but considering the treatment shown towards free blacks down South prior to the warOh, I guess you mean their ability to own land, property, and even rent property as historical fact shows in Charleston. Or do you mean such as further South where blacks owned land, plantations, and slaves to work for them? Or perhaps you're talking about the freedmen skilled workers in VA?
and given that their welcome up North wasn't very warm either
Well I'll give you that!!
No, I'm talking about a South Carolina where blacks and whites where not legally allowed to look out the same window, a Virginia where freed slaves had 12 months to leave the state or be sold back into slavery, an Alabama where the Supreme Court ruled that a slave could not be freed under any circumstances because freedom was a gift and the slave lacked the legal standing to accept such a gift. A south were not a single state allowed a free black to move in and not a single state allowed them to vote. That south.