One of the main claims by Confederacy apologists is that “only 5%” of the white population of the Confederacy held slaves. This is simply false. While only 6% held legal title to human beings, almost 40% of households were slaveholding households. It does not much matter if

the people providing you with your livelihood and your meals and your clothing were legally property of your father or your uncle. You still lived off of their stolen labor. And also, even if you could not afford to buy any humans, the ones who could would rent their labor to

Robert E. Lee fought solely from “conscience” because he was not a slaveholder himself. The fields and the enslaved people who provided him with his wealth, and over whom he exercised the power of life and death, were held in his wife’s name: he was a kept man who married money.

Adding this: Lee lived in a home owned by his wife. His son Rooney’s home was a gift from his wife’s family. The home Lee grew up in was inherited by his half-brother Henry, who then lost it as a result of raping his own underage sister-in-law, of whom Henry was legal guardian.

@Sartor1836 It's a stretch to say the non-slave owners benefited from slavery. They had to compete with slaves for jobs. Millions of impoverished whites migrated to the north because they couldn't find good paying jobs in the south.