[Modernman]

There were 2.96 times more free Blacks in the South than the North prior to the War of Northern Agression.

As a percentage, that's true, but not as a number (you quoted 225K free blacks in the North versus 262K in the South).

Certainly, it makes sense that there were more free blacks in the South, since the vast majority of blacks at the time lived in the South.

let it be that the Southern accepted his Free Black neighbor living among them more readily than did their Northern countrymen.

If that was the case, why were there about the same number of free blacks in the North as there were in the South? Since it is logical to assume that the free blacks in ths North moved there from the South, it would seem that the migration of blacks was from the South to the North, thereby going against your claim that Southerners got along well with free blacks.

[pepsionice]

Lets present one other bit of the puzzle. If you drove through Georgia or Alabama in 1855, you would quickly come to a conclusion that there were at least 3 layers of whites in the south. The first being rich land owners who made up less than 2 percent of the white population in most regions. The second being the lower class farm owners who made up almost 80 percent of the rural regions, and who owned nothing but their property and a mule. And the final group, being the merchant-businessman, who might have owned slaves.