"Black" state created at end of Civil War

HueyLong

Banned
Oklahoma was last in demand at the time, and remained closed the longest. And as said, the US did use the ACW as an excuse to further squash the tribes there.

And who ever said it was going to be voluntary?

I wrote a story (in the Writer's Forum) in a vaguely sketched TL on this topic. There, they followed a black evangelical first and got followed by a prison exodus (Southern states use the state to dump their prisons)
 
Why bother? If you were going to go to that much trouble, it would have made more sense to just kick 'em all out of the country. Liberia, after all, was created by freed slaves. Maybe you could make a large portion of the blacks could be forced to go there.

Because you can't walk to Liberia? :p
Seriously, though. If you carved out part of say - Montana (I don't think anyone was using it at the time) and just offered it to the blacks, I could see lots of them move out there. Lots of them also dying along the way - but the idea of a 'black state' would be interesting.

You could also try and shove them into Utah as a counter to the Mormons.

Ideally, you'd want to take a part of the world that is not currently US territory - Baja California comes to mind. Oh, I can SEE the racist rationale for that one! (I just won't repeat it). And after all, we did try to swipe Baja California from Mexico in the Gadsen Purchase

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsen_Purchase


Of course we'll never know what Lincoln would have done...
 
Or you could, I don't know, carve out states where blacks are already the majority. Then you could just move/encourage movement to where the greatest concentrations of blacks already exist. Southern states lose their black underclass, the the white already-a-minority in the black belt would either (a) hopefully be marginalized or (b) move to the "white" south.

Then you save yourself most of the manpower and cost of gathering, moving, and settling the blacks in question.
 
Oklahoma is the best bet. In 1865 in was "Indian Territory" and the Civilized Tribes were forced to cede the western half of the state to the US because of their assistance to the CSA. There were also several "colonization" movements among blacks that focused on Oklahoma as a potential black state. In the late 19th century numerous all-black towns were founded - not so much because of white racism (although it existed) - but because african americans deliberately established them and recruited others.
 
Oklahoma is the best bet. In 1865 in was "Indian Territory" and the Civilized Tribes were forced to cede the western half of the state to the US because of their assistance to the CSA. There were also several "colonization" movements among blacks that focused on Oklahoma as a potential black state. In the late 19th century numerous all-black towns were founded - not so much because of white racism (although it existed) - but because african americans deliberately established them and recruited others.

Oklahoma? A much longer Trail of Tears.
 
Oklahoma? A much longer Trail of Tears.
Except with trains and early-industrial technology.

But then, as I mentioned earlier, you'd have the problem of physically moving masses of blacks into an area where there (a) were no blacks previously and (b) doesn't have the infrastructure to support them.

Really, simple logistics would argue against that as an option for a "Black" state, especially when you could simply punish the states that just finished rebelling/insure total loyalty from a significant minority population by redrawing the state lines. Especially since there was a serious Congressional group (the radical reconstructionists) who would have been amiable to such a recarving of the South.
 
The problem with this is that a "black state" could theoretically deny rights to whites, and I don't see the U.S. going for that, then or now.

Nonetheless, IIRC, when the U.S. was to get Santo Domingo, I think that it would have been a largely black state.
 
If we're trying to imagine a scenario in which a state was carved out to have a permanent black majority and local government/elite class, how about this:

Confederate guerrillas attack Federal occupation troops and officials administering reconstruction, provoking the Federal government to make an example of a given region-- say, half of South Carolina or Mississippi-- by confiscating every farm larger than 160 acres and distributing the land to ex-slaves as reparations for slavery. Then sending all-black army units to enforce that action, leading to white flight. Reluctance to accept black in-migration in other states funnels blacks to the newly created state, and by the time Jim Crow undoes reconstruction in most of the south, the new state is too well-established to be undone.

Plausible? And what would it look like today?
 
If we're trying to imagine a scenario in which a state was carved out to have a permanent black majority and local government/elite class, how about this:

Confederate guerrillas attack Federal occupation troops and officials administering reconstruction, provoking the Federal government to make an example of a given region-- say, half of South Carolina or Mississippi-- by confiscating every farm larger than 160 acres and distributing the land to ex-slaves as reparations for slavery. Then sending all-black army units to enforce that action, leading to white flight. Reluctance to accept black in-migration in other states funnels blacks to the newly created state, and by the time Jim Crow undoes reconstruction in most of the south, the new state is too well-established to be undone.

Plausible? And what would it look like today?

Sounds likely to me. South Carolina is the best bet as it was the most hated state in the Union at the end of the Civil War including much of the South who blamed South Carolina for the war.
 
From what I've read so far the main arguements are...

1.) Why bother?
Well the simplest answer is that it is far less trouble, and more benefical for the blacks to be sent away from the South. Of course the counter to this is that in doing such a thing the main export region of the US loose's a precentage of it's manpower.

2.) What about states where blacks are the majority?
I'd venture a guess that if given an option of working under Whites, or working for themselves they'd choose themselves. Plus what does one do in events where people are the elite? Money talks better then people wish to admit. So do you really like the US will displace a large selection of white people, when there is land to the west?

3.) Where do we put them?
Well we have between the East and West coast so I'm positive we can find them some space. i do not see a single black state, but more like various black regions across the US. For think in terms of the time and does anyone really want a state filled with black people having a very large say in the house of representitives?

This seems like a rather good way of giving blacks an equal footing in the United States, as well as the 40 acres and a mule they had been promised.
 
It's an ingenous way to make the black vote worthless, isn't it? I mean, stick all the blacks in one state, so during elections, you have votes from 51 white states and one black state, which means that all politicians can safely ignore the black state since the popular vote is meaningless anyway.
 
It's an ingenous way to make the black vote worthless, isn't it? I mean, stick all the blacks in one state, so during elections, you have votes from 51 white states and one black state, which means that all politicians can safely ignore the black state since the popular vote is meaningless anyway.
Sorry RA you are not even close to right on this one.:(
If they become 12% of the population as they are OTL that one state would see more ass-kissing in one election than the total that OTL Blacks have ever seen. We are talking at or about 54 of the 270 electorial votes needed for election. California in comparison has 55.
The Black state would have approx. 52 Congressmen and 2 Senators for 54 electorial votes,California has 53+2=55 currently there are 435 Congresscritters and 100 Sen. for a total of 535 add 3 for the Distict of Columbia and that makes 538.
A Black State would have one-fifth of the Electors needed to elect a President not even George Wallace would ignore this state.:D
 
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Very true. Gerymandering, the tactic of redrawing district lines to political advantage, is a double edged sword. If you're in the minority, it can be used to sideline you into a few districts that can be overruled by the majority. If you're in the majority, as these black states would be, then that works for you. You could theoretically have two (or possibly three, if you make them smaller) black states in which a hostile white minority can be sidelined into irrelevance.


And for awhile, "fear for the rights of whites" won't exactly matter squat. This is reconstruction, and any black state in Reconstruction will be made during radical reconstruction. Reconstruction already saw whites stripped of their rights and put under military occupation. This will be harder, and any thing that Black Joe does in his state to secessionist traitors will be overlooked by the powers that be. And that assumes that they are stripped of their rights. If they're just marginalized, you can leave them to rot.
 
Confederate guerrillas attack Federal occupation troops and officials administering reconstruction, provoking the Federal government to make an example of a given region-- say, half of South Carolina or Mississippi-- by confiscating every farm larger than 160 acres and distributing the land to ex-slaves as reparations for slavery. Then sending all-black army units to enforce that action, leading to white flight. Reluctance to accept black in-migration in other states funnels blacks to the newly created state, and by the time Jim Crow undoes reconstruction in most of the south, the new state is too well-established to be undone.

Plausible? And what would it look like today?

Not plausible since there are no Confederate guerrillas following the surrender of the Confederacy. Anybody comitting crimes against Federal authorities are outlaws or criminals and most of the South was practically lawless the last months of the war. What about the presence or actions of the Klan, or was that after Reconstruction?
 

HueyLong

Banned
Having an area that is majority black does not mean it contains a majority of the US blacks. So, 54 electoral votes? I think not.

In fact, I think it would be stuck as a special territory- like our later Hispanic acquisitions. So, not a state, with maybe some "observers" sent to Congress, no electoral votes etc.... Basically, no national representation.

But still, giving American blacks their own experience in self-government (longer than OTL's Reconstruction, to be sure) will certainly change all of American blacks lives.
 
Having an area that is majority black does not mean it contains a majority of the US blacks. So, 54 electoral votes? I think not.

In fact, I think it would be stuck as a special territory- like our later Hispanic acquisitions. So, not a state, with maybe some "observers" sent to Congress, no electoral votes etc.... Basically, no national representation.

But still, giving American blacks their own experience in self-government (longer than OTL's Reconstruction, to be sure) will certainly change all of American blacks lives.

I just had a vision: "The American Ireland," or the "Black Puerto Rico on steroids," etc.

In which the insular, landlocked African commonwealth has a communist-leaning insurgency movement. Like the IRA they are hardly Stalinist communist/socialists, but the fear of it leads to government police/etc. acting against them in a small-scale conflict.
 
The most likely outcome in my opinion is that after a large number of Blacks move to the Black State is that the treatment and pay of Black field hands goes up considerably as the White farm owners will have to do so to keep farming because their farm hands will leave if they don't. Along with the fact it is a long, expensive trip away from friends means that most Blacks will probably not move.
 
Having an area that is majority black does not mean it contains a majority of the US blacks. So, 54 electoral votes? I think not.

In fact, I think it would be stuck as a special territory- like our later Hispanic acquisitions. So, not a state, with maybe some "observers" sent to Congress, no electoral votes etc.... Basically, no national representation.

But still, giving American blacks their own experience in self-government (longer than OTL's Reconstruction, to be sure) will certainly change all of American blacks lives.

No, eventually blacks living in other parts of the country will campaign for the territory's right to statehood, not to mention the eventual civil rights movement.

As mentioned earlier, I doubt it will be either exclusively black to begin with nor total black for long. Other races will eventually move in and blacks will move out. Its always been like that.

And another point, it could be suggested that the Radical Republicans would seek statehood for any territory immediately in the believe that they will have created a loyal Republican Party base.
 
Except with trains and early-industrial technology.

But then, as I mentioned earlier, you'd have the problem of physically moving masses of blacks into an area where there (a) were no blacks previously and (b) doesn't have the infrastructure to support them.

Really, simple logistics would argue against that as an option for a "Black" state, especially when you could simply punish the states that just finished rebelling/insure total loyalty from a significant minority population by redrawing the state lines. Especially since there was a serious Congressional group (the radical reconstructionists) who would have been amiable to such a recarving of the South.

Why are we talking about a state based on forced immigration of Stalinist prportions? I presume we are talking about a "black state" which develops gradually over time as settlement grows and population increases. Also, the entire process of state formation in the US is voluntary. People want to move there, people ask fore statehood, and people get statehood (or they don't). Most states in the US started history with no basic infrastructure and it was developed by the people moving in. Oklahoma is more appropriate than you might think. There was a pre-existing - if small - black population (former slaves held by Indians and escaped/manumitted freedmen from the south). The infrastructure (towns, railroads, etc) in the eastern 1/3 of the State (settled Indian Territory) was not radically less developed than western Arkansas or many parts of Texas. Also, I just don't see radical republicans ultimately having the long term political clout (or ultimately the will) to carve out black states in the south.

I don't see why people seem to be presuming the movement of black people west would necessarily be forced or involuntary, any more than it was for Kansas or Nebraska. By 1870, Oklahoma was basically the only place in the US which could have allowed blacks the opportunity to "start fresh" in a southern-like environment they would be most familiar with and form their own state. Of course the Indians would be the people lose big on this deal, but that would not sway many people in the north or south.
 
Unless it's where blacks are already the solid electoral majority, you won't have blacks moving out west for a majority state. Why? Economics. The black migration post ACW was to the North for a reason: jobs. Jobs and economic opportunities not available out west for settlers (which requires its own monetary expense to start) where eventually white immigration from Europe is going to flow anyway. Blacks broke up their population majority on their own post Civil War. Getting a population super-majority in some state out west is going to require forced movement, especially when the super-farmers who can afford tractors and mechanized equipment start buying out land and smaller farmers.
 
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