I asked here earlier about the Cozumel proposal in the US as an effort by Abraham Lincoln to settle freed slaves after the Civil War. As I sort of researched this topic, I stumbled upon various resettlement and colonization projects for African-Americans proposed by the United States and became interested. So, say that the colonization movement took off in the United States to a much larger extent to a place outside of Liberia or say the "four horses and a mule" took off and mitigated the creation of a federal Western territory for Blacks, where would be the most likely place to be for this?
Alternative Black Homelands to Liberia?
- Thread starter ACB3C0_
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I thought of either Namibia (there's actually a TL that based on such scenario) or even the eastern side of South Africa. Either way, the principal opposition is still the same as OTL.
DRC ( as I seem to like this location,), Haiti (as They are advocating for them to go to their country), Another Place in West Africa,
One day I am gonna go back and finish that up
The Free Man’s Republic: A Story of Jubilation
Foreword: I read and post a lot here, and you may know me from my previous small-time project “The Left and Right Eyes of India”. That, for now, has been ended, as I focus on this, an upcoming idea I had. This TL will be slow, as it is particularly busy in my life at the moment; and there may...
www.alternatehistory.com
How about Natal? Geography and climate make the area to raise sheep, cattle and all sorts of crops like corn and sorghum. Sierra Leone already exists as a place to resettle emancipated slaves but I can't see why there can't be two areas. The British government or private interests or some mixture of the two can purchase slaves and bring them to Natal to resettle. It can be used as counterbalance against both the local African kingdoms and the Boers who often resisted British rule.
So maybe there is an alternate emerging Afrocentric Christian Spiritual awakening movement in the 19th Century even before the American Cival War somehow identifying the Negus Negasti of Abyssinia as a spiritual figurehead and Ethiopia as the Biblical promised land.
It has to be nearby, considering the numbers to be moved and the transport tech of the time - mostly in the Americas, the western coasts of Africa at most. On the domestic front, Lincoln did speak with many Black leaders and repeatedly insist that they prepare to leave the United States mostly to Latin America and the Caribbean, and even sent a few hundred to an island off southern Haiti (settlement failed during the war) - probably not in the Dixiecrat "get em out" spirit, rather keeping every option on the table, pulling out all the stops to pre-empt a feared ethnic conflict in the South after a Union victory. Frederick Douglass notably disagreed and insisted that the Black population be freed and given US citizenship as any other man. If Douglass had come around to Lincoln's pragmatism/cynicism, there would have been much more support for sustained Black emigration to a land by and for free men. The population was 5,000,000 at the time, likely too much to completely resettle from the continental US without Monrovia-style MDSs on a massive scale.
If they moved "a few hundred here, a thousand there" all across LatAm and the Caribbean, that's 1% moved out at best, assuming that all the recipient governments agreed to it.
Wank the Radical Reconstructionists, and they could be pissed enough at the South to simply carve out a territory from down there. Likely the Savannah River Basin of Georgia/South Carolina with a capital in the former slave-port city of Savannah, or the Mississippi Delta of Mississippi/Arkansas/Louisiana with filthy rich soil. The government itself would be largely modelled off the US Constitution, albeit more centralized to fit a smaller land, while existing as a protectorate/associated state, like Puerto Rico.
If they moved "a few hundred here, a thousand there" all across LatAm and the Caribbean, that's 1% moved out at best, assuming that all the recipient governments agreed to it.
Wank the Radical Reconstructionists, and they could be pissed enough at the South to simply carve out a territory from down there. Likely the Savannah River Basin of Georgia/South Carolina with a capital in the former slave-port city of Savannah, or the Mississippi Delta of Mississippi/Arkansas/Louisiana with filthy rich soil. The government itself would be largely modelled off the US Constitution, albeit more centralized to fit a smaller land, while existing as a protectorate/associated state, like Puerto Rico.
I was about to say that the Samana region of the DR had a good number of African Americans settle the area.
it was shot down quick but Cozumel or an alternate Yucatan republic-turned-into-a-us-puppet used as a staging ground for an alt Linconia
Oh my God there's a timeline somewhere in the multiverse where William Walker is more successful in Nicaragua, Linconia gets founded and a Confederate government in exile and a nation of freed slaves fight an eternal proxy war over Costa Rica!
There's a lot of places in Africa and Latin America that the US could annex with the intention of resettling freed men but that's never going to happen. The freedmen don't want to leave and the southerners still need them. America is still reliant on its cotton production and cotton production is still reliant on the exploitation of black labor. There is nobody to fill that gap with resettlement. The Irish aren't going to do it by the hundreds of thousands.
It is expensive to move hundreds of thousands of people to overseas colonies, especially if they're unwilling to go. You're going to pay for hundreds of ships to do hundreds of trips across the Atlantic or Caribbean, having to feed the "cargo" along the way, and setting up infrastructure for housing, food supply, and water by the time they land? For what? And what happens to the natives? We saw what happened to Liberia. Multiply that by a factor of 100.
Even if the US goes the route of colonization with the mindset of the upcoming generation of European imperialists, whether they take the Congo or Namibia or even places in the Indian ocean they're not going to be settled with more than 5 figures and it's highly unlikely they become full fledged colonies like otl's European counterparts in the same territories regardless. So no massive American infrastructure projects in the Congo like a Grand Inga Dam, probably.
It might be easier not to free them and just sell them to Brazil. Wouldn't that be a nice chapter in our history books? In a parallel universe where Hitler gets to read about it in the early morning of January 20th, 1942, he might even skip the meeting that day and just stay in bed and put on his favorite jazz albums.
The best bet is carving out a state or states within the US's borders but where are you going to do that? California and Oregon don't want them. Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico are deserts. The Mormons don't want them so there goes Utah and Idaho. The Dakotas are cold, Montana and Colorado are a bunch of mountains, cowboys, and natives, and Oklahoma has other plans. That just leaves Washington as a territory and there you'd have a second trail of tears and resettling a bunch of former slaves in a place named after a guy that owned slaves. And you're going to piss off the Oregonians and they'll come up with a reverse fugitive slave act if anybody tries crossing South from the Colombia or the 46th. Not to mention dropping off six million people into a land that's got only seven million people today in mostly very densely populated cities.
The alternative is where the slaves outnumbered the white populations in the south, but you're going to need to do some serious tampering in post civil war politics to even consider that and possibly light the Constitution on fire.
You could make a few small autonomous regions that aren't exactly states and classify them as reservations. Though that seems offly messy, but given the subject you're asking about I guess it kinda goes with the territory.
If you have to give a whole state to freedmen just make Charles Sumner president and he'll trail of tears the whites out of South Carolina and give the freedmen a home there, though the slave population in 1860 was higher than South Carolina's entire population today. Anybody remember his Crime Against Kansas speech?
"Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to the day of the last election of the senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose — I do not say how little ; but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas, in its valiant struggle against oppression, and in the development of a new science of emigration. "
Yeah, he took quite the beating for that one.
www.senate.gov
I root for the President Sumners option. Hell, he might also annex Canada if the Brits take his Alabama Claims more seriously. "Oh you meant that?!"
It is expensive to move hundreds of thousands of people to overseas colonies, especially if they're unwilling to go. You're going to pay for hundreds of ships to do hundreds of trips across the Atlantic or Caribbean, having to feed the "cargo" along the way, and setting up infrastructure for housing, food supply, and water by the time they land? For what? And what happens to the natives? We saw what happened to Liberia. Multiply that by a factor of 100.
Even if the US goes the route of colonization with the mindset of the upcoming generation of European imperialists, whether they take the Congo or Namibia or even places in the Indian ocean they're not going to be settled with more than 5 figures and it's highly unlikely they become full fledged colonies like otl's European counterparts in the same territories regardless. So no massive American infrastructure projects in the Congo like a Grand Inga Dam, probably.
It might be easier not to free them and just sell them to Brazil. Wouldn't that be a nice chapter in our history books? In a parallel universe where Hitler gets to read about it in the early morning of January 20th, 1942, he might even skip the meeting that day and just stay in bed and put on his favorite jazz albums.
The best bet is carving out a state or states within the US's borders but where are you going to do that? California and Oregon don't want them. Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico are deserts. The Mormons don't want them so there goes Utah and Idaho. The Dakotas are cold, Montana and Colorado are a bunch of mountains, cowboys, and natives, and Oklahoma has other plans. That just leaves Washington as a territory and there you'd have a second trail of tears and resettling a bunch of former slaves in a place named after a guy that owned slaves. And you're going to piss off the Oregonians and they'll come up with a reverse fugitive slave act if anybody tries crossing South from the Colombia or the 46th. Not to mention dropping off six million people into a land that's got only seven million people today in mostly very densely populated cities.
The alternative is where the slaves outnumbered the white populations in the south, but you're going to need to do some serious tampering in post civil war politics to even consider that and possibly light the Constitution on fire.
Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States. Compiled from the census of 1860
Scale ca. 1:3,000,000. LC Civil War Maps (2nd ed.), 13.2 "Entered according to Act of Congress, A.D. 1861 by Henry S. Graham." "Sold for the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers of the U.S. Army." "Census Office, Department of the Interior, Washington, Sept. 9th, 1861. After a careful...
www.loc.gov
You could make a few small autonomous regions that aren't exactly states and classify them as reservations. Though that seems offly messy, but given the subject you're asking about I guess it kinda goes with the territory.
If you have to give a whole state to freedmen just make Charles Sumner president and he'll trail of tears the whites out of South Carolina and give the freedmen a home there, though the slave population in 1860 was higher than South Carolina's entire population today. Anybody remember his Crime Against Kansas speech?
"Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to the day of the last election of the senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose — I do not say how little ; but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas, in its valiant struggle against oppression, and in the development of a new science of emigration. "
Yeah, he took quite the beating for that one.
U.S. Senate: "The Crime Against Kansas"
1851: "The Crime Against Kansas" -- May 19, 1856
www.senate.gov
I root for the President Sumners option. Hell, he might also annex Canada if the Brits take his Alabama Claims more seriously. "Oh you meant that?!"
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raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
In a scenario where you get an American Civil War, with a northern victory and abolition of slavery a full generation earlier, with a PoD of the Missouri compromise failing, https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ding-to-a-worst-case-sectional-crisis.522152/, substantial parts of the south are still in the territorial stage by the time the war is over (NLT 1835).
Thus, Florida territory (not a state until 1845) and Arkansas territory (not a state until 1836, and consisting of Arkansas and most of Oklahoma), are available as homelands for Freedman after war and emancipation, and have the bonus that most of their soils and weather can grow the types of crops that the Freedmen have experience growing.
Thus, Florida territory (not a state until 1845) and Arkansas territory (not a state until 1836, and consisting of Arkansas and most of Oklahoma), are available as homelands for Freedman after war and emancipation, and have the bonus that most of their soils and weather can grow the types of crops that the Freedmen have experience growing.
GuildedAgeNostalgia
Gone Fishin'
Logistics people. Keep in mind it took centuries to transport millions of Africans to the Americas by boat, and that was only because it was profitable. Forcing millions of free slaves onto boats back to Africa or the Caribbean in a matter of a couple decades is simply not possible.
If you want the African American population to move out of the US, look North to Canada, or South to Mexico.
Perhaps the US works out a deal with France after the Civil War where the US allies with Emperor Maximilian to take out Mexican rebels in the North under the condition that US freed slaves are given Northern Mexico as their own "reservation"?
If you want the African American population to move out of the US, look North to Canada, or South to Mexico.
Perhaps the US works out a deal with France after the Civil War where the US allies with Emperor Maximilian to take out Mexican rebels in the North under the condition that US freed slaves are given Northern Mexico as their own "reservation"?