other historians work on the interconnection between the southern and northern economies. sort of negates your earlier comments.
Rob, does this illustrate why all the jumping up and down and screaming about "History, not heritage!!!!" from you flogger types rings worse than absolutely hollow?
ReplyDeleteYou offer me this crapola, "Prior to the Erie canal, America's largest port city was New Orleans. So did the north's merchant industry play a part? Yes. Would it have existed otherwise? Most definitely," AND THEN HAVE THE UTTER GALL TO CALL IT HISTORY?
Did the north's "merchant" industry play a part? DID IT PLAY A PART? It was the engine that ran the whole flippin' thing! The South, and plantations and slaves and cotton EXISTED to feed New England's ports and ships' cargo holds and textile factorys and POCKETS...
Awaiting the accusation that this is somehow "perfuming" slavery in three... two... one...
But I didn't prove your point -- I disproved it. I don't have to Google anything. Harper's essay is more than sufficient to prove my point and disprove yours. If you want to go Googling in a desperate attempt to bolster your erroneous position, have at it.
ReplyDeleteOh, I would LOVE for you to copy and paste my earlier comments that you think Harper's essay negates. It actually proves my point. Slavery actually GREW to bolster the New England maritime and northern textile industries, but most especially the former.
Read this part again:
======
The role of the South was to devote itself to pouring out the raw material for New England's looms and for the bulk of America's export trade. This was laid out by Alexander Hamilton's "Report on the Subject of Manufactures" (1791, the blueprint for young America's economic program), and enshrined in Henry Clay's "American System," enacted in the mid-1820s with the support of Midwestern farmers as well as North Atlantic manufacturers.
That this was done most effectively by slave labor plantations was, after about 1800, no secret to anyone -- North, South, American, British. Robert Russell, the observant British traveller, wrote that slavery was "a necessary evil attending upon the great good of cheap cotton."
The shift of so much land and effort into cotton-growing meant that the people of the South relied on the West for much of their food and livestock, and on the North Atlantic states for most of their clothing and machinery. In turn, they provided more than two-thirds of the entire nation's exports, which brought in the specie that allowed commerce and growth in all sections.
"After 1830 the industrial North had become wedded, not only to the South's production of cotton, but to the institution of slave labor which made such valuable production possible." Northern factories based their profits on a steady flow of cotton.[6] The price of raw cotton was low during this period, and lagged behind the price of cotton goods. Northern bankers grew rich by extending liberal (but risky) credit to Southern planters against next year's crop. Cotton was already America's leading export by 1821. By 1850, Southern cotton accounted for nearly 60 percent of the nation's total exports, and was a major factor in Northern shipping prospects. While the looms of Lawrence and Lowell sucked up raw cotton, the ships of Boston bulged with it as they crossed the Atlantic, and their owners looked forward to increasing production on the slave plantations, which meant increased profit for them.
=======
The north didn't just "benefit" from slavery. It was an absolute JUNKIE for slave-grown Southern cotton. It's very economy was BUILT on it, by Hamilton's and Clay's plan, and by the support of support of Midwestern farmers and North Atlantic manufacturers.
Slavery in the South could NOT HAVE EXISTED if that had not been true.
You're denial is just flabbergasting. Would you, by chance, be a Democrat?
Comment coming. You really helped me out on this one.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, I'm not a democrat...unless of course you are referring to Jeffersonian Democrat, then mostly.
ReplyDeleteI want to break down Douglas's comments into different aspects to explain them in detail. After I get done with this, I will then go back to Pre-American colonial impacts of slavery and shipping to demonstrate: that your interpretation of Douglas's information is flawed; and that slavery did not need the North's merchant fleet to be a prospering agricultural industry in the South. Note this may take some time as my books are at home.
ReplyDeleteDouglas is presenting legitimate facts on the tariff of 1789 but his concentration is too narrow leaving out peripheral factors that impact these decisions as well. For example, there is a well known and documented conflict among congressional members centered on European allies. Namely their is political infighting in supporting the British or the French. James Madison, a Republican and slave owner, favored discrimination against British trade in favor of American and French vessels. Presiding over the committee he pushed for a tonnage fee on vessels that did not have a commercial treaty.
60 cents fee on vessels without treaty (G.B.)
30 cents fee on vessels with treaty (France)
This can be seen as economic war further complicating the matter. Madison's provision passed the House, but the Senate sent the act back. It then passed the house 30-19, without his amendment. Business interests of the North were afraid France could not deliver the products of Great Britain. The final version of the bill places a 50 cent levy on all vessels not American and only a 6 cent levy on American ships. Oddly this act was not discriminate to other nations. This is something George Washington approved of wanting to see American industrial growth One thing that Harper does not state, and he should, is that these practices are not rare. European maritime practices were virtually the same and used for the same reasons America sought tariffs; to pay for government and the substantial debt that war (American Rev.) cost. As you can see, there are numerous factors involved.
Harper's jump from 1789 to 1817 is not a wise one without calling attention to the fact that America had transitioned in that time frame. The U.S. moved to a Constitutional Republic in government in 1787 and recently fought in another war acquiring more debt. Not to mention that in that time period, America transitioned from colonial holding to full fledged nation. Also, as mentioned before, America sought growth and mass income to pay off war debts and maintain the cost of the new government. It is natural that shipping would increase along with other facets of the American economy. (below)
About that economy, political figures of the time maintained different opinions as to what the American economy should be. Proponents (mostly Southern) of the agrarian economy included figures such as Jefferson, while industrial economy proponents included Washington and Hamilton. The reason I bring this up is to point out that slavery in the South was already proportiantely higher than anywhere else in the country. South Carolina bolstered a population with 20% slaves. Georgia's population by the time of the Revolution consisted of 50% slave. Chattel slavery developed in the South before the slave codes of the late 1600's. The south already transitioned from society with slaves to slave society. (reference pending, book at home)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/GROWTH1850.JPG
Here is a breakdown of the growth of the American Economy per capita income at that time.
(To be continued)
So, Rob, you're scrambling to find contrary "evidence" that will shore up your historian determination to negate different viewpoints and maintain the evilization of Southern whites?
ReplyDeleteMy "interpretation" of Harper's essay is not flawed.
Oh, and don't forget to copy and paste my earlier comments that you think Harper's essay negates.
Epperson's formula is flawed from the get-go.
ReplyDeleteMom and Pop and X amount of children are counted as one family in census records. Fine and dandy.
But these are also counted as "one family"-
Hotels, Boarding Houses, Orphanages, Convents, Schools, Prisons, etc, etc.
So in Epperson's formula 12 unrelated and independent adults living in a boarding house is counted as "one family."
20 nuns in a convent is "one family."
50 prisoners in the city jail is "one family."
That's how the census counted families.
Border Ruffian, if more call it "units" were counted as families than actually were families, the number of families that owned slaves would actually a larger percentage of a smaller number.
ReplyDeleteCensus definitions can be confusing. I read on one genealogy site that the census counted both households and families. Haven't seen "household" clearly defined, but that site seemed to assume that it was a dwelling. Thus a household where two families resided -- say, two brothers and their wives and children -- would be counted as one household but two families. I don't know how accurate that is, though. And in data calculation, you don't know when households are being used, and when families are, and whether data about the two might be mixed together...
In any case, the number of slave owners is very clear: 393,975. Slave owners were named, counted, and written down. Downplaying that number in order to speculate (and that's exactly what it looks like) on data that makes slave ownership more extensive is done, I believe, from a motive of evilizing white Southerners.
Rob,
ReplyDelete"Why do people focus primarily on the south? Because the dominant population of slavery existed in the south. This is because the south as a people chose the path of slave society. It fit their agricultural foundations."
Fundamentally, only about ten to fifteen percent of Southern people were slave owners. Even the black scholar, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, said that the "Gone with the Wind" style plantations were few and far between in the South. He also stated that more often than not these slave owners had six to fifteen slaves and were so much in debt that they had to constantly sell their slaves. So where does that leave the other eighty-five percent of hog farmers that live in the South? Your theory that roughly 258,000 Southeners died solely for the cause of perpetuating slavery is absurd. Sure, there were people that wanted it. Just like there were people in Missouri and Kentucky that wanted it and were guaranteed by Lincoln the right to keep their slaves if they wouldn't secede. What about that polecat Grant that traveled with his slave while he was trying to liberate the rest? What was it he said? "Good help is so hard to come by these days."
The War was economic in nature.Not every landowner in the South made a living from being a Massa and having his slaves pick cotton. Just food for thought...