Truly Equal USA Post Civil War End To Slavery.

[SlickWilly]

No segregation, no bussing etc Black and White Americans equal, is it possible? And how does it change the course of history if it is? And How are native Americans treated in an equal Black White USA?

[RousseauX]

No segregation, no bussing etc Black and White Americans equal, is it possible? What are we talking about here? Black and white being "truly equal" or just avoiding Jim Crow?

[Derek Jackson]

I think the key thing should have been confiscation of land from the Slave owning class and its distribution as compensation to former slaves. This would have made it much harder to intimidate black voters and have kept political rights

[Lord Grattan]

I think the key thing should have been confiscation of land from the Slave owning class and its distribution as compensation to former slaves. This would have made it much harder to intimidate black voters and have kept political rights

This would greatly inflame the hate-filled, bigoted and vengeance-seeking passions of Southern whites.

[Elfwine]

This would greatly inflame the hate-filled, bigoted and vengeance-seeking passions of Southern whites.

How much worse than OTL can you inflame it?

[Turquoise Blue]

How much worse than OTL can you inflame it?
The 1920s South, but earlier?

[Elfwine]

The 1920s South, but earlier?

How is that worse?

I'll admit my knowledge of the 1920s in the South is sketchy, but the OTL Reconstruction era was pretty damn awful on the part of the South.

[Turquoise Blue]

How is that worse?

I'll admit my knowledge of the 1920s in the South is sketchy, but the OTL Reconstruction era was pretty damn awful on the part of the South.
Things got better after Reconstruction, and then Jim Crow Laws came in. Make the Jim Crow Laws come in earlier, and the KKK dont decline, and you have a worse South.

[Elfwine]

Things got better after Reconstruction, and then Jim Crow Laws came in. Make the Jim Crow Laws come in earlier, and the KKK dont decline, and you have a worse South.

When the Jim Crow laws come in, the Federal government will in this scenario be doing something.

Same with the KKK.

I'm not saying you'd have a good outcome here, but OTL is a very bad outcome. Unless the KKK is going from "terrorist" to "proto-Nazi" in terms of how bad (in terms of what it does), I'm not sure this would balance out as worse against the Federal government actually treating it as it deserved.

Mind, I think this scenario hits ASB because the rest of the country (the not-South) isn't enough better to make this much effort, but if we can assume it isn't ASB, that means that effort is invested instead of it being dropped as soon as possible.

[Lord Grattan]

No segregation, no bussing etc Black and White Americans equal, is it possible? And how does it change the course of history if it is? And How are native Americans treated in an equal Black White USA?

I believe that during the 1780s or '90s you could set into motion a series of events that spark small, subtle changes in White Americans' opinions, attitudes and beliefs about black people (slave & free) that over time could result in a more racially equatable society in the US.

[Snake Featherston]

It's not going to happen. The North was anti-secession, not really anti-slavery, and the vital element of Southern white anti-Confederates that did much to secure Union victory in the real war certainly was never going to sanction meaningful racial equality. A USA able to make this kind of turnaround won't fight a civil war over slavery in the first place.

[Snake Featherston]

How much worse than OTL can you inflame it?

There are plenty of ways to make it worse. Making it worse is easy. Making it better is what's hard.

[Zuvarq]

It's not going to happen. The North was anti-secession, not really anti-slavery, and the vital element of Southern white anti-Confederates that did much to secure Union victory in the real war certainly was never going to sanction meaningful racial equality. A USA able to make this kind of turnaround won't fight a civil war over slavery in the first place.
Well they were anti-slavery. They weren't pro-equality, though.

[Snake Featherston]

Well they were anti-slavery. They weren't pro-equality, though.

All the Northerners voting for Horatio Seymour in 1864 weren't anti-slavery. The shift to the Proclamation was from military expediency, not actual conviction. The only Americans who meaningfully wanted racial equality in its fullest since in the 1860s were black Americans.

[Admiral Ackbar]

What if they partitioned the Confederacy into an equal number of majority black and white states? Take the black populations of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee, and move them to states that were either majority black already like Mississippi, or roughly equal in number like Louisiana and Alabama, and states like Arkansas and Texas that had lower total populations with room to spare to handle the new arrivals. You can split Texas in two so you get 6 majority white states and 6 majority black states that are both in contiguous regions.

I'd still do land redistribution from the large plantation owners, but it'd be given to black people in the 6 majority black states, and given to poor white people or maybe lower ranking former confederate soldiers in the majority white states.

Would something like this have been possible with a radical Republican becoming President right after Lincoln's death instead of Johnson (maybe the rest of the assassination plans are carried out), or is it just impossible? If it could have happened how would things be different now?

[SPJ]

I do not believe it will be possible to have the majority of people abandon their belief in white supremacy. Though when it comes to legal equality what about the possibility of having PODs that put more radical Republicans into power during and after the war who were black suffragists and thus make it easier to pass laws that offer equal oppertunities to black people living within the US. Also perhaps there is a way to prevent laws that prohibit the immigration of freed slaves to the northern states which as I understand where set up as a form of job security to the working class already living there.

[RousseauX]

Things got better after ReconstructionNo it didn't, the reconstruction was pretty much the apex of civil rights for blacks until the 1960s

[King Henry]

Different political organization followed by some convenient assassinations from Confederates to put the most radical Republicans in power at the end of the war and the start of Reconstruction might help, along with Confederate remnants pulling some lurid atrocities for the papers every so often. I mean, there's still going to stop massive casual racism from most whites, but a deep south ruled by a military dictatorship with the support of poor whites and blacks is unlikely to have official racist laws on the books.

[Zuvarq]

No it didn't, the reconstruction was pretty much the apex of civil rights for blacks until the 1960s

I think Turquoise Blue meant after Reconstruction started, not after it ended.

[Turquoise Blue]

I think Turquoise Blue meant after Reconstruction started, not after it ended.
Yeah, I meant that. After Reconstruction ended, it got worse.

[Elfwine]

Different political organization followed by some convenient assassinations from Confederates to put the most radical Republicans in power at the end of the war and the start of Reconstruction might help, along with Confederate remnants pulling some lurid atrocities for the papers every so often. I mean, there's still going to stop massive casual racism from most whites, but a deep south ruled by a military dictatorship with the support of poor whites and blacks is unlikely to have official racist laws on the books.

The problem is that the poor whites are not going to join with the blacks.

[usertron2020]

All the Northerners voting for Horatio Seymour in 1864 weren't anti-slavery. The shift to the Proclamation was from military expediency, not actual conviction. The only Americans who meaningfully wanted racial equality in its fullest since in the 1860s were black Americans.

What about White Abolitionist Quakers?

[Derek Jackson]

I suspect that quite radical things could have happened in 1865. In otl the old power structures were allowed to reasert themselves for three years until Congress insisted on free elections including the people who had been oppressed.


It would have been both legal and just to make a any pardons for Treason given to major slave owners be conditional both on giving up lands and on significant periods of exile from the South ( It would have been legal to have hanged every Southern officer and legislator and public official.)

[Ares96]

This brings me to another query: if the Radical Republicans had been in charge of the executive as well as the legislative, military occupation extended well into the 1870s, and the planters been forced to give up land to the freedmen, how much better/worse would the situation have gotten?

[VictorLaszlo]

The best way to do this is splitting the white community in the South by a land reform benefiting not only former slaves, bus poor southern whites as well. If you have a society split along socioeconomic status instead of race, then the former slave-holding planter elite will have a harder time instrumentalizing the poor white majority to establish Jim Crow laws to regain at least part of the control over their former bondsmen they lost as a result of the 13th and 14th amendment.

[Dave Howery]

The only Americans who meaningfully wanted racial equality in its fullest since in the 1860s were black Americans.

not entirely true. The more radical Abolitionists wanted racial equality (although more of the 'separate but equal' type). Plus, there was a group called Amalgamationists who wanted whites and blacks to interbreed and create a single mixed race nation. There weren't many of them, but the South placed undue importance on them.

Also, it's not really necessary to break up the plantations to give blacks their own land. One not-so-widely-known fact is that the south had quite a bit of undeveloped land to settle, particularly in the western parts of it. I wonder if there might not be an impetus to encourage former slaves to settle/develop these lands in large communities of their own, electing their own city/county governments. In OTL, there was a 'go south' movement right alongside the 'go west' movement, and these lands ended up being settled mostly by whites. The major stumbling block to this would be that it would devastate the economies of the rest of the south, losing their work force and a lot of customers all at once.

[Ares96]

The best way to do this is splitting the white community in the South by a land reform benefiting not only former slaves, bus poor southern whites as well. If you have a society split along socioeconomic status instead of race, then the former slave-holding planter elite will have a harder time instrumentalizing the poor white majority to establish Jim Crow laws to regain at least part of the control over their former bondsmen they lost as a result of the 13th and 14th amendment.

Interesting. So we would see the planters punished more than the slaves are helped?

[Timmy811]

You'd need different supreme court justices who'll rule in favor of equality and you'd need a President will to enforce the decisions they make. The first can be done, though with difficulty. However I can't see a President in the aftermath of the Civil War being more proactive than Grant in pursuing reconstruction. There just wouldn't be political support for it.

[Mikestone8]

The best way to do this is splitting the white community in the South by a land reform benefiting not only former slaves, bus poor southern whites as well. If you have a society split along socioeconomic status instead of race, then the former slave-holding planter elite will have a harder time instrumentalizing the poor white majority to establish Jim Crow laws to regain at least part of the control over their former bondsmen they lost as a result of the 13th and 14th amendment.


What makes you think that the poor whites needed "instrumentalising"? When they gained political control from the planter class around the turn of the century, their regimes were more racist than the planter ones, not less.

[Nhilist]

Was the north not just as racist as the south? People seem to place undue importance on the south's racism,but northerners were not egalitarians in any sense of the word.

I've heard that many Blacks that migrated north were treated worse than the way they were treated in the south.

[Fiver]

I've heard that many Blacks that migrated north were treated worse than the way they were treated in the south.

That's fairly standard neo-Confederate propaganda.

[King Henry]

You'd need different supreme court justices who'll rule in favor of equality and you'd need a President will to enforce the decisions they make. The first can be done, though with difficulty. However I can't see a President in the aftermath of the Civil War being more proactive than Grant in pursuing reconstruction. There just wouldn't be political support for it.

President Seaward?

[Germania09]

I think the key thing should have been confiscation of land from the Slave owning class and its distribution as compensation to former slaves. This would have made it much harder to intimidate black voters and have kept political rights

I live in the South trust me when I tell you that this would have ended badly:(

[Lord Grattan]

I live in the South trust me when I tell you that this would have ended badly:(

I live in the Great Lakes but have lived in the South and concur wholeheartedly.

[KeeCoyote]

I think to have reconstruction equality you would need Abraham Lincoln survive the assaination and have it become a attempt, or have it not happen at all.

[1940LaSalle]

I don't know but what it would take a significantly, if not radically earlier POD to yield true equality today. Perhaps something in the Reformed theology of Cromwellian-era England might spark an anti-slavery move. This possibly might be equating slavery with the "Papist" [using quotes to note that this is the Cromwellian usage, not mine!] French/Spanish and therefore by extension that abolition is in accord with the Reformed faith?

If so, this attitude might be carried across the Atlantic to the extant colonies at the time, resulting in manumission of the slaves-such as there were-present in the colonies of that day. The slave trade to the English colonies would then perhaps have been outlawed, with slavers treated as pirates, subject to capital punishment. Their captives would have been freed on American soil.

If all this transpired, I suspect the Afro-American population today would be significantly smaller than it is in OTL, but it would likely be fully equal in all practical terms.

[lloyd007]

I don't think equality is achievable outside of the US doing something really, REALLY atrocious, like liquidating the Planter Class Stalin style...

[Snake Featherston]

I don't think equality is achievable outside of the US doing something really, REALLY atrocious, like liquidating the Planter Class Stalin style...

Not even then, as poor whites in the South didn't have any too great a love or respect for slaves as it was. They, in fact, could within some parameters be worse racists than the planters, as they sometimes had only their racism to fall back on in a life that was squalid, brutal, and back-breaking.

[Twin City Lines]

Not even then, as poor whites in the South didn't have any too great a love or respect for slaves as it was. They, in fact, could within some parameters be worse racists than the planters, as they sometimes had only their racism to fall back on in a life that was squalid, brutal, and back-breaking.

Perhaps Marxism makes headway in the South after the war.... There were already German Marxists in Texas before 1860. They had a lot of enemies, of course. The primary public opposition to them was due to their abolitionist stance. Could they have won more acceptance, perhaps in alliance with the Northern occupation?

[Mikestone8]

Perhaps Marxism makes headway in the South after the war.... There were already German Marxists in Texas before 1860. They had a lot of enemies, of course. The primary public opposition to them was due to their abolitionist stance. Could they have won more acceptance, perhaps in alliance with the Northern occupation?


No way are the authorities in the North going to ally with Marxists.

There was labour trouble in the North at this time, and anything of that nature would have been viewed as thoroughly subversive.

[Snake Featherston]

Perhaps Marxism makes headway in the South after the war.... There were already German Marxists in Texas before 1860. They had a lot of enemies, of course. The primary public opposition to them was due to their abolitionist stance. Could they have won more acceptance, perhaps in alliance with the Northern occupation?

That doesn't work either. Marxism to exist in any appreciable sense requires the kind of economic changes the Confederacy was created in 11 of the 15 slave states to forestall. If that happens then the question is moot as there won't be a Civil War in the first place.

[Socrates]

Have Lincoln survive and become convinced somehow that "economic slavery" is tantamount to actual slavery. His prestige strengthens his hand to get his way in appointing those who share his newly radicalised views. He argues that the planters have forsaken the rights to their land due to slavery and rebellion. It is confiscated by the federal government and given to blacks and poor whites alike, forging a political coalition despite mistrust. The two groups between them have a political majority they wouldn't have if they divided. This keeps them together while other state-level acts are passed, in a "you get A if we get B" manner that screws the wealthy further. This includes much better education for blacks, and, combined with land wealth, allows an embryonic black middle class to form a century earlier than OTL. Examples of genteel "civilised" blacks breaks the stereotype of illiterate brutes.

[Twin City Lines]

No way are the authorities in the North going to ally with Marxists.

There was labour trouble in the North at this time, and anything of that nature would have been viewed as thoroughly subversive.

Maybe if Lincoln isn't assassinated? He and Karl Marx had a somewhat friendly correspondence.

[Elfwine]

I can't see Lincoln trying something that radical, as appealing as Socialist Lincoln is.

[Faeelin]

I'm surprised everyone's going for pie in the sky ideals. Focus on simpler things, like an equal (even if seperate) education system, run nationally by the federal government; destroy the southern paramilitaries which crushed the blacks; etc.

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

I'm surprised everyone's going for pie in the sky ideals. Focus on simpler things, like an equal (even if seperate) education system, run nationally by the federal government; destroy the southern paramilitaries which crushed the blacks; etc.
1) separate but equal isn't. I'm sure it is theoretically possible for a 'separate but equal' education system to exist (the Protestant vs Catholic school boards in e.g. Quebec may be the closest example), but not when you have one group who is convinced of their superiority and has all the power. If you DON'T have that with whites and blacks, then you don't need 'separate but equal'. I'm not going to call it ASB, but I can't imagine a way to make it work.

2) "run nationally by the federal government" that would be unconstitutional.

3) "destroy the southern paramilitaries which crushed the blacks". Hoo boy. How? Permanent occupation with Federal Troops?

no, these are, in no way, shape or form, 'simple' solutions.

I think the reason 'pie in the sky' solutions are being proposed is that the challenge is so incredibly difficult it takes something like that.

Sorry.

[iddt3]

There is a TL on this site which partially attempts this, http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=131980, the author has divergent events in the pre civil war build up dramatically boost northern sympathy for blacks. His aim IIRC stated attempt is to have a Civil War where the North is aiming to abolish slavery from the start, which I think can only bode well for the post war settlement.

[Faeelin]

2) "run nationally by the federal government" that would be unconstitutional.


Why is this unconstitutional? Put it under the general spending clause.

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Why is this unconstitutional? Put it under the general spending clause.
I'm pretty sure that education is a State responsibility.

[Snake Featherston]

I'm pretty sure that education is a State responsibility.

So how did the USA get this, then?

http://www.ed.gov/

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

So how did the USA get this, then?

http://www.ed.gov/
Err... Um... They're not actually running things? I don't know what I'm talking about, here? ah... OK, I'll drop this.

[dduff442]

Lincoln kept a Senator from IIRC Connecticut waiting because Frederick Douglass was ahead of him in the queue. He took to referring to Douglass as "my friend" and ate dinner with him -- something that wouldn't be repeated in the Whitehouse for more than 40 years.

Of course these wouldn't have been noteworthy if it were not for racism in the North. OTOH, any president attempting to do this between 1875 and 1895 would have been destroyed politically. Any one of those acts would have provoked riots.

The wheels came off during reconstruction which was neither thorough enough to enable black communities to defend themselves or gradualist enough to enable a peaceful transition. The problem was it was lead intellectually by radical abolitionists who were reliant on the racist majority to actually carry it out.

What was needed was what's today called expectations management -- preparation of the Northern public for reconstruction as a long-term and expensive but rewarding project. I'd guess a 3% of GDP tax and 2-year 200,000 draft for 15 years would have done it -- a small price to pay to have Atlanta and Mobile developed to the extent of Northeastern cities by 1920.

Lincoln could have carried it off, though it wouldn't have been guaranteed.

[dduff442]

The constitutional gridlock was largely a product of the North-South divide itself. Reconstruction was also a window of opportunity for constitutional transformation.

[Mikestone8]

expectations management -- preparation of the Northern public for reconstruction as a long-term and expensive but rewarding project. I'd guess a 3% of GDP tax and 2-year 200,000 draft for 15 years would have done it -- a small price to pay to have Atlanta and Mobile developed to the extent of Northeastern cities by 1920.

Lincoln could have carried it off, though it wouldn't have been guaranteed.


Lincoln cancelled the 1865 Draft call as soon as he received the news of Appomattox. He didn't even wait for the other rebel armies to surrender, much less consider continuing any draft into peacetime.

The other stuff sounds even more ASB-ish. The taxpayer had quite enough on his plate just paying for the war. Extra taxes for rebuilding the South (black or white) would be a complete non-runner, under Lincoln or anyone else.

[dduff442]

Well I kind of assumed a commitment of 3% of GDP and hundreds of thousands of troops was a colossal undertaking. At a guess that's the sort of effort that would have been required, however.

Whatever about the draft, the USA made extensive preparations for war against Mexico in the summer of 1865, so the wind down wasn't immediate. The (fulfilled) hope was that supplies and weapons backed up by the threat of irresistible force would be enough to doom the Emperor.

If the peace was to be won, then 1865 was only the half way point. In the real world, when Woodrow Wilson (busy segregating the Federal Government) attended the Sons of the Confederate Veterans get together, so many senators and congressmen were in attendance that observers wondered who had in fact won the war.

[Mikestone8]

If the peace was to be won, then 1865 was only the half way point. In the real world, when Woodrow Wilson (busy segregating the Federal Government) attended the Sons of the Confederate Veterans get together, so many senators and congressmen were in attendance that observers wondered who had in fact won the war.


The peace was won.

It was 1912 before another man of southern birth reached the White House, and 1928 before a pol in a southern state was nominated even for Vice-President. The high protective tariffs, which favoured northern interests over southern, remained in place for generations. Northern settlers could move west without fear of competition even (to any great extent) from free blacks, let alone from slaves. Northern states were not required to deport black refugees back to the south.

In short, every point of disagreement between north and south was settled in favour of the north. That is precisely why the southerners got away with undoing reconstruction - because they never challenged the northern vistory on any point that really mattered.