re: How many poor dirt farmers owned slaves

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Those poor slaveowners

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My great grand pappy said it was a pain in the arse to keep all dem darkies healthy enough to work, great grandma blames all his worries over it for his early death.































































This post brought to you by your friend sarcasam

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Well, nobody has claimed that. The claim was that roughly 30% of HOUSEHOLDS in the South owned slaves. In Mississippi the number was 49%.

And that claim is accurate.

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It is not.

Most small farms (which made up a vast majority of the population) needed only small numbers of workers to work said farms. Say ma and pa have 100 acres of cropland. The do not have slaves but they do have 6 or 8 kids to work that land as kids can be made for free while a single slave might cost the equivalent of their entire income for a year.

I have read many old wills and testaments recorded in courthouses in the south. You will see some one who dies and has pages assets with lots of slaves. When you look at the smaller will you rarely see a slave in a death bequest. Spend some times reading the actual documents in your own courthouses instead of some history revisionist who has no clue.

When paper records are destroyed this will become the future history of the past