Slavery would have gone out on its own for economic and cultural reasons, but the radical abolitionist wing of the Republican Party had to have its way and turn the civil war into a war "about" ending slavery rather than preserving the union. This created resentment.
Once the slaves were free, Reconstruction sowed the seeds that created (understandable) resentments among white southerners and a sense of entitlement and revenge among blacks. This was exacerbated still further by forced integration in the 1960's.
Just as slavery would have faded on its own, blacks and whites would have learned to peacefully coexist in the South - in separate communities, but with normal business and interpersonal relationships. Instead, forcing them to coexist was a form of shock therapy that just created hostilities on both sides.
Reconstruction hurt blacks worse than slavery.
Some things you can’t force people to do.
It led the way to the KKK. There was no protection for whites so the KKK
Was formed. Similar to the American Indian wars and problems.
It is the same mania that lopped off the heads of young girls in Paris in 1793, for the sin of having been born in great landed families; that forced similarly Blessed girls into brothels to be worked to their deaths for the Red Army in the newly Bolshevik Russia in 1918; that forced frail scholars from their homes, to be worked to death in the boondocks, in Mao's Cultural Revolution.
It is what is really being manifested by the "Politically Correct." It benefits no one but demagogues & scoundrels.
ek_hornbeck: ** “ Many of the problems between blacks and whites today are the consequence of the government trying to create “equality” and coexistence by force rather than by allowing acclimation to run its natural course. “ **
I “get” all that, but I want to be 100% certain that **Democrats** get 10O% of the “credit” for first slavery itself, then secession & Civil War and now all the Big Government evils we see.
Yes, Republicans did contribute to 1960s era civil rights laws, but far less to LBJ’s hugely destructive “Great Society” and “War on Poverty”.
Our Lost Causers here like to blame “Northerners” for everything wicked, so I’m saying not “Northerner” , but **Democrats** many of whom (i.e., LBJ) were Southern.