Recent research published by the Daily Beast on Tuesday suggests that Benjamin Cole may have been a slaveholder but not a slaveowner, a distinction that may not seem to be a difference to those of us in the modern era, but which would have been significant back in the 1850s. Still, the bottom line on Affleck’s great-great-great grandfather Benjamin Cole is this: he was a slaveholder in 1860, and may have been either a slaveholder or slave owner in 1850, and possibly both.