Civil Rights if slavery had been gradually abolished

Until perhaps 1830 there were those in the South who openly opposed slavery for a variety of reasons.

In OTL it became a sectional issue (party because the slave owning class made debate on the issue in the South impossible and open opposition to slavery actively dangerous.)

In OTL there was the Civil War, the Reconstruction during which there was a serious attempt to make Civil Rights a reality and the 13th 14th and 15th Amendments which made Equal rights the Supreme law of the United States.

After 1876 large parts of the US Constitution were allowed to become a dead letter in a significant part of the US. However the existence of the Constitutional provisions was a significant element in the eventual gains made by Civil Rights Campaigners.


WI some Southern States, probably starting with Virginia but maybe some other places too abolished slavery.

By the 1860s it could well be that slavery was confined to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and perhaps Florida.

I believe that slavery would have been abolished by 1900. There would have been no Civil War.

However I know that many Northern states after abolishing slavery kept strong laws discriminating against black people. Some made it effectively illegal for black people to be there at all. Other places resticted or totally denied voiting rights.

If slavery had been abolished in a gradual way would African Americans have formal legal equality by 2008?

Would and Obama be possible in such a time line?
 
They may have formal legal equality, but the Civil Rights movement would've been harder. Look at the importance of legal battles that hinged on post-ACW amendments, frex.

Could you see a situation where the South looks more like Northern Ireland?
 
The civil rights movement was triggered by twentieth century modernization. From the standpoint of 1885, people did not live with electricity, indoor plumbing, running water, automobiles. Telephones were few and far between. Homes were heated by wood stoves or fireplaces. The notion of "separate but equal" could be rationalized in a pre-modern environment.

Move ahead into the twentieth century. Martin Luther King summed it up in 1963 when he said blacks live in "islands of poverty" in a "sea of prosperity." The inequities became intolerable as the cutting edge of modernization was labeled "white people only."

So, a change in the timing of abolition of slavery or voting rights (at least on paper) would not have had much effect on the modern civil rights movement. Civil rights were necessitated by modernization.
 
Actually I think had there been no Civil War, the whole Civil rights issue would've been more... civilized.

Basiclly the Civil War pulled the whole institution by it's roots and yanked it out. Thus the countereactions in the South were open hated in many cases.

I'm not saying if slavery was allowed to slowly die everyone would be rosy about blacks being equal but I don't think organizations like the KKK would've gotten off to the start they did.
 
WI some Southern States, probably starting with Virginia but maybe some other places too abolished slavery.

By the 1860s it could well be that slavery was confined to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and perhaps Florida.

I believe that slavery would have been abolished by 1900. There would have been no Civil War.

What's the POD?
 
I think the question depends on whether or not there's any kind of TTL analogue to the Dred Scott decision. OTL the 14th Amendment is phrased as an almost direct refutation of the SCOTUS decision in the matter of Dred Scott, particularly the part making any person born in the US a citizen of the US (the Scott case had denied Scott's right to sue and thus his freedom from having lived on free soil because of Scott's lack of citizenship and his continued status as property).

The problem out of which Scott arose would still persist OTL: does taking a slave into a free state free the slave and thus destroy the property of the slaveholder by allowing the free state's law to trump the slave state's? Indeed, this problem might well increase: what if slaveowner who owned a slave in Virginia but moved to South Carolina after a gradual manumission had been passed but travelled for a period of several years (long enough to muddy residence) in free states or territoires?

While TTL certainly lacks our Reconstruction Amendments, it may well have some other form of reconciling the question above. Such a solution necessarily affects the civil rights not just of African Americans, but all Americans (given the 14th amendments role in policing state power and in creating a rule of naturalization). Without the OTL ACW, the power of the federal government is far weaker, but more importantly so too is its moral authority as the primary bulwark of liberty / safeguard of rights. I'd expect state constitutions to retain their primary significance, particularly without Reconstruction to sour the mix in many Southern states. Political organization is thus probably paramount, since it's unlikely the US constitution is amended to afford the Federal BoR the power later "granted" it by the 14th Amendment (it may happen in a more limited form, though, based on the Republican government clause and the supremacy clause; if judges could read the 14th amendment in a certain way, they could find other passages to imbue with similar meaning). I'd expect future changes to look like the movements of Jacksonian Democracy, with efforts centered on reforming state institutions.

The problems would I imagine come to ahead as TTL's USA modernized in a manner analogous to OTL's Gilded Age: no doubt TTL's USA has lots of forms of racial segregation (and may indeed have sought to re-settle much of its "free negro" population as part of manumission). However, TTL might also see a very different from of labor movement and farmer movement that morphed into the Populists, Socialists and Progressives by the turn of the century. Just as OTL's Progressives fought against the power of state governments as being refuges for the power of plutocracy, so too could TTL's (as Jacksonian Democracy had done in the 1830s). This fight would probably serve as the precedent for a latter struggle over civil rights, but very well might itself incorporate parts of it: without the memory of the Civil War to manage or the Solid South to combat (Virginia in particular along with Louisiana and perhaps North Carolina are probably much different, with industry, poor white farmers, and mixed populations to contend with), TTL's progressives could be more moved to take a stand against segregation.

Of course, it is rather hard to be more specific, since an early gradual manumission (begun in the 1830s) might well change a lot (like the Mexican-American War). A later gradual manumission with a POD in the 1850s or 1860s may be harder. For one, the sides are much more instransigent. For another, aspects of the OTL disputes over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Dred Scott Decision may well require some kind of reconciliation in the context of the Gilded Age, particularly in the context of workers rights, etc.

The other aspect of the outcome is the response of African-Americans themselves. Would Frederick Douglas support a gradual scheme? What would happen to the freed slaves? Would they be incorprorated into a system of sharecropping (laying the seeds for a future movement based more on economic exploitation)? Is there something analogus to the dispute between Booker T. Washington and WEB duBois, regarding the propoer path to Black prosperity (seeking civil rights first or seeking economic development first, IIRC)? I would guess that a gradual movement fairly well divides the abolitionist community and that despite efforts to re-settle freed slaves elsewhere, something like a sharecropping system would develop, but with perhaps even less autonomy for the sharecroppers. And there's liable to be a bigger divide amongst the freed slave community about the proper path, particularly as slaves freed earlier in the process clash with slaves freed later on. Louisiana may be particularly interesting if it sees larger instances of African-American slaveholding (IIRC very limited in practice OTL, but I could well be wrong).

Just some general thoughts.
 
The problem out of which Scott arose would still persist OTL: does taking a slave into a free state free the slave and thus destroy the property of the slaveholder by allowing the free state's law to trump the slave state's? Indeed, this problem might well increase: what if slaveowner who owned a slave in Virginia but moved to South Carolina after a gradual manumission had been passed but travelled for a period of several years (long enough to muddy residence) in free states or territoires?
What you might have seen were challenges under the Commerce Clause. It's already been well established OTL one state cannot interfere in the commercial transactions of another state (in ref a NY State riverboat case, the name of which escapes me).

There's another factor most people don't know about. The 14h Amendment was later used by corporations to qualify as "legal citizens".:eek: Without that, what would have happened?
 
I am assuming things start to change by the 1830s. I think that by the 1850s slavery is confined to six or seven states. Specifically it would butterfly away Dredd Scott because the slave state he was moved from would already have abolished slavery. I think that the Court would be far less sympathetic to slavery.


As I think further I am wondering whether WW1 might have become a boost for Civil Rights because black troops would be needed.
 
I am assuming things start to change by the 1830s. I think that by the 1850s slavery is confined to six or seven states. Specifically it would butterfly away Dredd Scott because the slave state he was moved from would already have abolished slavery. I think that the Court would be far less sympathetic to slavery.

What drives these changes? As it is, you have people acting in a way completely inconsistent with their historical behaviour for no reason, other than that it would be nice.
 
What drives these changes? As it is, you have people acting in a way completely inconsistent with their historical behaviour for no reason, other than that it would be nice.

It could have happened without Nat Turner's revolt. By then Virginia was considering a bill to gradually abolish slavery which died when Turner revolted.
 
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