But the entire point of this argument is Watie's attempt to prove that slavery played a minor role in the south of the time. To do that, he's only willing to count the number of actual slaveholders, without attributing those slaveholders to some larger demographic unit like a family. And there's a big difference between saying that only 5% of southerners owned slaves and saying that 30% of southern families owned slaves. Even though both may be true, the former minimizes the economic reality of how deeply entrenched slavery was in southern society and how widespread personal economic interest in the institution extended.
The further mathematical calculations have no bearing on reality, and make no allowance for one person being the holder of a large number of slaves.
Hypothetically, -one- person could have held -all- the slaves. The mathematical computation upon which you rely would not be affected. The computational method irrationally relies upon the slaves being equally distributed among all White families.
No it doesn't. Where are you getting that? The number of slaves hasn't even entered the discussion, although there were 3.5 million slaves in the south. The one assumption is that slaveholder families are the same size, on average, as non-slaveholding families in the south. The number is question is 347,255 slaveholders. Are you saying that one person could have held all the slaves and the other 347,254 didn't actually? Your argument makes no sense. The way it actually breaks down is that only 6% of slaveholders owned more than 50 slaves. 88% of owners had fewer than 20 and 50% less than ten
Just as there is an enormous difference between enumerating and SWAGGING.
DeBow's irrational method takes the number of slaveholders (347,255) and arbitrarily multiplies by the average family size (~ 5.76) to synthesize an irrational result which is averred to be the number of slaveholders.
Let us take a real life example.
Mrs. John Emerson (nee Eliza Irene Sanford) became a widow and inherited property rights in a family of slaves -- a husband, wife and two daughters. Mrs. Emerson became Mrs. Chaffee by marrying Mr. Calvin C. Chaffee. In this manner, Massachusetts Congressman Calvin C. Chaffee obtained property rights in said slaves. The Chaffee family slaves were in Missouri.
Was there 1 slaveholder, or 2 slaveholders, or 5.76 slaveholders, or 11.52 slaveholders?
Presumably, DeBow derives at least 5.76 slaveholders consisting solely of Massachusetts Congressmen. (1 Massachussetts Congressman multipled by 5.76 equals 5.76 Massachusetts Congressmen.)
Now, let us take a hypothetical example. There is a slave named Walt, and three more just like him. Their masters are four single, unmarried Southern gentlemen who are brothers. Are there 4 slaveholders? Are there 23.04 slaveholders?
Moreover, DeBow made no attempt to determine if those Southern gentlemen wealthy enough to own slaves, had wives who punched out as many babies as those of the less priviliged classes.
There is no evidence to suggest that the size of the average family was the same as the size of the family of the privileged elite.
DeBow makes no allowance for multiple individual slaveholders within a single family.
DeBow states that he assumes published reports to be correct. All of his figures and assumptions flow from this assumption.
You have claimed you have "posted academically-accepted evidence that about 30% of southern FAMILIES owned slaves...."
Of course, if you hold DeBow's paper to be authoritative and academically-accepted, it would seem you must accept the rest of the paper as authoritative and academically-accepted.
For example, DeBow also stated:
1. The non-slaveholder of the South is assured that the remuneration afforded by his labor, over and above the expense of living, is larger than that which is afforded by the same labor in the free States. To be convinced of this he has only to compare the value of labor in the Southern cities with those of the North, and to take note annually of the large number of laborers who are represented to be out of employment there, and who migrate to our shores, as well as to other sections. No white laborer in return has been forced to leave our midst or remain without employment. Such as have left, have immigrated from States where slavery was less productive. Those who come among us are enabled soon to retire to their homes with a handsome competency. The statement is nearly as true for the agricultural as for other interests, as the statistics will show. . . .2. The non-slaveholders, as a class, are not reduced by the necessity of our con dition, as is the case in the free States, to find employment in crowded cities and come into competition in close and sickly workshops and factories, with remorseless and untiring machinery. They have but to compare their condition in this particular with the mining and manufacturing operative of the North and Europe, to be thankful that God has reserved them for a better fate. Tender women, aged men, delicate children, toil and labor there from early dawn until after candle light, from one year to another, for a miserable pittance, scarcely above the starvation point without hope of ameliora tion. The records of British free labor have long exhibited this and those of our own manufacturing States are rapidly reaching it and would have reached it long ago, but for the excessive bounties which in the way of tar iffs have been paid to it, without an equivalent by the slaveholding and non-slaveholding laborer of the South. Let this tariff cease to be paid for by a single year and the truth of what is stated will be abundantly shown.
3. The non-slaveholder is not subjected to that competition with foreign pauper labor, which has degraded the free labor of the North and demoralized it to an extent which perhaps can never be estimated. From whatever cause, it has hap pened, whether from climate, the nature of our products or our own labor, the South has been enabled to maintain a more homogenous population and show a less admixture of races than the North. This the statistics show.
* * *
They [the non-slaveholders of the South] perceive the inevitable drift of Northern aggression, and know that if necessity impel it, as I verily velieve it does at this moment, the establishment of a southern confederation will be a sure refuge from the storm. In such a confedeation our rights and possessions would be secure, and the wealth being retained at home, to build up our towns and cities, to extend our railroads, and increase our shipping, which now goes to tariffs or other involuntary or voluntary tributes, to other sections; opulence would be diffused throughout all classes, and we should become the freest, the happiest and most prosperous and powerful nation upon the earth. [5]
[5] In his concluding remarks in which he responds to Robert Gourdin's request for the speech, De Bow cited Kettell, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, to show that the "annual drain in profits which is going to the North" was nearly $250 million.
Of course, DeBow's paper was not presented as, nor was it ever intended as, an academic paper. It began as a speech given on December 5, 1860 in Nashville, Tennessee. Robert Gourdin of the South Carolina "1860 Association" reprinted it as pamphlet number five of his secession pamphlets.
DeBow's speech was designed to provide support for secession. It was designed and delivered as a propaganda effort.
In this, DeBow's effort is much like the slanted, propaganda effort of Michael Zak in his book, "Back to the Basics for the Republican Party." For example, Mr. Zak avers, "Overlooked by so many histories of the Reconstruction era is the fact that until 1867 the white supremacist Democrat regimes of the pre-Civil War era were back in business." This observation fails to note that prior to Andrew Johnson there was the regime of the White supremecist, Abraham Lincoln, and after Andrew Johnson was the regime of the racist bigot, Ulysses S. Grant, who is widely credited with presiding over the most corrupt administration in American history. In stretching credulity, Mr. Zak averred,"Not until the 1852 publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin did northern whites give much thought to the actual suffering of the slaves. Perhaps the biggest bestseller in U.S. history...." Then again, perhaps not. Not even the most wild-eyed optimist would lend credence to the notion that, up to that time or this, the fictional Uncle Tom's Cabin had outsold the Bible.
Surely there are some good points to B2B, but nobody should imagine that it could properly be cited as academically accepted evidence of the claims therein. Neither can one properly cite DeBow's partisan effort as authoritative and academically-accepted.