Thank your for your thoughtful reply. I’m not trying to be difficult. I taught U.S. History for 10 years. I was born nin Jefferson Ohio, the birthplace of Wade and Giddings. Abolition runs strong in my veins as I toured the Underground RR hiding places. I live in the South now and have listened to all the arguments. Of course slavery was an abominable institution that all mankind should be ashamed of. I’m just pointing out that the Black man had few friends anywhere, North or South. Reconstruction with its promises of “40 acres and a mule” was a farce. But a lot of poor Tn, NC, and other poor farmers who couldn’t spell the word slave fought for ideals other than human slavery. Lincolns original idea of compensated emancipation would have been the best solution other than 700,000 lives.
While I will agree, wholeheartedly, that Reconstruction was a farce. It never promised anyone “40 acres and a mule”. This term originated with General Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 of Jan 16, 1865. He directed officers divide up abandon land South of Charleston, SC to the St Johns River, FL in to 40 acre plots for distribution to the thousands of refugee blacks in the area. No mention of mules in the order. About 450,000 acres were eventually distributed before Sherman cancelled the order.
Ther may have been many aggravations.
None but slavery was serious enough to fight over.
John Brown, Charles Sumner, Bleeding Kansas..... All over slavery.
More friends than you might imagine, both North and South.
Remember, along with 4-million slaves in 1860 the US had about 400,000 freed blacks, half in the North, half in the South.
Indeed the list of states with more than 25,000 freed-blacks includes Northern New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio, but also Southern Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia.
States over 10,000 freed-blacks included Northern Indiana and Massachusetts, but also Southern Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana & South Carolina.
Of course, nobody pretends that antebellum freed-blacks were treated like first class citizens, but their numbers were growing.
2nd Amendment: "Lincolns original idea of compensated emancipation would have been the best solution..."
The first such plan was presented by President Jefferson and there were many similar.
Some included Federally supported recolonizing freed-blacks to Liberia, Africa, or elsewhere.
In 1820 Congress appropriated $100,000 for recolonizing, roughly $3 billion today, depending on how you calculate it.
And over the decades there were many such plans.
All failed because slave-holders would have none of it.