[Bill Haywood]

it was Northern political use of freed Southern slaves in the various military dictatorship puppets governments that hardened Southern white racism for the next century.

Better puppets than slaves. Puppets can eventually cut the strings.

The north was responsible for postwar racism? That doesn't sound like conservatives taking personal responsiblity for their actions.

Southern racism went through a growth spurt in order to control the labor supply -- with Northern connivance.

That's why you saw the resumption of slavery in the form of prison farms. Blacks got draconian sentences for nothing, then got rented out to plantations. That and share cropping kept labor under control, both for planters, and the northern textile mills that wanted cheap cotton.

And the reason you're "not going to get into it" is because your position is untenable. If the South should not have been occupied, then slavery could not have ended. The cult of the lost cause cannot be intellectually consistent without supporting slavery. Mr. Charlie.

No matter what the North did, it was better than the holocaust that preceeded the war.