[Alter Kaker]

I'm a black guy from Southern Louisiana and if I lived back in 1857 there's a 99% chance I would have been a slave. The United States was neither a republic or democracy before the Civil War,

Why stop at the Civil War? After the Civil War, your ancestors wouldn't have been slaves, but they wouldn't have been anything like full citizens of a Republic either. They couldn't vote, couldn't get elected to office, if charged with a crime they couldn't get a fair trial, they couldn't use public facilities and they couldn't hold meaningful gainful employment. If the US, because of slavery, wasn't a Republic before the war, what made it a Republic after the war?

[Raymann]

Why stop at the Civil War? After the Civil War, your ancestors wouldn't have been slaves, but they wouldn't have been anything like full citizens of a Republic either. They couldn't vote, couldn't get elected to office, if charged with a crime they couldn't get a fair trial, they couldn't use public facilities and they couldn't hold meaningful gainful employment. If the US, because of slavery, wasn't a Republic before the war, what made it a Republic after the war? Why not? I used the Civil War because of the large civil and political changes that occurred during and after it. Blacks when from a period of no rights to some rights, however limited which was a stark contract to the Plessy case.