What is Reddit's opinion of General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse?

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Solid read here that discusses the subject: https://www.amazon.com/General-Lees-Army-Victory-Collapse/dp/1416596976/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502222994&sr=1-1&keywords=general+lee%27s+army

Of troops who volunteered in 1861 roughly 10% personally owned a slave. An additional 15% had someone within their family who owned a slave while they personally did not.

"Even more revealing was their attachment to slavery. Among the enlistees in 1861, slightly more than one in ten owned slaves personally. This compared favorably to the Confederacy as a whole, in which one in every twenty white persons owned slaves. Yet more than one in every four volunteers that first year lived with parents who were slaveholders. Combining those soldiers who owned slaves with those soldiers who lived with slaveholding family members, the proportion rose to 36 percent. 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. 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.

The attachment to slavery, though, was even more powerful. One in every ten volunteers in 1861 did not own slaves themselves but lived in households headed by non family members who did. 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."

From <em>General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse</em>

While there were certainly ultra rich slave owners who had massive plantations and enslaved hundreds of people, the institution of slavery was pervasive throughout the Southern United States in the years before the U.S. Civil War. According to statistics from the 1860 U.S. Census, there were 393,967 slave owners in the United States at that time. Of these, 216,269 (or 54.9%) owned 5 or fewer slaves, while 78,726 (or 19.9%) of slave owners had just one slave. So, while ultra rich slaveholders may have been some of the most visible, they made up a relatively small portion of slave owners overall (just ~0.6% of slave owners had 100 or more slaves in 1860). [1]

Now, let's look at that 1.6% figure. Though the figure cited in the post can be calculated from census data, it is grossly misleading and does not accurately convey the scope of slavery in the United States in 1860.

Let's start with this - where does this 1.6% figure come from? This statistic seems to be based on the 1860 U.S. Census, and is calculated by taking the total number of slave owners recorded in the census and dividing that by the total white population of the United States. According to the census, there were 393,967 slave owners and 26,922,537 white people in the United States in 1860. If we take these two numbers and divide, we get (393,967/26,922,537) = 1.46%. I've seen some posts online state the figure as 1.4%, while others have the number as high as 1.7%. It varies slightly from post to post, but for our purposes, all of these are close enough to be considered the same basic claim.

This statistic is effectively meaningless and fails to capture the extent of slavery in the United States, particularly in the South, for a variety of reasons.

First, by 1860, most Northern states had already outlawed slavery, which meant that there were no slave owners living in those states. However, the statistic we calculated above includes the white population of all of the free states in its denominator. Including these people as part of this calculation lowers the percentage significantly.

Second, the census count of slave owners only considers those individuals who legally owned slaves themselves - specifically, the head of the household (usually a man). This means that women, children, and any other men living in a household that owned slaves were not included in this figure, because they were not technically “slave owners” - they merely lived in a slave owning household.

Third, just because someone didn’t own a slave themselves, doesn’t mean they weren’t a “slave master” or otherwise benefited from the practice of slavery. Whites who worked for plantation owners may have overseen slaves as part of their job duties without ever owning slaves themselves, and the practice of renting slaves, or “hiring out”, was fairly common, allowing small planters to use slave labor without directly owning any slaves. It was entirely possible to benefit from the institution of slavery without being a slaveowner yourself.

So, what might be a more meaningful number? Ideally, we would look at slave owning households rather than individuals. Here, we'll turn to Dr. Joseph Glatthaar, author of General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse, writing here about Confederate soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia (as quoted in The Atlantic, August 9, 2010 [2]):

“Even more revealing was their attachment to slavery. Among the enlistees in 1861, slightly more than one in ten owned slaves personally. This compared favorably to the Confederacy as a whole, in which one in every twenty white persons owned slaves. Yet more than one in every four volunteers that first year lived with parents who were slaveholders. Combining those soldiers who owned slaves with those soldiers who lived with slaveholding family members, the proportion rose to 36 percent. 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. 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.

“The attachment to slavery, though, was even more powerful. One in every ten volunteers in 1861 did not own slaves themselves but lived in households headed by non family members who did. 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. Nor did the direct exposure stop there. Untold numbers of enlistees rented land from, sold crops to, or worked for slaveholders. In the final tabulation, the vast majority of the volunteers of 1861 had a direct connection to slavery.” [3]

So, while the 1.6% figure may be based on figures in the 1860 U.S. Census data, it completely misses the bigger picture and misleads about how widespread slavery was in the states where it remained in 1860. The institution of slavery was a pervasive system that touched every aspect of life, whether someone owned slaves themselves or not. The statistic cited in the original post grossly misrepresents the scale of American slavery on the eve of the Civil War.

_______________________________

[1] Jenny Bourne, Economic History Association, "Slavery in the United States", figures calculated based on "Table 4, Holdings of Southern Slaveowners by state, 1860":https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/statistics_on_slavery.htm https://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/

[2] Andy Hall, “Small Truth Papering Over Big Lie,” https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/small-truth-papering-over-a-big-lie/61136/

[3] Joseph Glatthaar, General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse, <em>https://www.amazon.com/General-Lees-Army-Victory-Collapse/dp/1416596976/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1276825358&amp;sr=1-1</em>

https://www.amazon.com/General-Lees-Army-Victory-Collapse/dp/1416596976/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1276825358&amp;sr=1-1

> Here is a good video on this topic

No, it's not - it's by someone who has no idea what they're talking about, either.

Educating yourself via "Rebel Media" youtube videos isn't the wisest move: if you want to learn about the causes of the Civil War, why don't you read the actual words of the people who did the rebelling? You might start here with the 4 declarations regarding the causes of secession issued by seceding states, or with the Vice-President of the Confederacy's cornerstone speech. Or maybe you could just read what other Confederates were saying.

Or if the Confederates' own words aren't good enough, how about some basic reasoning: why do you think it is that all of the states which attempted to secede had more than 20% of their populations as slaves; that no state with more than 20% of the population enslaved attempted to secede; and that secession occurred directly in response to the election of the moderate Republican Abraham Lincoln?

Or if neither reasoning nor evidence helps you, how about math? According to the 1860 US census, among the states which attempted to secede, 30.8% of families owned slaves: according to the exhaustive study of the Army of Northern Virginia performed by historian Joseph Glatthaar, about 10% of the 1861 enlistees personally owned slaves (along with more than half of the officers), and very nearly half either owned slaves or lived in a slaveowning household. And that doesn't count the ones who merely had friends and neighbors who owned slaves; who ran businesses which rented slaves; who made their money by doing business with slaveowners; who aspired to own slaves; or who simply believed that slavery was morally right and liked having someone to feel superior to.

> Do you think with the recent wars the US has been involved in that the people fighting them were the bad guys?

I don't think there has to be only one set of 'bad guys'. And people who aren't particularly nice can still sometimes do the right thing.