If your neigherborhood was suddenly overrun by foreigners
that were dispossesing you of your property, don't you think you might fight back?
Having a bunch of Yankees appointing people to rule over you
when you are used to electing leaders yourself can cause lots of ill will.
Race relations have always been better in the South than in the North except when interefering Yankees were down here stirring up trouble. Seems like Yankees busybodies love to
go to places they don't belong and tell everyone that they have to conform to their "obviously superior" way of living.
Seems like "Yankee busybodies" left the South alone for eighty years to end slavery, and they didn't. Then "Yankee busybodies" left the South alone for another three quarters of a century to wind up segregation and they didn't do that by themselves either. Take our history as a whole and the picture of so "superior" interfering Northerners and Southerners who just wanted to be left alone to live together in peace and harmony doesn't quite work.
Where you see continually interfering Northerners, plenty of people see long periods when Northerners essentially left the South alone to do as it pleased. In those times, the slightest whisper of criticism was enough for White Southerners to circle the wagons and rally against any change. It might be comforting to believe that things would all have been for the best and that racial problems would have been amicably resolved if not for those "Yankee busybodies," but it's just not true.
If your neighborhood was overrun by foreigners that were dispossessing you of your property, would you put on a sheet, go down the street and murder the guy who lives on the corner, who's innocent and just trying to stay out of trouble but happened to glance at a white woman?
Having a bunch of Yankees appointing people to rule over you when you are used to electing leaders yourself can cause lots of ill will.
Being held as a slave, having your family ripped apart at the whim of someone else, being property and having your God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness breeds a bit of ill will, as well. Wouldn't you agree?
And it's a shame, isn't it, that the black Southerners were never asked to participate in these elections? Or were forbidden, at the risk of their lives, from being one of these elected leaders? Maybe had they been treated as men with the rights and responisbilities of men, rather than subjugated as property, the whole war might have been avoided to begin with...
Race relations have always been better in the South than in the North except when interefering Yankees were down here stirring up trouble. Seems like Yankees busybodies love to go to places they don't belong and tell everyone that they have to conform to their "obviously superior" way of living.
Really? "Always been better"? Even back when black people were property? How about when a black man could not be secure in his life or property; could be hung from a lamp post and burned alive; merely because of the degree of melanin in his skin, the shape of some of his facial features, and the fact that his hair follicles are flat rather than rounded? Were race relations better then?
You mean, causing trouble by demanding that blacks be given the vote and be allowed all the same rights as white people?
I can see how that would lead Southerners to start lynching.......