The U.S. Coast Survey map calculated the number of slaves in each county in the United States in 1860. 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. It's true that in an extremely narrow sense, only a very small proportion of Confederate soldiers owned slaves in their own right. By comparison, only one in twelve enlisted men owned slaves, but when those who lived with family slave owners were included, the ratio exceeded one in three. Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline, study warns., When fentanyl burns it smells like popcorn.. This compared favorably to the Confederacy as a whole, in which one in every twenty white persons owned slaves. Busted: 6 Civil War Myths | Confederate Flag & Slavery | Live Science The total population in Sharpsburg in 1860 was around 1,300. "Very few of them were slaveholders, probably not more than a very few thousand," McPherson told us. We rate it Pants on Fire. That, of course, is to be expected; soldiering is a young man's game, and most young men, then and now, have little in the way of personal wealth. The owners were not getting rich. But even if it is narrowly true, it's a deeply, deeply dishonest statistic. Townsend doesnt say which "Southern" states he had in mind. As the Civil War progressed, desertion amongst Confederate soldiers infected the Confederate Army like a poisonous cancer. This myth, that the Civil War wasnt fundamentally a conflict over slavery, would have been a surprise to the original founders of the Confederacy. West Virginia fell somewhere in between because it split off from Virginia in 1863 to join the Union. 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. Although Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland never formally seceded from the Union, they were not "Northern" states in either a geographic or a cultural sense. 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. Privacy Statement The nation's 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. During the American Civil War slaves and free blacks served the Confederate Army, in many roles and duties. Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window), Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window), Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window), Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window), Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window), https://www.history.com/news/5-myths-about-slavery. 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. 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:. U.S. public schools don't teach the Declaration of Independence. On the Northern side, the rose-colored myth of the Civil War is that the blue-clad Union soldiers and their brave, doomed leader, Abraham Lincoln, were fighting to free enslaved people. The answer to the question of why the Northern states didn't outlaw slavery prior to the Civil War is an obvious one: it simply wasn't possible. (In fact, only a small percentage of the population did. Enslaved workers constituted the backbone of the Confederate war effort. He posted, one lie circulating that only 1% of white southerners owned slaves. Slaves also were rented out. 801 3rd St. S 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. Soldier demographics for the Confederate Army are not available due to incomplete and destroyed enlistment records. Become a member! Lee went on the offensive for the following two days but failed to crack the Union defenses. Lastly, and most importantly, why did NORTHERN States outlaw slavery only AFTER the war was over? For the men from the Confederate states, Tinkler said the pattern is clear. Confederate soldiers were optimistic about the prospects for the survival of the Confederacy and the institution of slavery well into 1864. . The regiments quartermaster reassured the family that the colonels items, including spyglasses, watch, toothbrush, and various memoranda books plus $59, were all safe under Kinciens care. Many of them labored as cooks, butchers, blacksmiths and hospital attendants, and thousands of enslaved men accompanied Confederate officers as their camp slaves, or body servants. In the official declaration of the causes of their secession in December 1860, South Carolinas delegates cited an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery. According to them, the Northern interference with the return of fugitive slaves was violating their constitutional obligations; they also complained that some states in New England tolerated abolitionist societies and allowed Black men to vote. The claim that only 1.6% of U.S. citizens owned slaves in 1860 is MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research. In 1865, Moses made the long journey back to Gettysburg with McLeods brother-in-law to bring the body home. They were fighting for survival as cotton and tobacco prices were on a roller coaster.. Vance said nothing about the attack on Paul Pelosi. About 5% of people in those states were considered slaveholders, the data shows. "Many Northern civilians owned slaves. Accordingly, Lincoln had no legal authority to free all slaves everywhere, only in the "states and parts of states in which the people thereof" were in "rebellion against the United States.". Fact Check: What Percentage Of White Southerners Owned Slaves. 2023 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Satellite Information Network, LLC. Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri were called Border States. As far as slavery goes, every museum on the war is currently obsessed with the subject. Observers will note that the incidence of slaveholding was highest in agricultural lowlands, where rivers provided both transportation for bulk commodities and periodic floods that replenished the soil, and lowest in mountainous regions like Appalachia. On the first of the new year, Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which emancipated enslaved people in the states that seceded from the United States. If it refers to the federal government, then it's still false: the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, was initially passed by the U.S. Senate on 8 April 1864, more than a year before the end of the Civil War (although it was not ratified by the requisite number of states until December 1865). Throughout most of his pre-war life Sherman had little opportunity to own slaves, as he lacked the money to purchase them and/or lived in states (California, Indiana, and Ohio) where slavery was not legal. Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought - American Battlefield Trust that black soldiers would still be slaves. In fact, until March 1865, Confederate Army policy specifically prohibited Black people from serving as soldiers. Am I right?. Camp slaves like Moses who, for whatever reason, were committed to their owners made do with the limited resources available and resigned themselves in the end to passing on their owners parting words to their grieving families. 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? Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. They werent, at least not initially; they were fighting to hold the nation together. Large numbers of indentured servants did indeed emigrate from Ireland to the British colonies of North America, where they provided a cheap labor force for planters and merchants eager to exploit it. That left about 27.5 million free people in the U.S., according to 1860 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Fact check: Stat grossly misleading about slave ownership in 1860 . Prior to, during and even after the War of Northern Aggression. Using census numbers for the percentage of families who held slaves, the nationwide calculation for the percentage of "families owning slaves," is 7.4%, Rothman told us. 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. 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. More:Court clears way for removal of Confederate statue at the center of deadly Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally. A second, separate schedule records the name of each slaveholder and lists the slave he or she owns. 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. State-by-state, we applied that percentage to the total number of military age males. 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. The user who posted the original tweet and the Facebook user who shared it on July 11 did not respond to requests for comment. This figure, combined with the 36 percent who owned or whose family members owned slaves, indicated that almost one of every two 1861 recruits lived with slaveholders. Mackey is an educator, a retired U. S. Air Force officer and a former human resources manager with a global company. The size of Union forces in January 1863 totaled over 600,000. For slaveholder and nonslaveholder alike, slavery lay at the heart of the Confederate nation. For many Confederate officers who were separated from their servants as a result of the battle or the confusion of the retreat, disappointment awaited them, as it did Captain Waddell of the 12th Virginia, who rejoined his unit on July 8 only to learn that his servant Willis had run off with his personal baggage. Once again, the historical record tells us their stories. 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 Antietam Campaign took place in Maryland, a slave state at the time. Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. Two years later, that number had . PolitiFact and Snopes have previously evaluated similar claims that popped up in 2017 and 2019, respectively. 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 . Jefferson Davis was their President. 'U.S. NOT in the North! 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. "Healthy pilots are suffering from myocarditis and dropping dead on flights because of the COVID-19 vaccines. In 1860, nearly 20% of households in seceding states owned slaves, he said. These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States Compiled from the census of 1860 Copy 1, Decennial Census Official Publications - 1860. subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. On March 14, 1865 the Confederate military . Southerners across the Confederacy, from Texas to Florida to Virginia, civilian and soldier alike, were awash in the institution of slavery. Cookie Policy Black Civil War Soldiers - Facts, Death Toll & Enlistment - History Thats nearly three times higher than the number shared in the post. Nor did the direct exposure stop there. "Ninety-eight percent of Texas Confederate soldiers never owned a slave." So in theory, there were slaveholders from Union states and slaveholders from Confederate states that could have fought on the Union side. The data in the UofV online system can be broken down either by state or counties within a state, and make it possible to compare one data element (e.g., households) with another (slaveholders) and calculate the proportions between them. The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861-1865), fighting against the United States forces to win the independence of the Southern states and uphold and expand the institution of slavery. Editor's note, November 14, 2016: The posted excerpt from Mike Landree originally included a paragraph about historian Kevin Levin. We did not hear from him. That contrasted starkly with the 24.9 percent, or one in every four households, that owned slaves in the South, based on the 1860 census. Conversely, the Proclamation highlighted even further the degree to which the Confederate Army represented a force of enslavement. U.S. Grant also had several slaves, who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December of 1865. 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. In Washington County, Maryland, 1,435 people were enslaved, 1,677 people were listed as "free blacks," and 398 people were listed as slave owners. They fought the battle defending their homelands againstan invading army.. Evaluating the share of households that owned slaves in seceding states is a much more effective means, said Joseph Glatthaar, history professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Data from another direction also throws Baldwins figure into question. Historians, though, say that grosslyunderrepresents the extent of slavery in the U.S. before the Civil War because it includes babies, children and people in states where slavery was illegal in the calculation. "Thus," Glatthaar notes, "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." In short, Confederate volunteers actually owned more slaves than the general population. Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and (from 1865) the general-in-chief of Confederate forces, neither owned slaves nor inherited any, thus it is not correct to assert that he "freed his slaves" (in 1862 or at any other time). High, but not nearly as high as the Union figure. 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." The loss of Colonel Henry King Burgwyn Jr., killed on the first day of fighting at Gettysburg, was a devastating loss not only to the 26th North Carolina but also, as described by a fellow officer in the regiment, to his servant Kincien, who takes it bitterly enough. Once Burgwyns body was given an appropriate burial, Kincien proposed transporting the young colonels personal items home along with information about his death that he knew his family craved. These men performed a wide range of roles for their owners, including cooking, cleaning, foraging and sending messages to families back home. 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. "Mommy, he did it too!"

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