The vast majority of white southerners, supported vociferously by the Democratic Party of the north, were deeply opposed to any equality for the form… - Eric Foner

Slavery, Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens proudly affirmed, was the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Accordingly, slavery's disintegration compelled the Confederate government to take steps to save the institution, and these policies, in turn, sundered white society.

The more fiercely the Confederacy fought for its independence, the more bitterly divided it became.

The United States was not the only nation to experience emancipation in the nineteenth century. Neither plantation slavery nor abolition were unique to the United States. But Reconstruction was.