Alternate Reconstruction: Prairie Liberia and Negro Carolina

[mrmandias]

What kind of POD during the Civil War or Reconstruction would lead to a more practical version of the African-American colonization idea: North American states that are reserved for freedmen? Prairie Liberia (OTL Oklahoma) and Negro Carolina (OTL South Carolina) are just two possibilities.

What effects would the existence of these states have?

What would these states look like? Would citizenship be reserved exclusively for blacks, or just government positions, or what?

 

[Cylon_Number_14]

This isn't gonna help much


But in the aftermath of Turtledove's "In At the Death" I could imagine the whites of several states, especially SC, being relocated elswhere while SC and perhaps MS or AL could also be turned into negro states.

In order for this to happen OTL, you might need something like this: either the war starts a decade later or a weapons' technology POD that turns the war into something akin to Western Front Trench Warfare. Somehow the North accepts outrageous death tolls until it achieves Victory, but in the aftermath the Radical Republicans are so angry over the 1,000,000 dead that they erase all the Southern state boundaries, redraw the map into fewer territories (therefore fewer senators) and take some pages out of Indian Removal, but apply it to a couple states in the South.

 

[Faraday Cage]

Maybe an orderly plan to fill up the West, section by section, with both blacks and whites, to relieve pressure on the South? Policed by the integrated Buffalo Soldiers in the way the Canadian territories were by the mounties (thus the West isn't quite as wild in this timeline). The South loses much of it's landless residents, leaving family farms and then large plantations which need to modernize to mechanized agricultural techniques.

 

[eschaton]

IIRC, the Radical Republicans favored a system of abolishing the antebellum states, making the whole Confederacy one U.S. territory, and then redividing it into whatever portions they saw fit.

If you had such a system, it would be pretty easy to get majority-black states, especially in the Yazoo region of MS/LA/AR and in the cotton belt running along the Piedmont. Create a few Appalachian states like East Tennessee to give unionist whites a base as well. And then try to lump all the lowland whites into two or three states. Essentially gerrymander the entire region to ensure that blacks and unionists will remain in control for several generations.

 

[mrmandias]

If you keep the existing state boundaries, South Carolina was the state with the largest black percentage, somewhere between 50 and 60%.

 

[David S Poepoe]

Essentially gerrymander the entire region to ensure that blacks and unionists will remain in control for several generations.

Not just that - and probably more importantly - it would have kept the Republican Party in control for generations.

 

[AmIndHistoryAuthor]

If you keep the existing state boundaries, South Carolina was the state with the largest black percentage, somewhere between 50 and 60%.

That'd be poetic justice as well. I have a POD that imagines SC being chosen as a designated state for Blacks out of revenge for the state's role in starting the Civil War.

 

[Johnrankins]

That'd be poetic justice as well. I have a POD that imagines SC being chosen as a designated state for Blacks out of revenge for the state's role in starting the Civil War.

Agreed, what you need is a longer Civil War. Maybe the South tries irregular warfare and so the war lasts another decade. The North is so angry this time it does the gerrymandering mentioned earlier. I could see SC as a black state. The North also carves out a bunch of appalachian states as well starting with East Tennesee.

 

[freivolk]

WI the Republicans doing 1876 better in the North. They don´t need to make a deal with the Democrats and enforce that the republican State goverment in South Carolina stays in power. Okay, there are still problems, like that the democratic Congress could stop funding for the occupation troops, but lets say Hayes make a deal, that he will retreat the troops from Louisiana and Florida and Congress will keep funding the troops in SC.
Now let say we will in the next 8 (or 12) years still have republican Presidents. As the rest of the South becomes solid democratic, it becomes for the Republicans more and more a question of prestige to hold SC. And more and more blacks flee to SC, where their rights are still protected
On the other sides the whites in SC starts to give up. More and more start to leave the state.
1888 70-80% of the population are black, the governeur is a black Republican and nothing except a real invasion through the "whité" States could change that. But even a Democrat in the White House will not allow this.

 

[mrmandias]

That'd be poetic justice as well. I have a POD that imagines SC being chosen as a designated state for Blacks out of revenge for the state's role in starting the Civil War.

Good point. Especially because the victorious Union would also have seen it as poetic justice. Lots of northerners HATED South Carolina and blamed it for the war.

 

[mrmandias]

Freivolk, I like that, especially because your POD doesn't require any explicit 'blacks only' policy.

What I wonder is how this will affect civil rights. On the one hand, having Black senators and congressmen into the Progressive era is going to make the OTL attitude towards African-Americans more difficult. But I wonder if South Carolina might bleed off the natural leaders of the local black communities who otherwise might stay home and help organize resistance and activism.

Having continued black senators from SC makes national politics a little more interesting. Maybe "prairie Liberia" comes about through some logrolling. It certainly means that the ATL civil service reforms that awarded jobs based solely on blind testing, which allowed black americans to go heavily into federal service in the late 19th Century, are likely not butterflied away.

 

[freivolk]

Freivolk, I like that, especially because your POD doesn't require any explicit 'blacks only' policy.

What I wonder is how this will affect civil rights. On the one hand, having Black senators and congressmen into the Progressive era is going to make the OTL attitude towards African-Americans more difficult. But I wonder if South Carolina might bleed off the natural leaders of the local black communities who otherwise might stay home and help organize resistance and activism.

.

This is a possibility. Why get lynched in Georgia, if you just have to go to SC. But practicly SC would become a big Ghetto, a "State of Harlem". There will be the question, which attitude the state-goverment. Will there main goal be "protect what we have" or will the Gouverneur or the Senators become some kind of "Negro-president" , speaking for all the blacks.

 

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

This is a possibility. Why get lynched in Georgia, if you just have to go to SC. But practicly SC would become a big Ghetto, a "State of Harlem". There will be the question, which attitude the state-goverment. Will there main goal be "protect what we have" or will the Gouverneur or the Senators become some kind of "Negro-president" , speaking for all the blacks.

My Guess is, Negro Carolina will Become a Beacon for Freedmen from All Over The Country, Maybe even The World ...

Furthermore, it'll Also Arise as The Nation's Civil Rights Epi-Centre for at Least The Remainder of The 19th Century ...

If TTL's Obama-Esque Figure ever Reaches The National Stage, it'll be from there, And Probably a Generation or Two Earlier to Boot!

 

[Socrates]

How well governed would this alt-Carolina be? Places like Haiti after the revolution or African countries after independence didn't do too well. If it becomes a basket case, it could sadly cause more racism elsewhere.

I also imagine a rift would emerge between white Northern Republicans and black southern ones if the latter actually got to a position of power. Perhaps over economic policy?

 

[mrmandias]

Socrates,
that's a real concern. The South is already depressed after the dislocation of the war, plus African-Americans have no tradition of self-government and have their human capital severely depressed by slavery and its legacy.
On the other hand, the GOP would be strongly committed to making sure the place turns out OK.