Desegregation earlier in The South

WI Abe Lincoln had survived and made greater overtures towards federal intervention in terms of law enforcement, business investment and federal infrastructure to support the development of African Americans after the ACW.

Could things have been different particularly in The South?

Justa thought! :D
 
You dont necessarily need lincoln to survive to do this. Just have reconstruction continue on for a longer period of time. It wasnt a perfect system, but during that phase african-americans often enjoyed a level of political and economic equality.

Perhaps a different, more decisive, or less controversial election in 1876.
 

Eurofed

Banned
My preferred PoD for this is the accomplice of Booth that was charged to kill Andrew Johnson getting a bit more spine and luck and succeeding. With Johnson dead and massive outrage in the North from the double assassination, the Congressional Radical Republicans should have no trouble to get total control of the US political process and implement a really radical Reconstruction from the get-go, with severe repression of southern segregationists.
 
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WI Abe Lincoln had survived and made greater overtures towards federal intervention in terms of law enforcement, business investment and federal infrastructure to support the development of African Americans after the ACW.

Could things have been different particularly in The South?

Justa thought! :D

Lincoln would not, most likely, have done much to interfere with segregation in the South. For one thing, segregation was something he supported in his own State of Illinois, where he supported black exclusion laws and the like. There is no evidence he felt it was a bad policy.

And Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan was even more lenient than the one adopted by his successor, Andrew Johnson. Johnson at least tried to break the power of the planter aristocracy in the South. Lincoln's plan did nothing like that, and seemed to be aimed at restoring the South to the Union with as little change to Southern society as possible...with the exception of the abolition of slavery, which he did insist on.

That being said, in a South where Reconstruction had proceeded according to Lincoln's plan, segregation might never have arisen at all. The Jim Crow laws of the 1880s and onwards were largely a reaction to what had happened in the South during Radical Reconstruction...namely the use of the black vote, coupled with massive disenfranchisement of Southern whites, in order to establish Republican control of Southern State governments. This would not have happened under Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan. Lincoln never talked about giving freedmen, en masse, the right to vote, nor of organizing them as a Republican voting bloc to put Republican governments in power in the South. He did talk about giving those blacks who had served in the Union armies the right to vote. And he talked about re-enfranchisng almost all of the former Confederates, with the exception of some high-ranking political and military leaders. In that situation, blacks would have been a relatively small bloc of voters in each State and would not have been able to be used to control the State governments. And if that did not occur, the Jim Crow laws probably would never have been passed, either.

This is not to say that everything would have been rosy for blacks even if there was no de jure segregation under Jim Crow. The legal repression of blacks might well have still existed, only in a different form. It just wouldn't have been via segregation.
 
The "massive disenfranchisement" of whites is a bit of a red herring, given how many poor whites voted Republican in the period in question.
 
The "massive disenfranchisement" of whites is a bit of a red herring, given how many poor whites voted Republican in the period in question.

That must be why, in the first elections held under Reconstruction (before the Radical Republicans got busy disenfranchising people and re-writing the election laws to suit themselves) slates full of former Confederates running on Democratic tickets were returned by the voters. Then after the Radicals took over Reconstruction policy, suddenly you have slates of Republican candidates being elected. :rolleyes:

The fact that some whites voted Republican does not deny that a large number of Southerners were disenfranchised for a period after the war.
 
My preferred PoD for this is the accomplice of Booth that was charged to kill Andrew Jackson getting a bit more spine and luck and succeeding. With Jackson dead and massive outrage in the North from the double assassination, the Congressional Radical Republicans should have no trouble to get total control of the US political process and implement a really radical Reconstruction from the get-go, with severe repression of southern segregationists.
Andrew Jackson? Why would they want to kill a former president? Don't you mean Andrew Johnson?
 
Lincoln would not, most likely, have done much to interfere with segregation in the South. For one thing, segregation was something he supported in his own State of Illinois, where he supported black exclusion laws and the like. There is no evidence he felt it was a bad policy.

And Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan was even more lenient than the one adopted by his successor, Andrew Johnson. Johnson at least tried to break the power of the planter aristocracy in the South. Lincoln's plan did nothing like that, and seemed to be aimed at restoring the South to the Union with as little change to Southern society as possible...with the exception of the abolition of slavery, which he did insist on.

That being said, in a South where Reconstruction had proceeded according to Lincoln's plan, segregation might never have arisen at all. The Jim Crow laws of the 1880s and onwards were largely a reaction to what had happened in the South during Radical Reconstruction...namely the use of the black vote, coupled with massive disenfranchisement of Southern whites, in order to establish Republican control of Southern State governments. This would not have happened under Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan. Lincoln never talked about giving freedmen, en masse, the right to vote, nor of organizing them as a Republican voting bloc to put Republican governments in power in the South. He did talk about giving those blacks who had served in the Union armies the right to vote. And he talked about re-enfranchisng almost all of the former Confederates, with the exception of some high-ranking political and military leaders. In that situation, blacks would have been a relatively small bloc of voters in each State and would not have been able to be used to control the State governments. And if that did not occur, the Jim Crow laws probably would never have been passed, either.

This is not to say that everything would have been rosy for blacks even if there was no de jure segregation under Jim Crow. The legal repression of blacks might well have still existed, only in a different form. It just wouldn't have been via segregation.

Keep in mind, however, that Lincoln had been changing over the coarse of the war and that the Plan of 1863 could be modified for one for 1865 to concern many of the matters Lincoln had been coming to support more and more (namely, black rights and liberties). As I have said previously, the static man model of history isn't a good one. Similarly, Lincoln's plan was lenient out of a belief that the South would allow to the blacks civil rights on their own without much reconstructing necessary, which the South would in all likelihood not do, so that could perhaps -and debately- garner a reaction on Lincoln's part similar to the occupation and reconstructing under the radicals to enforce protection, if with less malice toward the Southerners (Lincoln also talked of allowing the right to vote to the freed slaves once they had been properly educated which could range from establishing freedmen's schools and then granting the vote or granting the right to vote while educating. However long that would take is debateable.). And Jim Crow laws largely grew out of the old Black codes and I'd postulate would likely be attempted to be put into action, Lincoln or not, since Southern whites fostered a disdain for freedman simply from the fact that they were indeed free.

That must be why, in the first elections held under Reconstruction (before the Radical Republicans got busy disenfranchising people and re-writing the election laws to suit themselves) slates full of former Confederates running on Democratic tickets were returned by the voters. Then after the Radicals took over Reconstruction policy, suddenly you have slates of Republican candidates being elected. :rolleyes:

The fact that some whites voted Republican does not deny that a large number of Southerners were disenfranchised for a period after the war.
If I recall, the disenfranchisement argument is overblown. I believe only about 10,000 to 15,000 whites were denied the right to vote or hold office based on service to the Confederacy previously, and that was only on a temporary basis. Similarly, the reason Republicans got a boom in the South is because firstly, the major political leaders and heads in the South had largely been denied the ability to hold office based on former service in the Confederacy, and secondly, because Blacks were given the right to vote, that right was protected by Federal troops (and would later be denied when those troops left by Southern whites and Jim Crow), they voted in large numbers, voted Republican, and -in many states- occupied the majority of the population.
 
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Especially a former president who was already dead for awhile at this point.
Yeah, I'm sure Booth's accomplices didn't sign up to go dig up the rotten corpse of some asshole and ritually kill him for the sole reason of pissing of the North despite the fact that Jackson himself was a Southerner. Seems kinda fishy, but then it'd be the last thing they expect! Bwahaha!
 

Eurofed

Banned
Andrew Jackson? Why would they want to kill a former president? Don't you mean Andrew Johnson?

Yup, you're totally right, sorry. :eek: I wrote that post while thinking about the 1820s update to my Ameriwank TL, and wires apparently crossed in my brain. :p
 
That must be why, in the first elections held under Reconstruction (before the Radical Republicans got busy disenfranchising people and re-writing the election laws to suit themselves) slates full of former Confederates running on Democratic tickets were returned by the voters. Then after the Radicals took over Reconstruction policy, suddenly you have slates of Republican candidates being elected. :rolleyes:

This is interesting, but I can't help but notice how your theory avoids any mention of the black codes which tried to restrict the vote of blacks in the south, and how these were put in law immediately after the war ended.

Fortunately, the Damnyankees reacted with horror and passed the 14th and 15th Amendments, but you can see why that fact, along with the fact that estimates of disenfranchised whites are actually surprisingly low, makes me dubious about your claim.
 
It would take at least 2 generations for blacks to catch up with whites (60 years) due to education, capital accumulation, and gaining the power to protect themselves. Once these 3 are done blacks should be able to project political power.

Best shot: The union provides the protection while training blacks how to fight and make the laws from Washington for the next 60 years. The north also provides loans and land grants to get people started. Federal schools are opened to teach blacks. I don't know if there is enough political will to make this happen for 60 years. That and having to be dependent on someone else is generally very detrimental your ability to do things for yourself. It's a hard problem.

Lincoln's assassination and Johnson's evilness is what actually got most of the protections for minorities written into the Constitution. Without him dying I think it's unlikely any of them would have passed.
 
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