[LS]

It ain't no Hollywood myth. Let's get a clue, please. I'm a history professor, I've read the hundreds, if not THOUSANDS, of slave narratives and studies on this, and it is pure BS, barbara streisand that the "slaves remained loyal to the masters."

Just for ONE reference, try reading "Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees," a look at blacks in Virginia (which had, on the whole, some of the better treatment of slaves in the slavocracy). If it was even remotely true that such "loyalty" was the case, the South wouldn't have needed extensive travel laws, restrictions on the movement of slaves, and held countless "slave revolt" trials because there would have been no need. The slaves, as Sherman well knew, couldn't wait to join his army---which was a problem; he had trained professionals, and neither the food nor the guns for such "irregular" forces. Please, read something before you post such utter nonsense.

[Ohioan]

You have read hundreds of accounts? I will take your word for that. But there were millions of slaves. The slave population far outnumbered the total White population in many counties. Most of the able bodied White males went off to the war in many areas, where the women and children would have been totally vulnerable to a slave revolt--if that were actually the mood.

You have been snowed by advocates of a point of view, making out a case. But the reality is much closer to that which Booker T. Washington recounted than what you have been given to believe.

Again, I accept your claimed evidence. It does not prove your point. Indeed, so extensive was the acceptance of Southern culture, among the Southern Negro population, that to this day, it provides a major ingredient in cultural habits. (And in fact, it works both ways.)

William Flax