setting default face background

[michael]

I am having a problem with the background face of my default font being
white instead of the emacs background color.  ( emacs -bg DarkSeaGreen )

I can set it by:
M-x set-face-background default DarkSeaGreen

but I'd like to do it in .emacs   anyone know how to access that
variable?
-or-
how do I force the default face to inheret the the background color?  

I have what appear to me to be two identical setups and one inherets the
color properly and one doesn't.


thanks!
michael