and can never seem to get a straight answer when I ask just who is it dividing from whom ...

for all my adult life the refusal of society in general to tolerate racist language and behaviors worked quite well to suppress both AND to help enable ongoing great advances in equality.

And that that refusal still exists and still does is obvious on looking around, in spite of the current weaponization of the internet to sow toxic divisions...

southern states would have eventually seen the error of their ways and abolished slavery themselves.

Who was it that fired shots at Fort Sumter?

The First Battle of Fort Sumter began on April 12, 1861, when South Carolina Militia artillery fired on the Union garrison. These were the first shots of the war and continued all day, watched by many civilians in a celebratory spirit. The fort had been cut off from its supply line and surrendered the next day. The Second Battle of Fort Sumter (September 8, 1863) was a failed attempt by the Union to retake the fort, dogged by a rivalry between army and navy commanders. Although the fort was reduced to rubble, it remained in Confederate hands until it was evacuated as General Sherman marched through South Carolina in February 1865.

have been abolished sooner or later. He never said exactly when that would have taken place, though. Social change for conservatives always comes way too soon. This high school was in the '60s South, where they were still calling the Civil War the war of "northern aggression."