In some states close to half of all families had slaves. In the south as a whole around 1 family in every 5 held slaves, and these were the people who would have to root or die. The benefits of slavery were far more common that you are apparently willing to admit. You would rather call people marxist and go home.
James Webb's 2004 book Born Fighting, pg 212:
"As John Hope Franklin points out in his landmark work From Slavery to Freedom, by 1860 Virginia was still the greatest slaveholding state, while regionwide less than 5% of the whites in the South owned slaves. Franklin goes on to say that, "Fully three-fourths of the white people of the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery or the plantation system." Further, of the 385,000 who did own slaves, more than 200,000 had five slaves or less, and "fully 338,000 owners, or 88 percent of all the owners of slaves in 1860 held less than twenty slaves.""
So. We can take your "half of all families" which morphs into 20% of the whole, or James Webb's less than 5%.
You would rather call people marxist and go home.
Well, Mr N-S, there were indeed a couple of arguably marxist journalists who did like to paint the Civil War as the slaveowners against the forces of progress. And they were big fans of Mr Lincoln as well:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/11/07.htm