Obviously most non slave owners voted to secede.." I don't doubt that you are telling the truth about your own ancestors, but I'm certain someone is lying about the 87% voting for slavery. Where did the bogus 87% come from? Here is one source: "However, just months later, Tennessee would make a complete reversal. By June 8, a second referendum saw 88% of voters in favor of secession. What, you might be asking, caused such a dramatic shift?" That claim is false. Here is the real vote on June 8, 1861: 69.6% for secession. However, your 87% could be true, if you exclude East Tennessee from the totals. IOW, this is likely true: "87% of Tennessee voters outside East Tennessee voted for secession on June 8, 1861. Non-slaveholding East Tennesseans voted 2 to 1 against secession".I thought I saw 87% but I could not locate that again and other sources said 70%. OK. I'll accept 70%. Only 4.42% of the White population in Tennessee owned slaves and only males could vote at that time. So 70% voting in favor of secession indicates a large majority of the non slave owning White male population of Tennessee voted to secede.
"4.42% of whites" is irrelevant, what matters is that roughly 25% of Tennessee voters owned slaves and they all voted for secession on both February 9 and June 8, 1861.
Wrong. Women could and did own slaves yet could not vote at the time. Some of that 4.42% of slave owners in Tennessee were women. Families did not vote. Only White Males voted. So it was less than 4.42% of the voters that owned slaves. Yet Tennesseans voted with a 70% majority to secede.
This means a vast majority of non-slaveholders voted against secession on February 9, but a small majority of non-slaveholders (55%) voted for secession on June 8.
No. As I just demonstrated, you got your numbers wrong. Families did not vote. White males did. Less than 4.42% of White males (of voting age) owned slaves. Therefore it was a large majority of the non slave owning White Male population that voted for secession. The math simply does not work any other way.
Your 4.2% of the white population is roughly 25% of all voters.
No its not. Families did not vote. Children did not vote. Women did not vote. Only White males voted.
Those 42,000 slaveholders all voted for secession on both February 9 and June 8.
Presumably a majority of them did though there were doubtless slave owners who voted against secession. I know you would like to reduce everything to slavery but it simply was not so. There were slave owners who were pro union. It happened in all the border states and no doubt happened in some of the non border Southern states too. Grant's wife owned slaves for example.....
So, what changed was that on February 9, some 90% of non-slaveholders voted against secession, while on June 8, about 55% of non-slaveholders voted for secession and that's what flipped Tennessee.
You have your percentages wrong because you failed to grasp who was voting.....and who was not.
Slaveholders dominated Tennessee economically, politically and culturally in West Tennessee and in South-Central TN, where Giles & Marshall counties are.
They "dominated"? How would you prove that? They were only at most 19.9% of of families and less than 4.42% of adult White Males.
We know this because Giles & Marshall counties had over 35% of slaves & slaveholding families and the counties voted over 70% for secession on February 9, then over 90% for secession on June 8, 1861.
But families did not vote. Adult White Males did. Only a relatively small percentage of adult White Males in both counties owned slaves. Ergo, for the vote for secession to exceed 90%, that indicated a large majority of non slaveowners voted for secession.
West Tennessee's cotton economy-culture-politics voted ~90% for secession on both February 9 and June 8, 1861. South Central Tennessee's (including Giles & Marshall) cotton economy voted over 70% for secession on February 9 and over 90% for secession on June 8. Non-slaveholding East Tennessee voted over 80% against secession on February 9 and 70% against secession on June 8.
Yet East Tennessee was a clear minority of the state's population and a large majority of the state voted for secession after Lincoln started a war.
Tennessee's non-slaveholders voted over 90% against secession on February 9, but flipped to ~55% for slavery on June 8.
Obviously over 90% of non slaveholders did NOT vote against secession. Only less than 4.42% of Adult White Males owned slaves. This is about the 5th time I've had to explain this to you in this one post alone.
Obviously, a small majority of non-slaveholders bought into Confederate propaganda that even though Jefferson Davis attacked and took Fort Sumter, it was Lincoln who "chose war".
Obviously a relatively large majority of non slaveholders voted to secede after Lincoln invaded South Carolina's territory and deliberately started a war.
Also my research shows that the rate of slave ownership in Marshall county was about 25%."
Marshall county had 729 slave owners out of a total free population of 14592. That works out to 5% of the total free population.
Yes, ~25% was the average for Tennessee in 1860, but Giles and Marshall counties were far from average. Marshall County's slave population was 35% of the total, making Marshall equivalent to Deep Cotton South states where 35% to 40% of families owned slaves.
19.9% of families in Tennessee owned slaves and what matters in terms of the voting and political power is not the number of slaves. Its the number of slave owners. Only 5% of the total free population of the county owned slaves.
Marshall County voted 71% for secession on February 9 and 94% for secession on June 8.
And given only 5% of the total free population of the county owned slaves.....
So, any suggestions that Giles & Marshall were not then deeply embedded in the Deep Cotton South economy-culture-politics are lacking in evidence.
All you've demonstrated is that both counties consistently voted for secession. You haven't proven an especially high rate of slave ownership.
Davidson county voted 55% against secession on February 9, then 93% for secession on June 8, 1861.
Yep. They agreed with Jefferson that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed and a government that tries to impose its rule over people who do not consent to it is not legitimate.
Slave populations in both Giles and Marshall counties were over 35%, meaning slaveholding families were also over 35%.
Woah! You think the a large population of slaves automatically means there were therefore a high percentage of slave owners? Not necessarily. A few slave owners could own a lot of slaves. That would not mean most of the White population were slave owners. That is a bad assumption on your part.
There is no evidence -- zero, nada, zip evidence -- suggesting the other 65% of families (& voters) did not sympathize with the economic, cultural & political interests of the 35% slaveholding families in Giles & Marshall counties, Tennessee.
You have not shown that anything like 35% of White families in these counties owned slaves. The percentage for Giles was difficult to find but the exact number of slave owners and total White population for Marshall county shows only 5% of that population owned slaves. It would be hard to believe that 5% somehow comprised 35% of White families in that county.
The relatively low rate of slave ownership and the overwhelming majority voting in favor of secession indicates most non slaveowners supported secession - just as was the case statewide.
All of that is a lie. The truth is: Neely's numbers -- 14,401 arrests -- are not an "estimate", they are a count of actual records, including those from the Provost Marshal's office in Washington D.C. Neely made no estimates about how many the total number of military arrests might be, so you are free to speculate all you wish, Neely does not support any number higher than the actual 14,401 records he counted. There are no estimates by any historian supporting any number higher than Neely's 14,401 arrest. All of the higher numbers -- up to 38,000 -- come from unnamed sources based on nothing more that wild-assed guesses. Specifically, your claim about 38,000 records counted at the "Provost Marshal's office in Washington D.C." is a flat-out lie. No such count ever existed. It is a total concocted number.
That is a lie. I posted the source and I posted a link to the source. You are simply lying by saying otherwise. A simple google search yields "High Estimate (38,000): This figure is often cited based on research by scholar Alexander Johnston in the 1880s, which is frequently referenced in historical discussions of the arrests."
Here's another source: "The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865 stated that the total number of military arrests in the North, during the War Between the States, had been thirty-eight thousand. (Columbia Law Review, XXI, 527–28, 1921)"
Abbeville Institute is your source and this is the quote:.......Repeating & expanding on previously posted facts: None of the alleged "38,000" arrests were "unlawful" at the time, nor has any of them ever been legally declared unlawful since. There is no physical record of Alexander Johnson ever claiming "38,000 unlawful arrests". None of Johnson's surviving works say "38,000", only secondary sources claim he put that number on them. No scholars before or since Neely's 1992 & 1999 books on Civil War-related arrests have ever examined & quantified the total number of records of such arrests. Bottom line: Whatever numbers or criteria they chose, Johnson & other scholars (except Neely) were all making wild-ass guestimates on how many of what type of arrests happened in either the Union or by Confederate authorities during the Civil War. None of them did the serious work to find & count actual records, except Neely.
As I've already shown, this is BS. SCOTUS has since ruled that the president alone may not suspend habeas corpus - particularly when the regular courts are operating. Thus all arrests at Lincoln's arbitrary order were unconstitutional - Justice Taney was fully vindicated in his ruling. The Abbeville was just the first source I listed. As I've shown in this post, there were others. Yes their research was serious. It was just inconvenient for you.
FLT-bird:
"I thought I saw 87% but I could not locate that again and other sources said 70%.
OK. I'll accept 70%." You're not wrong -- your Abbeville source did say 88%, but that number can only be true if you exclude East Tennessee's opposition to secession (by 2 to 1) from your calculations.
Once East Tennessee is included, the overall secession vote falls from circa 88% to the actual 70%.
Regardless, the June 8, 1861 vote is a serious majority for secession and a major flip from the first vote on February 9, 1861.
FLT-bird #533: "Also my research shows that the rate of slave ownership in Marshall county was about 25%."
25% of Marshall families & voters owned slaves -- that is much closer to the truth than 4.42%.
The actual number is 29%, but if you agree with 25%, then we are in the same ball park at least.
FLT-bird: "Only 4.42% of the White population in Tennessee owned slaves and only males could vote at that time.
So 70% voting in favor of secession indicates a large majority of the non slave owning White male population of Tennessee voted to secede."
Do the math.
Your 4.42% of the free citizens holding slaves is 36,844 (from the 1860 census) which is ~25% of all families & voters = 36,844 of ~127,000 voters on February 9 and ~155,000 voters in the June 8, 1861, elections.
Now, if you subtract those pro-slavery, pro-secession 36,844 from the total pro-secession votes, you see that ~77% of non-slaveholders voted against secession on February 9 and 60% of non-slaveholders voted for secession on June 8, 1861.
Look at the votes by county and you'll see that the biggest flips from anti-secession to pro-secession came in North Central Tennessee, around Nashville.
Giles & Marshall (in South-Central TN) voted pro-secession (~70%) on February 9 and pro-secession (>90%) on June 8.
FLT-bird: "Women could and did own slaves yet could not vote at the time.
Some of that 4.42% of slave owners in Tennessee were women.
Families did not vote.
Only White Males voted.
So it was less than 4.42% of the voters that owned slaves."
White male heads of families voted, so the total number of families (149,000) approximates the total number of voters (127,000 & 155,000).
What's true is that women slaveholders could reach 40% of all slaveholders in big cities like New Orleans and Charleston.
However, in rural plantation regions like South-Central Tennessee, things were very different.
There, women or children slaveholders amounted to only 5% of all slaveholders, with 95% of slaveholders being white male heads of households.
And even with the 5% women slaveholders, nearly every woman represented a family with adult male voters whose economic-social-political interests supported the dominant slave-culture.
FLT-bird: "Yet Tennesseans voted with a 70% majority to secede."
Nearly 100% of Tennessee's 36,844 slaveholders (or male relatives) voted for secession on both February 9 and June 8, 1861.
Non-slaveholders voted ~68% against secession on February 9, but flipped to vote 60% for secession on June 8.
That's why the overall came to 70% for secession on June 8.
FLT-bird #533: "Also my research shows that the rate of slave ownership in Marshall county was about 25%."
25% of Marshall families & voters owned slaves -- that is much closer to the truth than 4.42%.
The actual number is 29%, but if you agree with 25%, then we are in the same ball park at least.
FLT-bird: "Less than 4.42% of White males (of voting age) owned slaves."
I'm certain you know better than that.
Your 4.42% (36,844) is not the percentage of white male voters who owned slaves, it's the percentage of the entire white population (834,082), including women & children.
Your 4.42% represents overall about 25% of Tennessee's adult male voters.
Here's the same table again, updated and enhanced to show the June 8, 1861 voting percentages:
1860 Tennessee Population, Slaveholders and Voting, by Region:
| Area | Free population | Free families | Enslaved population | % enslaved of total population | Number of slaveholders | % of free families owning slaves | % vote FOR secession (June 8, 1861) |
|---|
| East Tennessee | ~350,000 | ~62,000 | ~25,000 | ~7% | ~2,500 (apportioned) | ~4% | ~32% |
| Middle Tennessee | ~300,000 | ~50,000 | ~125,000 | ~29% | ~16,500–17,500 (apportioned) | ~33–35% | ~88% |
| West Tennessee | ~184,000 | ~37,000 | ~125,000 | ~40% | ~14,000–14,800 (apportioned) | ~38–40% | ~83% |
| Tennessee (Total) | 834,082 | 149,335 | 275,719 | 24.8% | 36,844 (counted) | 24.7% | 69.6% |
| Giles County | ~16,800 | ~3,050 | ~7,400 | ~31% | ~975 | ~32% | 99.6% |
| Marshall County | ~14,200 | ~2,550 | ~4,900 | ~25% | ~740 | ~29% | 94.2% |
FLT-bird: "You have your percentages wrong because you failed to grasp who was voting.....and who was not."
Are you still confused about this?
Do you understand yet that the total number of voters (~150,000) roughly equaled the total number of heads of households (~149,000) and that roughly 25% (~37,000) of those were slaveholders ?
FLT-bird #533: "Also my research shows that the rate of slave ownership in Marshall county was about 25%."
25% of Marshall families & voters owned slaves -- that is much closer to the truth than 4.42%.
The actual number is 29%, but if you agree with 25%, then we are in the same ball park at least.
FLT-bird: "Marshall county had 729 slave owners out of a total free population of 14592.
That works out to 5% of the total free population."
You're right on 729 slaveholders out of 14,592 total free population = 5% of the free population owned slaves.
I've corrected my numbers in the table above.
However, the point you deliberately miss is that those 729 slaveholders represent ~29% of families, heads of households and voters.
Even where a small number of those were women or children, they still represent families whose adult men voted in the best interests of the Southern slave culture.
FLT-bird: "That is a lie.
I posted the source and I posted a link to the source.
You are simply lying by saying otherwise.
A simple google search yields "High Estimate (38,000): This figure is often cited based on research by scholar Alexander Johnston in the 1880s, which is frequently referenced in historical discussions of the arrests." "
If you dig deeper into Johnson, you find:
- There is no surviving work from Johnson which claims "38,000 illegal arrests", and no evidence he ever studied or counted the historical records.
- All of the sources claiming Johnson said "38,000" are secondary and do not quote him directly.
- Nobody except Neely has ever actually counted the Civil War related arrest records of both Union and Confederacy.
Neely does not claim his numbers are the total of all arrests, only that they are the total of all surviving CW records.
