Likely butterflies from earlier abolition of slavery

So the south has bad race relationships because the N. tried to force them to treat blacks as equals (an effort that the southern whites reversed quite handily soon enough) rather than allowing them to treat blacks as sub-human for decades longer, which would have led to harmonious race relations nowadays?

Your resoning is full of FAIL.


Bruce

From where you are standing probably.

Within the context of the POD, an earlier abolition of slavery, probably.
 
I am? Please explain.

The equation Reconstruction = intensified racism does not hold. Ignoring your strange construct of malice-free racism, you ignore the fact that racism exists in countries outside the USA, in places that have had no equivalent to Reconstruction

In my opinion, the amount of racism in the American South can be largely explained by the combination of the natural human tendency to hate people different from yourself and the legacy of the intellectual contortions necessary to maintain the highly profitable institution of slavery in a post-Enlightenment era. The hypothesis of Reconstruction boosting racism is simply extraneous.
 
Possible butterfly on the expansionist end, I think, without as many slave states to push for Texas annexation, "54-40 or Fight!" becomes "54-40 and Fight!".

Now, this isn't to say the U.S. isn't inevitably going to annex Texas, they'll take it, but abolition will probably be a pre-condition. When Texas gets annexed depends on the outcome of "The Oregon Crisis".

The ensuing conflict sure isn't going to be "1812 Redux".

Basically, you're looking at the U.S. Army officer corps from the Mexican war (and a much larger, better prepared Navy and Marine corps.) and a population and industrial base that can build and sustain large and powerful field armies with waaay better leadership than back in 1812.
 
From where you are standing probably.

Within the context of the POD, an earlier abolition of slavery, probably.

Gammon and spinach. This was set off by your statement about OTL,

'My personal view is that Reconstruction is the main reason that race relations in the South were so terrible in the late 19th century and into the 20th century'

Unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding you, you are claiming that OTL's poor racial relations are due to attempting to establish full civil rights in the south after 1865. Really, from "where I am standing", it seems less insulting to Southerners to suggest that poor racial relations were rooted in attitudes from before the civil war than that the south was still hating on black folks in the 1950's as a result of a struggle they had essentially _won_ by the 1880's. This would seem to indicate an almost pathological need for scapegoats.

(Perhaps German tourists in France are regularly beaten and lynched and prevented from sitting at lunch counters as a result of the events of 1940-44, but I am unaware of it.)

I mean, really, try googling on "black codes 1865." That predates reconstruction. You simply aren't going to look sympathetically on legal equality for someone that just the other day you considered essentially subhuman and property, and to which popular wisdom ascribed an abiding lust for white women.

Now, the business about the context being one of an earlier abolition of slavery: this is not a POD, it is a result of some earlier POD. Abolition of slavery is not a coin-toss. We _seriously_ need to consider when and how this occured, and it probably requires a POD before the cotton gin made plantation slavery so very much more profitable.

Perhaps a successful early (under Pres Jefferson, perhaps?) move to prevent the movement of slavery into new western territories? And I see someone suggested a pre-Revolutionary POD...hm. The British hold onto part of the South in a less successful revolution, weakening the power of the slave states. Expansion of slavery is forbidden by the rump US, which later grabs (South Carolina? Georgia?) in an alternate *1812...with no possibility of expansion, slavery becomes a minor regional issue rather than a nation-splitting one...

Other suggestions?

Bruce
 
Gammon and spinach. This was set off by your statement about OTL,

'My personal view is that Reconstruction is the main reason that race relations in the South were so terrible in the late 19th century and into the 20th century'

Unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding you, you are claiming that OTL's poor racial relations are due to attempting to establish full civil rights in the south after 1865. Really, from "where I am standing", it seems less insulting to Southerners to suggest that poor racial relations were rooted in attitudes from before the civil war than that the south was still hating on black folks in the 1950's as a result of a struggle they had essentially _won_ by the 1880's. This would seem to indicate an almost pathological need for scapegoats.

(Perhaps German tourists in France are regularly beaten and lynched and prevented from sitting at lunch counters as a result of the events of 1940-44, but I am unaware of it.)

I mean, really, try googling on "black codes 1865." That predates reconstruction. You simply aren't going to look sympathetically on legal equality for someone that just the other day you considered essentially subhuman and property, and to which popular wisdom ascribed an abiding lust for white women.

Now, the business about the context being one of an earlier abolition of slavery: this is not a POD, it is a result of some earlier POD. Abolition of slavery is not a coin-toss. We _seriously_ need to consider when and how this occured, and it probably requires a POD before the cotton gin made plantation slavery so very much more profitable.

Perhaps a successful early (under Pres Jefferson, perhaps?) move to prevent the movement of slavery into new western territories? And I see someone suggested a pre-Revolutionary POD...hm. The British hold onto part of the South in a less successful revolution, weakening the power of the slave states. Expansion of slavery is forbidden by the rump US, which later grabs (South Carolina? Georgia?) in an alternate *1812...with no possibility of expansion, slavery becomes a minor regional issue rather than a nation-splitting one...

Other suggestions?

Bruce

Virginia was considering abolition when Nat Turner's Rebellion hit, if it happens Virginia is likely to abolish slavery and Deleware and Maryland are likely to do so as well, fairly quickly after Virginia does. Anti-slavery measures are now more likely to pass in congress and pro-slavery ones less likely.
 
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