Why should they hold them accountable when they were also complicit in slavery from the very beginning? In fact, they didn't do shit because they still needed cotton exports, so they placed some of the old plantation owners back on the plantations so cotton would keep on shipping.

The United States was also complicit in a peonage type of prison system that would further enslave foundational black Americas for minor crimes and get them to do work for free on chain gangs. I like your writing. I have an article I am about to release based on one of your articles.

To answer you question of morality, hell yes, they absolutely should have held not only plantation owners accountable along with others who aided slavery, they also should have paid reparations to them during that period as black Americans had existed in slavery here for pushing 250 years before the Civil War.

Take a look at where the forty acres and a mule was going to be placed and see why it did not happen.