Percentage Question

[bob 125th nysvi]

"wealth" at the plantation level was more a facade than a reality.

Many of the planters lived on credit based on what the crop was going to be worth. And because the soil was outrageously depleted and they constantly needed new farms they were constantly in a mortage cycle too.

There was also the whole keeping up with the Jones thing.

The whole thing collapsed after the war for two reasons.

1) The value of the cotton crop had dropped immensely verses both the GDP and the value of exports plus foreign sources had found replacement suppliers.

2) The freedmen now insisted on a wage that included a 'profit' on their labors, raising production costs.

It was a lousy ecomonic system that was barely sustaining itself and was rapidly going to die in the face of agricultural mechanization.

The economic damage the war caused was much more than the economic value of the system. And it certainly could not support the building of the south.

The really surprising thing is the large slaveowners got the yeoman farmers to buy into their view of why that particular 'southern' way of life needed to be preserved. It was a system the yeomen really had no use for.

Bob Sandusky
Co C 125th NYSVI
Esperance, NY

[Linda Trent]

Well, it is easy enough to find out how many people in thw whole country owned slaves by going to the 1860 census on line...
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-l...en.pl?year=860

Of course the 1860 census was contested in an article by J.D.B. DeBow, who claimed that there was a greater proportion of slaveholders than the census showed. It's also interesting to note the 10 reasons *The Non-Slaveholders Of the South: [had an] Interest in the Present Sectional Controversy Identical, with that of the Slaveholders.* This was published in his magazine in January 1861. http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/debow.html

Linda.

[tompritchett]

The actual breakdown by state as recorded is below. The official number of families owning slaves is actually very close to Debow's estimates.


Union States

State Number of Families Number of Slaveholders Percentage of Families
Families Owning Slaves

DE 18,966 587 3.1%
Kansas 21,912 2 0.009%
KY 166,321 38,645 23.2%
MD 110,278 13,783 12.5%
MO 192,073 24,320 12.7%
NEB 5,931 6 0.1%
Total: 515,481 77,343 8.6%

Original 7 States of Confederacy

State Number of Families Number of Slaveholders Percentage of Families
Families Owning Slaves
AL 96,603 33,730 34.9%
FL 15,090 5,152 34.1%
GA 109,919 41,084 37.4%
LA 74,725 22,033 29.5%
MS 63,015 30,943 49.1%
SC 58,642 26,701 45.5%
TX 76,781 21,878 28.5%
Total: 494,775 181,521 37.0%

States that left Union after Lincoln's Call for Militia

State Number of Families Number of Slaveholders Percentage of Families
Families Owning Slaves
ARK 57,244 11,481 20.1%
NC 125,090 34,658 27.7%
TN 149,335 36,844 24.7%
VA 201,523 52,128 25.9%
Total: 533,192 135,111 24.6%

Overall average percentage of families owning slaves in the states in the Confederacy. 30.8%

Total number of slave holding families in the states of the Confederacy 316,632

[Bill_Cross]

It was a lousy ecomonic system that was barely sustaining itself and was rapidly going to die in the face of agricultural mechanization.

Bob, please support this point with some evidence, as the ground-breaking work by the "econometric" historians of the mid-60s like Robert Fogel would contradict your thesis. Fogel's important book, Time on the Cross, used statistics (what he called "cliometrics") to disprove the myth that slavery would have died out if left alone. Southern apologists have advanced this argument to show themselves as victims of an overeager, aggressive North, when in fact slaves were rising in value before the war.

As to your point about mechanized farming, it did not happen for cotton during the 19th Century; it continued to be picked by hand until the mid-20th Century. Indeed, a mechanical picker wasn't invented until 1948. Mechanization of agriculture on the plains and elsewhere is probably one contributing factor to the South's relative backwardness and poverty after Reconstruction, as the nation's bread basket became wealthy, while cotton continued to be undervalued (especially with competition from foreign producers). Your thesis doesn't seem to apply to an agriculture focused on crops like sugar cane and cotton that required large amounts of cheap labor.

[creel]

What about the northern interest in the Southern slavery and agriculture?

How did that play into the US economy? IE: shipping (South had very few ships) for exports and imports? Banking (as today NY held a lot of money)?

[tompritchett]

How did that play into the US economy? IE: shipping (South had very few ships) for exports and imports? Banking (as today NY held a lot of money)?

And to the U.S. government itself. Remember back then, most of the government's income came from duties and tariffs. Because the South's economy was so based upon imports and exports, it ended up provided the majority of the money to support the Federal government. (Just a statement of fact with no further implications.)

[ley74]

Never mind...

[RJSamp]

Overall average percentage of families owning slaves in the states in the Confederacy. 30.8%

Total number of slave holding families in the states of the Confederacy 316,632

Tom you are drifting madly from the original question.

1. Familes DID NOT own slaves. Just as families don't own houses. Typically the head of the household might own slaves....and it might be the In Law or Father of the Head of Household. For all we know a 25 year old son in the family might be a slaveowner.....but my guess is that his father (Head of Household) might be the actual owner.

2. Census', including the 1860 census, are by Household, not by Family.....you might have several families/generations living in one house. They may or may not skew your numbers.....but I don't think that the statistical number crunchers you cited made allowances for this....just as they didn't compile a list of Individuals that owned slaves.

BTW I'm an amateur genealogist and have a subscription to every US census image online from 1790 - 1930 and have spent over 100 hours perusing the 1860 Census' alone (the 1850 census is the first By Name census, prior to that it was tallies by head of household by gender by age bracket ....the 1860 census has a ton of information for me on the early Irish in WI).

3. The question was.....what percentage of soldiers in the CSA army were slaveowners..... not their parents, not their family, not their household, and not their relations.

Your numbers are obfuscating the answer, IMHO.

[Bill_Cross]

Familes DID NOT own slaves. Just as families don't own houses. Typically the head of the household might own slaves....and it might be the In Law or Father of the Head of Household. For all we know a 25 year old son in the family might be a slaveowner.....but my guess is that his father (Head of Household) might be the actual owner.

Talk about obfuscating!

I don't think we should read too much into the limitations of the census records before 1870 (I'm an amateur geneologist, too). Some states (VA) had strong inheritance laws, while others did not. Fact is, the head of the household could be an elderly woman, though I'm not sure that proves a lot in this discussion.

And given the strong ties of family, I fail to see what difference it makes whether the soldier, his father or his mother or even his sister owned the slave(s). The FAMILY had a stake in the ante-bellum social order, and we simply can't know if the soldier was a firebreather or was quietly opposed to slavery and planning to free his chattel upon the death of his elder.

The point we're missing here, in my opinion, is that Southern society was highly-stratified, with a powerful slave-owning upper class that had (as we're starting to see now in America) most of the wealth under its control. But then (as now) Americans believed in the notion of economic equality and advancement, so the non slave owners ASPIRED to be rich, landed and slave-owning. Contemporary observers noted the difference with, say England, where the lower classes "knew their place."

[tompritchett]

Tom you are drifting madly from the original question.

1. Familes DID NOT own slaves. Just as families don't own houses. Typically the head of the household might own slaves....and it might be the In Law or Father of the Head of Household. For all we know a 25 year old son in the family might be a slaveowner.....but my guess is that his father (Head of Household) might be the actual owner.

Technically you are right. While the other members of the family did not actually have titled ownership of the family slaves, they were still masters of the family slaves. So maybe the question should be "how many soldiers were masters of at least one slave?" Most modern Americans make no distinction between being a master of a slave versus actually owning one.

2. Census', including the 1860 census, are by Household, not by Family.....you might have several families/generations living in one house. They may or may not skew your numbers.....but I don't think that the statistical number crunchers you cited made allowances for this....just as they didn't compile a list of Individuals that owned slaves.

Point well taken. However, this would only increase, not decrease, the number of soldiers that were masters of at least one slave.

3. The question was.....what percentage of soldiers in the CSA army were slaveowners..... not their parents, not their family, not their household, and not their relations.

Your numbers are obfuscating the answer, IMHO.

While I agree that the stated question involved titled ownership, I personally believe that in the modern context the issue of ownership is more of family ownership rather than personal ownership. Walk into any neighborhood and ask someone to point out his or her house. Everyone will either point it out directly or point in the general direction of it, regardless of whether or not their name is actually on the deed. Unless you are dealing with a relation or part of a couple who are living together, I strongly doubt that you will hear someone say "its actually not my house but ..." very often. After all the house is property used by the whole family (versus a car for example), just as slaves were back then. In fact, in the case of valet slaves I would not be surprised if the assigned master did not refer to that slaves as "his" even if the actual titled owner was someone else.

IMHO, Your splitting hairs is what is really obfuscating the answer.