DBWI: What if no Radical Reconstruction?

Most AH scenarios about the Great Rebellion deal with a Confederate victory. That is why I chose one dealing with the reconstruction period in the south. The POD I was thinking of was having the assassinations of Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward fail. OTL, Lincoln was already having disagreements with Congress over how the south was to be reconstructed. With him living, i doubt we would see the emancipated slaves receiving forty acres and a mule or the various treason trials of former Confederate leaders. Davis, Lee et al. might live. Would Confederate military officers above the rank of Lt. Colonel loose the rights to vote and own large amounts of property? Would the south still have a black majority, what with most whites emigrating out west or to Canada, or to Brazil (which recently elected a "Confederado" president IIRC)? I also doubt that Congress would have carved new states out of the old south (I used to live in the state of Lincoln (ooc. OTL's South Carolina)). What are the board's thoughts?
 
Since Radical Reconstruction, the South and its black majority have been the strongest and most loyal base of support for the Republican party. We probably would not have a black President if it were not for Reconstruction. When President Taft died in 1910, Vice President George Washington Carver became the first black President. In 1912, he defeated New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson in a 46 state landslide.

President Carver's most important accomplishments were annexing Haiti in 1914 after that country's government collapsed (Black Americans were encouraged to migrate to Haiti which became a territory and the 49th state in 1920), and keeping the USA out of World War I. That war bankrupted the United Kingdom forcing it to sell the Virgin Islands to the USA (and becoming the 50th state in 1925).

Any other comments?
 
as glenn67 points out no Radical Reconstruction, the black vote isn't as strong, a lot of White Southerners still have hard feelings over it, I believe that Reconstruction I a lot of ways kept the CSA alive, groups like the KKK didn't truly die in the south till the early 1900s, they found guys in the swamps up till 1901 still fighting the war, any ways the point I was trying to make was if left on their own the old guard Southerners would of tried to find ways to cut the blacks out of voting using the law rather than force the way they did in OTL when the black-carpetbagger-Scalawag coalitions in the south turned the whole South Republican, that coalition holds to this day, the GOP's backbone as they're called.

also no Black vote, less interest in black Nations affairs, such as the closest between the USA and Liberia, US support in the Scramble for Africa helped Liberia become an Africa super-power
 
Since Radical Reconstruction, the South and its black majority have been the strongest and most loyal base of support for the Republican party. We probably would not have a black President if it were not for Reconstruction.

Any other comments?

Perhaps the south remains the Democratic stronghold, instead of becoming the agrarian party popular out west. Would the issue of the bloody shirt come up in such a timeline?
 
Perhaps the south remains the Democratic stronghold, instead of becoming the agrarian party popular out west. Would the issue of the bloody shirt come up in such a timeline?

well the civil war is so big, so many died, it's be very unlikely that the War wouldn't be a political issue, it's really a matter of how long it's an issue, to this day "waving the bloody shirt" is still a good way to win there are places in the USA were if you are of "union" stock you can't get elected, and in a lot of places being of Dixie stock thats a major check against you in any election.
 
I'll Not Be Reconstructed And I Do Not Give A Damn

Sadly, I don't see a lot of changes, other than Samuel Tilden becoming President. The hatred produced in the hearts of white southerners losing means that ITTL the KKK won't be as large, but it won't have to be. In many areas of the postwar south, ex-slaves continued to live as slaves for all intents and purposes since local authority refused to enforce the 14th, 15th, and 16th Amendments. For these Blacks, it seemed like the whole thing about "freedom" was just another White lie, and the local Whites did everything they could to encourage that. The biggest job the Army had was finding these Blacks to tell them they were free and force the local Whites to let them go. Without Reconstruction, you could expect a de facto, though not de jure, Antebellum South. The Jim Crow laws written after 1877 were a preposterous collection of Anti-Constitutional statutes that a pliant US Supreme Court refused to strike down. My favorite? Five years for showing lack of respect for a White Man!:rolleyes::eek: So all a planter has to do is walk into town, talk to the Sheriff, tell him he needs ten more workers today, and the sheriff gets a posse to collect ten "Disrespectful Negroes", Kangaroo Court them (all-White jury, of course), put them in a chain gang, and pass them on to a Planter. Once on the chain gang, as soon as their "sentence" ends, they get "disrespectful" again. There is your postwar slavery. At least in Reconstruction there was the chance to go North. After 1877, they actually restored the fugitive slave patrols! Of course, they got the name of "posse".:mad:

Without Reconstruction, it gets worse. The southern Whites didn't need Reconstruction to hate us. The War of Southern Aggression did that.:cool:
 
Top