Okay, fine. Let's go there, shall we?
Watie insists that only 5-6% of southern families owned slaves. Every source, from the 1860 census to the Georgia Encyclopedia to the secessionist publisher James ;DeBow puts the number at about a third of families, although the actual owners, as head of households, do comprise about 5-6%. Watie's response is that the 1860 census is no good on any level and that one has to look at the individual tax records for every county in the south. Naturally, he neither provides the number that those records would reveal, nor does he provide any evidence for his assertion that the 1860 census is so utterly flawed that it can't be used for any purpose. His only support? That the DAR won't accept it for genealogical purposes--a claim again without any evidence in support. (And why would they anyway? The DAR wants birth, death and marriage documents.)
But more fundamentally, Watie is demanding evidence that he himself never provides for any of his claims. He claims for instance that there was a mechanical cotton picker in 1850 that worked so well that it would have meant the end of slavery in ten years. Evidence? He won't tell us. "Wait for the extensive bibliography in the book I've been writing for ten years." Pressed on the matter, he cites a conversation with a curator at the Smithsonian, a gentleman he claims was the Agricultural Curator. I track the guy down and e-mail him the question. He not only disagrees with Watie, but reveals that it's not even his area of expertise. His specialty, as it turn out, is the history of technology and industrialization, and he was never the agricultural curator. He does refer me to the REAL agricultural curator, a man whose books about mechanization of southern agriculture have actually been published and peer-reviewed, and he also refutes Watie's claims and makes several other points about the mechanization of cotton farming and social conditions in the south that give lie to Watie's unsupported claims.
Watie is also fond of quoting, as evidence, college professors he had some unspecified number of years ago, in either undocumented conversation or unpublished papers.
So when Watie demands that others stick to standards of evidence that he himself never comes close to meeting, well, I just have to laugh.
Oh, and Watie's response to this will be another of those bizarrely capitalized rants about yankee south haters.
do you REALLY believe the stupid NONSENSE you post, OR are you just a TROLL??? (i have a difficult time believing that anyone, who is smart enough to "log in on FR", are as all-around dumb as you seem to be.)
rave on, fool. you're on a roll!
YOU serve the RISEN SOUTH!
free dixie,sw
My theory is that stand watie is e.e. cummings' crazy aunt who escaped from the attic.