Now you're engaging in teleology. White Southerners didn't feel in 1866 that blacks were part of American society any more than Abraham Lincoln did in 1858 per his quotes above posted by others.
That they were included in American society rather than colonized was a matter subject to the political will of others: the black community was indeed still a slave society in all important respects(how could it change in one year?), however much their immediate circumstances may have suddenly improved, but they escaped colonization and expatriation only because Lincoln couldn't find the political will to put his ultimate plan into effect, and because the Black Republicans decided, viciously, to play "let's you and him fight" with their hated, defeated enemies. That's a Transactional Analysis game, btw -- this version was played at the level of the third degree, the degree in which smoke rises and blood flows. Postwar Republican Reconstruction politics relied on using the black population as a weapon against white Southerners in a program of permanent political domination for the Republicans' own socioeconomic benefit. And boy, did they benefit.
But who are you, Capitan, to judge those Southerners, at the comfortable distance of 140 years? Really, who are you to make these calls about other people's lights and times? You sound like a liberal, confidently and hypocritically calling dozens on people you don't know, for your own benefit.
Wait 'til you lose a war to people who hate you, before you go around telling everyone what you wouldn't do.
You conveniently forget the events which shaped changing opinion between 1858 and 1866. "White southerners" didn't feel blacks were human beings in 1858, 1866, or for decades afterward.
"... but [blacks] escaped colonization and expatriation only because Lincoln couldn't find the political will to put his ultimate plan into effect ..."
You were aware, were you not, that for a number of years before the war, Roger Taney was the vice president of the American Colonization Society?
"But who are you, Capitan, to judge those Southerners, at the comfortable distance of 140 years?"
Those who decline to establish objective moral values, or tolerate practices contrary to the laws of God and nature, are called "moral relativists." "All men are created equal" is considered a fundamental tenet of natural law and this country's political legacy. To the extent that southerners either denied the tenet itself, or rationalized that blacks were not human (and therefore did not apply), those who would today justify that conduct fit squarely into the category of moral relativist. Your post suggests that you are willing to tolerate, and apologize for, historic amoral conduct.
"Wait 'til you lose a war to people who hate you, before you go around telling everyone what you wouldn't do."
As you have read, I try to avoid "hate." But I fully understand your underlying motivation. And I have a reasonably good appreciation of the southern culture - having married a southerner, having ancestors who lived in the south and fought for the south, lived in the south and remained loyal, lived in the north and fought for the north (and others who did not arrive in this country until the 20th century), and having lived in Texas for a few years (if you want to consider Texas as "southern" - I would call it a distinctly different culture).