It's Claimed that Only 1.6% of US Citizens Owned Slaves In 1860. We Ran the Numbers

Snopes ^ | April 4, 2024 | Alex Kasprak

[Brooklyn Attitude]

“I also think it is eroneous to equate modern parties with 19th century parties. The ideology of both the Republican and Democratic parties has greatly changed since the 1860s.

In the 1860s, the Republicans were the big city liberals intent on big government projects, high taxes, high spending, protectionism, etc.

Also they lived in the very same areas of the country that today are dominated by Liberal Democrats.

Boston was a liberal area in 1860, and it’s still a liberal area today. The names may have changed, but the regional attitudes, ideology and philosophy of those areas are still relatively unchanged.”

You said all this already. Are you saying the Republicans of today would be for slavery? Or that the Repubs back then were generally for it? Either way is nonsense. Ever hear of “The Great Society” program passed by Lyndon Johnson? The welfare program destroyed the Black family. He said “I’ll have those n*****s voting Democratic for 200 years” (even though the Left denies it). They are STILL slaves to the DemocRAT party, and they will stay that way. I revere the Constitution and the RAT party shites on it every chance they get. The Repubs at least give lip service to it. If the RAT party cheats its way to victory in 2024, it’s GONE along with ALL our freedoms. Which is the party of liberty today and which is the party of Fascism?

[BroJoeK]

Brass Lamp: "A slave owner has the legal power to dispose, by selling or freeing, the slave in question.
Anyone who does not possess such a power is proven, therefore, to not be a slave owner. "

Sure, by definition.
And, by definition, a slaveholder's spouse, children, parents and other relations belong to the family of a slaveholder, and benefit from slavery.

Also, slaveholders often hired overseers and other white workers who benefitted directly or indirectly from slavery.

And beyond the immediate slaveholding community, the broader US economy, indeed the global economy, benefitted hugely from Southern slave labor.
I think that helps explain why so many Northern Democrats were willing to tolerate slavery even when they themselves owned no slaves.

Brass Lamp: "There was no such 'familial' power, a near-relation did not have a legal right to sell or free a slave, and a non-slave owning relation could hardly be condemned for a moral crime he could not have vacated through inaction."

No, of course not, but clearly family members of slaveholders, as well as their wider communities, benefitted from slavery, and supported it.

Brass Lamp: "This is matter of definition and is not really subject to the emotionally-weighted word piling of the Continental methodology.
There is no real argument among peers, because dissenters are not peers."

Sorry, but your argument here makes no sense -- what is "Continental methodology" and what "peers" or "dissenters" are you talking about?

Brass Lamp: "Story tellers like McPherson aren't writing for the approval of educated historians or truthseekers, he writes specifically for the approval of non-historians who hate the idea of objective history."

Now, seriously, you're just babbling nonsense, and why?
I posted quotes from three different sources, one of them being McPherson, and you chose to dump all over McPherson with a bunch of nonsense?
Who told you that's a good way to argue?
They lied to you, FRiend.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "In the 1860s, the Republicans were the big city liberals intent on big government projects, high taxes, high spending, protectionism, etc.
Also they lived in the very same areas of the country that today are dominated by Liberal Democrats."

Brooklyn Attitude: "You said all this already.
Are you saying the Republicans of today would be for slavery?
Or that the Repubs back then were generally for it?"

DiogenesLamp keeps posting this cr*p, even though he knows it's all lies.
The truth is that both Democrats and Republicans are the basically the same people today as we were in 1860.

Democrats then (and now) were/are:

1. Big city immigrant voters controlled by political bosses like NY's Tammany Hall.

2. Racially motivated block voters.

3. Big globalized business, based on the cheapest available labor, to make themselves unimaginably wealthy.
   In 1860 these were Southern slaveholders allied with Northern manufacturers, exporters and financiers.

4. Special interests of every imaginable kind, some in violent opposition to each other.

   

5. Supporting Federal laws to enforce their own special privileges.
   In 1860, those included Fugitive Slave Laws.

6. More corrupted, less concerned with traditional values.

7. Supporting unlimited immigration.

8. Supporting aggressive foreign adventurism, notably the 1858-59 Paraguay Expedition.

9. Supporting infrastructure spending which favored their own voters, for examples, the construction of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and a transcontinental railroad which routed near the home of Mississippi Democrat Senator Jefferson Davis.

10. Supporting lower tariffs to make foreign imports cheaper, to drive down American wages and to drive US manufacturing out of business.

    Democrat products were highly protected by US tariffs:

    

11. Supporting higher tariffs to protect their own products, especially cotton, tobacco and sugar.

12. Bent the US Constitution to the breaking point whenever that suited their own goals, most notably the 1857 SCOTUS Dred Scot ruling.

13. Supporting extravagant Federal spending which under Democrats doubled the US national debt between 1856 and 1860.

14. A disregard for the values of a strong currency and low inflation.

15. In total rebellion against the US Founding Principles, especially, "all men are created equal".

16. Supporting effective enslavement of certain groups for the benefit of Democrat voters.

17. Demand conformity in speech and silencing of opponents, notably Congress' 1830s era "Gag Rules".

By start contrast, Republicans then and now:

1. Average middle-income Americans.

2. Living in smaller towns, suburbs and rural areas.

3. Family farmers, skilled workers, small business, professionals, managers, law enforcement and military.

4. Traditional values, including Christianity and strict construction of the US Constitution.

   Young Federalist John Quincy Adams:

   

5. A more circumspect foreign policy that "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy", as John Quincy Adams colorfully put it in 1821.

6. Support democracy and independence everywhere, as Adams himself put it in that same quote, the United States "is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all."

7. Opposed all schemes of disunion or unconstitutional assaults on states' rights, be that to abolish slavery or abortion.

8. Support strong national defense, as a deterrent against war, and when in war support maximum efforts to achieve the enemy's Unconditional Surrender.
   Support for soldiers, sailors and veterans.

9. Oppose slavery in any forms, including unhealthy dependencies on drugs, government welfare or unnecessary regulations.

10. Supporting opportunities for advancement through hard work, not guaranteed incomes for Democrat rent-seekers.

11. Supporting equal rights not only for African Americans but also for women and legal immigrant citizens.

12. Support minimum necessary government, to include balanced Federal budgets, and payment of national debts.

    RR routes studied in the 1850s, built by 1880s:

    

13. Support for traditional family values, opposed to polygamy among Mormons.

14. Support infrastructure spending based on overall value to the US economy, not just special interests.
    A prime example is the central route selected for the first transcontinental railroad.

15. Support tariffs necessary to protect all US manufacturing, not just those of Democrat voters.

16. Supporting Federal government protecting the rights of American citizens abroad against being "abridged or impaired" by foreign governments.

17. Support free speech, even when it's not politically correct, whether that be in the 1830s against slavery or today against equally insane Democrat interests.

This map from the 1876 presidential election well shows the political bases of Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats are strongest outside the South around big cities of New York, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati & St. Louis.
Republicans were strong in rural areas of Southern Unionism, in places where Southern freed blacks could vote and in Northern rural counties:

[Brass Lamp]

i>Sure, by definition. And, by definition, a slaveholder's spouse, children, parents and other relations belong to the family of a slaveholder, and benefit from slavery.

But you don't get from 1.6% to one third of all soldiers, mathematically, just by implicating the nuclear family. That would require tainting everyone who ever showed up at Johnny Reb's for Thanksgiving, including second cousins and step nephews.

Also, slaveholders often hired overseers and other white workers who benefitted directly or indirectly from slavery.

So, NOT owners. But we would never accept such a sloppy claim in any other area of economic history. Let me demonstrate:

There are employers and employees. Some employers directly manage their people, but sometimes employers hire managers to oversee front-line employees. Now, suppose you are tasked with producing an economic report for the made-up town of Plainsburgington and its surrounding area and you, through very thorough and exacting census, determine that the whole region's population (suspiciously numbering exactly 10,000) strangely enjoys 100% employment or self-employment and that, further, there are (all too conveniently) exactly one hundred self-reporting employers (as determined through taxes and licensing), that is, one hundred who are not themselves employed by another person. When you compile the census data according to JOB TITLE, you find that exactly one hundred people report that they hold the position of "Manager". However, when you cross compare the job title study with the tax records, you find that fifty of the managers are, themselves, salaried and employed by fifty of the previously determined one hundred regional employers. How many employers will you claim for this economic zone in your report?

For McPherson, it wouldn't be the obvious answer. He would have to decide if employment was a moral good or not, and he would have to decide how he FELT about it. He would have think about how he FELT about Plainsburington and whether the historical narrative, as a morality tale, should lionize or demonize the town. If employment is virtuous industry, and if he likes Plainsburgingtonians, he might claim that there are two hundred employers. If employment is the blight of exploitation, he might claim that one hundred reduced the remaining 9,900 to labor. If he hates Plainsburgingtonians, and wants to cast them as shiftless lowlifes, he may claim that only fifty ever rose above the dregs. If he wants to write about the rise of the Plainsburginton middle-class, he might claim one hundred and fifty. He would have to choose his pre-concluded conclusion before settling upon a half-assed rationalization from the breech end of the argument.

And beyond the immediate slaveholding community, the broader US economy, indeed the global economy, benefitted hugely from Southern slave labor.

And if we trace the fungible liquidity of wealth generated by the SLAVE TRADE, we can determine that most major institutions of the North East are likewise tainted. All principled people, even having different principles, nevertheless demand consistency.

I think that helps explain why so many Northern Democrats were willing to tolerate slavery even when they themselves owned no slaves.

Or, perhaps, they were eye witness to the horrors of industrial child labor and also had a sense of proportion.

No, of course not, but clearly family members of slaveholders, as well as their wider communities, benefitted from slavery, and supported it.

As a rule, I don't like to contest a statement on the matter of its generality, regardless of purpose, saving that the base claim be generally untrue, itself. I have doubts about this. I don't deny that generational wealth-building, slave (property) holding included, could benefit an heir as easily as a coin purse, a tract of land, or a good stable of horses; Washington's estate, slaves included, did pass through the Custises into Lee's hands, though he did not purchase slaves and, on the balance, he was increased. However, consider the I-just-made-it-up-right-now parable of the two sons who split their father's property inheritance BEFORE slaves are purchased. If one brother then buys slaves to work his cash crop, the other brother and his wage laborers must economically compete in a market affected by any eventual cost-saving the first brother might enjoy. But even if the second son also turns to slave-labor, he can never more than match his brother (assuming perfectly equal apportionment of land), and then nether can risk the potential economic harm to their own immediate heirs in being the first to disentangle their business lest the grandsons economically be overmatched and financially consumed by their cousins. If the second son is a sincere abolitionist and refuses to resort to slave labor, he is just as well painted by the whole "familys own 'em" brush. It's easy to see how, as the slave population began to age out, the maintenance of slavery came to be seen by the upper-class as a noblesse oblige of the landed gentry, a burden to many estates.

what is "Continental methodology" and what "peers" or "dissenters" are you talking about?

The two prevailing schools of discourse are the so-called Continental and Analytical, loosely associated with left- and right-wing philosophies, respectively. Whereas Analytical dialectic is concerned with the construction of categorical language and its argumentation more logical, the Continental approach (which should probably be called the "Commentary" approach) is more wholly rhetorical and relies upon building up outweighing bodies of commentary, usually not subject to analysis. If you've ever watched a Young Republican trying to explain to a SDS student that Christianity can't be fascist, given history and the actually definition of "fascism", only be called a Nazi, then you've seen how the two methods compliment each other./s

A hallmark of the Analytical method is that it enjoys critical thinking, that is, a line of thought which entertains the potential to falsify one its own principles, for truth-finding purposes.

The Analytical is traditionally associated with the inherited intellectual culture of British higher education, whereas the Continental is usually associated with, well, Continental Europe and arises from the pretensions of newly literate, self-styled middle-class intellectuals who haunt coffee houses and LARP as underdog revolutionaries. My old professorate liked to contrast the two with readings from the Spanish Civil War, with "Oxbridge" classicists expressing the last gasp of original English conservatism in journalistic debate with Spanish Communists and their orbiters who thought the the height of intellectualism was be seen reading over a pair of fake reading glasses.

Now, seriously, you're just babbling nonsense, and why?

Back in the 90s, there was a fierce debate over the utility and morality of objectivity. McPherson decidedly came down on the anti-objectivity side. He believes that history is a political narrative and that historians should be politically dutiful storytellers. He has the same relationship with the scholarly study of history that Anthony Fauci has with the scientific integrity of medical research.

[BroJoeK]

Brass Lamp: "But you don't get from 1.6% to one third of all soldiers, mathematically, just by implicating the nuclear family.
That would require tainting everyone who ever showed up at Johnny Reb's for Thanksgiving, including second cousins and step nephews."

Seriously?!
You don't know any more about this subject than that?
You think 1.6% somehow compares to how many Confederate soldiers owned slaves?
How can you possibly be so confused?

So here are the basic facts, and you can chose whether to call them Analytical or Continental:

1. According to the 1860 census, the total US free population was 27,467,604 -- that's all non-slaves, North, South, East & West.

2. The total number of slaves was 3,955,617 -- of which all but a handful lived south of the Mason Dixon line.

3. The total number of slaveholders was 393,967 which is 1.4% of all free people.

4. The total number of free Southerners was 8,339,782 meaning that slaves represented 32% of the total Southern population and slaveholders were roughly 5% of all Southerners.

5. However, the median age in 1860 was only 19, meaning only half of the South's 8,339,782 people were adults, and of those roughly half were men, meaning the number of adult men potential to be slaveholders was only about 2 million.

6. Of the circa 2 million Southern free adult men, roughly 400,000 were slaveholders, or about 20%.
   Of course, you can argue that not all slaveholders were adult men, but what evidence is there to suggest significant numbers were not?

7. These numbers cover the entire South, and we also know the number of slaves was much higher in the Deep South than in Border States, so the 20% average ranged from about 50% in the Deep South to less than 15% in Border States.

8. Bottom line is that: 10% of Confederate soldiers owning slaves, and 20% came from slaveholding families, overall, those numbers make perfectly good sense, based on what we know.
   That these numbers would vary from 50% in the Deep South to less than 15% in Border States also sounds right to me.

Brass Lamp: "So, NOT owners.
But we would never accept such a sloppy claim in any other area of economic history.
Let me demonstrate:..."

I'm sorry, but your hypothetical makes no sense to me and seems to miss entirely the point of this discussion.

Of course, I'm no expert on James McPherson, but these are his words:

"There are all kinds of myths that a people has about itself, some positive, some negative, some healthy and some not healthy.
I think that one job of the historian is to try to cut through some of those myths and get closer to some kind of reality.
So that people can face their current situation realistically, rather than mythically.
I guess that's my sense of what a historian ought to do."
— James M. McPherson, in an exchange with a Civil War historian[4]"

To me, he doesn't sound like the man you've portrayed him to be.

Brass Lamp: "And if we trace the fungible liquidity of wealth generated by the SLAVE TRADE, we can determine that most major institutions of the North East are likewise tainted.
All principled people, even having different principles, nevertheless demand consistency."

Of course, and it's all because of a key fact which our pro-Confederates 100% refuse under all circumstances to admit -- that until 1861 Southern Democrats more-or-less ruled over the USA through their alliance with Northern "Dough Faced" Democrats, and what made their alliance so powerful was the fact that everyone benefitted from it, except the slaves, of course.

So far as I can tell, nobody is debating the numbers themselves.
The issue is what interpretations should we put on them.

Brass Lamp: "Or, perhaps, they were eye witness to the horrors of industrial child labor and also had a sense of proportion."

In those days most industries were the size of a family farm where children were expected to work from very young ages.
Also, there were many indentured servants, forced to work wherever they were told to.
So everybody understood that some could be and were forced to do things.
Still, chattel slavery was in a class by itself as being not only permanent, but inherited, and so the obvious worst of the worst conditions of human beings.

Brass Lamp: "...the Continental is usually associated with, well, Continental Europe and arises from the pretensions of newly literate, self-styled middle-class intellectuals who haunt coffee houses and LARP as underdog revolutionaries."

The Continental tradition includes the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, which hopefully we will not need to discuss here...

Brass Lamp: "Back in the 90s, there was a fierce debate over the utility and morality of objectivity.
McPherson decidedly came down on the anti-objectivity side.
He believes that history is a political narrative and that historians should be politically dutiful storytellers.
He has the same relationship with the scholarly study of history that Anthony Fauci has with the scientific integrity of medical research."

So, you allege, but I've seen no evidence to support such claims.
What little I have seen of McPherson seems to make perfectly good sense.
And, for purposes of this particular discussion, McPherson was only one of three sources I quoted on the percentages of slaveholders among Confederate soldiers.
So your assaults on him are pointless.

[DiogenesLamp]

They put the high ideal out there and FAILED it from day 1. They said all men created equal thrn let some be property.

Makes them sound kinda stupid, doesn't it? Here's another theory. Maybe when they wrote that they intended that it apply to themselves, and they didn't give a thought to the idea that it might apply to the slaves? (Except for Jefferson, who made it clear this was his intent all along.)

Their intent was to justify their own separation from England, they had no intention on starting a discussion about slavery with the Declaration of Independence.

That it should apply to slaves was a later day realization, but it wasn't the intent or thought of the Representatives that signed the document July 4,1776.

[DiogenesLamp]

The Southern states also benefited from a federal government as much as the Northern states did.

No they didn't. They paid most of the bills, and the North got most of the benefit.

It would take some effort to determine how much of the 72% (probably a disputed number, depending on how it was calculated) went to benefit the South.

People have done this before, and the evidence indicates the vast majority of Federal spending went to the North, while the vast majority of the tax revenue was created by the South.

The proper calculation is how much the South paid in tariffs for things like manufactured goods.

No it isn't, because the protectionist laws forced all such goods to be priced higher than their fair market values. I believe the taxes could range from 20% to 50% depending on the goods and the time in question.

When the South bought manufactured goods from the North, the artificially higher prices over what the Europeans would charge was a loss to the South.

Tariffs were paid by everyone, not just the South.

28% for Northern products, 72% for Southern products.

But just because you export more doesn't mean you are paying more in tariffs.

It does. Any money you make from exporting is the same money you get taxed on when importing. It's the difference between taxing the mouth of the horse or the butt of the horse. The same stuff going in is the the same stuff coming out.

If you tax the stuff coming out of the horse, it's the same as taxing the stuff that went into the horse.

Anyone else seen the movie "Kidco" where they illustrate this principle?

[discostu]

That doesn’t make them sound any brighter.

They didn’t really start a discussion about slavery. Abolition was already gaining traction in Europe. Admittedly Europe didn’t start banning slavery until the early 1800s. But the discussion was already rolling. And we know some of that was happening here. So I wouldn’t say they were unaware. They might not have connected all the dots from those sentences to the ongoing discussions, but the dots were there. And we know they had lots of discussions while working the Constitution and SHOULD have connected them then. But failed. And thus moved us from where we could have been a leader in that to behind the curve.

[DiogenesLamp]

Or so it was claimed by pro-Southerners at the time, based on the value of Southern exports in relation to Federal tariff revenues.

Easiest way to comprehend it, and close enough to being correct as to make little difference.

But a truer picture is much more complicated

Yes it is, because the tariffs varied from one type of product to another and from various times they were enacted. It is a mess to try to unpack everything bought and sold at the time, and to try to assign a value of gain/loss to the artificial markets created by the Federal government tampering with market forces.

But one thing is pretty clear, the whole thing served as a money pump to move money from the South into the North.

especially by not counting California gold or Nevada silver as Northern exports.

As I told you before, you can't count specie as "trade." You keep trying to put gold and silver into the equation of trade, because it makes your numbers look better, but specie isn't trade.

The product swapping (you know, actual trade) between Europe and the US was 72% from the South, and 28% from the North.

[DiogenesLamp]

Which is the party of liberty today and which is the party of Fascism?

Well today, the Republicans (Not the Gope) are the party of liberty, and the Democrats are the party of Fascism.

But in 1860, it was the other way around. People don't realize just how much collusion was going on between corporations and the Republican party and corporations and the government.

Railways act of 1862 was a huge corporate giveaway and it was promoted by a former corporate railroad lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln himself even came to realize how dangerous it was for corporations to control the government. He had this to say about it.

" I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

[DiogenesLamp]

Racially motivated block voters.

Only white men could vote in 1860. Tammany Hall was mostly a later phenomena.

Big globalized business, based on the cheapest available labor, to make themselves unimaginably wealthy. In 1860 these were Southern slaveholders allied with Northern manufacturers, exporters and financiers.

"Allied" in terms of the big New York corporations controlled every aspect of cotton productions and left the Southern slaveholders with about 40% of the total value of their production.

Supporting Federal laws to enforce their own special privileges. In 1860, those included Fugitive Slave Laws.

While you forget to mention the Federal constitution required the exact same thing in Article IV, Section 2.

This is why I usually don't bother responding to you. You twist everything and only show the parts you want people to see and hide the rest. You are openly partisan and make no effort to present a fair and balanced view of whatever particular topic you are going on about.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Makes them sound kinda stupid, doesn't it?
Here's another theory.
Maybe when they wrote that they intended that it apply to themselves, and they didn't give a thought to the idea that it might apply to the slaves? (Except for Jefferson, who made it clear this was his intent all along.)
Their intent was to justify their own separation from England, they had no intention on starting a discussion about slavery with the Declaration of Independence."

Naw, sadly, DiogenesLamp is again twisting logic pretzel-like to avoid having to admit the perfectly well-known truth of this particular matter.
It's this: before the early 1800s, nearly every American politician professed opposition to slavery, at least in theory and in the long term.

This includes every Founding Father from Virginia north, and even among Founders from South Carolina and Georgia, we can still find expressions of opposition to slavery in principle.
Further, in several states during the Revolutionary War period, including North Carolina and Maryland, freed-black property owners were permitted to vote.
So, the issue of freedom for African Americans was neither alien nor necessarily opposed by any of our Founders.

That's why our Founders had no particular problems with Thomas Jefferson's Declaration words of:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

Of course, none of this fits the pro-Confederate narrative DiogenesLamp is here to sell us, but is true nonetheless.

I think this quote from Virginia's Patrick Henry pretty well expresses the views of every other Founding Father regarding slavery:

"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. 
Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."
letter to Robert Pleasants, January 18, 1773

[BroJoeK]

marktwain: "The Southern states also benefited from a federal government as much as the Northern states did."

DiogenesLamp: "No they didn't.
They paid most of the bills, and the North got most of the benefit."

I'm sorry, but yet again DiogenesLamp is just not telling it straight here, because the evidence shows something entirely different, and DL well knows it.

On who paid the tariffs in 1860:

1. 74% of all tariffs were collected in New York City alone.

2. 92% of all tariffs were collected in the five Union cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Detroit.

3. 5% of all tariffs were collected in New Orleans, from where imported goods were transported by steamboats and railroads as far north as St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Chicago.

4. 2% of all tariffs were collected in the Southern port of Baltimore, but distributions of goods from Baltimore were almost entirely focused westward into Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Indiana.

5. Less than 2% of all US tariff revenues were collected from Southern ports between Baltimore and New Orleans, and yet, regardless of facts, DiogenesLamp continues to insist that Southerners "paid for" Federal revenues.
   They didn't.

But what about, who benefitted from Federal spending, wasn't that mostly "in the North"?
Yes, but only if by "the North" you mean every state North and West of South Carolina!!

In fact, by 1860, slave states:

Typical of dozens built in the South before 1860:
Fort Jefferson in Florida:

1. Represented roughly 1/3 of US territory, 30% of US voters (40% including slaves), and 31% of US GDP.

2. Received 58% of all Federal construction spending, including 65% of the single largest category of spending, on Fortifications such as Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
   In total, the Federal government built over two dozen coastal forts in the South, from Delaware around to Texas.

3. Received 49% of lighthouse spending and 45% of internal improvements.

I'll stop here for now, pick up the rest later...

[DiogenesLamp]

Naw, sadly, DiogenesLamp is again twisting logic pretzel-like to avoid having to admit the perfectly well-known truth of this particular matter. It's this: before the early 1800s, nearly every American politician professed opposition to slavery, at least in theory and in the long term.

Even if that is true, it has absolutely nothing to do with declaring Independence from England.

Only a fool tries to send mixed messages, and the founders were not fools.

Their intent, and their only intent was to declare Independence, not to get involved in a discussion on the morality of slavery.

Those who claim otherwise are either ignorant or deliberately dishonest.

[DiogenesLamp]

74% of all tariffs were collected in New York City alone.

A dishonest point. Where they were collected is very different from who paid for them.

I am not going to pursue the rest of your message.

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

[HandyDandy]

Just the opinion of one guy who was around at the time:

“The new [Confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution (African slavery as it exists amongst us) the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.” ……..

Link to full statement available upon request.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Their intent, and their only intent was to declare Independence, not to get involved in a discussion on the morality of slavery.
Those who claim otherwise are either ignorant or deliberately dishonest."

You keep dodging the point here, and I think it's deliberate.

The fact is, there was no debate about the morality slavery amongst our Founders.
All of them agreed, in principle, that slavery was evil and should be abolished eventually.

That's why they had no problem with Jefferson's Declaration words of "all men are created equal".
Jefferson's words did not contradict their beliefs in any way.

The only real debate was over how and when to put their beliefs into practice, and for that, some were more eager than others to get started on abolition, but none opposed it, in principle.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "A dishonest point.
Where they were collected is very different from who paid for them.
I am not going to pursue the rest of your message."

Right, because your argument is 100% dishonest and any attempt to debate the point will only reveal that.

The fact is that you have no evidence whatever that anyone outside the ports where imported goods landed paid the tariffs on those imports.
Instead, you assert, as a matter of your Lost Cause religious faith, that those tariffs were "paid for" by Southerners.

They weren't, instead, those goods were distributed around the entire country and paid for by anyone who bought them.
Given the Southern population and economy, as I demonstrated in post #153 and elsewhere, in 1860 the South represented roughly 30% of the entire white population and economy, and so that, reasonably, is how much of the Federal revenues they paid for.

Plus, as I demonstrated in post #173, roughly half of all Federal construction spending went to Southern states, so your entire argument is a stinking pile of nonsense, FRiend.

And so what do you do about it?
Naturally, you lie and exaggerate.
You claim that "paid for" means 72% of US exports were "Southern Products" and those "paid for" imports, hence tariff revenues.

But you only get to 72% if you include as "Southern" exports from Union slave states, and if you exclude exports of California gold and Nevada silver.
You think these somehow don't belong as "Northern Products", but in reality, specie transfers were used to balance our trade books in exactly the same way as exports of "Southern Products".

Gold and silver were never "Southern Products".

[DiogenesLamp]

Right, because your argument is 100% dishonest and any attempt to debate the point will only reveal that.

Not going to bother with you.

Tired of your magic show.

[DiogenesLamp]

You keep dodging the point here, and I think it's deliberate.

Right back at you. You and others keep trying to make the Declaration of Independence about slavery because you want to completely distract people from the fact it is about *INDEPENDENCE*.

Why do you do this? Because it contradicts your claimed belief that the South had no right to leave. The very founding document of this nation says they absolutely had a right to leave, so you want to try to say the Declaration of Independence was about slavery.

It wasn't. If you were honest you would admit that and just accept the fact that your side is legally and morally wrong about trying to stop people from having independence.

The Declaration of Independence is a *KNOCKOUT PUNCH* to your side, and this is why you keep trying to divert any discussion of it into "slavery."

It's dishonest, and your side needs to quit doing it.