Finally, an honest Abe

New York Post ^ | Nov. 25, 2012 | Harold Holzer

[T Ruth]

Director Steven Spielberg, whom I introduced last week [in 2012] at Gettysburg at ceremonies marking the 149th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s greatest speech, said he was deeply humbled to be delivering an address on that history-making spot.

***

… Daniel Day-Lewis gives the definitive portrayal of our time, perhaps ever, of Honest Abe.

For people like me, who have spent their lives studying Abraham Lincoln, the film is chilling — as if he’s really come to life.

Day-Lewis does it by avoiding the traps most Lincoln actors fall into, the stoic, “Hall of Presidents”-esque stereotype that probably most Americans imagine.

There are no moving pictures of Lincoln, no recordings of his voice. But after his death, everyone was Lincoln’s best friend, and there are descriptions of everything from his accent to his gait.

The most important thing is the voice. Far from having a stentorian, Gregory Peck-like bass, Lincoln’s was a high, piercing tenor. Those who attended his speeches even described it as shrill and unpleasant for the first 10 minutes, until he got warmed up (or his endless stories managed to cow them into submission).

***

Few great people are appreciated in their time. And it’s good to remember that, no matter how right the decisions seem now, they were hard-fought then.

“I wanted — impossibly — to bring Lincoln back from his sleep of one-and-a-half centuries,” Steven Spielberg said at Gettysburg, “even if only for two-and-one-half hours, and even if only in a cinematic dream.”

***

Harold Holzer is one of the country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln. ...

[At the end of the article Holzer gives thumbnail reviews of all prior Lincoln films, ranking them from worst to best, which Holzer considers to be Spielberg’s.]

[x]

Once again, very impressive work.

[FLT-bird]

Yes, but this is also a mathematical fact, deny it all you want: regions with high %s of slaveholders, such as Giles & Marshall counties, voted overwhelmingly (70%+ & 90%+) for secession on both February 9 and June 8, 1861. Conversely, regions with low to no slaveholders voted against secession both times, in East Tennessee's case by 4 to 1 on February 9 and still 2 to 1 on June 8, 1861.

In this case? Yes. That was not universally the case though. There are areas that had relatively higher concentrations of slave owners which did not support secession and areas with lower concentrations which did.

There is no rational argument which says that difference had to do with anything other than the dominant slave culture of West and South Central Tennessee.

Different areas saw things differently and their votes did not always depend on the prevalence of slave owners in the area.

I researched it further. Turns out that Unionist Border State slaveholders like Grant's father-in-law, Frederick Dent in St. Louis, were the majority of slaveholders there, at least until actual shooting began in 1861, and even then, even in Missouri's Little Dixie, a good many slaveholders, like Dent, saw their future in the Union rather than in a rebel Confederacy. In the Upper & Lower South the situation was very different, but I was still able to get my AI assistant to confess the Lost Cause mantra: "Slaveholding status alone did not determine secession allegiance, even after Fort Sumter." When I challenged AI on this, it quickly reverted to saying the overwhelming correlation between slaveholding and pro-secession votes could not be just "coincidence": "Historians are very explicit on this point.

I don't deny there was a correlation. Areas that had more slavery also tended to be those areas that were better suited to producing cash crops for export and thus their economic interests were much more directly impinged. So its not so easy or simple as to say owning slaves = supporting secession and not owning slaves = not supporting secession. It was more complicated than that.

The Upper South’s late secession was not random, not cultural coincidence, and not abstract “states’ rights” sentiment. It tracked slave density almost mechanically. So you’re right: this cannot be waved away." Bottom line: Yes, even on June 8, 1861 there were documented slaveholding Unionists in East, Central and West Tennessee. However, they were a tiny minority of the significant numbers of slaveholders who had voted against secession on February 9.

If slave ownership had been such a dominant factor, it seems strange then that the states of the upper South did not choose to secede until war had started. Only then did they switch and support secession.

True enough, but the Marshall County percentage of voters owning slaves -- ~29% -- was high enough that nearly everyone who did not own slaves was related to, or neighbors of, and shared common interests with the dominant slave culture.

Wait. You say "common interest". By plenty of measures non slave owners were put at a disadvantage when they had to compete against slave labor which was sometimes the case for various contracts, jobs, etc. The existence of slave labor in the area actually harmed their economic interest.

By stark contrast, in regions with few to no slaves, the entire culture and outlook was different -- they were anti-secession, anti-Confederacy and anti-war against the United States.

Sometimes though not always. I won't deny there is a correlation, but it is far from absolute.

The first link says: "The findings indicate that 90 percent of the enslaved population were reportedly held by free males." The 10% who were not "free male slaveholders" (and so were ineligible to vote) is an overall number which includes big cities where slave ownership could soar to nearly 40% women slaveholders.

the way I read that was that 90% were males in rural areas...ie 10% were women. While the rate of females owning/buying and selling slaves soared to as much as 40% in major cities.

Further, not all non-voting slaveholders were women, some were children and a few were even freed-blacks. That's why 5% of slaveholders being women in rural Giles & Marshall is more reasonable than 10%.

Its true that Freedmen and Children sometimes owned slaves. But the same paper also said that when a female slave owner married, they would often call those slaves the property of her husband rather than her property unless there were a specific deed or contract setting out that the slaves were the wife's property. So less than 10% were women by one measure but a portion of that 90% which were listed as being owned by males were actually slaves owned by their husbands. They didn't give a percentage when you revised both up and down for those categories so I just assumed it was the 10% that were owned by women in rural areas that they listed.

Sure, overall, you're right. But, yet again, if you look at Tennessee by region -- West, Middle and East -- you see that very high-slavery % West Tennessee voted overwhelmingly for secession both times, February 9 and June 8, while very low-slavery % East Tennessee voted overwhelmingly against secession both times. High slavery % South Central TN (including Giles & Marshall) voted with West Tennessee both times overwhelmingly for secession. North Central TN (i.e., Nashville), flipped from anti-secession of February 9 to solidly pro-secession on June 8, and that is what drove TN totals to ~70% pro-secession on June 8.

Yes a large chunk of voters in areas with relatively low rates of slave ownership flipped after a war had started.

Here's your problem with all of those sources: The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865 is nowhere quoted fully and in context, nor is there information on the source and definitions behind the number "38,000" -- IOW, that 38,000 could represent almost anything, not necessarily "illegal arrests". Mark Neely himself cites the 38,000 as an example of very poor scholarship, having no source or definition data behind it, other than, according to Neely, Cyclopedia said 38,000 were “denied the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus”

Nothing in the Columbia Law Review (1921) has been found to confirm the 38,000 "illegal arrests" number, or anything similar.

IOW, there is no confirmed citing of the Columbia Law Review (1921) as claiming "38,000 illegal arrests". There is no surviving work from Alexander Johnson which claims "38,000 illegal arrests", and no evidence he ever studied or counted the historical records.

John Marshall's American Bastille (1869) is anti-Lincoln polemics, not true scholarship.

Marshall's claims of 5,000 to 10,000 "illegal arrests" came out of thin air, not from any serious research. 16 years later (1885), Marshall doubled his numbers but again without defining what they meant or doing any actual research.

IOW, Marshall's numbers are strictly pulled out of thin air.

Only Neely has ever made the efforts to actually define and count the numbers of records on what he calls "arbitrary arrests" (not "illegal arrests").

Those paint a very different picture of who, where and why people got arrested, than what we see from pro-Confederate propagandists like John Marshall or your Abbeville Institute.

A few problems here. 19th century record keeping was not at anywhere near the level of detail we would require nowadays. Believe me, I've seen this when researching a number of different topics from the era. That includes the records of both armies. Secondly, this was not exactly a subject the Lincoln administration, the army or the federal bureaucracy was keen to keep detailed records of. Lincoln twice refused to provide Congress a detailed listing of those who had been arrested and held arbitrarily saying it was "not in the national interest" to provide the numbers.

So by everybody's admission, you simply will not find records for all those arrested and imprisoned without charge or trial or only given perfunctory trials in front of military tribunals. Neely counted those for whom there is an explicit record but he even admits there were more - he simply can't find records for them. Though he was a Lincoln apologist, I think he's telling the truth about this. Such records probably never existed.

American Bastille listed multiple accounts of individuals who were arrested and held without charge or trial. That's not polemics, those are actual eyewitness accounts from the people themselves as well as from other witnesses. Neely lists 14,400 but admits there were more. Other sources say 38,000 as an estimate. Most modern scholars say somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000.

[BroJoeK]

1861 votes for and against secession:

FLT-bird: "In this case? Yes.
That was not universally the case though.
There are areas that had relatively higher concentrations of slave owners which did not support secession and areas with lower concentrations which did."

A few rare exceptions, read the map.
Every major region which voted against secession was also a region with few to no slaves & slaveholders.
Those regions included:

1. Western Virginia
2. Eastern Tennessee
3. Western North Carolina
4. Northern Georgia
5. Northern Alabama
6. Mississippi Free State of Jones, Piney Woods
7. Arkansas Ozarks
8. Southern Louisiana, including Cajun country
9. Northern Texas and Texas Hill Country

Yes, here and there a few small exceptions, including:

• Western & North-central Virginia (east of West Virginia) where slaveholders felt & acted more like Border State slaveholders, who believed that secession meant war and war would destroy their economic well being.

• Northern Alabama, Tennessee Valley, non-cotton growing political Whigs.

• Louisiana French speaking Cajun Country, focused on local mixed agriculture rather than the plantation export economy.

• Parts of North‑Central Texas outside the German Belt were Sam Houston loyalists, and/or settled from the Upper South and Northern states -- these were people who did not necessarily oppose slavery, but did reject secession.

Those slaveholders who opposed secession shared the following:

1. Whig political culture:
   • Loyalty to the Union
   • Suspicion of radical democracy and planter oligarchs = Southern Democrats!!

2. Economic orientation:
   • Mixed farming vs. plantation monoculture
   • Trade networks oriented toward local and Northern US sales, rather than Atlantic & Gulf ports' international exports

3. Ethno‑cultural identity:
   • German Texans
   • French‑speaking Louisianans
   • Scots‑Irish uplanders

4. Fear of war:
   • Slaveholders who believed secession would endanger slavery -- by provoking war -- rather than protecting it

Bottom line: A small minority of slaveholders -- especially those with fewer slaves -- opposed secession because they viewed it as reckless elite adventurism, not because they rejected slavery itself.

FLT-bird: "Different areas saw things differently and their votes did not always depend on the prevalence of slave owners in the area."

Yes, on rare occasions, slaveholders voted against secession, however, in every case it was because their specific region did not belong to the dominant plantation export mono-culture -- cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar & hemp -- but were instead relatively small, locally oriented & agriculturally diverse producers who feared civil war would only bring destruction to their way of life.
They were minor exceptions to the general rule that: the higher the % of slaves & slaveholders, the greater was the 1861 vote % for secession.

FLT-bird: "I don't deny there was a correlation.
Areas that had more slavery also tended to be those areas that were better suited to producing cash crops for export and thus their economic interests were much more directly impinged.
So its not so easy or simple as to say owning slaves = supporting secession and not owning slaves = not supporting secession.
It was more complicated than that."

You're right, it was slightly more complicated.
The general rule did not apply in every case, but it did apply in the vast majority, and exceptions were few and far between -- a few counties in Northern Virgina, Northern Alabama, Louisiana Cajun Country and Northern Texas.

Out of roughly 1,000 Confederate counties in total, 20 to 30 were exceptions to the general rule that: higher % slaveholders = higher votes for secession.
That's less than 3% of all counties, but these were relatively sparsely populated, so represented fewer than 2% of the Confederate voting population.

So, you're right, the general rule is not 100% accurate, it's only ~98% accurate.

FLT-bird: "If slave ownership had been such a dominant factor, it seems strange then that the states of the upper South did not choose to secede until war had started.
Only then did they switch and support secession."

No, it's not at all "strange" because:

1. Compared to the Deep South, there were fewer slaveholders in the Upper South, and more slaveholder Unionists, who feared war and did not like the dominant plantation export culture.

2. And Border States had even fewer slaveholders and even more of them remained loyal Unionists after war began at Fort Sumter.
   From their perspectives, the Union (not civil war) was the best protector of slavery.

3. Overall there were only minor exceptions to the general rule that: throughout the South, the higher the percentages of slaves and slaveholders, the higher the percentage vote for secession.

FLT-bird: "Wait.
You say "common interest".
By plenty of measures non slave owners were put at a disadvantage when they had to compete against slave labor which was sometimes the case for various contracts, jobs, etc.
The existence of slave labor in the area actually harmed their economic interest."

So, first, despite what Karl Marx claimed and your professors may have preached, "economic interests" are not the only interests which can unite or divide different groups in a diverse society.
People can have many other common interests, even when their economic interests diverge.

Second, in counties like Giles & Marshall in South-Central Tennessee, only a small minority (~15%) were considered "poor white trash" because they were landless and dependent on wage labor -- which was often not available in high slave regions.
Everyone else (well over 50%) who was not a slaveholder fell into a middle-class "yeoman farm" type category.
Such people were close neighbors to, and often relations of, the large export-oriented cotton slave plantations.
But, more important, where large plantations concentrated on growing products for exports, the "yeoman farmers" grew or made products for local consumption, including supplying food to cotton plantations which were not always self-sufficient.

Third, as such, the yeoman farmers who did not own slaves were still closely tied in their economic interests to the large & medium sized plantations which did own slaves.
They therefore voted in the interest of slavey for secession on June 8, 1861.

Fourth, this leaves only the bottom tier, disparagingly called "poor white trash", who competed directly with slave labor for wages and may have felt highly alienated from the dominant slave culture.
But by June 8, 1861, they decidedly were not. Why?

Because despite being privately disparaged as "poor white trash", they were often essential in maintaining the dominant slave culture by:

1. disproportionately serving in slave patrols & posses
2. hired as overseers to supervise slaves
3. used as constables, jailers & guards enforcing slave codes, guarding jails, transporting captives
4. worked jobs “Too dangerous for slaves” labor (dirty, risky, expendable), i.e., building railroads & bridges, canal digging, drainage & flood control
5. also: Mining, quarrying, heavy earthworks, all "too dangerous for slaves"
6. volunteered disproportionately for Tennessee military service in May 1861.

Bottom line: even "poor white trash", despite resentments against slave labor, still showed overwhelming support for the slave-system which, in maintaining itself, provided them both status and employment.

FLT-bird: "Sometimes though not always.
I won't deny there is a correlation, but it is far from absolute."

Yes, if we look only at Confederate counties, then the correlation holds true at least 97% of the time.
If we look at populations in those exception counties, compared to the entire Confederacy, then the correlation of slave-ownership to secession votes holds true over 98% of the time.

FLT-bird: "the way I read that was that 90% were males in rural areas...ie 10% were women.
While the rate of females owning/buying and selling slaves soared to as much as 40% in major cities."

You misread it.
That quote, in context is:

"This paper analyzes the characteristics of the free population who were recorded as “owners” of enslaved people in the antebellum Southern states...
The findings indicate that 90 percent of the enslaved population were reportedly held by free males."

There's nothing in the report suggesting it applies only to rural counties and indeed it specifically mentions slaveholder occupations more common in towns and cities:

"professionals, including clergy, doctors, and lawyers who used enslaved people in their household, in their professional practice..."

The attached table 2 shows % of women slaveholders at ~10% overall, but also says,

"They find that White women participated in more than 30 percent of the transactions (as either buyers or sellers) in the New Orleans slave trade overall and in about 40 percent in the trade of enslaved women (Wishart and Logan, 2024)."

So, in big cities, women represented up to 40% of slaveholders, meaning the percentage in rural areas (like Giles & Marshall counties TN) must have been well under 10%.

FLT-bird: " So less than 10% were women by one measure but a portion of that 90% which were listed as being owned by males were actually slaves owned by their husbands. "

I don't think we need to debate the differences between "owned by" and "controlled by" men or women.
It's irrelevant for our purposes here.
What matters is that even in families with women slaveholders, there were male voters who supported their family's economic, social & cultural interests.

FLT-bird: "Neely lists 14,400 but admits there were more.
Other sources say 38,000 as an estimate.
Most modern scholars say somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000."

No, "most scholars" don't say that, "most scholars" say they don't know the totals and refer to Neely's records for what we can say for sure.

[FLT-bird]

A few rare exceptions, read the map. Every major region which voted against secession was also a region with few to no slaves & slaveholders. Yes, here and there a few small exceptions,

We don't really disagree here. I've acknowledged there was generally a correlation between those areas with higher slave ownership and those areas that supported secession and those areas with lower rates of slave ownership which did not. I would ascribe much of the fact of higher rates of slave ownership to the local climate/terrain being suitable for the production of cash crops ie what most slaves were engaged in - and that export-import economy being more affected than areas where there was more subsistence farming which tended to be poorer and more insular....thus not affected nearly as much by the tariff.

Bottom line: A small minority of slaveholders -- especially those with fewer slaves -- opposed secession because they viewed it as reckless elite adventurism, not because they rejected slavery itself.

There were plenty of slaveowners who supported the union. The border states had plenty as well as the Upper South. Obviously they did not reject slavery being slave owners themselves.

Yes, on rare occasions, slaveholders voted against secession, however, in every case it was because their specific region did not belong to the dominant plantation export mono-culture -- cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar & hemp -- but were instead relatively small, locally oriented & agriculturally diverse producers who feared civil war would only bring destruction to their way of life. They were minor exceptions to the general rule that: the higher the % of slaves & slaveholders, the greater was the 1861 vote % for secession.

Again, we're saying the same thing. Areas that had more slaves had economies more geared toward the production of cash crops for export. They also tended to be less self sufficient focusing all their efforts on that and thus needed to import more. So tariffs would affect them far more.

No, it's not at all "strange" because: Compared to the Deep South, there were fewer slaveholders in the Upper South, and more slaveholder Unionists, who feared war and did not like the dominant plantation export culture. And Border States had even fewer slaveholders and even more of them remained loyal Unionists after war began at Fort Sumter. From their perspectives, the Union (not civil war) was the best protector of slavery. Overall there were only minor exceptions to the general rule that: throughout the South, the higher the percentages of slaves and slaveholders, the higher the percentage vote for secession.

We agree on the facts. Our differences are in interpretation. You look at it and say its slave ownership driving the support for secession. I look at it and say their economy was geared more toward an export-import based model and thus they were hurt far more by the tariff.

So, first, despite what Karl Marx claimed and your professors may have preached, "economic interests" are not the only interests which can unite or divide different groups in a diverse society. People can have many other common interests, even when their economic interests diverge.

Agreed.

Second, in counties like Giles & Marshall in South-Central Tennessee, only a small minority (~15%) were considered "poor white trash" because they were landless and dependent on wage labor -- which was often not available in high slave regions. Everyone else (well over 50%) who was not a slaveholder fell into a middle-class "yeoman farm" type category. Such people were close neighbors to, and often relations of, the large export-oriented cotton slave plantations. But, more important, where large plantations concentrated on growing products for exports, the "yeoman farmers" grew or made products for local consumption, including supplying food to cotton plantations which were not always self-sufficient.

Indeed the large plantations were very much not self sufficient. All their resources went into producing cash crops. Yes, Yeoman farmers did sell them corn, animals, etc. It was a common practice for those Yeoman farmers to also devoted 20%, 25% of their land to producing cotton themselves which the plantation as the large entity in the area would buy up and bundle along with their own cotton for export. Basically the large plantations acted as wholesalers and for the small family farmers and would make a slight profit from doing to by buying the family farmer's cotton at a slight discount.

Third, as such, the yeoman farmers who did not own slaves were still closely tied in their economic interests to the large & medium sized plantations which did own slaves. They therefore voted in the interest of slavey for secession on June 8, 1861.

Again, this is a difference in interpretation. The yeoman farmers in those areas were plugged into the export-import economy of the area. They were selling their cotton and selling food and services to the plantations to keep them going. A tariff which hurt sales and drove up the price of manufactured goods would hurt them pretty quickly and directly too.

Fourth, this leaves only the bottom tier, disparagingly called "poor white trash", who competed directly with slave labor for wages and may have felt highly alienated from the dominant slave culture. But by June 8, 1861, they decidedly were not. Why? Because despite being privately disparaged as "poor white trash", they were often essential in maintaining the dominant slave culture by: disproportionately serving in slave patrols & posses hired as overseers to supervise slaves used as constables, jailers & guards enforcing slave codes, guarding jails, transporting captives worked jobs “Too dangerous for slaves” labor (dirty, risky, expendable), i.e., building railroads & bridges, canal digging, drainage & flood control also: Mining, quarrying, heavy earthworks, all "too dangerous for slaves" volunteered disproportionately for Tennessee military service in May 1861. Bottom line: even "poor white trash", despite resentments against slave labor, still showed overwhelming support for the slave-system which, in maintaining itself, provided them both status and employment.

You say they provided support for the slave system. I'd say they provided support for their local communities and for their states. (BTW, some slaves were skilled laborers, eg carpenters, masons, etc and these definitely did compete against White labor)

No, "most scholars" don't say that, "most scholars" say they don't know the totals and refer to Neely's records for what we can say for sure.

We're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. Even a simple google search yielded:

Key Details of the Arrests

Total Numbers: While some estimates are lower (roughly 14,000), newer research suggest up to 38,000 individuals were detained in Northern-controlled areas, including political opponents, journalists, and civilians perceived as disloyal.

[x]

Some of the river counties in Mississippi were less keen on secession than the inland or coastal counties. They were an exception to the general rule. The wealthy planters there were Whigs. They were doing remarkably well economically and feared that things would be worse if their state seceded. You'd think that if seession really were about tariffs, etc. the wealthy planters would be the first to favor secession for they would be the ones who losing the most, but they knew that the South wasn't getting ripped off by the North.

That's not to say that they supported Lincoln or opposed the Confederacy once it was established. They were going to be among the leaders whatever happened. One problem with the statistics is that votes in areas with many slaves and slaveowners tended to separate the immediate secessionists and the "cooperationists" who opposed immediate secession, so it wasn't always a matter of opposition in the Delta counties, but of hesitation.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "We're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one.
Even a simple google search yielded:
Key Details of the Arrests
Total Numbers: While some estimates are lower (roughly 14,000), newer research suggest up to 38,000 individuals were detained in Northern-controlled areas, including political opponents, journalists, and civilians perceived as disloyal."

I'm certain you know that both google and AI are great assistants in looking up whatever information is out there on the web, but both can be wrong and sometimes ridiculously so.

In this particular case:

1. Neely's 14,401 number of "arbitrary arrests" is not an estimate; it's a count of all available records.
   Neely does not claim 14,401 is a total or an estimate, nor does he project from that number what the total might be.

2. None of the names you listed -- Johnson, Marshall, The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865, Columbia Law Review (1921) -- are recent and none based their (alleged) numbers on actual research or careful definitions.

3. There is no recent scholarship on the topic except Neely's.

4. Everyone else, such as your Abbeville Institute quote, is simply recycling numbers from old reports which were themselves based on nothing substantial.

Bottom line: Whatever the actual total number, Neely's reporting shows that the vast majority of Union "arbitrary arrests" happened in conflict zones for:

1. Trading with the enemy
2. Blockade runners
3. Guerillas & spies
4. Draft evaders & assisting deserters
5. Contractors cheating and supplying defective goods
6. Small numbers of copperheads, agitators, newspaper editors and anti-war politicians

Neely also identified 4,108 civilian Confederates arrested by Confederate authorities for:

1. Unionism
2. Harboring or sheltering Union sympathizers
3. Anti-conscription agitation, draft resistors and civilians aiding deserters
4. Religious conscientious objectors
5. Being labeled "disloyal", “disaffected,” “dangerous,” or “unreliable” by CSA authorities
6. Claiming the CW was a “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”
7. Writing letters to relatives in Union states
8. Domestic violence against Confederate authorities
9. Hiding goods from CSA impressment officials
10. Trading with Union smugglers or forces

As I read these numbers and reasons:

1. Both governments were very aggressive in asserting their requirements for loyalty and obedience to martial-type law.
   
2. Both governments engaged in "arbitrary arrests" of civilians for war-related reasons.
   
3. Given the different population sizes, the relative scales of such arrests were roughly equal.
   
4. So neither side can claim exceptional adherence to constitutional niceties in the midst of an existential civil war.

[Mr. K]

Wow! an intelligent discussion on FR without the name calling!

[FLT-bird]

I'm certain you know that both google and AI are great assistants in looking up whatever information is out there on the web, but both can be wrong and sometimes ridiculously so. In this particular case: Neely's 14,401 number of "arbitrary arrests" is not an estimate; it's a count of all available records. Neely does not claim 14,401 is a total or an estimate, nor does he project from that number what the total might be. None of the names you listed -- Johnson, Marshall, The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865, Columbia Law Review (1921) -- are recent and none based their (alleged) numbers on actual research or careful definitions. There is no recent scholarship on the topic except Neely's. Everyone else, such as your Abbeville Institute quote, is simply recycling numbers from old reports which were themselves based on nothing substantial. Bottom line: Whatever the actual total number, Neely's reporting shows that the vast majority of Union "arbitrary arrests" happened in conflict zones for: Trading with the enemy Blockade runners Guerillas & spies Draft evaders & assisting deserters Contractors cheating and supplying defective goods Small numbers of copperheads, agitators, newspaper editors and anti-war politicians

Neely's number is an actual count though he acknowledges there were more that were not accounted for in the spotty official records. Everything between 14,400 and 38,000 is an estimate. We'll never know for sure. Different historians have reached different conclusions though from everything I've read, few believe it was as low as 14,400 or as high as 38,000. It was somewhere in the middle of those two estimates.