The highlighted quote of yours above is in to no way challenge you, but to ask if this is what the book states?
hentob, no that isn't really what the book is about. It's a travelogue really, Tony Horwitz grew up with a Civil War buff for a father, and like many boys, read about battle tactics and heroic acts, and looked at the war as a grand adventure tale.
As an adult, he realized that there were more complex issues involved in the war, specifically in the continued fascination that the Civil War holds over generation after generation.
So he went on a trip through the south, to try and learn why we can't seem to "get over" this war. The subtitle in fact is "Dispatches from the unfinished Civil War".
In fact the book is quite honest about the racism that the author encounters, throughout the south.
In saying that the 19th century North was no more racist than the 19th century South - that's my own interpretation, based on my reading and studying.
Of course I can't speak for every person of that era, no historian can. But Victorian abolitionist groups tended to be motivated by a sort of condescension and patronization. A "save the poor slaves, because they are inferior creatures who need rescuing," mentality. And it is true that some groups campaigned to end slavery so that all blacks could be rounded up and sent back to Africa - including the ones that were born in the Americas.
Ironically, it could be argued that Southerners might have a more humanistic view of black Americans, because blacks were an integral part of their communities. This in NO WAY defends or excuses slavery - slavery and the treatment of blacks in the south is and was an abomination. But somehwere there's a statistic about interracial relationships and marriages being more prominent in the South than in the North, befure, during, and after the Civil War era. That is one small example of a way that some Southerners had more of a willingness to establish equal relationships with blacks.
It is odd that we have always been taught in schools that the slaves wanted to go North.....That they surely thought they would have a better life in the North...That all of the stories of blacks being kept out of schools and colleges seem to come from the South. Back of the Bus, separate water fountains and all of that other vile garbage has always been pinned on the South.
Sure, absolutely. But there were (and are) racial clashes in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York too. The winner gets to write the history books, the saying goes. But absolutely, the Civil Rights movement demonstrated the absolute worst of Southern racism, and the frightening depths of the the racial hatred there.
In one sense, racism is more prominent in the South because there is more opportunity for that sort of thing. After the War, the South was (and remains) home to many blacks. Just as you'll find Anglo-Hispanic clashes in Texas and Arizona, because many Hispanics live there. You probably won't hear about racial divisiveness in some little Minnesota town where there are no black people.
I also think that blacks were scapegoated by unhappy whites who felt denigrated and humiliated during the Reconstruction. Like many groups who feel victimized, they found a politically and socially weaker target upon which to vent their frustration.
One of the points made in the book was that the Civil War is the last war fought on American soil, and the only time Americans have suffered a loss. You can still see the battlefields, the buildings - this war is not just a collection of words and pictures about some foreign place that we read about in high school history. It's a living, breathing, thing.
Do you think that the Northerners of the past were truly as racist as the South? Has history been twisted to favor the North as sympathetic, forward thinking people when it came to our black brothers and sisters?
I think there were very few people in the 19th century, in
any country that fully considered all races and ethnic groups equal.
You should read some of the travelogues of 19th century British explorers who traveled in and established colonies in Africa and India! And the original texts of Mary Poppins and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory have some really offensive comments and illustrations regarding Africans.
Achieving racial equality and harmony has been a long hard trip on a long hard road, and I really do think that road is still stretching out for miles and miles ahead of us.
They had student referendums so that the student body could voice their opinions on the subject, but we found out later the district had decided to remove the flag from the logo, etc even before we were allowed to have our say. 
