Lincoln survives, sends all African-Americans "back" to Liberia

Baby Kata

Banned
This was Lincoln's original plan, but since he died, it never happened.

In the late 1900s, Liberia had political instability, since Americo-Liberians (American slave descendants) were 3% of the population, but held all the power.

In 1865, the population of Liberia was about 720,000, of whom 20,000 were Americo-Liberians. There were approximately 4.5 million African-Americans.

A couple thoughts
1. Some would surely die on the boat ride to Liberia, and some would surely find some way to stay in the US, though if the government went all in, this would be less than 100,000 people. Liberia would get 4.3 million African-Americans, at most.
2. Liberia would now have 5.7 million people, of whom about 5 million (about seven-eights) are Americo-Liberian. Americo-Liberians would probably be able to maintain their power indefinitely, the same way Turkey rules over its Kurdish minority (~15% of the population) and Egypt rules over its Coptic minority (~10% of the population).
3. Liberia today has between 4-5 million people. Could 1865 Liberia even support 5-6 million inhabitants?
4. America would now be 99% White. This probably butterflies Jim Crow away, since one of the biggest reasons for it was that the White southern leaders didn't want the south become mostly mulatto. African-Americans were about half of the population in many former Confederate states. I wonder if America would still have been open to the massive turn of the 20th century wave of immigration. On one hand, they would need the extra labor because 4.5 million Black people leaving would put a huge dent in the labor force. On the other hand, with virtually no Black population, there would be less of a motivation for the government to try and attract White European immigrants to increase the White share of the population.
5. I am virtually certain the Hart-Celler act would have never passed, since its proponents latched on to the African-American Civil Rights Movement to get it through.

What I think this would lead to:
1. A USA that is at least 95% White today
2. A Liberia that is about 7/8 America-Liberian, and still run by them
3. Ethnic and religious differences between White Americans would be more salient, since Anti-Black racism is a big part of what encouraged Anglo Whites to accept Ethnic Whites.
4. America would not be as powerful, economically or militarily.
5. America would probably have less social tension, since a lot of it is race-based, though the tension between different White groups might just be greater instead.
6. America would be more agrarian
 
Logistically, I don't know how he could send them all to Africa. It's just too far too many people, requiring a huge number of ships, and for no economic benefit. Plus there would be labor shortages in the south without them.
 

Baby Kata

Banned
Logistically, I don't know how he could send them all to Africa. It's just too far too many people, requiring a huge number of ships, and for no economic benefit. Plus there would be labor shortages in the south without them.

The Southern Whites would have happily funded it. They loathed Black people, especially by 1865.
 
Seconded funnyhat, Logistically impossible.

The Southern Whites would have happily funded it. They loathed Black people, especially by 1865.
Southern Whites wouldn't spend money for Blacks welfare, even now charity in South is separated into two. And they need Blacks as source of cheap labor.plus after Civil war, they are bankrupt.
 
Seconded funnyhat, Logistically impossible.

Southern Whites wouldn't spend money for Blacks welfare, even now charity in South is separated into two. And they need Blacks as source of cheap labor.plus after Civil war, they are bankrupt.

Yeah but with welfare they don't get the "benefit" of not having to live near black people. They can replace them with immigrant labour.
 
Yeah but with welfare they don't get the "benefit" of not having to live near black people. They can replace them with immigrant labour.
. Southern culture didn't have problem living near black people, arguably southern culture is affected more by living near black people than northern culture. What southern culture have problem is living with EQUAL black people, they didn't want to live in White Only country (that strain is Modern and internationally is more Australian culture). And economically south is dependent on Black labour, replacing it with immigrants bring no benefit (and probably more disbenefit since new immigrants is less subservient and more foreign).
 

Lusitania

Donor
Let’s look at this as though it is supported by many within south. But these people are they not American citizens? Don’t they after civil war have Americans rights or we talking about racist whites stating they not have rights? How can they be forced to leave? By riffle to their backs? To force that many, heck even sending by force 1 million blacks in Liberia within a short period would cause massive genocide.

Sorry but today that would be viewed on scale of the Nazi genocide.
 

Baby Kata

Banned
Let’s look at this as though it is supported by many within south. But these people are they not American citizens? Go they now not have Americans rights or we talking about racist whites stating they not have rights? How can they be forced to leave? By riffle to their backs? To force that many, heck even sending by force 1 million blacks in Liberia within a short period would cause massive genocide.

Sorry but today that would be viewed on scale of the Nazi genocide.

I'm not endorsing this idea, just saying that Lincoln tried to implement it.

Most African-Americans didn't become citizens until after the Civil War.
 

Lusitania

Donor
I'm not endorsing this idea, just saying that Lincoln tried to implement it.

Most African-Americans didn't become citizens until after the Civil War.
But they were all born in the US.

For the record I am not stating you are but I was stating the genocide in Africa and death forcing and transporting people who are black and only the blacks would be on the scale of what Nazi did to Jews and others in WW2.
 
Yeah but with welfare they don't get the "benefit" of not having to live near black people. They can replace them with immigrant labour.
The majority of immigrants were headed for urban centers, particularly in the north, during this era, though. And the South doesn't have the luxury of trying to attract immigrants with decent wages when it's been devastated by total war (especially the flood of Southern Italian peasants, who were fleeing from poverty and work arrangements with the landowning nobility that rather resembled sharecropping). Sending away that much the labour force would be disastrous for the broken southern economy, not to mention the cost of actually sending them over for literally no economic gain. It'd be as stupid as it was economically suicidal.
 

Baby Kata

Banned
But they were all born in the US.

For the record I am not stating you are but I was stating the genocide in Africa and death forcing and transporting people who are black and only the blacks would be on the scale of what Nazi did to Jews and others in WW2.

Take it up with Lincoln, it was his idea.
 
Take it up with Lincoln, it was his idea.

The American Colonization Society was founded when Lincoln was 7, so not really his idea either.

Also, the early colonizers had an appalling mortality rate, so it’s highly doubtful that blacks or whites would get behind this.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Take it up with Lincoln, it was his idea.
Ideas and carrying out them are two different matters. He might of thought at the beginning that it sound solved a lot of problems but if he survived he would of become aware of the impracticality of the idea plus the economic cost both to federal government paying for it and southern states who would of lost large portion of their workforce.
 
This was Lincoln's original plan, but since he died, it never happened.
I'm not endorsing this idea, just saying that Lincoln tried to implement it.
Take it up with Lincoln, it was his idea.
Per Politifact, although Lincoln promoted voluntary emigration of African-Americans, at no point did he suggest deporting the entire African-American population whether they liked it or not, and he ceased to publically advocate for such emigration following the Emancipation Proclamation, well before his death.
Politifact said:
We wondered whether mainstream historians believe that Lincoln was "making plans to send all freed slaves to the jungles of Central America once the (Civil War) was over" and that "the only thing that kept this from happening was his assassination."

The short answer is that Lincoln had long favored the "colonization" option, though as a voluntary option rather than a mandated removal. Moreover, his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, rendered even that voluntary option effectively dead -- and since that was more than two years before the end of the war on April 9, 1865, his assassination didn’t stop it from happening. Lincoln never spoke publicly of colonization after issuing the proclamation, and apparently did little behind the scenes to advance the idea after that date, focusing instead on creating a post-war society that included both blacks and whites.

"The post is preposterous," said Michael Burlingame, a historian who holds a distinguished chair in Lincoln studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
 
This was Lincoln's original plan, but since he died, it never happened.

There are disputes about whether Lincoln eventually abandoned colonization, but even if he never did, colonization did not necessarily mean forced deportation and it certainly did not necessarily mean "back to Africa." In fact, by the 1850's, most colonization programs involved Latin America rather than Africa. The measures Lincoln proposed as president in fact, involved Latin America and voluntary colonization. "In his annual December message to Congress that year [1862] (his second "State of the Union" Message), he reiterated his strong support for government expenditure on colonization for those who wanted to go, but he also noted that objections to free blacks remaining in the United States were baseless, "if not sometimes malicious.'" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery#Colonization The article discusses plans involving Panama, Ile a Vache off the coast of Haiti, and the British West Indies--not Africa.

However impractical colonization seems today, we have to understand how it looked in the mid-nineteenth century. As Eric Foner notes in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War,

"In an age which witnessed the voluntary emigration of millions of Europeans to the United States and the constant flow westward of the American population, the idea that black Americans would wish to seek a better life in other lands did not seem as impractical as it does today. The radical Senator John P. Hale said colonization was “one of the most absurd ideas that ever entered into the head of man or woman,” but [Senator] Doolittle [of Wisconsin] countered by pointing out that between 1847 and i860 over three and a half million Europeans had arrived in the United States. “Colonization,” said George Julian, “is one of the great tidal forces of modern civilization.”" https://archive.org/details/freesoilfreelabo01fone/page/280
 
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Dolan

Banned
So with so many american-african in Liberia, won't they end up as a black colony-state that would later on become full on state? like Hawaii?
 
This may be better as an ASB discussion like "What if when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation all the freed slaves were transported instantly to Liberia".

Throw in a year of supplies to prevent an instant die off.

Otherwise at best if implemented maybe they double the Americo-Liberian population if enough Northerners fund the project.
 
Even after the Civil War, African-Americans contributed a lot to the agricultural base of the South. So too, it also contributed to supporting the North. If they were forced to leave, it would mean widespread labor shortages in the South and probably a severe economic downturn. Another thing to keep in mind is how greatly African-Americans have contributed to American culture, especially in the field of music. Jazz and later music fields as a cultural export would not have spread to Europe and across the West like it did OTL, as there wouldn't be African-Americans to embark on those fields OTL.
 

Vuu

Banned
19th century... Well, a lot of money spent, and Liberia suddenly finds itself having quite a strong population base.

The plan was that they'd move out West to colonize the area but the reverse happened - many whites moved instead
 
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