The reason that black slavery was worse than the working conditions of factory workers in the north is a simple one: Slavery was based on skin color, with no way to escape the opprobrium; factory workers' conditions were based on poverty with its concomitant powerlessness. The factory workers never had to feel the helplessness of smiling governmental collusion in persecution. There is a HUGE difference.

As for so many of you above saying that Mississipi voters have spoken and that should settle it, are you also arguing that the north should have let the south secede when it wanted to?

I too lived in the south- back in the days of the 'colored ' fountains and separate accommodations, in the days when no black stranger would look you in the eye, in the days when black people stepped off the sidewalk to let the white person by...

Ebbie