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Yes, I do deny that the white and black races are engaged in perpetual race conflict. I think that argument is risible.

It's funny? I don't think so.

I do not believe that any such conflict is built in. I do believe that the concern that it is by Lincoln, Jefferson and many, if not most, thoughtful Americans of the 19th century was not without basis.

We were in the process of ethnically cleansing the continent of its original natives. Why should thoughtful men not worry that similar actions would be carried out against blacks if slavery, which regularized the relations between the races in a way comfortable for whites, was removed?

I don't believe this. I just don't think concern about it at that time automatically made a man either racist or illogical.

My own study of slavery suggests to me that Southerners were justified in fearing that slaves, like all men, want to be free, and would resort to violence in order to achieve it.

But in truth, freedmen copied white society to the best of their ability.

In Louisina, which had a sizeable component of freedmen, contemporary commentators noted that the more blacks formed societies similar to that of whites, the more many whites hated and feared them.

I think that many - certainly not all - whites hated to think that blacks were human beings just like they were, because that would be too horrible. Dehumanizing them was the only way. If you believe that the person you mistreat is little more than an animal, then you can look at yourself in the mirror, or pray to God in church, without hating yourself. Frances Kemble, a plantation owner, for example, did not believe that slave women had family feeling for their children, and did not suffer when they were sold.

Yes, that's human nature.

But I've collected dozens of stories sympathetic to blacks, freedmen and slaves, written by Southern whites in the ante-bellum period, so I know that many whites knew that blacks were human beings just like them except for the color of their skin.

It's also human nature to fear revenge and God's judgment.