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 (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)
• CONCLUSION: therefore increases in the slave population was not the basis of the colonial development

click EXPAND to view comparative table of colonial white and slave population growth:

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%

• after 1800, the slave population increased dramatically following introduction of the cotton gin
• non-black population growth exceeded that of blacks (free and slave) for all decennial (every 10 years) census counts except 1810 & 1880

logical fallacy 2: colonial per capita wealth not reliant upon slavery

• in 1774, slavery represented a significant proportion of per capita private wealth:
  • 28.7% of national per capita wealth
  • 31.7% of southern per capita wealth
    • measured here as an asset, slavery was less than 1/3rd overall colonial wealth
    • = static measurement (snapshot of current values)
    • but not a measurement of economic output
      • just as an office building has a value but its economic output is measured not by its value but by the sum of its rents

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.