[Rockingham]

As best as I can tell, about a quarter to a third of all white families in the South owned slaves at any given moment. There were local variations of course, depending on the strength and nature of the local plantation economy, but the importance of slavery in the South ought not to be minimized.

Amazingly, US census records are good enough that I was able to trace a black friend's ancestry back to two specific slaves on an Alabama plantation, then to a series of small farms after the Civil War. She was delighted. Since almost every black person in the US is descended from slaves, discussion of the subject of slavery cuts more deeply for them.

My grandparent were all immigrants early in the last century with no connection to the US Civil War. The closest that any recent relative came to combat was an Irish grandfather who seems to have been involved in the Irish Civil War, a great uncle who died while in the British Army on the Somme in WW I, and an uncle who was in the US Merchant Marine on the North Atlantic run during WW II. My father was in the US Navy during the Korean War. I also had a great uncle who was in Rural Solidarity in Poland and was apparently murdered by the communist secret police.

[FLT-bird]

As best as I can tell, about a quarter to a third of all white families in the South owned slaves at any given moment. There were local variations of course, depending on the strength and nature of the local plantation economy, but the importance of slavery in the South ought not to be minimized.

That is a massive overestimate. Even most PC Revisionists claim 20% to 25% and I doubt it was that high. They do this by taking the total number of slave owners (5.63% of the White population) and then just extrapolating an average family size. Of course, they don't account for the fact that there could be multiple slave owners in one family (that would reduce the number of families which owned slaves so it would be inconvenient for them). The large majority of White Southern families did not own any slaves.

My grandparent were all immigrants early in the last century with no connection to the US Civil War. The closest that any recent relative came to combat was an Irish grandfather who seems to have been involved in the Irish Civil War, a great uncle who died while in the British Army on the Somme in WW I, and an uncle who was in the US Merchant Marine on the North Atlantic run during WW II. My father was in the US Navy during the Korean War. I also had a great uncle who was in Rural Solidarity in Poland and was apparently murdered by the communist secret police.

I had family in WWII. My mom's two older brothers were drafted. My dad was just 14 when the war ended so he was too young. He was drafted during the Korean War but as a medical student they gave him a deferment until he finished med school and then he did his 2 years in the army as a doctor.