AHC: Forty Acres & a Mule

Incidentally, if one is really keen on getting the Republicans to persist with Reconstruction, there could be a simpler way of doing it - get them to abolish the Electoral College.

This would have created a situation where "every vote counts", so the Reps would have needed every Black vote they could get. Iirc, it is believed that, had only white men voted, Grant would have lost the popular vote to Seymour, and this was certainly the case between 1876 and 1892, when the Reps frequently lost the popular vote even with significant numbers of negroes voting.

In this situation, the Republicans could not have written off the South, and allowed the Black vote there to be suppressed. OTL they could, because the Electoral College system enabled them to win elections w/o a single Southern vote. Thus the political rights of Southern Blacks were a frill, not a necessity, and as soon as public weariness with Reconstruction started to imperil their hold on key Northern States, it was abandoned like a shot. But with direct popular vote, they cannot do so.

BTW, I have a vague recollection that Senator Sumner actually advocated such an amendment, though I can't remember exactly when.
 
Key thing, Proper reconstruction starts April 1865. The South is defeated. Land redistribution will be possible. Also destroy the planter class: give up your land and leave the South for 20 years or be tried for treason by an abolitionist and a jury consisting mainly of USTC soldiers.

Also the new regime should try to emphasize that the war was started to benefit that class.

Oh and create and enforce specific rights for former slaves and their descendant in states and territories that took part in the rebellion
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Rigging the jury? Yes. Prosecuting for treason? Not so much.
It was indeed the jury (and judge) I was thinking of.
The treason prosecution is a bit of a gray area because, to be quite blunt, if you treat secession as treason you have to execute half the South. Selective application of the laws isn't a good look, but an apparent "white genocide" in the south is an even worse look!
OTOH, if you respect the blanket pardons given by Grant and other generals, you're letting a lot of them off (including the officers, and I suspect quite a lot of the planters you want to target were in the armies as officers) but you still need to execute anyone who deserted the Confederate armies before the final surrenders.

ED: actually, the requirements for a treason conviction are actually quite strict. It's either admitting it in open court (that is, admitting specifically to treason) or the testimony of two eyewitnesses. That might cause a problem - it may well be part of why less than 30 cases of treason charges being brought have happened in US history.
 
Last edited:
Either the South became conquered provinces or there was treason. I think the threat of prosecution will do the trick. Treason = making war on the United States, This clearly happened
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Either the South became conquered provinces or there was treason. I think the threat of prosecution will do the trick. Treason = making war on the United States, This clearly happened
My point is that you have, roughly speaking, four choices.

1) Treat secession as treason and do not respect the surrender terms offered by Grant (and others).
This is essentially declaring intent to execute the majority of the men of the South, and is basically a recipe for a gigantic guerilla war because you've given all those southerners nothing to lose by taking up arms again.
2) Treat secession as treason but do respect the surrender terms offered by Grant.
This is still a declaration of intent to execute large numbers of southern men, this time specifically excluding only those who did not fight the Union up to the end of the war. That means everyone in Lee's army at Appomattox gets away free, but their wounded they left in Richmond do not.
It's likely to cause a lot of unrest, plus it also means the most loyal Southern partisans get away free.
3) Declare the South a conquered province and do whatever you want with it.
This is implicitly confirming that the South did become a foreign country, which has unfortunate legal precedents. It's also unlikely to make people calm about the idea of mass deportations and/or execution.
4) Sweep the whole thing under the rug and don't charge anyone.
Basically OTL.
 
Which clearly relates to a purely wartime measure.

There would be no constitutional basis for forbidding whites to reside in the area, or for reserving its administration to the Freedmen alone, once the war was over. Even the Reconstruction Acts never included anything of the kind.

In any case, how does the situation in a thin strip of the Atlantic coast have any effect on what happens in the rest of the South? The area concerned is nowhere near big enough to hold the entire Black population.

Section three stated:

PBS said:
in the possession of which land the military authorities will afford them protection, until such time as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their title.

Which suggests it wasn't intended as a purely wartime measure if the order includes such stipulations. That sounds like an order with the expectation of a long-term period of occupation.

As for what it means if the sea islands and coastal regions, which was a pretty substantial strip stretching from Charleston to St. John's River in Florida including everything up to thirty miles inland, are maintained and able to get on their feet not only do you have a set of strongholds for the freedmen to use it establishes precedent for doing the same in other parts of the South. A successful working example where free Blacks cannot be dislodged from will have its own impact on how everything plays out.

"Critical" time in what way?

As already noted, Black militias were set up during Reconstruction, but to no avail. Why should starting them a year or two earlier make any long term difference?

Because that first year, which is something you're blatantly ignoring, was a year where slavery in all but name was re-established and Southern state governments were able to get back in the saddle before being deposed again. If that whole mess doesn't happen then not only does that mean the militias are in place earlier, which means more time to train, recruit, and develop experience and credibility, they won't be operating in a situation where the early Redeemers were able to establish some semblance of post-war authority however brief it was. That matters.

As for the Freedmen's Bureau, it was closed down in 1872, long after Johnson had left the White House, and at a time when the Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. It was never intended to be permanent, and there's no reason whatever to suppose that getting rid of Johnson would have made it so.

Johnson not being in place to hobble Reconstruction from the get-go could be enough to either give it a new lease on life or, barring that, at least more time to operate with a freer hand than one would expect from having a pro-slavery Democrat in the White House.

It was at first believed to be a double assassination anyway, as for quite a while Seward was not expected to live. As for Johnson, he wasn't particularly well thought of after his embarrassing performance at the inauguration, and his death could scarcely have made people any more horrified than they already were at Lincoln's. "You can't wet a river".

It's less a question of horror and more a question of putting Congress directly in the driver's seat with a clear cause for more Radical Republicans to push for stronger measures against the South. No Johnson getting in the way of Congress means you get a very different Reconstruction.

Well, he later become a Democrat which doesn't sound as if he was particularly radical. As Pres of the Senate he was more aware of Congressional opinion, so I could imagine him going a bit further than Johnson, perhaps requiring all persons who could read and write a section of the US Constitution to be enrolled as voters regardless of their colour. But the effect of this is likely to be marginal.

If there's hue and cry being raised in Congress, people already jockeying for position to be the next President, and an Acting President who knows they're a placeholder who has to keep things under control until November I doubt you'd see the Black Codes be tolerated for as long as they were, if they are at all, and it is likely the last policies put in place by the outgoing administration would remain to keep some sense of continuity. There might also be measures for immediate martial law pushed through by Congress in response to what had just happened as well as out of a desire to keep a lid on things.
 
Incidentally, if one is really keen on getting the Republicans to persist with Reconstruction, there could be a simpler way of doing it - get them to abolish the Electoral College.

That's not too simple - it would require a constitutional amendment.

I guess it's feasible - they did manage to pass a few amendments in a fairly short time (13th, 14th, 15th) but those were ones where there was a pretty strong consensus for (among non-Southerners).
 
If there's hue and cry being raised in Congress,

Would Congress be in session? OTL it didn't meet until December - by which time the new Presidential election would already have taken place.

Foster might call the HoR into special session, to allow a Speaker to be chosen, but not necessarily both houses.

people already jockeying for position to be the next President,

How do you mean "jockeying"? There's no likelihood of anyone other than Grant ever being seriously considered.

and an Acting President who knows they're a placeholder who has to keep things under control until November I doubt you'd see the Black Codes be tolerated for as long as they were, if they are at all,

The Black Codes didn't start being enacted until Nov/Dec 1865 - by which time Grant would already have been elected. In any case, important parts of them were overridden by the military authorities, with Andrew Johnson's approval - some of it was too much even for him - so never came into effect at all. So not a lot of change from OTL.

An interesting question is what becomes of the Fourteenth Amendment. TTL, Grant (who takes office in March 1866) will presumably sign the Civil Rights and Freedmen's Bureau Bills (the latter may have already been signed by Foster) so the Amendment may seem less necessary. OTL, it passed the Senate 33-11, so only four defections would be needed to defeat it - or at least to get the disqualifying measures of Section 3 stricken out. Also, TTL the Southern states aren't being egged on by Johnson to reject it, so if it still passes Congress they are more likely to ratify. If they do, they may well be readmitted w/o the question of Black suffrage being raised, save by a radical minority.

Finally, even if Black suffrage is imposed, it may have less impact than OTL. Much of the initial Radical success in the 1867/68 State elections was due to large numbers of white men (with Johnson's encouragement) boycotting the polls in the hope that a Democratic victory in 1868 would render the Reconstruction Act a dead letter. In this alt-1866, with Grant already in office and the next election nearly four years off, they have much less incentive to do this. So quite a few Southern States are likely to be readmitted under much more conservative governments, as happened in Virginia even OTL. So in much of the South Reconstruction may, paradoxically, end up being less radical rather than more.
 
Treat secession as treason and do not respect the surrender terms offered by Grant (and others).

An insult which could well have led to Grant, Sherman and several other generals resigning from the Army in protest. Grant might have ended up running on the Democratic ticket instead of Republican.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
An insult which could well have led to Grant, Sherman and several other generals resigning from the Army in protest. Grant might have ended up running on the Democratic ticket instead of Republican.
God yes, it's also ensured that nobody will trust the US government for the next several decades - honourable surrender terms were one of those things generally considered sacrosanct.
 
It was at first believed to be a double assassination anyway, as for quite a while Seward was not expected to live.

Correction - it was a double assassination, as Frederick Seward, the Assistant Sec of State, was killed trying to defend his father. As the latter was at first not expected to survive, it appeared at the time to be a triple assassination.
 
Top