The definition of the nature of black people was critical to their treatment and the resources allocated to them; those who claimed to be able to identify the supposedly innate qualities of black people would in large measure get to determine their fate. Southern whites had long considered black people not only theirs to own but also theirs to define. This did not change with emancipation. A Virginian who told a northern reporter, “No nigger, free or slave, in these Southern States, nor in any part of the known world, ever would work or ever will work unless he’s made to” voiced the consensus
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