Common historical fallacies: Difference between revisions

* Parson Weems told the story in the 5th edition of his "The Life of Washington" (1806)

** long considered apocryphal (a made up story to make a valid point), there is no evidence that Washington <nowiki>''did not''</nowiki> cut down the cherry tree

** but the story is not implausible (unlikely):a

** it is, therefore, from a primary source (a witness)

**** logically, a king is just a man, born the same as any other man or woman ("Men"), as monarchs can be females, as well as males, as well as of any race;  

**** thus negating the legitimacy of "divine rule" by which the King of England (and all monarchs) justified his rule

| 1919 ||19th Amendment|| Constitutional amendment to secure the right to vote for women (and thus the right to full political participation)

** colonial,1609-1775 (or to the end of the Revolution, 1781)

** antebelleum ("before the war)"), 1815-1861 (start of the Civil War)

* by 1790, Virginia and Maryland had by far the highest slave populations (w/ North Carolina following)

*** into the late 1700s, African slavery replaced indentured servitude (white immigrants who worked for ocean passage for 5 to 10 years)

*** not all slaves produced cotton (about 56% of slaves worked on cotton plantations by 1860)

**** (see https://www.jstor.org/stable/40056471 fn 1)

* cotton created enormous wealth for southern plantation owners (which was severely unequal across free whites)

*** see J. William Harris (1990)<ref>Harris, J. William. “The Organization of Work on a Yeoman Slaveholder’s Farm.” ''Agricultural History'', vol. 64, no. 1, Agricultural History Society, 1990, pp. 39–52, <nowiki>http://www.jstor.org/stable/3743181</nowiki>.</ref> https://www.jstor.org/stable/3743181

** economists Olmstead and Rhode (2008)<ref>Olmstead, Alan L., and Paul W. Rhode. “Biological Innovation and Productivity Growth in the Antebellum Cotton Economy.” ''The Journal of Economic History'', vol. 68, no. 4, [Economic History Association, Cambridge University Press], 2008, pp. 1123–71, <nowiki>http://www.jstor.org/stable/40056471</nowiki>.</ref> point out that  

** economist Robert A. Calvert (1970)<ref>Calvert, Robert A. “Nineteenth-Century Farmers, Cotton, and Prosperity.” ''The Southwestern Historical Quarterly'', vol. 73, no. 4, Texas State Historical Association, 1970, pp. 509–38, <nowiki>http://www.jstor.org/stable/30236597</nowiki>.</ref> reported significantly higher picking rates in post-Civil War, even before introduction of mechanization in the late 1880s

**** i.e., harvesting was the constraint upon production (limited its extent)

** see Mauldin (2017)<ref>MAULDIN, ERIN STEWART. “Freedom, Economic Autonomy, and Ecological Change in the Cotton South, 1865–1880.” ''Journal of the Civil War Era'', vol. 7, no. 3, University of North Carolina Press, 2017, pp. 401–24, <nowiki>https://www.jstor.org/stable/26381451</nowiki>.</ref>

MERCHANDISE IMPORTS, EXPORTS, AND TRADE BALANCE (billions of dollars):

|Value of Exports ($bn)

|Est. GDP ($bn)

|40.0 % (est)

|(no data)

|(no data)

|(no data)

* growth of colonial African slavery was linear (upward but constant) until the development of the cotton gin

** up to 1800, colonial population growth was significantly higher for whites than for slaves (see chart)

* non-black population growth exceeded that of blacks (free and slave) for all decennial (every 10 years) census counts except 1810 & 1880

*** = ''static'' measurement (snapshot of current values)

** segregation inhibited black population growth, thus racial discrimination is not conducive of population growth (and we can infer from that economic activity)

** note that the lowest population growth counts occur following periods of war or during the Depression (1870, 1920, 1940)

** (which was a common practice)

*** and that the "wrath" of God would punish those who violated the "liberties of the nation", which he believed should include those of slaves to be freed ("total emancipation")

click EXPAND to read the Wikipedia entry on Robert Carter III's manumission (freeing) of his slaves:

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.</pre>