Historians and the Extent

A detailed Summary of Historians and the Extent

"Only a minority of the whites owned slaves," "at all times nearly three-fourths of the white families in the South as a whole held no slaves;" "slave ownership in the South was not widespread;" "not more than a quarter of the white heads of families were slave owners, and even in the cotton states the proportion was less than one-third;" "in 1850, only one in three owned any Negroes; on the eve of the Civil War, the ration was one in four;" and slave owners "probably made up less than a third of southern whites." From the US History textbooks in an elementary school to the Civil War journals of a major university, these lines are reprinted and repeated in an attempt to shape the perception of the public and to ease the insecurities of a nation embarrassed by slavery, an institution that supposedly marred its glorious history, or so says Otto H. Olsen.

In an article that appears in the journal of Civil War History of 1972 entitled, "Historians and the Extent of Slave Ownership in the Southern United States" Olsen attempts to challenge the widely accepted notion that slave ownership was confined to only a few southern white plantation owners and that most of the white population was unaffected by it. The author spends nearly h

In writing on this topic, one worthy of debate and further study, Olsen hoped to show that the "the enslavement of black people did provide extensive economic opportunities for whites," and that, "slavery appears a good bit less oligarchical in several significant economic respects than twentieth century free labor capitalism." Although he has shown the reader that the extent of slave ownership in the south was more widely distributed than previously thought, has made some decent arguments through showing the distortion of facts by some antislavery supporters, and shown studies that support his ideas, Olsen's own studies fail to be thoroughly persuasive. The question as to the extent of slave ownership in the Southern United States remains one of perspective.

The second of these examinations is a comparison of the opportunity extended to white citizens of the slave South to achieve an employer status with the same opportunity afforded citizens in the twentieth century Untied States. Olsen says that the results are similar to those of the first argument. He says that in 1940 the number of employers in the nation was less than 10 percent of the number of households. Pointing out the comparison the author says, "even the figure of 10 percent hardly equals the 31 percent of white families holding slaves in the Confederate South who may be classed as employers."

With the studies the author has given thus far, including those revealing the percentages of southern slave owners and those showing the distorted manner in which they were used by the antislavery movements, Olsen has done well in showing the reader the argument he is about to take on. One can easily see the weaknesses in the way statistics were distorted and can also begin to see the approach Olsen will take in trying to disprove them.

Olsen, Otto H. "Historians and the Extent of Slave Ownerhship in the Southern United States." Civil War History 1972. vol. 18, pp. 101-116

alf of his thirty-seven paragraph article displaying the past and present attitudes of the general population through several case studies which he lists chronologically and explains in brief detail. He tries to discredit a handful of them while, at the same time, injecting his own views. In an attempt to persuade the reader he sets up his side of the debate by citing a few case studies that promote his hypothesis and concludes by relating some of his own opinions and findings including a study where he makes a seemingly strong comparison between those of the population who invested in the slave labor market in 1850 and those who invested in the stock market in 1949.

As the reader might assume, Olsen approaches the same statistical evidence with a different perspective. Where historians usually calculate the percentages of slave ownership using all slave states Olsen points out that in the seven states of the lower South the numbers show a different story. He lists them in the

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Approximate Word count = 1983
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History