Emancipation in the CSA?

Can someone help me with a list of prominent (well-known) supporters of emancipation and abolition of slavery from Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi that survived the civil war to at least 1880?

And before anybody does one of those "let me google that for you" things, I have googled it. It doesn't always help.
 
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Can someone help me with a list of prominent (well-known) supporters of emancipation and abolition of slavery from Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi that survived the civil war to at least 1895?

And before anybody does one of those "let me google that for you" things, I have googled it. It doesn't always help.

The problem you're going to run into here is that most of the politicians who supported the emancipation/black recruitment effort during the Civil War in OTL...people like Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin...were already relatively old guys during the Civil War. By 1895 they are either dead or long retired from politics. This old guard will have been put out to pasture and a new generation of politicians...men who might have been very junior Congressmen or even State legislators during the Civil War and who would not have been in any way prominent at that time...will be in power.

There are some people who might still be around, mostly former military men who supported the black recruitment proposals during the war...

Patrick Cleburne...assuming we're talking about a Southern victory scenario here, it should be easy enough to arrange things so he survives the war...would be 67 years old in 1895. He was from Arkansas.

James Longstreet (who supported the black recruitment proposal during the war) would be 74, and was alive in 1895 in OTL. He was from Georgia, but could have moved to one of the States you're looking for after the war in a Southern Victory timeline.

P.G.T Beauregard, who supported the black recruitment proposal and after the war supported black civil rights...died in 1893 in OTL. It might be possible to have him survive a few years longer. He's from Louisiana, of course, and would have been 77 years old in 1895.

Henry Watkins Allen, former Governor of Louisiana whose letter to the RICHMOND ENQUIRER sparked the national debate which led to the final passage of the black recruitment law in OTL, went to Mexico after the war and died of dysentary (probably from drinking contaminated water) in 1866. In a Southern Victory scenario he no doubt doesn't go to Mexico and survives much longer. He was born in 1820 and would have been 75 years old in 1895.

Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi was the author of the OTL black recruitment law. He, like Beauregard, died in 1893, but butterflies from the ATL could cause him to live longer. He would have been 71 years old in 1895.

There may be others. I'll think on it and if I can think of anybody else, I'll post it. Unfortunately, my library is in storage right now (I moved to SC in December and most of my stuff is still in storage), otherwise I'd probably be able to get you a more complete list more easily.
 
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The problem you're going to run into here is that most of the politicians who supported the emancipation/black recruitment effort during the Civil War in OTL...people like Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin...were already relatively old guys during the Civil War. By 1895 they are either dead or long retired from politics. This old guard will have been put out to pasture and a new generation of politicians...men who might have been very junior Congressmen or even State legislators during the Civil War and who would not have been in any way prominent at that time...will be in power.

There are some people who might still be around, mostly former military men who supported the black recruitment proposals during the war...

Patrick Cleburne...assuming we're talking about a Southern victory scenario here, it should be easy enough to arrange things so he survives the war...would be 67 years old in 1895.

James Longstreet (who supported the black recruitment proposal during the war) would be 74, and was alive in 1895 in OTL.

P.G.T Beauregard, who supported the black recruitment proposal and after the war supported black civil rights...died in 1893 in OTL. It might be possible to have him survive a few years longer.

Henry Watkins Allen, former Governor of Louisiana whose letter to the RICHMOND ENQUIRER sparked the national debate which led to the final passage of the black recruitment law in OTL, went to Mexico after the war and died of dysentary (probably from drinking contaminated water) in 1866. In a Southern Victory scenario he no doubt doesn't go to Mexico and survives much longer. He was born in 1820 and would have been 75 years old in 1895.

There may be others. I'll think on it and if I can think of anybody else, I'll post it. Unfortunately, my library is in storage right now (I moved to SC in December and most of my stuff is still in storage), otherwise I'd probably be able to get you a more complete list more easily.

If you could please, I would apprecieate it greaty. :eek:
 
Wasn't Longstreet also a supporter of civil right IOTL as well? I know he joined the Republican Party and helped with Reconstruction after the war.

Yes, he was. That is, unfortunately, part of the reason why he got such a bad rap in the Lost Cause literature which was published after Reconstruction ended.
 
I think you have to Google southern abolitionists, and then follow the links.
Like the Duncan Smith Article gives you three other names to Google.

then when you get done with the Google links go to another search engine [I like Dog-pile] and start again




When I opened this thread there was only the OP
By the time I hit REPLY there were 6 posts ahead of Me.
This Board moves Fast
 
I think you have to Google southern abolitionists, and then follow the links.
Like the Duncan Smith Article gives you three other names to Google.

then when you get done with the Google links go to another search engine [I like Dog-pile] and start again

However, that route might not be all that fruitful because Southern abolitionists, as a rule, were pretty thin on the ground by the time of the Civil War. These men also generally opposed the Confederacy during the war and afterward would likely have left the South, and so not be around in 1895.
 
What was John Henninger Reagan's view on the issue?

He never, to my knowledge, expressed a view on the issue during the debates which led up to passage of the black recruitment law. However, he did write, in an open letter to the people of Texas in August 1865, his opinion that emancipation should be accepted and the freed blacks allowed to vote. And in general during the war he was a pretty strong supporter of the Davis administration, whose policy the black recruitment law was. So he might be a good candidate for you as well.
 
Augustus Hill Garland- Calling him an abolitionist wouldn't be accurate, but he did help found the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, a HSBC, and he believed in a stronger central government, so in a CSA lives TL I could see him being persuaded to join an abolitionist movement once it gained some momentum in the South. He was 63 in 1895.

Thomas G. Jones- He was a governor from Alabama, but he was also known as a famous speaker, so he could certainly do some speaking in Mississippi. As governor he helped establish the Alabama School for Negro Deaf Mutes and Blind and was later appointed as a District Judge by Teddy Rosevelt at the recommendation of Booker T. Washington. He was 51 and just finished up his term as governor a year prior in 1895.
 
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Spengler

Banned
IT would be very difficult to attempt because the Southern constitution says this

(1) The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
 
How many of these so-called emancipationists took strong steps or measures during and after Reconstruction to protect the civil rights of free blacks? Not too many, I imagine. There is a huge difference between someone mildly not liking slavery, or willing to support limited emanicpation because you're losing the war and grasping at straws, versus forceful abolitionism. A lof of these sentiments are going to be weak, and kept in private.

Also, does anyone really expect a victorious Confederacy to allow any real debate or dissession on this issue? In the old Congress, there was the Gag Rule which prohibited hearing of any anti-slavery petitition, the physical attack by Rep Preston Brooks on Sen Charles Sumner because of his anti-slavery speech, the local post offices often didn't deliver abolitionist mail, and there were local bans on abolitionist literature. Southerners constantly agitated to get the North to clamp down and suppress abolitionist societies in the North. I don't see that not being done in an independent Confederacy, and they are going to be a lot more successful at making it happen.

Furthermore, the Confederate government is unlikely to have anything near the kind of revenue necessary to compensate owners for their emancipated slaves.

So I'm not sure where you are going with this, but this is important to keep in mind.
 
IT would be very difficult to attempt because the Southern constitution says this

How many of these so-called emancipationists took strong steps or measures during and after Reconstruction to protect the civil rights of free blacks? Not too many, I imagine. There is a huge difference between someone mildly not liking slavery, or willing to support limited emanicpation because you're losing the war and grasping at straws, versus forceful abolitionism. A lof of these sentiments are going to be weak, and kept in private.

Also, does anyone really expect a victorious Confederacy to allow any real debate or dissession on this issue? In the old Congress, there was the Gag Rule which prohibited hearing of any anti-slavery petitition, the physical attack by Rep Preston Brooks on Sen Charles Sumner because of his anti-slavery speech, the local post offices often didn't deliver abolitionist mail, and there were local bans on abolitionist literature. Southerners constantly agitated to get the North to clamp down and suppress abolitionist societies in the North. I don't see that not being done in an independent Confederacy, and they are going to be a lot more successful at making it happen.

Furthermore, the Confederate government is unlikely to have anything near the kind of revenue necessary to compensate owners for their emancipated slaves.

So I'm not sure where you are going with this, but this is important to keep in mind.

This thread is not the place for this discussion. This is a thread where the OP is asking for very specific help with a scenario he's doing, not inviting an off-topic tangent/incipient flame war about whether emancipation is likely or not.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
This thread is not the place for this discussion. This is a thread where the OP is asking for very specific help with a scenario he's doing, not inviting an off-topic tangent/incipient flame war about whether emancipation is likely or not.

The thread is very much about this discussion; some of the "prominent abolitionists" that are likely to crop up only became so when manpower shortages got desperate.
 
The thread is very much about this discussion; some of the "prominent abolitionists" that are likely to crop up only became so when manpower shortages got desperate.

That may or may not be true. However, the fact that they came out in support of the idea during the war, regardless of the circumstances, indicates a mind which is open to the possibility...which is important. Lord knows there were plenty of men like Howell Cobb and Louis Wigfall and Robert Barnwell Rhett whose minds were completely closed to the possibility regardless of the circumstances.

If you're looking for people like William Lloyd Garrison or Wendell Philips, or someone of that ilk in the South, and that's your standard for what a "Southern abolitionist" in the context of an independent Confederacy must be, then you're doomed to disappointment, I'm afraid. That kind of person existed in the South, to be sure, but would likely have been a Unionist during the war and left the South afterward. And the tactics used by the Northern abolitionists would never have worked in the South. The last thing an anti-slavery movement in the Confederacy wants to do is to put slaveholders back into a siege mentality where they'll circle the proverbial wagons, cling to the lifeline of ideology, and reject all compromise. That's what happened in the Union in OTL. Those who would be abolitionists in an independent Confederacy would surely have learned that lesson.

No, what you've got to find is reasonable people who aren't so ideologically bound up with slavery that they're willing to look at what's best for the Confederacy in the long term. The people I cited could have been the nucleus of such a group.
 
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