Had that happened, it is hard to see how the Confederacy would have been able to fight at all. Here are county maps for all eleven Confederate states, with the proportion of slaveholding families indicated in green -- a darker color indicates a higher density: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, All States. Custis' will stipulated that all of his slaves were to be freed within five years: " upon the legacies to my four granddaughters being paid, then I give freedom to my slaves, the said slaves to be emancipated by my executor in such manner as he deems expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease." But, as James W. Loewen writes for The Washington Post, it certainly wasn't just the slaveholdingelite who fought to maintain slavery. Darity cited a chart and research by U.S. civil war expert Al Mackey to back up his statement. Grant also had several slaves, who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December of 1865. The nation's 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. This is the single item this section of "Truth about Confederate History" actually got right: Delaware was one of three states (along with Kentucky and Mississippi) that initially rejected the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery and did not ratify it until after the start of the 20th century, by which time the amendment had long since become part of the Constitution. It is thus possible to compare the number of slaveholders in a given state to the numbers of families/households, and get a rough estimation of the proportion of free households that owned at least one slave. Chuck Baldwin, a fundamentalist pastor and columnist, made this case in a recent essay that appeared on his website and many others, including a fan page for Fox News Megyn Kelly. Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. Children of indentured servants were born free; slaves children were the property of their owners. The Army of the Potomac was instead a predominately working-class army. So says Texas State Senate Resolution No. This pecksniffery even went so far as to find the state of Delaware rejecting the 13th Amendment in December of 1865 and did not ratify it (13th Amendment / free the slaves) until 1901! Once again, the historical record tells us their stories. Slavery is an important subject to study in its total as an American institution, but the politicizing of it to support modern political agendas will not be addressed at our museum. The documentary 2,000 Mules proves Democrats cheated on the 2020 elections., Immigrants illegally in the country are treated better than military veterans., Kari Lake has gone on the record saying she supports Arizona's complete abortion ban. Yes, There Were Black Confederates. Here's Why Those inaccuracies have since been corrected. "In 1860, 49% of White Families in Mississippi Owned Slaves, Who slaves represented nearly a third of the population in those slaveholding states. This myth, that the Civil War wasnt fundamentally a conflict over slavery, would have been a surprise to the original founders of the Confederacy. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. 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. Did Only 1.4 Percent of White Americans Own Slaves in 1860? Cookie Policy In Mississippi, 49 percent of families owned slaves, and in South Carolina, 46 percent did. Nonetheless, the 1860 census recorded only 18 slaves in all of New Jersey. In fact, such a policy would be radical in any country today: the federal government's massive confiscation of private property some 400,000 acres formerly owned by Confederate land . The fact that their paper notes frequently depicted scenes of slaves demonstrated the institution's central role and symbolic value to the Confederacy. 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. 20006, Florida 33701 Where it was still legal, slavery was far more widespread than the number in the post indicates, they said. Was the Civil War Really a Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight? . The UofV system also makes it possible to generate maps that show graphically the proportion of slaveholding households in a given county. Get the latest History stories in your inbox? 'U.S. Others included laborers, 9 percent; mechanics, 5.3 percent; commercial, 5 percent; professional occupations, 2.1 percent; and miscellaneous, 1.6 percent. She's called it a great law., Katie Hobbs voted for allowing a baby who survives an abortion that the hospital would refuse medical care and allow the baby to die on a cold metal tray.. The total population in Sharpsburg in 1860 was around 1,300. (This is usually followed immediately by an assertion that the speaker's own Confederate ancestors never owned slaves, either.) He managed to limp off the field with the help of a camp servant by the name of Jim. By the time the war ended in 1865, about 180,000 Black men had served as soldiers in the U.S. Army. A second, separate schedule records the name of each slaveholder and lists the slave he or she owns. Moses then followed a Confederate brigade back to Winchester, Virginia, before heading home with his owners personal effects to Swainsboro, Georgia. All of the Northern states, with a single arguable exception, had (by law or by practice) ended slavery within their borders long before the Civil War began. "Many Northern civilians owned slaves. Early in the conflict, some of Lincolns generals helped the president understand that sending these men and women back to bondage could only help the Confederate cause. With the inclusion of those who resided in nonfamily slaveholding households, the direct exposure to bondage among enlisted personnel was four of every nine. If other museums refuse to provide that balance, well do so. It was neither a law passed by Congress nor the equivalent of a constitutional amendment, with the power to free slaves everywhere throughout the United States (and former states then in the Confederacy); it was an executive order issued as a wartime measure by President Lincoln, based on his constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. All three historians told us that the number of men on the Union side who owned slaves was quite small. tho so weak he could hardly be understood. He assured his family that they would meet again in heaven. The data from the 1860 census show that if Baldwin were correct, an overwhelming fraction of all of the young men from slave-owning families across the Deep South and beyond would needed to have broken with their communities and fought for the Union. Thus, volunteers in 1861 were 42 percent more likely to own slaves themselves or to live with family members who owned slaves than the general population. Chuck Baldwin, The Confederate Flag Needs To Be Raised, Not Lowered, July 9, 2015, Thomas Seaman Townsend, The Honors of the Empire State in the War of the Rebellion, A. Lovell and Co., New York, 1889, California State University-Chico, Southern Unionists in the Civil War, U.S. Census Bureau, Census of population and housing - 1860, Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Dyer Publishing, Des Moines, Iowa,1908, Civil War Statistics, Strength of the armies, Email interview, James McPherson, professor emeritus, Department of History, Princeton University, July 22, 2015, Email interview, Gary Gallagher, professor, Corcoran Department of History , University of Virginia, July 23, 2015, Email interview, Robert Tinkler, professor, History Department, California State University-Chico, July 22, 2015. "Ninety-eight percent of Texas Confederate soldiers never owned a slave Slavery in the Confederate States Army - History Collection 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. As the Confederate army reorganized in the weeks following the campaign, the thin ranks of many regiments were magnified by the absence of its enslaved. But again, those slaves belonged to Grant's father-in-law, so Grant himself had no legal authority to set them free. Thats nearly three times higher than the number shared in the post. But that provides no evidence that all of them owned slaves, either directly themselves or through their families. "William T. Sherman had many slaves that served him until well after the war was over and did not free them until late in 1865.". Soldier demographics for the Confederate Army are not available due to incomplete and destroyed enlistment records. A quartermaster in John Bell Hoods division observed that a great many Negroes have gone to the Yankees. Union cavalry raids, such as the one led by Judson Kilpatrick at Monterey Pass on July 5, hampered the retreat of tired Confederates and resulted in additional prisoners being taken, including the camp servants attached to the Richmond Howitzers as well as Major William H. Chamberlains servant, horse, and personal equipment. When it comes to reparations, one of the consistent arguments against them is that there were actually not very many white slave owners in the U.S. I never saw fidelity stronger in any one, noted the quartermaster in a letter. Did Only 1.4 Percent of White Americans Own Slaves in 1860? 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Advertising Notice 801 3rd St. S They were up to their necks in it. 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. High, but not nearly as high as the Union figure. Although renowned Union general William T. Sherman was rather conservative on the issue of slavery (he was far from an abolitionist) and did not believe in equal rights for "negroes," there is scant evidence that he ever owned any slaves he certainly did not own "many," nor did he own any during the course of the Civil War. 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. 526, designating April as Texas Confederate History and Heritage Month. Mark Kelly voted against the Keystone pipeline, which caused higher gas prices., "40% of the folks who have student loans do not have a college diploma, four-year diploma. 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. There is no chain of custody for ballots placed in Box No. Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. A more accurate way to portray the extent of slavery would be to note 20% of households in seceding states owned slaves, even though the individual owner was counted as only one person in that household. 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. We did not hear from him. Small Truth Papering Over a Big Lie - The Atlantic 727-821-9494, When President AbrahamLincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation, "there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army. 4 . (In addition, as many as 200,000 black former slaves became Union soldiers and sailors.). U.S. public schools don't teach the Declaration of Independence. Across America, 60 percent to 75 percent of high-school history teachers believe and teach that the South seceded for state's rights, said Jim Loewen, author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me:. Advertising Notice PolitiFact | No, 300,000 slave owners did not fight on the Union side Each slave is listed by sex and age; names were not recorded. Busted: 6 Civil War Myths | Confederate Flag & Slavery | Live Science When asked why he didn't free his slaves earlier, Grant stated "Good help is so hard to come by these days. Its true that not every white person in the pre-Civil War South owned slaves. Proportionately, far more officers were likely to be professionals in civil life, and their age difference, about four years older than enlisted men, reflected their greater accumulated wealth. The nations 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. Some volunteered to assist the Confederate war effort, while many others were forced to support the Confederacy, working on farms and in factories and households throughout Virginia. Baldwin gave many reasons to back up his conclusion, but a reader asked us to examine one in particular: Slavery was not the pivotal reason for the war because thousands of slave owners supported the North. 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. Others included mechanics, 24 percent; laborers, 16 percent; commercial, 5 percent; miscellaneous, 4 percent; and professional occupations, 3 percent. 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. Doing so is clearly designed to make that form of property seem marginal. 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. If 300,000 Union soldiers were slave owners, it would mean that somewhere in the ballpark of three-quarters of the available slave owning men put on the Union blue. Some likely anticipated the brutal punishment that accompanied their recapture (or punishment that might be meted out to family members in their absence), while others worried about how they might be treated once behind Union lines. 3 at Maricopa, Arizona, polling sites. Only in Delaware, a state which was far from being undeniably a "Northern" state: depending upon the criteria used, one could justifiably have pegged Delaware at the time of the Civil War as being Northern, Southern, Mid-Atlantic, or some combination thereof. However, the version of history that the SCV is trying to tell is rooted in Lost Cause mythology,instead of confronting more difficult truths. Enslaved people, themselves helped make the case for emancipation as a military aim, fleeing in droves beyond the lines of approaching Union armies. "Very few of them were slaveholders, probably not more than a very few thousand," McPherson told us. Lee went on the offensive for the following two days but failed to crack the Union defenses. If it refers to individual states, then it is false: all the Northern states (again, with the arguable exception of Delaware) had abolished slavery well before the start of the Civil War. "Mommy, he did it too!" More:How an accidental encounter brought slavery to the United States. Joseph Glatthaar, history professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Court clears way for removal of Confederate statue at the center of deadly Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally, Charlottesville removes Confederate statues, including one that sparked deadly far-right rally. Nor did the direct exposure stop there. This is particularly useful in revealing political divisions or disputes within a state, although it takes some practice with the online query system to generate maps properly. He focuses on stories with a health/science bent and has reported some of his favorite pieces from the prow of a canoe. Ninety-five percent of Lee's soldiers came from farming communities. On March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a law to allow black men to serve in combat roles, with the provision "that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which said slaves shall bear toward their owners," i.e. The largest segment were day laborers, finding any work they could. That left about 27.5 million free people in the U.S., according to 1860 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. #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. District of Columbia The claim that only 1.6% of U.S. citizens owned slaves in 1860 is MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research. Kevin M. Levin 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. For the record, in 1863, Confederate forces totaled about 300,000. The Union had 101,000 factories, while the Confederacy had 21,000 and the Border States had 9,000. Of the 462,634 Confederate soldiers captured 247,769 were paroled on the field and 25,976 died in prison. 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. Even more revealing was their attachment to slavery. Percentage of slaves in each county of the slave states in 1860. . "Ninety-eight percent of Texas Confederate soldiers never owned a slave." 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. "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. 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 Microdata Series at the University of Minnesota. We wont tell people what to believe, but we will challenge them on what they think they know. Washington, DC (AP). In the wake of the June 2015 racially motivated shooting that left nine people dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and the renewed debate that event prompted about the propriety of displaying Confederate flags on the grounds of the South Carolina state capital (and elsewhere), a long-circulating article advertised as dispelling "falsehoods and inaccuracies of Confederate and Southern history" attracted renewed interest.