As I recall - and remembering the 13 States were sovereign nations who took what ten years to formulate, write, and pass the US Constitution as a replacement for the Articles of Confederacy - all the northern States had some form of approval of slavery.

New England, Maine perhaps was the first to make a change.Massachusetts much later and Delaware/Maryland the last. Of the southern states Mississippi was dead last to somewhere early in this century. That long lived process or procedure would seem to speak for some degree of iinstitution as accurate. Slavery defined another way is indentured servitude or non-generational slavery.

For the south to make the changes the carrot was delegates to Congress and their vote restored. The stick was martial law, carpetbaggers. By happenstance Andrew Johnson (seems to be a hard luck name for politicians at that level) came along and ignited the first no so cold war. By this time the south had a lot of support from the North. That part has never reached a conclusion.

And so it goes to this day where the current version 'racism' and 'cvil rights, are supported and encouraged primarily by the government itself.

Returning to Institution no it is not but it's certainly been institutionalized as an acceptable method of governing with the major support coming from the left except for a brief period in the first part of the Clinton Administration a move of short duration and little substance in the civil rights phase.

Curiously Andrew Johnson's political namesake despite some of their political moves made no pretense of being anything but racist. the latter using the N word in a condescending comment on the Great Society project. Give ... 'the n------ something to take home'... and "I'll have them voting Democrat for the next' 100 or 200 years. In the end his main accomplishment was pouring fuel on the fire.

Clinton was a light weight who one day declared the Democrats were now the party of civil rights. Which didn't stop them from voting for the Patriot Act not forming the Government Party Coalition.


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