Historians and the Extent

“Only a minority of the whites owned slaves,” “at all times nearly three-fourths of the white families in the South as a whole held no slaves;” “slave ownership in the South was not widespread;” “not more than a quarter of the white heads of families were slave owners, and even in the cotton states the proportion was less than one-third;” “in 1850, only one in three owned any Negroes; on the eve of the Civil War, …

…widely distributed than previously thought, has made some decent arguments through showing the distortion of facts by some antislavery supporters, and shown studies that support his ideas, Olsen’s own studies fail to be thoroughly persuasive. The question as to the extent of slave ownership in the Southern United States remains one of perspective. Olsen, Otto H. "Historians and the Extent of Slave Ownerhship in the Southern United States." Civil War History 1972. vol. 18, pp. 101-116