Just because the South didn't reap the benefits of it's massive free labor pool, doesn't mean that those benefits didn't exist. Both the North (and even England

Just because the South didn't reap the benefits of it's massive free labor pool, doesn't mean that those benefits didn't exist. Both the North (and even England!) benefitted from slavery even if they didn't directly own the slaves. The abolition of slavery was economically good - if not for the fact you freed up a massive labor pool out of what was essentially farming into working in factories. But that initial suppression, combined with with the continued discrimination that led to plenty of African Americans (and Natives, and arguably the earliest asian settlers) to be regularly robbed of whatever the could build contributes directly to the reason that we are still circling around the reparations concept today. Even if you don't believe slavery was "that bad", the effects of slavery prevented the entire demographic from building wealth; and a lot of was stolen in a government sanctioned manned, e.g. the Tulsa bombings in 1921, 50 years after the abolition of slavery.