What if Amendment 13 does not pass?

[Pesterfield]

So, without a Thirteenth Amendment, slavery would still be illegal under state law in all the ex-Confederate states,

Once Reconstruction starts to weaken would any state governments try to legalize it again?

They managed to work around it with sharecropping, convict labor, wage slavery, etc. So officially bringing back chattel slavery might not be worth it, on the other hand if they had the option I could see some considering it worth doing even if it isn't necessary.

 

[Tripwire]

Once Reconstruction starts to weaken would any state governments try to legalize it again?

They managed to work around it with sharecropping, convict labor, wage slavery, etc. So officially bringing back chattel slavery might not be worth it, on the other hand if they had the option I could see some considering it worth doing even if it isn't necessary.

There's no way in hell post-emancipation proclamation (and Union victory) that slavery was going to persist for more than a few years. As other posters said, it's getting Congress to a two-thirds majority for the amendment banning it that was the crucial issue in 1865, they already had well over a simple majority, and if the 13th amendment failed, it would just be re-proposed over and over until it passed. With all of the slaves outside the border states freed (something like 80%+ of them), slavery is dead, it's just a matter of years rather than decades.

 

[dmg86]

The congress elected in 1864 had enough Republicans to ensure it's passage. Lincoln was prepared to call it in march to Washington it wouldn't otherwise meet until December.

 

[Tallil2long]

Once Reconstruction starts to weaken would any state governments try to legalize it again?

They managed to work around it with sharecropping, convict labor, wage slavery, etc. So officially bringing back chattel slavery might not be worth it, on the other hand if they had the option I could see some considering it worth doing even if it isn't necessary.

I doubt it. Even five or ten years after the ACW, plantation owners were seeing the "advantages" of convict labor, wage slavery, and share cropping over chattel slavery.

For one thing, the planter had no requirement to provide for the housing, health and feeding of the workers. For another, all of those methods, unlike slavery, were equal opportunity (my grandmother was a share cropper, two of her brothers worked in lumber "company towns", etc) which brought enough workers into competition for labor to be cheap as dirt. They got to play off the races against each other ("You don't want a raise; why, that'd make me fire you and hire Negroes in your place...")

No, the new system was a quite satisfactory deal for the planters.

The only thing missing, from the perspective of the wealthy planters, was a system of social control so that freed slaves (and uppity poor whites, too) were kept "in their proper place". Corrupt police, the klan, white vigilante groups incited by racist agitation, etc provided that control.

It was a filthy system, but it certainly proved that the wealthy planters knew how to adapt...

What needed to happen was for the big plantations to be divided up and given to the freed slaves. That would be the death blow (if not instantly, then soon) against the planter aristocrats. It probably ought to result in collaborative enterprise among many of the freed slaves. It would remove a malign, monied influence in Southern politics.

And frankly, the slaves had bought that land with generations of unpaid labor and misery.

 

[Johnrankins]

I doubt it. Even five or ten years after the ACW, plantation owners were seeing the "advantages" of convict labor, wage slavery, and share cropping over chattel slavery.

For one thing, the planter had no requirement to provide for the housing, health and feeding of the workers. For another, all of those methods, unlike slavery, were equal opportunity (my grandmother was a share cropper, two of her brothers worked in lumber "company towns", etc) which brought enough workers into competition for labor to be cheap as dirt. They got to play off the races against each other ("You don't want a raise; why, that'd make me fire you and hire Negroes in your place...")

No, the new system was a quite satisfactory deal for the planters.

The only thing missing, from the perspective of the wealthy planters, was a system of social control so that freed slaves (and uppity poor whites, too) were kept "in their proper place". Corrupt police, the klan, white vigilante groups incited by racist agitation, etc provided that control.

It was a filthy system, but it certainly proved that the wealthy planters knew how to adapt...

What needed to happen was for the big plantations to be divided up and given to the freed slaves. That would be the death blow (if not instantly, then soon) against the planter aristocrats. It probably ought to result in collaborative enterprise among many of the freed slaves. It would remove a malign, monied influence in Southern politics.

And frankly, the slaves had bought that land with generations of unpaid labor and misery.

Plantation land being divided only among the slaves would have never flied. What might have had a chance is dividing it between all Union Army Veterans regardless of race. The freed slaves would have gotten a lot of it because so many of them were Union Army Veterans.

 

[Tallil2long]

Plantation land being divided only among the slaves would have never flied. What might have had a chance is dividing it between all Union Army Veterans regardless of race. The freed slaves would have gotten a lot of it because so many of them were Union Army Veterans.

Hrm. That would mean that an awful lot of former slaves get nothing, while lots of Union veterans who only served a year or so are rewarded disproportionately. And I'm failing to see why this plan would be more likely to fly, to be honest.

If implemented, it would secure the goal of destroying the poisonous power of the wealthy planters, but I would infinitely prefer a solution that at least goes some little way towards compensating the former slaves for their previous lives of misery and forced labor.*





* No, nothing can exactly compensate for slavery; but in the absence of a way to actually do it, dividing up all the planters' land among the slaves is better than nothing!

 

[Mikestone8]

Hrm. That would mean that an awful lot of former slaves get nothing, while lots of Union veterans who only served a year or so are rewarded disproportionately. And I'm failing to see why this plan would be more likely to fly, to be honest.

It wouldn't.

It took Congress two years even to come round to embracing negro suffrage. More extreme measures like wholesale confiscation were simply never going to happen.

 

[Tallil2long]

It wouldn't.

It took Congress two years even to come round to embracing negro suffrage. More extreme measured like wholesale confiscation were simply never going to happen.

Yeah, I was kind of figured that.
Under other circumstances, I wouldn't be in a rush to confiscate private property, either. But in this case it not only seems fair, it seems likely to save a good bit of grief along down the line.