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Ive been reading “Lincoln’s Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy” by Richard Current and passage came up. When talking about Unionists in North Carolina, most of whom were poor white farmers, they had a general support of freedom for the slaves but expressed a very descisive interest in seeing said slaves removed from the state after they were freed.

Now this had me thinking, of the Homestead act which was open to African Americans but discrimination and the like prevented many from taking up on it. There were black settlements settled in western territories but they were fairly few. Also, about the general support of a “Back to Africa” movement among abolitionists.

What if instead a specific homestead act was opened to recently freed slaves to re-settle many in the Western Territories, say running from Montana to Colorado. I could see Republicans, maybe even Grant, getting behind it for seeding Republican Support in new states that would be admitted to the Union. Put loyal citizens on the ground to reap the bounty of the West. Say, within a decade from 1865 100,000 are resettled followed by several hundred thousand more. It may not even have to be that much, if African settlement can claim the choicest of fertile territory in these states than lack of immigration these arid states initially received could solidify the demographics.
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