In response to Glen C. Gregory's post...
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Those lynchings did not take place without the full support of the white 
population and reflect the culture of the white population at the time. Did 
white just become barbarians after the war?

There is a clear connection between the fact that African American slaves
were merely property prior to the Civil War and the actions of whites 
towards
them after the war. More than two hundred years of slavery firmly set this
concept into white culture--regardless of the myth of "good" slaveowners.

Wasn't it Eugene Genovese who wrote that our ideas about slavery, both North 
and South, stem mostly from newspapers printed before the Civil War?

I decided to take my own advice and abstract the parts of the wills of
slaveowners that refer to slaves. I own the two microfilms of the wills
from Halifax County, North Carolina, from 1758 to 1891, so I will start with
them. It is not Virginia, but it borders on it and all the families came
from there. I have so far only abstracted the first hundred pages, but I 
cannot yet detect any instance in which one could not replace the name of a 
slave with that of a horse except in those cases where they refer to female 
slaves as wenches or one master that allowed a slave to choose masters (a 
talking horse?).
http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/halifax.htm
Paul