It's a silly thing to say, but not without a grain of truth. If you had pulled a random 18th-19th century Southerner off the street, and point-blank asked him did he hate black people, the answer almost assuredly would have been no. If you had asked him what he thought of black people, he probably would have said something to the effect of "they are primitive, childlike savages who lack the intelligence to manage their own affairs and therefore must be kept in slavery for their own good *and ours. As early as the Stono Rebellion of 1739, and certainly by Nat Turner's revolt of 1831, the bugaboo of slave revolt featured prominently in the white Southern national consciousness. Even peaceful liberation was enough to terrify whites; blacks, depending on what stratus of white society you asked, would either become slothful and lazy, rapacious and criminal, or they would outcompete poor whites by working menial jobs cheaper than they would or could. Black people had to be controlled; white mastery was necessary for that control. By the mid 19th century, slavery and white supremacy had become the natural, God-ordained order, and any attempt to violate that order would produce anger and consternation.