Who Was It?
You cannot understand the present unless you understand the past. The present is only the momentary continuation of the past and is part and parcel with the same. So why is it that when American history is discussed, be it in schools or books, that we seem to skip from the freeing of the slaves right to the beginning of the first World War? One would almost think that slavery ended with the end of the civil war. It did not. It might have ended in name, but it was not over in reality. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were obeyed in the south only because the union troops, underneath the command of the brutal but efficient Sherman, ensured it with force. The black populace voted for the republicans; the party of the abolition. Republican power during this short span was greater than it ever was and will ever be again. And the black populace enjoyed greater civil rights than they would until the mid twentieth century. 1866 saw the formation of the KKK; the, evil, white trash, scrub bas...