Have blacks ever said a public thank you to all the whites who were killed or maimed in the Union Army?
I'm pretty sure somebody did.
Read the accounts of Lincoln's reception by the freed slaves of Richmond.
Plenty of accounts of freed slaves greeting union troops in the same spirit.
But isn't it in the nature of free people not to be too servilely grateful?
So African-Americans came to celebrate their own contributions to winning their freedom in the same way that Americans don't dwell on the French contribution to our victory in the Revolutionary War,