I tried to look this FACT up in Sherman's autobiography and two other biographies, "Citizen Sherman" by Michael Fellman and "Sherman: a Soldier's Passion for Order" by John Marszalek. Neither mentions Sherman ever owning a slave in his life, much less during the Civil War. Both mention Mrs. Sherman's strong dislike of slavery. A search of the web didn't bring any sites that claimed he ever owned a slave, either. I can't accept a source I can't substantiate.
Most historical revisionists EXCLUDE border states, where most of the freed blacks lived.
Fair enough. According to the census of 1860 there were 118,027 free Blacks in the border states and 429,401 slaves. Add those to my earlier totals and you have 250, 432 free Blacks and 3,950,511 slaves. Hell, let's look at the country at a whole. In the entire country, north and south, there were 476,478 free Blacks and 3,950,528 slaves. That is STILL nowhere near the figures you quoted. It means 9 out of 10 blacks were slaves, not 1 out of 2. Your source for your claim is flat incorrect. My source for my information is located here .
Slavery was unquestionably dying a natural death.
I don't even see how you can say that. Looking at the period you mentioned, 1850 to 1860, the number of free Blacks grew from 424,183 to 476,748 or an icrease of about 12%. The slave population grew from 3,200,600 to 3,950,528 or an increase of about 23.5%. How you can look at those statistics and proclaim slavery a dying institution based on that is beyond me. Again, my numbers come from the University of Virginia website mentioned previously.
Finally, if military service is a requirement for this discussion, I spent 22 years in the Navy, active and reserve, and finished up an O-5. I was NROTC at an excellent Northern Big 10 university instead of Canoe U., and my graduate degree is in business instead of history, but it is also from another excellent Northern Big 10 University. And on this subject I'll match my knowledge and understanding against your's any time.