Common historical fallacies: Difference between revisions

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** slaves & indentured servants represented 21.3%
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** the labor of colonial African slavery was focused on "cash crops" of rice, indigo, tobacco





Revision as of 01:08, 19 February 2022

Creating Common historical fallacies taught by high school & other teachers

  • teachers are frequently responsible for erroneous historical facts or interpretations
    • teachers have a point of view that inescapably informs their teaching
  • the best teachers "teach" not "preach"
    • but even the most objectively-minded teacher has as a point of view, an underlying outlook

US History fallacies[edit | edit source]

Slavery was the basis of the American economy[edit | edit source]

Enslaved populations in the Thirteen Colonies in 1770.[1]
Evolution of the enslaved population of the United States as a percentage of the population of each state, 1790–1860

logical fallacy 1: colonial slave v. overall population growth[edit | edit source]

  • the growth of colonial African slavery was linear until the development of the cotton gin
    • after which, given the truly slave-dependent cotton economy ("king cotton") slavery became a more important element of the US economy
      • but it was never a dominant or even majority source of American economic activity
    • up to 1800, colonial population growth was much higher for whites than for slaves
    • whereas, after 1800, slave population increased dramatically, overtaking white populations in many areas of the south
      • therefore slavery was not the basis of the colonial development
Year Free Population increase % Slave Population increase %
1610 350 n/a n/a n/a
1620 2300 657.1% n/a n/a
1630 4540 197.4% 60 30.0%
1640 26003 572.8% 597 290.2%
1650 48800 187.7% 1600 32.8%
1660 72180 147.9% 2920 78.8%
1670 107365 148.7% 4535 100.6%
1680 144529 134.6% 6971 90.5%
1690 193671 134.0% 16729 99.5%
1700 223083 115.2% 27817 86.0%
1710 286834 128.6% 44866 111.6%
1720 397361 138.5% 68839 107.7%
1730 538379 135.5% 91021 97.8%
1740 755576 140.3% 150024 103.6%
1750 934380 123.7% 236420 88.1%
1760 1267794 135.7% 325806 109.7%
1770 1688278 133.2% 459822 98.1%
1780 2204980 130.6% 575420 98.1%

logical fallacy 2: colonial per capita wealth not reliant upon slavery[edit | edit source]

  • as a proportion of per capita private wealth in 1774:
    • chart to be completed
Wealth source All 13 colonies New England Middle Colonies South
Land 49.6%
Servants & Slaves 28.0%
Farm & Non-Farm equipment, livestock, Materials Durables & Perishables 22.9%
Financial Assets 16.2


late 1700s to early 1800s manumission[edit | edit source]

from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Carter_III#Manumission

Manumission<br>
In the years after the Revolutionary War, Virginia's legislature (having barred the slave trade in 1778) passed several laws sympathetic to freeing slaves, although it did not pass a law legalizing manumission until 1782, and throttled many petitions for wider emancipation. Numerous slaveholders in the Chesapeake Bay area freed their slaves, often in their wills (like Quaker John Pleasants) or deeds, and noted principles of equality and Revolutionary ideals as reason for their decisions. The number of free African Americans increased in the Upper South from less than one percent before the Revolution, to 10 percent by 1810. In Delaware, three-fourths of the slaves had been freed by 1810. In the decade after the act's passage, Virginians had freed 10,000 slaves, without visible social disruptions. The price of slaves reached a 20-year low as the percentage listed as "black, tithable" (i.e. slaves) fell below 40%, the lowest point in the century. However, Virginia's courts sidestepped issuing appellate decisions ratifying emancipation until 1799, and the methodology of within-life emancipation was not established.