FLT-bird: "4.42% of the Total White population owned slaves.
19.9% of White families owned slaves.
45% voted for secession the first time and 70% the second time.
Ergo even if ever slave owner voted for secession - which is something that nobody has shown - slave owners could not have been the majority of votes for secession in either referendum."
The difference between your 19.9% any my 24.7% is in the methodology and assumptions.
Both numbers have been proposed and defended:
From the 1860 census:
But so is your 19.9%:
Tennessee State University materials state:
That should be "case closed" on whether slavery was a determining factor in Tennessee's votes on secession.
FLT-bird: "You are ASSUMING every slave owner voted for secession.
You have no evidence they did.
I can cite numerous examples of pro union slave owners.....like the Grants for example."
Julia Dent Grant's father, Frederick, owned a 30-slave plantation of 850 acres just west of St. Louis, Missouri.
Dent did not grow export-oriented crops like cotton, tobacco or rice, instead he grew wheat, corn, potatoes and other produce for sale in St. Louis produce markets.
St. Louis was the locus of Missouri Unionism so Dent, like other slaveholding Unionists recognized his own best interests lay with the Union.
Pro-Union slaveholders like Frederick Dent were a small minority, ~10%, among slaveholders, even in Union slave-states like Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland & Delaware.
Such men were rare to non-existent in the Deep Cotton South and export-cotton growing regions of Upper South states like Tennessee.
We can see this in such high slavery counties as Marshall and Giles, Tennessee, where ~70% voted for secession on February 9 and nearly 100% on June 8, 1861.
FLT-bird: "Once again, you are ASSUMING every adult White male had a family.
While most would have, certainly not all of them would have.
Also, you don't know if the people who voted were the heads of families."
Different methodologies for counting families and slaveholders produce results which range from your ~20% to my ~25% of families holding slaves.
I doubt if we'll ever get more precise than those two numbers -- 20% to 25% of Tennessee families & voters owned slaves.
FLT-bird: "Where are you getting this from? I'll need to see some evidence that only 5% of slaveowners were women. "
Here is a good source.
Here is another.
And here is a third.
What these show is that:
FLT-bird: "While there is no way of knowing how individuals voted, The flip in the vote after Feb 9 must have happened mostly among non slaveowners because they were a large majority of all voters and the vote did flip pretty significantly from 45% to 70%."
That is correct, but we can easily see that the higher percentage of slaveholders, the higher the percentage voting for secession -- on both February 9 and June 8, 1861.
Regions with low % slaveholders voted against secession both times, while those with high % slaveholders (like Giles & Marshall) voted for secession both times.
FLT-bird: "I do not buy the argument that a vote for secession was a vote in favor of Slavery.
The best way of protecting slavery would have been to stay in the union."
That was the opinion of Grant's father-in-law, Frederick Dent of St. Louis, Missouri.
But Dent's views were a small (~10%) minority even among Border State slaveholders and were almost unknown in the Deep Cotton South in 1861.
FLT-bird: "I've cited others who researched it as well and I've cited two that said 38,000.
Most sources say that most historians who have examined the record in this period think its 25,000 to 30,000."
In fact, the only name you cited was Alexander Johnson from the 1880s, and for him there is no proof he actually said that, since no surviving work of Johnson's repeats the 38,000 number -- look that up if you don't believe me.
The truth is, no recognized historian has put a total number on either Union or Confederate "illegal arrests", and only one, Mark Neely, has taken the time to actually count all the actual records available for what Neely calls "arbitrary arrests" (not "illegal arrests").
Neely does not claim his numbers (~14,400 Union, ~4,000 Confederate) are the actual totals, only that they are the totals of surviving records.
Why should it? In the regions that had more slave owners, most of the votes for secession in both referenda were from Non Slave Owners. Any other outcome is mathematically impossible.
Julia Dent Grant's father, Frederick, owned a 30-slave plantation of 850 acres just west of St. Louis, Missouri. Dent did not grow export-oriented crops like cotton, tobacco or rice, instead he grew wheat, corn, potatoes and other produce for sale in St. Louis produce markets. St. Louis was the locus of Missouri Unionism so Dent, like other slaveholding Unionists recognized his own best interests lay with the Union. Pro-Union slaveholders like Frederick Dent were a small minority, ~10%, among slaveholders, even in Union slave-states like Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland & Delaware. Such men were rare to non-existent in the Deep Cotton South and export-cotton growing regions of Upper South states like Tennessee.
You are claiming that without any evidence. There were plenty of slave owning unionists in border states. For all we know there were more than a few in the states of the Upper and Deep South as well.
We can see this in such high slavery counties as Marshall and Giles, Tennessee, where ~70% voted for secession on February 9 and nearly 100% on June 8, 1861.
In both of these counties a majority of non slave owners had to have voted for secession in both referenda.
Here is a good source. Here is another. And here is a third. What these show is that: Census‑based analyses and county‑level slave schedules indicate that in rural cotton‑producing counties of Middle Tennessee, slaveholding was overwhelmingly concentrated among white male household heads, with women comprising only a very small minority of recorded slaveholders—typically widows or estate representatives. This contrasts sharply with major slave‑market cities such as New Orleans and Charleston, where women constituted roughly 30–40 percent of documented slave owners. From this, I put women slaveholder in rural plantation counties like Giles & Marshall, TN, as in the range of 5% rather than the up to 40% in large port cities like New Orleans or Charleston.
The First link said 10%. The 2nd was not very informative. The third link showed Women involved as buyers and sellers at a rate of between 23% and 40%. I don't see anywhere where 5% would be the expected ratio for women.
That is correct, but we can easily see that the higher percentage of slaveholders, the higher the percentage voting for secession -- on both February 9 and June 8, 1861. Regions with low % slaveholders voted against secession both times, while those with high % slaveholders (like Giles & Marshall) voted for secession both times.
True, but that's only a general observation and does not allow anybody to say with any degree of confidence that all slave owners voted for secession. What's clear is that in the states of the Upper South, the overwhelming majority rejected secession at first but changed their minds once a war to prevent it had begun. It seems to me that was by far the biggest issue to them.
That was the opinion of Grant's father-in-law, Frederick Dent of St. Louis, Missouri. But Dent's views were a small (~10%) minority even among Border State slaveholders and were almost unknown in the Deep Cotton South in 1861.
It was only a small minority who believed that slavery was safer in the union than outside of it? Again, I don't know where you would find any data to support that claim. We do know that Lincoln publicly said that and that several others had expressed the same thought publicly for years as well. We have no idea how many believed it or did not.
In fact, the only name you cited was Alexander Johnson from the 1880s, and for him there is no proof he actually said that, since no surviving work of Johnson's repeats the 38,000 number -- look that up if you don't believe me. The truth is, no recognized historian has put a total number on either Union or Confederate "illegal arrests", and only one, Mark Neely, has taken the time to actually count all the actual records available for what Neely calls "arbitrary arrests" (not "illegal arrests"). Neely does not claim his numbers (~14,400 Union, ~4,000 Confederate) are the actual totals, only that they are the totals of surviving records.
The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1865: This primary source of that year stated that the total number of military arrests in the North during the war was thirty-eight thousand, a statistic later referenced in the Columbia Law Review (1921).
There are other sources including American Bastille (1869) which covered the topic.