[southland]

Sooner may be an elusive term for this subject. I believe it brought another hundred years of opression. The reconstruction certainly didn't benefit the newly freed slaves. It made people quite bitter to endure this period of time then the KKK was formed. I believe economically the slave trade would have suffered had there not been a civil war then perhaps the freed men would have been better treated. This idea will never be resolved....

[Non-Sequitur]

The southern leadership didn't need reconstruction to lean on free blacks. They did it through a myriad of laws limiting their freedom prior to the war and then they imposed the Black Codes which returned free blacks to a situation closely resembling slavery right after the war and before reconstruction began. If you think that racism was solely a northern trait then you haven't read much about the period.

[Texaggie79]

I don't believe that all the southerners would have every given up slavery easily It would have been a disgruntled vote that finally freed them and the KKK would still exist. It would have taken longer for blacks to achieve equality, and this would be 2 separate nations and that would suck.