Thanks for making my point Sailing Jack! You have espoused the Northern point of view. Because the North won I did not feel I had to explain simple truths to simple folk. This is what a vast majority of Americans know, understand and believe, including myself. There are a few knotheads of the other persuassion who will not give it up for anything, the white supremacists and their ilk. Do yourself a favor and quit trying to make me out a racist. I'm not and you are missing my point.

I AM saying that had YOU lived in the South at this time, the supremacy of the white race would have been the "given" and by all odds, you would have held those views, same as your peers. You would have sneered at abolitionists the same as you are sneering at me. True, the abolition movement was farther along and growing while today white supremacy seems to be headed out but it was still a hot topic of debate, antebellum. Some folks like to point to England's earlier accomplishment of abolishing slavery on their shores but I would argue that it was much easier for a nation who's big problem was exporting "surplus population" and who had a much greater labor pool to exploit than it was for the South to do without slave-labor. This is time and circumstances. As late as around 1899 Rudyard Kipling penned "The Whiteman's Burden". They may have ended "slavery" per se, but they still had a discrimination problem of their own.

Some of you guys like to try to paint folks you may disagree with as racist but you are really trying to wedge apart fellow Americans and unjustly, I might add. And as alwyas it is better to seek common ground and promote understanding than to be in someone's face, use smear tactics and character assassination to feel good about your cause. I could explain more about where that attitude comes from but not here and not now. If you are honest people, you will know that what I have put forth is truth. Let truth be the dividing line and not a snobbish superiority attitude. That has been my main thrust all along. What went down in the Civil War was too big in scope to have been totally percieved then by any one man or any group of men, and not as it is today perceived.