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.
