Common historical fallacies

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

Slavery was the basis of the American economy

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

• 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

• 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

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.