Among whites who had only accepted universal slave emancipation purely as a device to end the war, resentment over Black people’s subsequent insistence on—and acquisition of—civil rights was high. This thinking could have led some whites to believe uppity Black people were only getting what they deserved. And even if some whites were paying close enough attention to see that this was not just one random massacre or mass killing, but many, these distant observers might absolve themselves of their duty to act: the more deaths that registered in their minds, the more impersonal they might become.
