" a great reward" ?

By the time the Civil War entered its 4th year, life and death matters truly were complicated. Those enslaved in the South were freed, but not free because the nation was still ensnared in a bloody conflict based on unreconcilable beliefs and lifestyles. Scouts and spies were hung. Prisoners shot. Corpses abused. Officers possessed body servants as a custom of the time. Negroes were hitched to the wagons, going on their way singing and joking. The most scandalous thing according to a freedman was the "way men were shot to pieces." And to a freedwoman in 1864, whose house was torn down for use by the Union army, a tall, thin man said, "It is hard, but you shall reap a great reward." The specter promising hope to the woman was Abraham Lincoln. Yet it took a hundred years until 1964, for ‘civil rights’ to win proper attention. Why? Fits and starts between Republican and Democrat politicians. Complications prolonged the hard times for freed blacks. The United States has come a long way as of 2008, but Lincoln would not be pleased now that Barack Obama’s running for President because with him, by him and for him, racial tensions won’t disappear.