. I encourage readers to consider if our concept of 'Old South Charm' relies on the racist mythology of the Lost Cause, will that not hinder Maury Countys 'New South Progress' in the 21st century?". Data from another direction also throws Baldwins figure into question. 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. Southerners who didn't ownslavesaspired to one day become slave-owners themselves one day. The Antietam Campaign took place in Maryland, a slave state at the time. Privacy Statement In July 1861, the two armies were nearly equal in strength with less than 200,000 soldiers on each side; however at the peak of troop strength in 1863, Union soldiers outnumbered Confederate soldiers by a ratio of 2 to 1. There is a bright side to the story of the Lost Cause: after generations, it appears to be fading. Slavery in the Confederate States Army - History Collection We wont tell people what to believe, but we will challenge them on what they think they know. This statement is somewhat ambiguous. More a practical wartime measure than a true liberation, it proclaimed free all enslaved people in the rebel states, but not those in the border states, which Lincoln needed to remain loyal to the Union. 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. "Contrarily, Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed his slaves (which he never purchased they were inherited) in 1862! About 5% of people in those states were considered slaveholders, the data shows. She has been a frequent contributor to History.com since 2005, and is the author of Breaking History: Vanished! They were fighting for survival as cotton and tobacco prices were on a roller coaster.. So while a slave owner was only counted once, other people and businesses, including railroad companies, could benefit from slavery as well, Schermerhorn said. 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. Anywhere between 6,000 and 10,000 enslaved people supported in various capacities Lee's army in the summer of 1863. Baldwin wrote. The average fraction of slaveholding families was about 11 percent for those Union states, while in the Confederacy, it was about 40 percent. Some states had far more slave owners (46 percent of families in South Carolina, 49 percent in Mississippi) while some had far fewer (20 percent of families in Arkansas). Get the latest History stories in your inbox? 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. "Most of the Confederate soldiers never owned slaves and didn't fight the battle because of slavery. 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. Privacy Statement "Check it out.". 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Soldier demographics for the Confederate Army are not available due to incomplete and destroyed enlistment records. 33701 Contrarily, Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed his slaves (which he never purchased they were inherited) in 1862! The population of the Union was 18.5 million. He has become an expert on the U.S. Civil War and writes a blog called Student of the American Civil War., Policing, Enforcement, and Justice (Information Forthcoming), Media Communications: Narratives of Inequality, DITE Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics, Hank & Billye Suber Aaron Young Scholars Summer Research Institute, The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, NEW NSF GRANT AWARDED TO COOK CENTER RESEARCHERS FOR COVID-19 PROJECT, From administrators to animals, heres who you need to know at Duke. "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. And during the fierce early days of the war when the South was obliterating the Yankee armies! 3 at Maricopa, Arizona, polling sites. Library of Congress. As historian and public librarian Liam Hoganwrote: There is unanimous agreement, based on overwhelming evidence, that the Irish were never subjected to perpetual, hereditary slavery in the colonies, based on notions of race. The enduring myth of Irish slavery, which most often surfaces today in service of Irish nationalist and white supremacist causes, has roots in the 17th and 18th centuries when Irish laborers were derogatorily called white slaves. The phrase would later be employed as propaganda by the slave-owning South about the industrialized North, along with (false) claims that life was far harder for immigrant factory workers than for enslaved people. 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. Upon Custis' death in 1857, Lee did not "inherit" those slaves; rather, he carried out the directions expressed in Custis' will regarding those slaves (and other property) according to his position as executor of Custis' estate. (In addition, as many as 200,000 black former slaves became Union soldiers and sailors.). 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. (Lyons Press, 2017), which chronicles some of history's most famous disappearances. The so-called "Emancipation Proclamation" of Lincoln only gave freedom to slaves in the SOUTH! 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. In addition, since publishing the story, Mike Landree, the executive director of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, responded to the story, and we asked him a few questions about the museum. Enjoy exciting benefits and explore new exhibitions year-round. The Confederacy produced nearly all of the nation's rice which amounted to 225 million bushels. Below is a condensedexcerpt from his e-mail: "Thank you for reaching out to us and I am glad to provide some additional information. Prior to, during and even after the War of Northern Aggression.". Once again, the historical record tells us their stories. 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.". But theres no evidence to suggest that significant numbers of Black soldiers fought under the Confederate banner against Union soldiers. 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. Why that's misleading. But indentured servitude, by definition, came nowhere close to chattel slavery. David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994. Your Privacy Rights But historians say the bigger issue is that measuring slaveholders as a percent of the total population is misleading because slavery was illegal in most states by that point. 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. Cookie Policy Small Truth Papering Over a Big Lie - The Atlantic Lee freed his slaves several years before the war was over, and considerably earlier than his Northern counterparts. . "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.". The percentage of population that owned slaves in the south is in single digits. 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. In border states, the percentage was lower -- 3 percent in Delaware and 12 percent in. He focuses on stories with a health/science bent and has reported some of his favorite pieces from the prow of a canoe. 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. U.S. Census | Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 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. Once released, they joined Union regiments or found their way to towns and cities across the North looking for work. Danny Lewis A Note to our Readers 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 size of Union forces in January 1863 totaled over 600,000. Thats slightly different from the 1.6% in the July 11 Facebook post. Where did legalized slavery still exist in the North in 1861? They accompanied the Army of Northern Virginia in its two invasions of the North, in the Antietam Campaign of 1862, and the Gettysburg Campaign of the following year. From 1854 to 1859 Grant managed his father-in-law's farm, White Haven, where a number of slaves lived and worked. Editor's note, November 14, 2016: The posted excerpt from Mike Landree originally included a paragraph about historian Kevin Levin. | 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. If that were true, it is hard to see how the Confederacy would have had enough men to deliver any success on the battlefield. The prevalence of slaveholding was so pervasive among Southerners who heeded the call to arms in 1861 that it became something of a joke; Glatthaar tells of an Irish-born private in a Georgia regiment who quipped to his messmates that "he bought a negro, he says, to have something to fight for.". The largest group was the Irish, followed by Germans, British, French, Poles, and Canadians. 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. This myth, that the Civil War wasnt fundamentally a conflict over slavery, would have been a surprise to the original founders of the Confederacy. Most importantly, servitude wasnt hereditary. These heroic stories of abandonment were quickly supplanted by the extraordinary steps of fealty taken by enslaved men like Moses, Dave or Kincien and became the centerpiece of the Lost Cause movement, which stressed unwavering and unquestioning obedience of slaves to their masters. The 13th Amendment could not have passed until the Southern states, having seceded from the Union, were no longer represented in the U.S. Congress. 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. Even more revealing was their attachment to slavery. The closest we can get to that figure is an estimate that 300,000 men from states that allowed slavery put on the Union blue uniform. The Confederacy included the states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. 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 . It was a mobilization effort that he called "astonishing.". 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. "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!". Most of these soldiers were farmers and the vast majority had direct contact with slavery. Unlike other museums on the war, well focus our lens through the Southerners eyes because their perspective, which was once placed side by side with the Northern view, is now completely absent. A House Divided: Civil War Kentucky | American Battlefield Trust 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. (AP). Its true that not every white person in the pre-Civil War South owned slaves. Since none of the Northern states had rebelled against the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to them. Kevin M. Levin 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. 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). Just last weekend, groundbreaking began on the site of the museum dedicated to continuing a long-discredited myth about the beginnings of the Civil War: the Myth of the Lost Cause, historian Kevin Levin writes for his blog,"Civil War Memory". "Healthy pilots are suffering from myocarditis and dropping dead on flights because of the COVID-19 vaccines. 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. USAFdisabledvet on Twitter 727-821-9494, When President AbrahamLincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation, "there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army. But there is no reason to believe that all or even a hefty minority of these white soldiers were slave owners themselves. In a world of wild talk and fake news, help us stand up for the facts. Four years later Burgwyns body was reinterred in Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina. New York Gov. Some of these men were briefly held as prisoners in Union prison camps. 1800 I Street NW Well provide these facts and allow the individual the opportunity to make up their mind as to what they believe.". 'U.S. Casting the Confederacy as a honorable force standing strongagainst Northern aggressorsis a willful misreading of the historical truth that the institution of slavery was at the core of the Civil War, as George Washington University professorJames Oliver Horton reiteratesin a National Park Service history. All Rights Reserved. #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. Vance said nothing about the attack on Paul Pelosi. Mackey is an educator, a retired U. S. Air Force officer and a former human resources manager with a global company. This mythical narrative, which dates only to the mid-1970s, would be completely unrecognizable to the enlisted men and officers in the Army of Northern Virginia. Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought - American Battlefield Trust As PBS points out, New England's economywith its textile factories and banking industrywas built on the back of Southern slave labor. 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. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. More:Court clears way for removal of Confederate statue at the center of deadly Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally. Fact Check: What Percentage Of White Southerners Owned Slaves. Removal of the wounded took on a renewed urgency through the late afternoon and evening of July 3, following another failed assault along the center of the Union line. 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. High, but not nearly as high as the Union figure. A Controversial Museum Tries to Revive the Myth of the Confederacy's By the fall of 1862, Lincoln had become convinced that acting to end slavery was a necessary step. State-by-state, we applied that percentage to the total number of military age males. Ballot harvesting altered the outcome of a city council election in Yuma County, Arizona. Closely related to Myth #2, the idea that the vast majority of Confederate soldiers were men of modest means rather than large plantation owners is usually used to reinforce the contention that the South wouldnt have gone to war to protect slavery. There is no chain of custody for ballots placed in Box No. I think any museum is designed to challenge people to learn for themselves, not present a slanted storyline to accept without question. Of the 462,634 Confederate soldiers captured 247,769 were paroled on the field and 25,976 died in prison. 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. He was torn like many soldiers were of their loyalty to their State vs their Country. You don't have to talk to a Confederate apologist long before before you'll be told that only a tiny fraction of butternuts owned slaves. Others included mechanics, 24 percent; laborers, 16 percent; commercial, 5 percent; miscellaneous, 4 percent; and professional occupations, 3 percent. ), 'The so-called "Emancipation Proclamation" of Lincoln only gave freedom to slaves in the SOUTH! Farmers comprised 48 percent of the civilian occupations in the Union. | READ MORE. Of course the states had slaves and it was written into the Confederate States Constitution. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. Enslaved and free black people provided even more labor than usual for Virginia farms when 89 percent of eligible white men served in Confederate armies. That left about 27.5 million free people in the U.S., according to 1860 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Although North Carolina mustered more troops to fight for the . Had that happened, it is hard to see how the Confederacy would have been able to fight at all. Enslaved people, themselves helped make the case for emancipation as a military aim, fleeing in droves beyond the lines of approaching Union armies. 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. Advertising Notice 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. 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. When you search for context the context very quickly arrives in terms of what was actually going on.. For many tourists, no visit to Gettysburg is complete without retracing the steps General Robert E. Lees Army of Northern Virginia, those Confederates who crossed the open fields toward the Union line on Cemetery Ridge on July 3 in what is still popularly remembered as Picketts Charge. Once safe behind where the Union lines held strong, however, few turn around and acknowledge the hundreds of enslaved people who emerged from the woods to render assistance to the tattered remnants of the retreating men. Not many. (Maryland had to be kept in the Union by any means necessary, else the United States capital in the District of Columbia would have been completely enclosed within Confederate territory.) Joe enters into the invasion with much gusto, he noted, and is quite active in looking up hidden property.. 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:. 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. 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. As Southerners became increasingly isolated, they reacted by becoming more strident in defending slavery. But many of the soldiers' families owned at least one or two slaves. "Do you not realize that when Lincoln signed his (Emancipation) proclamation, there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army?" Abraham Lincoln was their President. "Designed to help secure plantation districts against slave revolts, this exemption policy inspired much class-based opposition to the Confederacy. Not exactly. 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. Electronic voting machines didn't allow people to vote in Maricopa County, Arizona. Blake Masters wants to privatize Social Security. So says Texas State Senate Resolution No. The nation's 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. 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. Townsend had a brief passage about the number of West Point graduates who remained loyal to the Union. White officers in the Confederacy did indeed bring enslaved people to the front during the Civil War, where they cooked, cleaned and performed other labors for the officers and their regiments. PolitiFact | No, 300,000 slave owners did not fight on the Union side The attachment to slavery, though, was even more powerful. The largest segment were day laborers, finding any work they could. Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline, study warns., When fentanyl burns it smells like popcorn.. South Carolinians in Lieutenant General James Longstreets First Corps witnessed the women of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, appeal to their enslaved servants to run off and seize their freedom. 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. According to Mackey, the 1 percent figure is misleading and needs to be understood. A prominent historian accurately noted that "by the late 1850's most white Southerners viewed themselves as prisoners in their own country, condemned by what they saw as a hysterical abolition movement.". 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. Lee went on the offensive for the following two days but failed to crack the Union defenses. But while looking at history through the eyes of the defeated can provide a more nuanced view of a conflict, it can also be used to try and obscure any wrongdoing on their part as well. 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. 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. Fact Check: What Percentage Of White Southerners Owned Slaves? - Moguldom Carter wanted it known that he was willing to die and that he talked to the clergyman about dying . 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. is rarely a cogent or convincing form of historical argument, especially when as in this case one is referring to actions that were very different in degree and time. Danny is based in Brooklyn, NY. 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.. In the final tabulation, the vast majority of the volunteers of 1861 had a direct connection to slavery. In 1860, slavery was still legal in 15 of the 33 U.S. states, and slaves represented nearly a third of the population in those slaveholding states. Gettysburg may not have been the great turning point of the war for Lee and the Army of Northern Virginiathe army would go on to fight for close to two more yearsbut the Gettysburg campaign did signal a crisis of confidence in soldiers belief in their slaves unwavering fidelity. . More:How an accidental encounter brought slavery to the United States. 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. The mortality rate for prisoners of war was 15.5 percent for Union soldiers and 12 percent for Confederate soldiers. Nevertheless, this. Those were Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky. 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. He is the author of numerous articles and books about the Civil War, including Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil Wars Most Persistent Myth. Gallagher noted that over the fouryears of the war, the South put 800,000-900,000 men under arms. When the war began, slavery was legal in four Union states. The nations 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. The Union had 20,000 miles of railroad compared to 9,000 in the Confederacy and 1,700 in the Border States. Kentucky and Missouri were both claimed as member states by the Confederacy and were represented in the Confederate Congress, and Maryland remained in the Union primarily because U.S. troops quickly imposed martial law and garrisoned the state to head off secession efforts. It is not certain how many foreigners fought for the Confederacy, but the number seems to be in the tens of thousands. These men chose not to escape, and while there can be little doubt that these stories convey evidence of strong bonds between owner and slave, the tendency of Lost Causers to frame them around the narrow motif of unwavering loyalty fails to capture other factors that may have influenced their behavior.