Incident at an Antique Store

[LincolnToddFan]

[Remember Jim Crow started in the North and D'Toqueville thought Illinois' black code to be the most vicious of all the states.]

Hi Bill,

I know about the ugly Illinois black code, but I need to understand your opinion about Jim Crow starting in the North. I cannot find any verification for this. As for the idea that AL "enslaved" Southern whites... as of April 15th 1865 when he died, the Southerners were certainly a defeated people living in territory occupied by Northerners, but President Lincoln died before he was able to implement what sounds to me like extraordinarily generous ideas for Reconstruction.

What actually did become of the defeated South under the Radical and vengeful Republicans in Congress in the 1870's is a different story, but that can hardly be laid at the feet of a dead man who most of the Radicals disliked and mistrusted anyway. Senator Ben Wade of Ohio went on record congratulating Andrew Johnson on the morning of the day of Lincoln's death...because he felt Lincoln was too soft on the "rebels" ("he had too much of the milk of human kindness in him...you will deal differently with these traitors!")

There were no Southerners on the auction block, or forced to prepare breakfast and nurse the children of the Yankees after the Civil War. There were few if any poor white Southerners lynched and hung from trees.

I am a Yankee, but I come in peace. I am asking these questions in a sincere attempt to understand.

Frankly, I hope Roger will close this thread. It's given me a sick headache just reading through it.