White moderates’ and progressives’ “feelings” would not have been an issue for Douglass and others, had it not been for the fact that, under whiteness as a political project, Black people’s very lives—from torture to manslaughter through planned mass killings—so often hinged on white people’s feelings. White northerners and westerners felt Confederates were good, misunderstood people in their heart of hearts, who understandably felt aggrieved by losing their cause and chattel slavery, and who openly sustained the war’s fighting by directing their fire primarily at Black people. By accepting
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