Excuse me?!? You may want to do a little research into the northern Black Codes preceding the War of Southern Independence. Also note some of those northern Black Codes were not done away with immediately following the war. Some states in the north went as far as to ban blacks from even living in their states.
Not immediately....but they were swept away by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments swept all of that aside, that is until the Supreme Court reinstated legal segregation with Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
On a somewhat related topic, didn't the City of Boston just recently repeal a law banning Indians from entering the city boundaries?
The North is nowhere near "innocent" on the terms of eglitarianism between the races, when viewed from modern eyes. In fact, I would propose that NO nation is! The times prior to the "civil rights" era were entirely different from today, and cannot possibly be qualified in a way which would look "appropriate" to our indoctrinated-with-political-correctness eyes.
It would help matters greatly if people would be able to step out of their modern prejudices and view history from within its proper context—namely, the context from which it occurred!
Just my two cents. Deo vindice!
~dt~
Pres. Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation, only freed the slaves in Confederate States. Slaves remaining in northern controlled states were not free. New Orleans may have been one that was controlled by the north, hence their slaves were not free. And the north was not bound by the Proclamation.
Our history states that free Blacks and some Cherokee Indian tribes owned slaves.