the first surprise to me was that there was only
slightly more than 6 million white people in the whole
of the souther and border states. that makes the
number of casualties in the war that much more
staggering. 

the first numbers he quotes of 6,148,744 only 347,525
were slave owners comes to 5.6 per cent closer to my
figures than yours, but i'll read further. 

indeed this article is only saying thus far that the
basis for these numbers was not firmly established
while addmitting that the figures can hardly be argued
with. 

they then speak of one in four owning slaves, but if
you put the figures into a calulator i do not see how
they can support the one in four. the math does not
work. it appears that their argument is that family
members of the slave owners were not counted. i do not
know to what extent that may have been true and to
what extent it would have screwed the figures, but i
highly doubt it would have go near the 49% estimate
they made for virginia, and i'd go the same way on the
others. the money was just not there to support these
figures. 

contrast with today where the government is
comtemplating doing away with the 1 cent and possible
the 5 cent coins; that time era while having large
coins had a great number of 1/2 cent, 1 cent, two cent
and 3 cent coins to give change for the 5 cent coins. 
the need for a 1/2 cent coin to give change for a 1
cent transaction would indicate average transactions
to be in these small coins.  with a slave selling for
4-5 thousand dollar range that i read in the book of
years ago, i doubt very seriouly that the percentage
of the wealthy that this article suggest would have
been ecconomically viable. 

of course the coinage conjecture is just me putting my
ecconomic education and my coin collecting hobby
together to form the opinion. 
  
--- Deri James <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On Thursday 10 April 2008 23:55:07 ken barber wrote:
> >   no i did not catch deri, but, i would like to
> see
> > it. it is diametrically opposed to a book i read
> > several years ago.
> >    also the ecconomy of the time i do not think
> would
> > support that many rich people in any of those
> states.
> > the coinage of the era would point to much less
> > wealth.
> 
> Hi Ken,
> 
> Here's the link again:-
> 
>
<http://www.southernhistory.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=9406&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0>
> 
> I hope you get a chance to read it. He makes some
> very valid points, although 
> there is certainly room to disagree with some of his
> conclusions.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Deri
> 
> PS The first third of the article sets out the
> traditional wisdom (that the 
> slave owning class was very narrow) and then he
> suggests reasons why such a 
> view may be incorrect.
> 
> -----------------------
> 
> To change your mail settings or leave the C-PALSY
> list, go here:
> 
>
http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?SUBED1=c-palsy
> 
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

-----------------------

To change your mail settings or leave the C-PALSY list, go here:

http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?SUBED1=c-palsy