Posted on 07/07/2015 3:17:08 AM PDT by dennisw
In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.
The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).
The rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).
According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of thisnumber, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Historically speaking, there was a spectrum of conditions between chattel slavery and freedom: serfdom, peonage, indentured servitude, apprenticeship, etc.
Our Declaration of Independence, oddly, probably made the contrast between freedom and slavery more stark. If all men are created equal, yet some men are slaves, then in some way those slaves aren’t “really” men, are they?
There are three logical ways to address this apparent contradiction:
1. Determine that slavery must be abolished.
2. Decide that slaves, and by extension blacks, aren’t really human in the full sense. This is what Taney did in the Dred Scott decision.
3. Decide that the Founders were just plain wrong. All men AREN;T created equal. This is what Calhoun decided and the notion Stephens incorporated into his Cornerstone Speech.
So what prevented southern states from also industrializing?
At the Founding neither section was industrial.
not the point - no one is happy there was slavery.
The point is that the agenda driven rhetoric would have you believe all blacks were slaves owned by cruel white men. That is just not the case.
I lived for a while in SW Virginia and they are proud of their Southern heritage and supplied many men to the Confederate army - yet some of those counties, according to cited census’, had no slaves.
I was responding to your comment about slaves being people as a valid reason for apportionment.
Obviously, the federal courts didn't view them as people at all.
And today, around the world, the largest slave owners and slave traders are the wonder religion of peace, MUSLIMS!!! But, since they are not whites, living in the southern USA, never mind.
The different economies of the Northern and Southern regions was a design of British colonialism we inherited.
Taney didn’t go all the way to claiming blacks weren’t people.
He simply stated that at the Founding, “they had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
IOW, he passed the buck to public opinion in 1776.
However, this middle position was logically untenable over the long haul. In fact, to maintain it even in the Dred Scott opinion he was forced to introduce multiple legal and historical untruths. As thoroughly documented in the dissents.
In the long run you have to agree it means what it say, and all men are created equal. Or you have to decide some unequal people aren’t really men. Or that the Declaration is simply wrong, and all men aren’t equal.
They look back and think nothing but Simon Legree, who was a made up figure created solely for the purpose of pushing Hariet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist propaganda. It was a deliberate distortion of the norm, it was outrage drama for the calculated purpose of rousing anger and hatred.
It was as accurate as all the Hollywood movies that portray the EVIL CORPORATIONS as the most wicked entities on Earth.
It is the same ole same ole from Northeastern Liberals and their current moral fad trying to impose "Change" on the rest of the society so as to coincide with their newly enlightened condition.
Yesterday it was Slavery, today it is "Gay Marriage", "Global Warming", and "Transgender Equality."
What it is, is troublemakers telling lies to induce sweeping social movements, and they simply do not care that what they say is untrue or distorted.
The "Cause" is greater than the need for truth.
The image of the cruel white slave master and his sons having their way with the female slaves was nowhere near 100% true. Look up hypergamy and the desire of females to marry up. And reproduce upwards too. Such as a female slave will want lighter children (more status and better chance at education etc.) so makes some babies with the slave owning family men.
1000x more taboo was the male slave having relations with females in the slave owners extended family
Of course it was political. Were you aware that when it came to counting slaves for the purpose of apportionment for tax determination the south didn’t want to count them at all?
Same with slavery. Maybe 4.8% of the people in the South owned slaves. But those people had spouses and children who all gained from that person owning the slave.
And what percentage of the Clothes wearing North benefited from purchasing products from the South?
What percentage of the North sold their own slaves in the South rather than take the loss when their state went Abolitionist?
What was the profits to the North Eastern Ship Building Industry which built the slave ships? How much value did the 13 Colonists get out of their slaves when they declared Independence?
You leave out a lot of calculations in your simplistic analysis.
It appears you failed to grasp the part about this being the numbers taken from the existing records.
What you are arguing is that whoever wrote down the records must have been lying. That's a pretty pathetic argument.
Since 1864!
The degree of cant with regard to slavery and segregation is staggering. I’ll bet there is not one person today who has lost one meal or one minute of sleep over the facts of negro chattel slavery and/or Jim Crow laws.
What am I supposed to take away from this article?
That you have been lied to. That the people who have taught you about the civil war have mislead you.
Originally it was deliberate. Subsequently it was out of ignorance. Modern people don't even know the truth themselves.
98.6 % of the population did not fight the Union Invasion to protect the 1.4% slave owners, they did it because their homeland was invaded.
They fought because they didn't want Washington D.C. to tell them what to do; A position with which I greatly empathize.
I was not aware of any apportionment from the census except for determining the number of Representatives in Congress, but I'm willing to learn. Do you have a source I can reference?
More than that, I find your assertion of the facts to be incompatible with the above stated assertion of the facts. You can't go from 1.4% to ~30-45% with only 11 states.
Somebody is playing some statistical games.
So were the numbers from the 1860 census. Link
What you are arguing is that whoever wrote down the records must have been lying. That's a pretty pathetic argument.
What I am saying is that the numbers make no sense at all. So which is more pathetic? My questioning them or you believing them?
The Invaders won the war.
The 1.2% is the percentage of all white individuals in the entire country owning title to slaves.
The 30% to 49% is the percentage of white families owning slaves in given states.
Since each family at the time had an average of roughly five members, and slaves were heavily concentrated in particular states, it’s entirely possible.
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