what percentage of confederate soldiers owned slaves

Well provide these facts and allow the individual the opportunity to make up their mind as to what they believe.". In the immediate aftermath of the battle and continuing throughout the Confederate armys retreat to Virginia, other camp slaves and enslaved men, however, abandoned their posts. In 1860, nearly 20% of households in seceding states owned slaves, he said. 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. | 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. Conversely, only 30 percent of soldiers in the Army of the Potomac were farmers or farmhands. Confederate soldiers were optimistic about the prospects for the survival of the Confederacy and the institution of slavery well into 1864. . 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. 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. ), 'The so-called "Emancipation Proclamation" of Lincoln only gave freedom to slaves in the SOUTH! 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. Some Confederate officers wanted to enlist enslaved people earlier: Gen. Patrick Cleburne proposed enlisting African American soldiers early in 1864, but Jefferson Davis rejected the suggestion and ordered it never to be discussed again. A majority of those young men who marched off to war in the spring of 1861 were fully vested in the "peculiar institution." As Southerners became increasingly isolated, they reacted by becoming more strident in defending slavery. 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. They fought the battle defending their homelands against an invading army." The Lost . The map of Virginia, in particular, goes a long way to explaining the breakup of that state during the war. 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. 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. We are excited to tell the stories of our ancestors through their own words and deeds. So says Texas State Senate Resolution No. Your Privacy Rights Enlistment strength for the Union Army is 2,672,341 which can be broken down as: Enlistment strength for the Confederate Army ranges from 750,000 to 1,227,890. "These soldiers generally came from low slaveholding areas, such as the mountain regions of Tennessee, and small, non-slaveholding families," he said. Many Northern civilians owned slaves. (This is usually followed immediately by an assertion that the speaker's own Confederate ancestors never owned slaves, either.) In 1865, the Union won the war. As retold by the family of the fallen officer after the war, the servant eventually made his way home and remembered enough information about the burial site to escort family members there to disinter the body for transport home shortly after the war. The percentage of population that owned slaves in the south is in single digits. The Confederacy produced nearly all of the nation's rice which amounted to 225 million bushels. That distinction might make no difference to Baldwins argument, but it makes a big difference in the underlying math. These men performed a wide range of roles for their owners, including cooking, cleaning, foraging and sending messages to families back home. The user who posted the original tweet and the Facebook user who shared it on July 11 did not respond to requests for comment. But indentured servitude, by definition, came nowhere close to chattel slavery. For one thing, it was temporary; all but the most serious felons were freed at the end of their contracts. The Union had 1.1 million factory workers, while the Confederacy had 111,000 and the Border States had 70,000. The battle that commenced west and north of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, expanded gradually as the two armies shifted units along the roads leading to the small town. That makes places like the future National Confederate Museum at Historic Elm Springscomplicated, to say the least. Had that happened, it is hard to see how the Confederacy would have been able to fight at all. But the general scale shows how Baldwins figure stretches belief. But there is no reason to believe that all or even a hefty minority of these white soldiers were slave owners themselves. 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. High, but not nearly as high as the Union figure. 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. "Do you not realize that when Lincoln signed his (Emancipation) proclamation, there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army?" that black soldiers would still be slaves. ', 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. Nevertheless, this. 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. Why that's misleading. The real Biden was executed for his crimes long ago along with Clinton. "', The only evidence that Union general (and later United States President) Ulysses S. Grant ever owned any slaves is a document he signed in 1859 that emancipated "my Negro man William" (i.e, William Jones), whom Grant stated in the document he had purchased from Frederick Dent (his father-in-law). The largest group was the Irish, followed by Germans, British, French, Poles, and Canadians. "Many Northern civilians owned slaves. U.S. Grant also had several slaves, who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December of 1865. 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. Their substantial median combined wealth ($5,600) and average combined wealth ($8,979) mirrored that high proportion of slave ownership. Specifically, we'll be assessing the statements from "the Truth about Confederate History" reproduced in the shaded box below, which claim to be separating myth from fact (while doing anything but): FACT: Entirely untrue. Its true that not every white person in the pre-Civil War South owned slaves. 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. Not exactly. Contrarily, Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed his slaves (which he never purchased they were inherited) in 1862! There is no chain of custody for ballots placed in Box No. The Confederacy included the states of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Find out the truth behind five common myths or misunderstandings about slavery in the United States. Danny is based in Brooklyn, NY. 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. Among the enlistees in 1861, slightly more than one in ten owned slaves personally. Thats slightly different from the 1.6% in the July 11 Facebook post. Washington, DC Lee freed his slaves several years before the war was over, and considerably earlier than his Northern counterparts. Lee's army numbered 90,000 at its strongest and was organized into state-specific regiments and brigades, with about 55 percent of its men coming from the Upper South. Chemtrails are being put into the atmosphere and are trickling down into soil and water, becoming the real cause of disease., "There is no Biden presidency. "Ninety-eight percent of Texas Confederate soldiers never owned a slave." 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 Confederate Congress played a role in that. Union soldiers outnumbered Confederate soldiers by a ratio of 2 to 1. 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. The stat itself is slightly off:Census Bureau data from that period shows about 1.4% of free people owned slaves in 1860. Prior to, during and even after the War of Northern Aggression.". Slavery was illegal in all but 15 states by 1860. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. 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.". Combining those soldiers who owned slaves with those soldiers who lived with slaveholding family members, the proportion rose to 36 percent. The attachment to slavery, though, was even more powerful. Soldier demographics for the Confederate Army are not available due to incomplete and destroyed enlistment records. | Surprisingly, to many history impaired individuals, most Union Generals and staff had slaves to serve them! If Confederate Major General William Dorsey Pender worried about his camp servant named Joe, he Pender did not share it in what would prove to be his final letter home to his wife. 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. Thats nearly three times higher than the number shared in the post. Editor's note, November 14, 2016: The posted excerpt from Mike Landree originally included a paragraph about historian Kevin Levin. It records basic data about the free population, including names, sex, approximate age, occupation and value of real and personal property of each person in a household. PolitiFact and Snopes have previously evaluated similar claims that popped up in 2017 and 2019, respectively. The purpose of the museum is to tell the story of the Confederate Soldier, Sailor, and Marine and it will provide facts for everyone to make their own mind up about the war. The other battles listed above all lasted more than one day. For the record, in 1863, Confederate forces totaled about 300,000. The Union included the states of Maine, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California, Nevada, and Oregon. "Among those Southern whites who did own slaves, even in the Unionist border slave states, many supported the Confederacy, and fought for it.". It wasnt, she said. 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. The census also reported the percentage of families that owned slaves in each state. According to 1860 census numbers, an estimated 8 percent of families in the United Statesowned slaves when the South seceded.) Where did legalized slavery still exist in the North in 1861? "Check it out.". 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 statement attributed to Grant about not his freeing his slaves earlier than December 1865 (when the 13th Amendment was adopted) because "Good help is so hard to come by these days" is almost certainly an apocryphal one. #FHTEIn 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.. A Note to our Readers 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. There is a bright side to the story of the Lost Cause: after generations, it appears to be fading. Vance said nothing about the attack on Paul Pelosi. Anywhere between 6,000 and 10,000 enslaved people supported in various capacities Lee's army in the summer of 1863. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission. Cookie Policy T he presidential election of 1860 deepened a growing chasm between divided Kentuckians. 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. 1800 I Street NW In fact, until March 1865, Confederate Army policy specifically prohibited Black people from serving as soldiers. 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. 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. The average fraction of slaveholding families was about 11 percent for those Union states, while in the Confederacy, it was about 40 percent. West Point is located in New York. For one major from South Carolina, his war ended along the difficult retreat route from Gettysburg, forcing his servant to take steps to properly bury the body. Combining those soldiers who owned slaves with those soldiers who lived with slaveholding family members, the proportion rose to 36 percent. 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. 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. 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. Face masks may raise risk of stillbirths, testicular dysfunction and cognitive decline, study warns., When fentanyl burns it smells like popcorn.. Darity cited a chart and research by U.S. civil war expert Al Mackey to back up his statement. West Virginia fell somewhere in between because it split off from Virginia in 1863 to join the Union. They fought the battle defending their homelands againstan invading army.. Some eagerly awaited reunion with their own families. But that provides no evidence that all of them owned slaves, either directly themselves or through their families. But the suggestion that "many Northern civilians" owned slaves at the time of the Civil War is flat out wrong. This included men in all the Confederate states, plus Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky. Nor did the direct exposure stop there. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook. Based on 1860 Census results, 49 percent of Mississippi households owned slaves at the start of the Civil War, and. 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. . A small number signed up for training, but theres no evidence they saw action before the wars end. All of them agree on these approximate totals: White Union soldiers from Confederate states -- 75,000-100,000, White Union soldiers from slaveholding Union states -- 200,000, So, in round figures, it is reasonably accurate to say that 300,000 white men from slaveholding states fought on the Union side. The first thing we did was reach out to Baldwin to learn his source. Slavery in Delaware nonetheless ended with the adoption of that amendment in December 1865. 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. The historians we reached said the actual number of slaveholders who fought for the Union was tiny, perhaps a few thousand. To avoid confusion as to the source of the factual errors, and to prevent any misunderstanding about Levin's credentials, we have removed the pragraph. 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. "Mommy, he did it too!" So while Lee did technically free those slaves at the end of 1862, it was not his choice to do so; he was required to emancipate them by the conditions of his father-in-law's will. May 15, 2014. Others have refuted Daritys claim, denying that slaves enriched their white owners. ". . 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. Enslaved people, themselves helped make the case for emancipation as a military aim, fleeing in droves beyond the lines of approaching Union armies. From 1854 to 1859 Grant managed his father-in-law's farm, White Haven, where a number of slaves lived and worked. The owners were not getting rich. (Note: these links often don't run run the map-generating scripts properly, so be patient and click gently.) . 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. It is not certain how many foreigners fought for the Confederacy, but the number seems to be in the tens of thousands. That was 40 percent above the tally for all households in the Old South. Percentage of slaves in each county of the slave states in 1860. . The nations 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. The ocean is "flat" and "contained" by land features that jut up from a flat (not spherical) earth. 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:. #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. 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). 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. Once again, the historical record tells us their stories. All were home to substantial pro-Confederate elements and contributed significant numbers of troops to the Confederate side during the Civil War. Texas also contributed Mexican troops. Moses then followed a Confederate brigade back to Winchester, Virginia, before heading home with his owners personal effects to Swainsboro, Georgia. Get the latest History stories in your inbox? Your Privacy Rights 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. Your membership is the foundation of our sustainability and resilience. Baldwin wrote. Terms of Use Joseph T. Glatthaar, in his magnificent study of the force that eventually became the Army of Northern Virginia, lays out the evidence. 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 . This argument, a staple among those seeking to redefine the conflict as an abstract battle over states rights rather than a fight to preserve slavery, does not hold up. Little is known about William Jones; as even Grant's biographers note, "exactly when and how Grant acquired ownership of a slave remain something of a mystery." More:How an accidental encounter brought slavery to the United States. Most importantly, servitude wasnt hereditary. 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. Ninety-five percent of Lee's soldiers came from farming communities. As a crude analogy, how many PFCs and corporals in Iraq and Afghanistan today own their own homes? Prior to, during and even after the War of Northern Aggression. The "Twenty Negro Law", also known as the "Twenty Slave Law" and the "Twenty Nigger Law", was a piece of legislation enacted by the Confederate Congress during the American Civil War.The law specifically exempted from Confederate military service one white man for every twenty slaves owned on a Confederate plantation, or for two or more plantations within five miles of each other that . During the American Civil War slaves and free blacks served the Confederate Army, in many roles and duties. 33701 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. Others included mechanics, 24 percent; laborers, 16 percent; commercial, 5 percent; miscellaneous, 4 percent; and professional occupations, 3 percent. A number of rebels passed by until a young man of benevolent expression attempted to locate a surgeon. We need your help. U.S. Grant also had several slaves, who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December of 1865. He was torn like many soldiers were of their loyalty to their State vs their Country. For the Union states that allowed slavery, the 1860 census shows that they had much lower rates of slave ownership than the Confederate states. By the end of the first day, Confederates had achieved the upper hand as the Union army established a new defensive line south of the town, with Confederates taking up a position opposite along Seminary Ridge. If other museums refuse to provide that balance, well do so. 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. They werent, at least not initially; they were fighting to hold the nation together. Of the 462,634 Confederate soldiers captured 247,769 were paroled on the field and 25,976 died in prison. 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. (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.) | READ MORE. 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". "It will be seen that the disloyalty of West Point was not as great as is generally supposed. These are people who are truck drivers and who are nail technicians and nurses aides., I had zero emails that were classified., The Congressional Budget Office says 90% of the revenue generated from the new IRS agents will come from people making less than $200,000 and the revenue generated will be $300-plus billion., Democrats are voting to add an army of 87,000 IRS agents who will target middle class taxpayers and conduct at least 1 million more audits each year. 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! . 2023 Smithsonian Magazine 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. The state of New Jersey was something of an outlier. If that were true, it is hard to see how the Confederacy would have had enough men to deliver any success on the battlefield. Yet more than one in every four volunteers that first year lived with parents who were slaveholders. Untold numbers of enlistees rented land from, sold crops to, or worked for slaveholders. 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. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. 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. So you can stop basing your hate for an entire race for the actions of a mere 1.6%, the 2019 Twitter post says. 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. 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. Electronic voting machines didn't allow people to vote in Maricopa County, Arizona. For real Confederates from Robert E. Lee on down, camp slaves and other enslaved workersthe entire institution of slavery, reallywere crucial to the ultimate success of the army in the field and the Confederate insurgency as a whole. Most of these soldiers were farmers and the vast majority had direct contact with slavery. Danny Lewis is a multimedia journalist working in print, radio, and illustration. It is, as TheRaven would say, a small truth used to paper over a big lie. Whats the truth? 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. 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). 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.

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