[R. Scott]

Very few Southerners owned slaves, less than 2%. Why would the common people fight and die to defend slavery?

[BroJoeK]

R. Scott: "Very few Southerners owned slaves, less than 2%.
Why would the common people fight and die to defend slavery?"

Your claim is often asserted by pro-Confederates, but it's untrue in any sense.
We have studies and actual census numbers which tell the real story in 1860:

• 400,000 is the total number of Southern slave holders.
• 8,000,000 is the total number of white Southerners which is 5% overall.
• But the numbers were very different in the Deep South (7%) versus Border States (3%).

• And even those numbers are hugely deceptive because we are really talking here of slave-holding families, not individuals.
• So, if we look at Southern families, we see that 16% of Border State white families owned slaves, 25% of Upper South owned slaves and 37% of Deep South families, including nearly half of families in Mississippi and South Carolina.

Indeed, in many Southern states there were strict dividing lines between Union loyalists and pro-Confederates, based on the number of slave-holding families in their regions.

[miss marmelstein]

Unless you listen to Michael Medved who claims that something like 93% of southerners owned slaves. Well, I may be exaggerating a bit but not by much.