see. While acknowledging the significance of the “social revolution” taking place after slavery was abolished, in 1865, retired U.S. Army general Carl Schurz advised Americans against indulging “in any delusions” about the real state of affairs in the South. But some white northerners and westerners were content to be deluded: they were exhausted from the war, grateful for peace, and—not having experienced the obscenity of slavery themselves—ignorant of the true depths of enslavers’ capacity for depravity.8
