equality than white southerners were. Many white Americans seemed to take it for granted that former Confederates would be outraged by defeat and abolition. The expected nature of white southerners’ reprisal against Black freedom allowed postbellum violence to remain normalized and institutionalized, just as it had been during slavery. But this was not merely a continuation; emancipation and Black people’s fight for legal equality changed everything, incentivizing the all-out war white southerners waged on freedom during the Reconstruction period.14
