The size of Union forces in January 1863 totaled over 600,000. The upland residents of what became West Virginia fit the same mold. A small number signed up for training, but theres no evidence they saw action before the wars end. The Army of the Potomac was instead a predominately working-class army. Of course the states had slaves and it was written into the Confederate States Constitution. As far as slavery goes, every museum on the war is currently obsessed with the subject. I never saw fidelity stronger in any one, noted the quartermaster in a letter. The Union had 20,000 miles of railroad compared to 9,000 in the Confederacy and 1,700 in the Border States. 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. Nevertheless, this. Gallagher noted that over the fouryears of the war, the South put 800,000-900,000 men under arms. Yes, There Were Black Confederates. Here's Why U.S. Grant also had several slaves, who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December of 1865. "Do you not realize that when Lincoln signed his (Emancipation) proclamation, there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army?" 3 at Maricopa, Arizona, polling sites. 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. 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. That left about 27.5 million free people in the U.S., according to 1860 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. 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? Joe enters into the invasion with much gusto, he noted, and is quite active in looking up hidden property.. Perhaps nowhere more so than in a widespread and ironically titled "Truth about Confederate History" article. 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. 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. And during the fierce early days of the war when the South was obliterating the Yankee armies! Terms of Use Small Truth Papering Over a Big Lie - The Atlantic Ninety-five percent of Lee's soldiers came from farming communities. But it's simply not true in any meaningful way. The Truth Behind '40 Acres and a Mule' - PBS Looking at the letters written by Confederate leaders and in their declarations of secession from the Union makes it clear that preserving slavery was central to their reasons for trying to split off into their own country in the wake of the 1860 election. You cansubscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here. 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. (In addition, as many as 200,000 black former slaves became Union soldiers and sailors.). As we researched this, we found that Baldwins statement was vague on one key point -- he didnt say which states the slaveholders came from. It's true that in an extremely narrow sense, only a very small proportion of Confederate soldiers owned slaves in their own right. In 1860, nearly 20% of households in seceding states owned slaves, he said. Once again, the historical record tells us their stories. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission. All three historians told us that the number of men on the Union side who owned slaves was quite small. 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. All were home to substantial pro-Confederate elements and contributed significant numbers of troops to the Confederate side during the Civil War. It is, as TheRaven would say, a small truth used to paper over a big lie. 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. Captain William McLeod of the 38th Georgia, meanwhile, died before the retreat, but an enslaved worker named Moses took steps to bury McLeod on a farm nearby. For example, the patriarch of a family might have been counted as the slave owner in the census, but other members of the household had authority to commit violence with impunity on enslaved people, he said. 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. Moses then followed a Confederate brigade back to Winchester, Virginia, before heading home with his owners personal effects to Swainsboro, Georgia. Slavery was illegal in all but 15 states by 1860. A Controversial Museum Tries to Revive the Myth of the Confederacy's In Mississippi, 49 percent of families owned slaves, and in South Carolina, 46 percent did. Well address states rights in the context of the founding principles of our country and the Jeffersonian vs. Hamiltonian views of republicanism. #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. #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. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. Finally, in the last weeks of the conflict, the Confederate government gave in to Gen. Robert E. Lees desperate plea for more men, allowing enslaved people to enlist in exchange for some kind of post-war freedom. If you only focus on who technically owned slaves, though, abetter metric would be to evaluate the proportion of slave owners in the 15 states where slavery was still legal in 1860, Arizona State's Schermerhorn said. To break it down about how many U.S. citizens owned slaves is absurd, Glatthaar said in an email. We found only one biography (out of many) that supported the notion that Sherman ever owned slaves, and that work merely stated, without elaboration, that Sherman "had a slave" at some point during the former period (a wording that allows for the possibility that Sherman rented or was tended to by a slave for a while rather than actually owning one). 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. slaves represented nearly a third of the population in those slaveholding states. 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 . . He was torn like many soldiers were of their loyalty to their State vs their Country. At the time, the total U.S. population was about 31.4 million, including more than 3.9 million slaves. 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. 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 state of New Jersey was something of an outlier. where only 11.3 percent of people owned slaves.11 There are numerous accounts of gangs of deserters who preyed upon the ci-vilian population in North . Advertising Notice Farmers comprised 48 percent of the civilian occupations in the Union. 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. 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. According to the U.S. Census of 1860 about 25% or one in every four households, in the South owned slaves and about 7% of Confederate soldiers owned slaves and according to the same U.S. census 2% of free Southern blacks owned slaves in 1860. This statement is somewhat ambiguous. Download the official NPS app before your next visit. Once released, they joined Union regiments or found their way to towns and cities across the North looking for work. PDF Desertion in the Confederate Army: A Disease that Crippled Dixie That was 40 percent above the tally for all households in the Old South. This included men in all the Confederate states, plus Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and. When asked why he didn't free his slaves earlier, Grant stated "Good help is so hard to come by these days.". 727-821-9494, When President AbrahamLincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation, "there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army. A House Divided: Civil War Kentucky | American Battlefield Trust "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. Farmers comprised 69 percent of the civilian occupations in the Confederacy. Enslaved workers constituted the backbone of the Confederate war effort. J.D. "Ninety-eight percent of Texas Confederate soldiers never owned a slave." Although North Carolina mustered more troops to fight for the . "Oil pulling improves overall oral health, strengthens gums, helps prevent cavities, whitens teeth and reduces plaque. Either way, even though legislative efforts to abolish slavery in Delaware had been unsuccessful, by the time of the 1860 census 91.7% of Delaware's black population was free, and fewer than 1,800 slaves remained in the state hardly a condition supportive of the notion that "many" Northerners owned slaves. "Check it out.". Needless to say, men of modest means wereless likely to own slaves. 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. 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. They were up to their necks in it. 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. This compared favorably to the Confederacy as a whole, in which one in every twenty white persons owned slaves. 'U.S. The first thing we did was reach out to Baldwin to learn his source. In addition to McPherson, we reached historians Robert Tinkler at California State University-Chico and Gary Gallagher at the University of Virginia. Black Civil War Soldiers - Facts, Death Toll & Enlistment - History Army of Northern Virginia - Encyclopedia Virginia Fact check: Stat grossly misleading about slave ownership in 1860 (AP). (In fact, only a small percentage of the population did. The real Biden was executed for his crimes long ago along with Clinton. According to Mackey, the 1 percent figure is misleading and needs to be understood. Although Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland never formally seceded from the Union, they were not "Northern" states in either a geographic or a cultural sense. 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. Cookie Policy 2023 Smithsonian Magazine In 1865, Moses made the long journey back to Gettysburg with McLeods brother-in-law to bring the body home. When you search for context the context very quickly arrives in terms of what was actually going on.. Anywhere between 6,000 and 10,000 enslaved people supported in various capacities Lee's army in the summer of 1863. 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. The nations 1860 census counted a bit under 1.6 million men of military age (18-45) in slaveholding states. In the navy about one-third of the officers came from slaveholding States, yet remained faithful to the Union; while one-eighth of the Union army, or 300,000 men, were contributed by the Southern States.". Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. High, but not nearly as high as the Union figure. Of the 462,634 Confederate soldiers captured 247,769 were paroled on the field and 25,976 died in prison. It is not certain how many foreigners fought for the Confederacy, but the number seems to be in the tens of thousands. 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. We can only take this as a rough guide for several reasons in the course of the war, young men would be killed, others would come of age, and later in the war, the Confederates broadened the age of conscription to span from 17 to 50 years old. NOT in the North! 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). U.S. Census | Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog With the exception of rice and tobacco, the Union had a clear agricultural advantage. The mortality rate for prisoners of war was 15.5 percent for Union soldiers and 12 percent for Confederate soldiers. . The ideology has been used to whitewash slaverys role in the Civil War for generations. They werent, at least not initially; they were fighting to hold the nation together. Myths and Misunderstandings: Slaveholding and the Confederate Soldier Prior to, during and even after the War of Northern Aggression.". 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 other battles listed above all lasted more than one day. They were fighting for survival as cotton and tobacco prices were on a roller coaster.. Many of them labored as cooks, butchers, blacksmiths and hospital attendants, and. Most of these soldiers were farmers and the vast majority had direct contact with slavery. Kathy Hochul wants quarantine camps and imprisonment if youre suspected of having a disease. Busted: 6 Civil War Myths | Confederate Flag & Slavery | Live Science We wont tell people what to believe, but we will challenge them on what they think they know. that black soldiers would still be slaves. They viewed theinstitution of slavery asthe white supremacist foundation that theSouthern way oflife was built on. 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. State-by-state, we applied that percentage to the total number of military age males. Data archived from the 1860 census shows the 1.6% is slightly off. 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. Others included laborers, 9 percent; mechanics, 5.3 percent; commercial, 5 percent; professional occupations, 2.1 percent; and miscellaneous, 1.6 percent. The total population in Sharpsburg in 1860 was around 1,300. Cookie Policy (Lyons Press, 2017), which chronicles some of history's most famous disappearances. Among the enlistees in 1861, slightly more than one in ten owned slaves personally. Failing this he directed some negroes to go and gather items that might improve our comfort. Matt Butler, assistant surgeon of the 37th Virginia, had a horse shot out from under him and was wounded in the foot on July 2 as he tended to fallen Confederates. 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. Danny Lewis is a multimedia journalist working in print, radio, and illustration. 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. 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. (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.) With the inclusion of those who resided in nonfamily slaveholding households, the direct exposure to bondage among enlisted personnel was four of every nine. 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. Civil War Facts | American Battlefield Trust Privacy Statement Your Privacy Rights 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. USAFdisabledvet on Twitter ', 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. For Glatthaar's purposes and ours, the 1860 census, taken a few months before the outbreak of the war, is crucial. 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. For the record, in 1863, Confederate forces totaled about 300,000. Misinformation about the antebellum South, the Civil War, and the practice of slavery in the U.S. is rife on the Internet. Slavery in Delaware nonetheless ended with the adoption of that amendment in December 1865. "Among those Southern whites who did own slaves, even in the Unionist border slave states, many supported the Confederacy, and fought for it.". . Below is a condensedexcerpt from his e-mail: "Thank you for reaching out to us and I am glad to provide some additional information. The largest group was the Irish, followed by Germans, British, French, Poles, and Canadians. . "Many Northern civilians owned slaves. 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. Abraham Lincoln was their President. 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. Slavery and Emancipation in Sharpsburg, MD - National Park Service 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. Southerners who didn't ownslavesaspired to one day become slave-owners themselves one day. It also did not apply to slave states that had not seceded from the Union (Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri), to the Virginia counties that had opted to break away from that state (and were soon to be admitted to the Union as the state of West Virginia), nor to the parts of the Confederacy that were deemed to be no longer in a state of rebellion against the United States (Tennessee and lower Louisiana) because they were occupied by Union troops. Combining those soldiers who owned slaves with those soldiers who lived with slaveholding family members, the proportion rose to 36 percent. On the homefront, the Union had $234,000,000 in bank deposit and coined money or specie while the Confederacy had $74,000,000 and the Border States had $29,000,000. The Confederate Congress played a role in that. But many of the soldiers' families owned at least one or two slaves. 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. TheLost Cause lament is ill-conceived, however. 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. 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. U.S. Grant also had several slaves, who were only freed after the 13th amendment in December of 1865. stated on November 8, 2022 election night coverage on Fox News: stated on November 1, 2022 a town hall event: stated on October 26, 2022 a newspaper interview: stated on October 25, 2022 an Instagram post: stated on October 9, 2022 an interview on CBS News' Face the Nation: stated on September 27, 2022 a campaign ad: stated on September 22, 2022 a Secretary of State debate: stated on September 8, 2022 a campaign ad: stated on August 28, 2022 an interview on CNN: stated on August 10, 2022 an interview on Fox News: stated on April 24, 2023 in una publicacin en Facebook: stated on March 1, 2023 in a social media post: stated on April 23, 2023 in an Instagram post: stated on April 24, 2023 in an Instagram post: stated on April 16, 2023 in a Facebook post: stated on April 20, 2023 in an Instagram post: stated on April 12, 2023 in a Facebook post: stated on April 21, 2023 in a Facebook post: All Rights Reserved Poynter Institute 2020, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. These primary source accounts, in the form of letters and diaries, detail how camp slaves remained in the rear, prepared to perform various support roles. magnificent study of the force that eventually became the Army of Northern Virginia. However, we will address it in the context of the political, economic, social, and constitutional atmosphere of the 1860s. 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. So while a slave owner was only counted once, other people and businesses, including railroad companies, could benefit from slavery as well, Schermerhorn said. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. He posted, one lie circulating that only 1% of white southerners owned slaves. "Mommy, he did it too!" Percentage of slaves in each county of the slave states in 1860. . 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. As more Confederate monuments were being removed in the South this month, an old claim seeking to downplay the extent of slave ownership began to recirculate online. One in every ten volunteers in 1861 did not own slaves themselves but lived in households headed by non family members who did. Free African-Americans and fugitive slaves in Adams County (including Gettysburg) and surrounding counties fled with the news of Lees advance. 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. Who Fought? | American Battlefield Trust Contrarily, Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed his slaves (which he never purchased they were inherited) in 1862! Children of indentured servants were born free; slaves children were the property of their owners. Fact Check: What Percentage Of White Southerners Owned Slaves? - Moguldom Combining those soldiers who owned slaves with those soldiers who lived with slaveholding family members, the proportion rose to 36 percent. 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. She has been a frequent contributor to History.com since 2005, and is the author of Breaking History: Vanished!