Republican party. In a speech to the people of the United States in 1856 the address asserted that non-slaveholders in the South “were reduced to a vassalage little less degrading than that of the slaves themselves…although the white population of the slaveholding States is more than six million, of whom but 347,525, or less than one-seventeenth, are the owners of slaves.” From the numbers given in previous studies we can see that these numbers do not include all who were directly involved and thusly agree with Olsen when he says that facts were often distorted in the past and still are today in an attempt to promote a negative view of slavery. He lists several other studies by prominent historical figures such as Karl Marx, John Elliott Cairnes, and Woodrow Wilson in which facts were distorted for the sake of antislavery sentiment. Olsen begins to construct one of his main topics of debate when he challenges a statement made by Civil War historian James Ford Rhodes. Rhodes states, “the political system of the South was an oligarchy under the republican form. The slave-holders were in a disproportionate minority in every State.” To that Olsen replies, “Rhodes, a very wealthy stockholder, failed to note that similar comments were being made by some social critics about nineteenth century capitalists.” With the studies the author has given thus far, including those revealing the percentages of southern slave owners and those showing the distorted manner in which they were used by the antislavery movements, Olsen has done well in showing the reader the argument he is about to take on. One can easily see the weaknesses in the way statistics were distorted and can also begin to see the approach Olsen will take in trying to disprove them. Before moving into his personal findings the author looks at a handful of studies that agree with his own theories and attempt to show the opposite of what we have a...
