Anyone who does not possess such a power is proven, therefore, to not be a slave owner. "
Sure, by definition.
And, by definition, a slaveholder's spouse, children, parents and other relations belong to the family of a slaveholder, and benefit from slavery.
Also, slaveholders often hired overseers and other white workers who benefitted directly or indirectly from slavery.
And beyond the immediate slaveholding community, the broader US economy, indeed the global economy, benefitted hugely from Southern slave labor.
I think that helps explain why so many Northern Democrats were willing to tolerate slavery even when they themselves owned no slaves.
Brass Lamp: "There was no such 'familial' power, a near-relation did not have a legal right to sell or free a slave, and a non-slave owning relation could hardly be condemned for a moral crime he could not have vacated through inaction."
No, of course not, but clearly family members of slaveholders, as well as their wider communities, benefitted from slavery, and supported it.
Brass Lamp: "This is matter of definition and is not really subject to the emotionally-weighted word piling of the Continental methodology.
There is no real argument among peers, because dissenters are not peers."
Sorry, but your argument here makes no sense -- what is "Continental methodology" and what "peers" or "dissenters" are you talking about?
Brass Lamp: "Story tellers like McPherson aren't writing for the approval of educated historians or truthseekers, he writes specifically for the approval of non-historians who hate the idea of objective history."
Now, seriously, you're just babbling nonsense, and why?
I posted quotes from three different sources, one of them being McPherson, and you chose to dump all over McPherson with a bunch of nonsense?
Who told you that's a good way to argue?
They lied to you, FRiend.