Above all, whites dreaded vengeance from their own ex-slaves. White Southerners had always wavered between contentions that their slaves were treated with kindness and considered part of the slaveholder’s family and a fear of seething collective black anger and individual grievances that had to be restrained by force lest they erupt in vengeance and retaliation. With emancipation, all their latent fears of retaliatory violence against a system sustained by the lash and gun haunted them.
