I've been meaning to ask you about this. You keep bringing up Zak in relation to my posts, then attempting to beat me with his writings. But I've never cited Zak. I've never read Zak. I have no idea what Zak is all about apart from your version. Frankly, I'd never heard of Zak until you brought him up.
If you want to use Zak as a wrongheaded example and tie him to me, I'm sure I can find some offensive southern partisan that you've never mentioned and tie him to you.
It is not my job to validate your invalid figures or provide an alternative figure. That is your job.
In Heyworth #58, you asserted that you had, "posted academically-accepted evidence that about 30% of southern FAMILIES owned slaves."
If is -your- job to support your argument that the figures you provided are "academically-accepted evidence" as you alleged.
To be accurate, DeBow assumed published figures to be correct, and based on that assumption enumerated the slave-owners at 347,255.
THAT is the enumerated number of slave-owners.
Multiplying that number by the size of the average household demonstrably does not provide the "real" number of slave-owners.
DeBow starts with one assumption, that the published enumeration is accurate, and piles on another wild assumption, that each and every slaveowner represents a distinct slave-owning family, and adds a third wild assumption, that the family size of the privileged elite was the same as the family size of the average family, and tops it off with the absurd assumption that every family member is a slave-owner.
It is -your- job to defend these assumptions as "academically-accepted evidence."
Such absurd methodology raises absurd questions. For example, if life begins at birth, should a child be statistically counted as a slave-owner only at birth, or should every pregnant woman be counted as at least 2 slave-owners?
With feme sole laws preventing many or most women from owning any personal property, is it proper to count women as owners of slaves they are legally prohibited from owning?
Is it proper to swell your figures with minor or infant children, counting them as slaveowners? [Using an average family fudge factor of 5.6 raises the possibility that the majority of your purported "slave-owners" are actually minor or infant children. In virtually all cases that would seem to indicate either 2 parents and 3.6 children, or 1 parent and 4.6 children.]
DeBow gives the enumerated figure of 347,255 persons as being slave-holders. That is the only slave-holder figure given by DeBow which may withstand scrutiny as "academically-acceptable evidence."
Surely, DeBow expended equal effort in determining that "the 'annual drain in [Southern] profits which is going to the North' was nearly $250 million." However, quoting this appears to have activited your mute function on that part of DeBow's "academically-accepted evidence." It would appear that you would like to cherry-pick a convenient sentence or two and forget the rest.
As clearly demonstrated, DeBow's effort was a partisan speech, not an academic paper.