what percentage of confederate soldiers owned slaves

South Carolina's decision to remove the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds renewed debate over the Civil War. In the vast majority of cases, each household (termed a "family" in the 1860 document, even when the group consisted of unrelated people living in the same residence) that owned slaves had only one slaveholder listed, the head of the household. So in theory, there were slaveholders from Union states and slaveholders from Confederate states that could have fought on the Union side. | The Union was attributed with having 40 million heads of livestock compared to 35 million in the Confederacy and only 10 million in the Border States. Townsend had a brief passage about the number of West Point graduates who remained loyal to the Union. Although stories of these impressed workers and camp slaves have been erased from our popular memory of the war in favor of mythical accounts of black Confederate soldiers, their presence in the Confederate army constituted a visual reminder to every soldier slaveowner and non-slaveowner alikethat their ultimate success in battle depended on the ownership of other human beings. The size of Union forces in January 1863 totaled over 600,000. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. The 1860 census shows that in the states that would soon secede from the Union, an average of more than 32 percent of white families owned enslaved people. So while a slave owner was only counted once, other people and businesses, including railroad companies, could benefit from slavery as well, Schermerhorn said. Fortunately, one of the leading Civil War historians, James McPherson at Princeton University, knows Townsends work and told us that he included the Confederate states, plus Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky. Slavery played no role it the coming of the war, they say; how could it, when less than two percent (four percent, five percent) actually owned slaves? As Southerners became increasingly isolated, they reacted by becoming more strident in defending slavery. As their shattered command fell back following their repulse, scores of camp slaves made their way out from the cover and protection of the woods in search of their owners and to assist the wounded. Two years later, that number had . Danny is based in Brooklyn, NY. This is an extremely common argument among Confederate apologists, part of a larger effort to minimize or eliminate the institution of slavery as a factor in secession and the coming of the war, and thus make it possible to maintain the notion that Southern soldiers, like the Confederacy itself, were driven by the purest and noblest values to defend home and hearth. (Some of the former Confederate states did eventually ratify the 13th Amendment after its passage by Congress, because they were required to do so as a post-war condition of regaining federal representation. Lees failure to dislodge the Union army from its position led him to order one final assault on the afternoon of July 3, utilizing the men under the command of Generals George Pickett and James Johnston Pettigrew. Untold numbers of enlistees rented land from, sold crops to, or worked for slaveholders. While Joe Glatthaar undoubtedly had a small regiment of graduate assistants to help with cross-indexing Confederate muster rolls and the 1860 U.S. Census, there are some basic tools now available online that will allow anyone to at least get a general sense of the validity of his numbers. As one reader wrote in aletter to the editor to the Columbia Daily Heraldin response to Powell's article,"Maury County is at a crucial point in its economic development. The post came a day after a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed in Charlottesville, Virginia, the site of a violent white supremacist rally in 2017. Though most crossed the Atlantic willingly, some Irish men and womenincluding criminals as well as simply the poor and vulnerablewere sentenced to indentured servitude in Ireland, and forcibly shipped to the colonies to carry out their sentences. In the Confederacy, the population was listed as 5.5 million free and 3.5 million enslaved. However, the version of history that the SCV is trying to tell is rooted in Lost Cause mythology,instead of confronting more difficult truths. Slave labor was as much a part of life in the antebellum South as heat in the summer and hog-killing time in the late fall. The owners were not getting rich. This included men in all the Confederate states, plus Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and. In this retelling, the South is more Gone With the Windthan Free State of Jones,casting the Confederate soldiers as trying to preserve their cherished, chivalric way of life instead of defending plantation owners'reliance on slavery to keep the local economy going. "These soldiers generally came from low slaveholding areas, such as the mountain regions of Tennessee, and small, non-slaveholding families," he said. A unified country like we know it today didnt exist back then . A museum must present facts to visitors, which may even challenge their own beliefs, so that they will want to go do their own research. Prior to, during and even after the War of Northern Aggression. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission. MSJE, as it is called, showcases the culture and heritage of the Jews who lived in the 13 southern states over a period spanning some three centuries: from colonial America through the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement and up to this day. Lieutenant Sidney Carters wounding at Gettysburg cut his life short, but before his death he requested that his camp slave, Dave, take everything he had and bring it home, where each item would be offered as a parting gift to his family members. The nation's 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. ), 'The so-called "Emancipation Proclamation" of Lincoln only gave freedom to slaves in the SOUTH! Others included laborers, 9 percent; mechanics, 5.3 percent; commercial, 5 percent; professional occupations, 2.1 percent; and miscellaneous, 1.6 percent. Although Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland never formally seceded from the Union, they were not "Northern" states in either a geographic or a cultural sense. At the time, however, Southerners had no problem claiming the protection of slavery as the cause of their break with the Union. In August 1862, he famously wrote to the New York Tribune: If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.. "In October 1862, Congress amended the Conscription Act with what became known as the Twenty Negro Law, a provision that exempted from the draft one white man of military age on plantations with at least 20 slaves," Tinkler wrote. Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline, study warns., When fentanyl burns it smells like popcorn.. "Do you not realize that when Lincoln signed his (Emancipation) proclamation, there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army?" As the Civil War progressed, desertion amongst Confederate soldiers infected the Confederate Army like a poisonous cancer. St. Petersburg, FL "That could only be accomplished by putting the vast majority of males from slaveholding families into service," Gallagher said. To break it down about how many U.S. citizens owned slaves is absurd, Glatthaar said in an email. Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The real Biden was executed for his crimes long ago along with Clinton. "Healthy pilots are suffering from myocarditis and dropping dead on flights because of the COVID-19 vaccines. ', Despite its status as one of the most important documents in the history of the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation is still misunderstood by many Americans. . That makes places like the future National Confederate Museum at Historic Elm Springscomplicated, to say the least. It is often stated that Grant's wife, Julia Boggs Dent, "owned four slaves," and Julia herself identified four "servants" whom she claimed "belonged" to her up until the end of 1862. Many of those white families, who couldnt afford enslaved people, aspired to own slaves as a symbol of wealth and prosperity. Carter wanted it known that he was willing to die and that he talked to the clergyman about dying . Likewise, many of the people fighting for the Union were far from paragons of virtue themselves. But theres no evidence to suggest that significant numbers of Black soldiers fought under the Confederate banner against Union soldiers. The approximately $3.5 million, 18,500-square-foot museum in Elm Springs, Tennessee, has been in the works for eight years and will also serve as anadministrative space for membersthe Sons of Confederate Veterans, the organization spearheading the project, Jay Powell reports for the Columbia Daily Herald. The U.S. had 395,216 slaveholders at that time, so about 1.4% of free people were classified as slave owners in the 1860 census, according to data archived by the Integrated Public Use. Slave-owners were greatly disconcerted by the desire of the enslaved people they held captive to flee to Union armies, . But indentured servitude, by definition, came nowhere close to chattel slavery. So says Texas State Senate Resolution No. As units readied for battle, a member of the 24th Georgia recalled, The Colonels sent back their horses by their servants. On the afternoon of July 1, Union captain Alfred Lee of the 82nd Ohio found himself wounded and behind enemy lines. Gallagher noted that over the fouryears of the war, the South put 800,000-900,000 men under arms. Absent the body, news that a soldier had been comforted in his final hours and had prepared himself for death reassured family members that their loved one experienced what 19th-century Americans understood as a Good Death.. Farmers comprised 48 percent of the civilian occupations in the Union. Failing this he directed some negroes to go and gather items that might improve our comfort. Matt Butler, assistant surgeon of the 37th Virginia, had a horse shot out from under him and was wounded in the foot on July 2 as he tended to fallen Confederates. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. The number ascribed to Confederate soldiers as a whole variestwo percent, five percentbut the message is always the same, that those men 150 years had nothing to do with the peculiar institution, they has no stake in it, and that it certainly played no role whatever in their personal motivations or in the Confederacy's goals in the war. We wont tell people what to believe, but we will challenge them on what they think they know. Cookie Settings, Kevin Levin writes for his blog,"Civil War Memory", James Oliver Horton reiteratesin a National Park Service history, Five Places Where You Can Still Find Gold in the United States, Scientists Taught Pet Parrots to Video Call Each Otherand the Birds Loved It, Balto's DNA Provides a New Look at the Intrepid Sled Dog, The Science of California's 'Super Bloom,' Visible From Space, What We're Still Learning About Rosalind Franklins Unheralded Brilliance. The Union led wheat production with 100 million bushels produced in comparison to 35 million bushels in the Confederacy and 20 million bushels in the Border States. Today some of these stories pulled from the historical record can be found on hundreds of websites, not as the stories of enslaved men, but as black Confederate soldiers. Conversely, only 30 percent of soldiers in the Army of the Potomac were farmers or farmhands. The total number of black Confederate soldiers is statistically insignificant: They made up less than 1 percent of the 800,000 black men of military age (17-50) living in the Confederate. No credible documentation records Grant as having said such a thing, and he was only ever in a position to emancipate a single slave, which he did back in 1859. The nations 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. Anywhere between 6,000 and 10,000 enslaved people supported in various capacities Lee's army in the summer of 1863. The ocean is "flat" and "contained" by land features that jut up from a flat (not spherical) earth. He posted, one lie circulating that only 1% of white southerners owned slaves. Library of Congress. (Note: these links often don't run run the map-generating scripts properly, so be patient and click gently.) Its true that not every white person in the pre-Civil War South owned slaves. For Glatthaar's purposes and ours, the 1860 census, taken a few months before the outbreak of the war, is crucial. The colonial system also offered more lenient punishment for disobedient servants than enslaved people and allowed servants to petition for early release if their masters mistreated them. Historians, though, say that statistic is hugely misleading since it both wrongly factors in the entirety of the non-slave-owning states and ignores that families owned and had power over slaves, not just one individual adult. The Confederacy included the states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. But Schermerhorn said even that minimizes the number of white people who benefitted from slavery. that black soldiers would still be slaves. Slaves also were rented out. About 5% of people in those states were considered slaveholders, the data shows. Why that's misleading. While slavery was not the only cause for which the South fought during the Civil War, the testimony of Confederate leaders and their supporters makes it clear that slavery was central to the motivation for secession and war, Horton writes. Free African-Americans and fugitive slaves in Adams County (including Gettysburg) and surrounding counties fled with the news of Lees advance. J.D. However, those slaves had been purchased by Julia's father, Frederick F. Dent, and there is no record of his ever having transferred ownership of them to Julia without such a transfer, neither Julia nor her husband Ulysses would have had legal authority to free them. The average fraction of slaveholding families was about 11 percent for those Union states, while in the Confederacy, it was about 40 percent. (AP). Advertising Notice Southern Democrat and Kentucky son John C. Breckinridge won 36 percent of the state's vote with a pro-slavery platform and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, champion of popular sovereignty, received 18 percent, while Constitutional Unionist John Bell, who stood simply for preserving the Union, carried . Surprisingly, to many history impaired individuals, most Union Generals and staff had slaves to serve them! For the Union states that allowed slavery, the 1860 census shows that they had much lower rates of slave ownership than the Confederate states. | As long as the Southern slave states remained in the Union, their aggregate Congressional representation was sufficient in number to block the passage or ratification of any law or constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Had that happened, it is hard to see how the Confederacy would have been able to fight at all. McPherson said in researching his bookFor Cause and Comrades,he read the letters of about 60 Union soldiers from slave states and he can't recall a single one who owned slaves. To adherents of the Lost Cause,a term coined as early as 1866,the Confederacy fought to uphold the supposed virtues of the antebellum South, advancedby leaders who were "exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, defeated by the Union armies not through superior military skill, but by overwhelming force," according to the site Civil War Journeys. Where did legalized slavery still exist in the North in 1861? Viral post gets it wrong about extent of slavery in 1860, Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. #FHTE In 1860, 1% of white southern families owned 200 or more human beings, but in states of the Confederacy, at least 20% owned at least one and in Ms and SC ran as high as fifty percent." Darity cited a chart and research by U.S. civil war expert Al Mackey to back up his statement. Get the latest History stories in your inbox? Ninety-five percent of Lee's soldiers came from farming communities. Union soldiers outnumbered Confederate soldiers by a ratio of 2 to 1. When asked why he didn't free his slaves earlier, Grant stated "Good help is so hard to come . The 642,427 total Union casualties have been divided accordingly: The 483,026 total Confederate casualties have been divided accordingly: Of the 211,411 Union soldiers captured 16,668 were paroled on the field and 30,218 died in prison. We are excited to tell the stories of our ancestors through their own words and deeds. It was not about slavery, these advocates say, but about the right to secede from the Union. Moses then followed a Confederate brigade back to Winchester, Virginia, before heading home with his owners personal effects to Swainsboro, Georgia. Not many. The 1860 U.S. Federal Census - Slave Schedules lists one-hundred fifty enslaved persons and 50 slave owners in Sharpsburg, Maryland. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. In border states, the percentage was lower -- 3 percent in Delaware and 12 percent in. Contrarily, Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed his slaves (which he never purchased they were inherited) in 1862! A small number signed up for training, but theres no evidence they saw action before the wars end. Our first installment dealt with the history of the Confederate flag; in this second installment, we examine "facts" asserted in a section of "the Truth about Confederate History" about the practice of slavery in the U.S. and its eventual abolition. In Mississippi, 49 percent of families owned slaves, and in South Carolina, 46 percent did. Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. In 1865, the Union won the war. In the eleven states that formed the Confederacy, there were in aggregate just over 1 million free households, which between them represented 316,632 slaveholdersmeaning that just under one-third of households in the Confederate States counted among its assets at least one human being. NOT in the North! Virginia had the largest population of enslaved African Americans of any state in the Confederacy, and those slaves responded to the American Civil War (1861-1865) in a variety of ways. The Union had 20,000 miles of railroad compared to 9,000 in the Confederacy and 1,700 in the Border States. While no known evidence exists that the armys slaves assisted in kidnapping of roughly 100 men from towns such as Chambersburg, McConnellsburg, Mercersburg and Greencastle on the eve of the famous battle, it is very likely that those ensnared and led south would have passed camp servants and other slaves whose essential presence in the army helped to make their capture possible. "Most of the Confederate soldiers never owned slaves and didn't fight the battle because of slavery. "Oil pulling improves overall oral health, strengthens gums, helps prevent cavities, whitens teeth and reduces plaque. It is true that slavery was not unique to the South: Both during the colonial era and after independence, slavery existed in areas that now comprise what we consider "Northern" states. At the time, the total U.S. population was about 31.4 million, including more than 3.9 million slaves. In 1860, there were about 412,000 men from slaveholding families who could serve as soldiers. As we researched this, we found that Baldwins statement was vague on one key point -- he didnt say which states the slaveholders came from. stated on November 8, 2022 election night coverage on Fox News: stated on November 1, 2022 a town hall event: stated on October 26, 2022 a newspaper interview: stated on October 25, 2022 an Instagram post: stated on October 9, 2022 an interview on CBS News' Face the Nation: stated on September 27, 2022 a campaign ad: stated on September 22, 2022 a Secretary of State debate: stated on September 8, 2022 a campaign ad: stated on August 28, 2022 an interview on CNN: stated on August 10, 2022 an interview on Fox News: stated on April 24, 2023 in una publicacin en Facebook: stated on March 1, 2023 in a social media post: stated on April 23, 2023 in an Instagram post: stated on April 24, 2023 in an Instagram post: stated on April 16, 2023 in a Facebook post: stated on April 20, 2023 in an Instagram post: stated on April 12, 2023 in a Facebook post: stated on April 21, 2023 in a Facebook post: All Rights Reserved Poynter Institute 2020, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 'U.S. In the final tabulation, the vast majority of the volunteers of 1861 had a direct connection to slavery. Fact check:Decades-old essay about Declaration of Independence signatories is partly false, You can use statistics to demonstrate a lot of things that arent relevant or true, said Calvin Schermerhorn, a history professor at Arizona State University. Cookie Policy On July 11, a Facebook user shared a screenshot of a 2019 tweet that claims only 1.6% of U.S. citizens owned slaves in 1860. In this way, many Confederates who did not enslave people went to war to protect not only slavery but to preserve the foundation of the only way of life they knew. May 15, 2014. Many Northern civilians owned slaves. Texas also contributed Mexican troops. "It will be seen that the disloyalty of West Point was not as great as is generally supposed. The total population in Sharpsburg in 1860 was around 1,300. Many of them labored as cooks, butchers, blacksmiths and hospital attendants, and. It wasnt, she said. The chance that a few thousand slaveholders fought for the Union, rather than the 300,000 as Baldwin said, does little to keep this statement in the realm of reality. The U.S. Coast Survey map calculated the number of slaves in each county in the United States in 1860. The census also reported the percentage of families that owned slaves in each state.

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