Best Case Scenario for Blacks in a Union post Confederate victory?

KN1

Now sure, the north had its own problems with racism, and the whole meme of "south secedes and north becomes a multiracial paradise because hurr-durr south is all the racists" is dumb. But, I still cannot help but feel that the station of blacks, and their civil rights, would not be at least marginally improved by the large Southern conservative bloc simply no longer being a factor.

Would a Union without the South be on a faster track to civil rights, or would there be a backlash against the abolitionists/Radical Republicans for losing the war?

EDIT: Aw crap, wrong forum, meant to go in pre-1900.
 
Yuelang

Yuelang

Banned
DownrangeDowner said:
Now sure, the north had its own problems with racism, and the whole meme of "south secedes and north becomes a multiracial paradise because hurr-durr south is all the racists" is dumb. But, I still cannot help but feel that the station of blacks, and their civil rights, would not be at least marginally improved by the large Southern conservative bloc simply no longer being a factor.

Would a Union without the South be on a faster track to civil rights, or would there be a backlash against the abolitionists/Radical Republicans for losing the war?

EDIT: Aw crap, wrong forum, meant to go in pre-1900.
Click to expand...

Best case is the Union will try to fill a territory entirely with Blacks, form a separate Black State, with Black army and such... to be used as a safe haven from Southron Enslavers and Slave catchers. Really, with Black soldiers patrolling the border and shoot on sight on every well known slave catchers.

Nobody could blame them because legally, those State are represented as sovereign state inside the Union, and is a fully empowered Black State with their own laws enforceable on their own soil.

So yeah, fully equal but at the end of the line, it was merely a milder form of Apartheid (or worse, depends on your views because this requires Black mass migrations).
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
It would vary from state to state, I think, depending on which party controlled the state government. Republicans would probably try to get legislation passed to grant blacks civil right and the franchise, because they would know that blacks would support them at the ballot box. For the same reason, they'd probably try to make it easy for blacks escaping from the Confederacy to seek safe haven in the United States.

By contrast, the Democrats would probably try to do just the opposite. Poor European immigrants, especially the Irish, formed one of their most important constituencies (one reason why nativists tended to support Republicans) and they looked upon freed slaves as competitors for low-wage jobs. So the Democrats would see it as being to their electoral advantage to block voting rights for blacks and to prevent blacks from coming into the Union from the Confederacy.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
As far as the "large Southern conservative" bloc,

DownrangeDowner said:
Now sure, the north had its own problems with racism, and the whole meme of "south secedes and north becomes a multiracial paradise because hurr-durr south is all the racists" is dumb. But, I still cannot help but feel that the station of blacks, and their civil rights, would not be at least marginally improved by the large Southern conservative bloc simply no longer being a factor.

Would a Union without the South be on a faster track to civil rights, or would there be a backlash against the abolitionists/Radical Republicans for losing the war?

EDIT: Aw crap, wrong forum, meant to go in pre-1900.
Click to expand...

As far as the "large Southern conservative" bloc being gone, of course - there's a reason that (among others) the bills for the Homestead and Land Grant colleges got through the US Congress after secession winter, and not before...

The question to keep in mind is how large would the population of those with (identifiable) African ancestry become in the US; antebellum, of course, it was fairly small (3 million+, mostly enslaved, in the seceding states; but less than a million across the loyal states).

And then, how big does the population of the US get, and how dispersed does the AA population get?

The overall demographics will have a tremendous impact on civil rights generally and for AAs specifically.

Of course, the short answer is life in the US will be paradisical compared to life in the rebel states, pure and simple...

There's a passage in Glory where Washington's character and Broderick (as Shaw) are talking:

Trip: I ain't fightin' this war for you, sir.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: I see.
Trip: I mean, what's the point? Ain't nobody gonna win. It's just gonna go on and on.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: Can't go on forever.
Trip: Yeah, but ain't nobody gonna win, sir.
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: Somebody's gonna win.
Trip: Who? I mean, you get to go on back to Boston, big house and all that. What about us? What do we get?
Colonel Robert G. Shaw: Well, you won't get anything if we lose.

Kind of sums it up, I think.

Best,
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
Points for going to the original sources.

TheYoungPretender said:
Before the cult of the kind, valorous Bobby Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest get here, the required reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech
South's gonna be bad. North, quite possibly could be less bad than OTL, because you don't have the South "winning" a lot of the antebellum situation back after Reconstruction ended.
Click to expand...

Points for going to the original sources.

Best,
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
TheYoungPretender said:
Before the cult of the kind, valorous Bobby Lee and Nathan Bedford Forrest get here, the required reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech

South's gonna be bad. North, quite possibly could be less bad than OTL, because you don't have the South "winning" a lot of the antebellum situation back after Reconstruction ended.
Click to expand...

You don't even really need to go to Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech. Just read the declarations put out by the South Carolina legislature and some of the other states to explain their reasons for secession. They made absolutely no bones about the fact that they were seceded because of slavery.

That being said, the OP is about race relations in the Union, not the Confederacy, so I'm not sure that this is relevant.
 
EnglishCanuck

EnglishCanuck

Well TFSmith's got it right, it really would depend on how big the population was and how dispersed it would get. Then Anaxagoras is right as it would depend on who was governing said state at the time.

It would vary by state to a great degree, so a black person in New York or Pennsylvania would probably be much better off than one in say Missouri or Michigan. Regional prejudices would factor in as much as politics as well.
 

President Sam Houston

One could probably research the 1860 census records to really determine this, but I would venture to guess that outside of the slave states that remained loyal to the Union, the entire black population throughout the free states would have been something like less than 2% (and probably was less than 1%). There would have been counties throughout the northern states where no black people lived at all. So the average northerner in 1860, did not encounter any blacks, did not know any blacks, and was not directly affected by blacks.

Now depending on what happens with the slave states that stayed in the union, and the number of slaves that are able to escape to the north, the demographics in the north will probably begin to change and the number of blacks in the north will likely rise. However, it will be years before free blacks in the north make up a large enough voting block to become a courted constituency. However, because their numbers are so low in circa 1865, I think they get the vote (at least the men) quickly.

But if the rising number of blacks throughout the north are seen as threatening other lower class workers - like the Irish - then racism will continue to be alive and well throughout those areas of the north where there are a significant number of blacks.
 

funnyhat

EnglishCanuck said:
Well TFSmith's got it right, it really would depend on how big the population was and how dispersed it would get. Then Anaxagoras is right as it would depend on who was governing said state at the time.

It would vary by state to a great degree, so a black person in New York or Pennsylvania would probably be much better off than one in say Missouri or Michigan. Regional prejudices would factor in as much as politics as well.
Click to expand...

Why do you say this? (Or were you just naming some states at random?)
 
EnglishCanuck

EnglishCanuck

funnyhat said:
Why do you say this? (Or were you just naming some states at random?)
Click to expand...

Well correct me if I'm wrong but it was my understanding throughout much of New England and the Great Lakes region, there was a greater acceptance of blacks in the US, while in the Midwest and Upper South there was considerable prejudice directed against them.

I figured these names would be convenient for reference purposes.
 

TheYoungPretender

EnglishCanuck said:
Well correct me if I'm wrong but it was my understanding throughout much of New England and the Great Lakes region, there was a greater acceptance of blacks in the US, while in the Midwest and Upper South there was considerable prejudice directed against them.

I figured these names would be convenient for reference purposes.
Click to expand...

The lakes were further from the main immigration points, while often having been settled before the big waves started. You don't have the black v. Irish/Italian dynamic you have in the big ports, or in the land grant areas post Civil War.

This divide in particular I think would be key - free blacks would be those areas organized immigrant group, similar to what the Irish would become along the Eastern Seaboard.

Anaxagoras - I agree totally, and yes, this is about the Union. But in two years of these boards, any ACW related post needs some reminders up top and center, or there's a long and impassioned debate about the common farmer's deep rage about high level tariff policy and Constitutional law.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
And how there were entire regiments

TheYoungPretender said:
Anaxagoras - I agree totally, and yes, this is about the Union. But in two years of these boards, any ACW related post needs some reminders up top and center, or there's a long and impassioned debate about the common farmer's deep rage about high level tariff policy and Constitutional law.
Click to expand...

And how there were entire regiments of black volunteers for the CSA. Can't forget them.:rolleyes:

Best,
 

funnyhat

EnglishCanuck said:
Well correct me if I'm wrong but it was my understanding throughout much of New England and the Great Lakes region, there was a greater acceptance of blacks in the US, while in the Midwest and Upper South there was considerable prejudice directed against them.

I figured these names would be convenient for reference purposes.
Click to expand...


It's the Michigan inclusion I don't understand. You do know that Michigan is in the Great Lakes region, right? We border four of the five lakes!
 
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EnglishCanuck

EnglishCanuck

TheYoungPretender said:
The lakes were further from the main immigration points, while often having been settled before the big waves started. You don't have the black v. Irish/Italian dynamic you have in the big ports, or in the land grant areas post Civil War.

This divide in particular I think would be key - free blacks would be those areas organized immigrant group, similar to what the Irish would become along the Eastern Seaboard.
Click to expand...

Hmm am I mistaken in thinking that the tensions were high in the MidWest then?

funnyhat said:
It's the Michigan inclusion I don't understand. You do know that Michigan is in the Great Lakes region, right? We border four of the five lakes!
Click to expand...

I was thinking of this incident which is why I included it.
 

TheYoungPretender

EnglishCanuck said:
Hmm am I mistaken in thinking that the tensions were high in the MidWest then?



I was thinking of this incident which is why I included it.
Click to expand...

The Midwest is one of the more heterogenous places in the US today, then it was true as well. Parts of Southern Ohio and Illinois were and are actively, virulently, anti-black. Northern Ohio? Full of abolitionists. Iowa still has parts where the accent is much more Southern Missouri than Midwest. Midwest is a kaleidoscope, always has been, with a given city and its hinterlands wildly different, culturally.
 
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