OTL History question: Slave culture and important black intellectuals in 1850s-60s

A lot of the people on this site know more about history than me, especially in this subforum.

Any experts on the African-American history?

Apparently 3.5 million enslaved African Americans and 500,000 African Americans lived in the US in 1860. How many of each type lived in the South?

Of the black intellectuals/famous figures who lived at the time, how many of them lived mostly in the South in 1860? Did free blacks even have the opportunity to become intellectuals in the South? Who would've been the most famous African-American in the area of the Confederacy, at that time?

What were the main black churches of the time?

Were there any Muslim and/or non-English speaking slaves left?

What modern elements of black culture existed back in the 1860s? How was slave culture in general back then? Free black culture in the 1860s and prior?

Did most slaves approve of the United States of America as a political entity? What about free blacks? For example if (yes I know this is a little ASB scenario, but it's a small part of this thread, and a lot of knowledgeable before 1900 people don't look at the ASB forum) all non-African-Americans disappeared in, say, 1860, would African-Americans reform the United States (obviously it would be a little different if so)? What about in 1865 or 1866?
 
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If memory serves, there were significant populations of Free People of Color (to use the census definition of the time) in Louisiana, Virginia, and North Carolina. There were very few free blacks in the rest of the Deep South.

The Atlantic Slave Trade had ended in the early 1800s, but there were at least a few Muslim slaves left in the 1850s: one known as Omar Ibn Said, who died in 1864, was from what is now Senegal and was able to write verses from the Quran in Arabic. Although he officially converted to Christianity in 1820, some suspect he continued to practice Islam in secret. I would have to think that almost all slaves spoke some form of English by the time the Civil War broke out, except maybe a few in Louisiana, though many would have spoken pidgins or creoles (again, especially in Louisiana, which still had a substantial number of French speakers well into the 20th century).

I can't really speak to your other questions, so I'll defer to those with more knowledge...
 
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MAlexMatt

Banned
I'm not sure about in the antebellum period, but freedmen loved the Federal government in the postbellum period. There's a quote out there by an African American from the postbellum South who spoke glowingly of going to the US Post Office because it was the only place where he felt like he was truly equal to his white neighbors.

It's hard to say if this feeling extended back into a world that had yet to experience a slave-freeing Civil War and 10 years of attempted racial reconstruction.
 
Apparently 3.5 million enslaved African Americans and 500,000 African Americans lived in the US in 1860. How many of each type lived in the South?

From the 1860 Census there were 3.9 billion slaves and 476,000 free blacks. There were more slaves in Virginia than there were free blacks in the entire country.

About 89% of the slaves and about 28% of the free blacks lived in the 11 states that would form the Confederacy.

Of the black intellectuals/famous figures who lived at the time, how many of them lived mostly in the South in 1860? Did free blacks even have the opportunity to become intellectuals in the South?

None and no.

What modern elements of black culture existed back in the 1860s? How was slave culture in general back then? Free black culture in the 1860s and prior?

I suggest The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp.

Did most slaves approve of the United States of America as a political entity? What about free blacks?

Based on their actions during the ACW, the vast majority of blacks, free or slave, supported the Union and were opposed to the Confederacy.

For example if (yes I know this is a little ASB scenario, but it's a small part of this thread, and a lot of knowledgeable before 1900 people don't look at the ASB forum) all non-African-Americans disappeared in, say, 1860, would African-Americans reform the United States

That would require the disappearance of 86% of all Americans. A better question would be to ask what sort of government the Europeans impose on them.
 
If memory serves, there were significant populations of Free People of Color (to use the census definition of the time) in Louisiana, Virginia, and North Carolina. There were very few free blacks in the rest of the Deep South.

There were more free blacks in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, or Pennsylvania than in the rest of the Deep South.
 
I suggest The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp.
I might take a look at it.

That would require the disappearance of 86% of all Americans. A better question would be to ask what sort of government the Europeans impose on them.

I meant if all humans disappeared other than African Americans. Including Europeans--including African Africans.

(Possibly) disregarding the "oh crap what happened is this some weird apocalypse sort of thing why did everybody who isn't black disappear" response that there would be.
 
1) All slaves lived south of the Mason-Dixon Line, however slavery varied in proportion to the free population the further south one went. Slavery was moribund, though still existent, in Delaware, was concentrated in geologically small pockets in Missouri and Kentucky. The negligible presence of the institution and lack of any benefit from it in northwestern Virginia is why we now have West Virginia. In the border areas of the Civil War Confederacy, slavery was strongest in each area where support for the Confederacy was strongest: southern Arkansas, western Tennessee, southeastern Virginia, and eastern North Carolina. In the Deep South, too, slavery was not universal, Unionism was strongest in more hilly/rugged backwoods regions, where the more urbanized, established regions that backed the Confederacy were the strongest pro-slavery regions and the regions with the most slaves in the USA, full-stop.

Free blacks in the South were relatively few in general, the bulk of them lived in places like New Orleans where restrictions on free blacks were minimal, the Slave South had a standing policy of expelling free blacks as menaces to slavery by virtue of simply existing. There were, however, free blacks in every US state, including all the Deep South states.

2) None, blacks were allowed to read only in exceptional circumstances (that is counting as free blacks) and black publications of an intellectual sort were Verboten and they were censored by the surveillance state that was required to preserve slavery. The most famous black in the proto-Confederacy/Confederacy was Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass was enslaved in a Union slave state.

3) There were no official black churches in the South, slave religion was done in secret, masters did not as a rule like blacks gathering in large numbers for any reasons unless they controlled it, while in the North the AME church came into existence during this timeframe due to free blacks in the North wanting to establish their own institutions in a segregated society.

4) No.

5) Modern elements included a prominent influence of religious leaders in terms of overall influential leaders, a group that felt blacks would never fully be accepted (these were the miniscule number of blacks that volunteered for Colonization), a larger, overwhelmingly so, group that sought to become US citizens like any other, and ultimately the group that joined the Union Army to learn how to read and gain their citizenship. These last would be where secular black leadership would come from in the Reconstruction/Redemption/Nadir era. Slave culture has several direct precursors, but has tended to be relatively difficult to understand due to the malignant influence of racism on white views of that culture, and due to slaves themselves being understandably reticient of sharing such information with whites, free black culture in the North and the South involved living in segregation, establishing separate religious and political institutions, steady rollback of their right to vote where it existed, and the ever-present possibility that one might be kidnapped and sold down South into slavery even if one was free into the third generation.

4) Arguably no, as the USA was what had propped up their enslavement and the brutal treatment of them in slavery in the first place. For understandable reasons slaves seldom have enthusiasm for the political institutions that enslave them.

Ambiguous feelings at best, I think, is the best way to put it. Fugitive slaves and free blacks tended to have more than a little irritation at an argument that as the North did not enslave blacks like the South did they should STFU and forget about equal rights. This speech in particular is one that I use as an example of that critcism: http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1832-maria-w-stewart-why-sit-ye-here-and-die

What changed things to make things more positive was the outbreak of the US Civil War, especially the decision to recruit blacks as soldiers. Then Reconstruction and Redemption ended any illusions on the parts of blacks that Northern and Southern whites were remotely considering equality to replace slavery.
 
What if the date of all these questions was changed to 1871 or so, and the location being all of the United States rather than just the South? What would the answers be then?

(Sorry Snake Featherston, since you put a big detailed answer for the original question. Well your post was really good and educational, at least.)
 
At the end of Reconstruction (going from 1878 instead of 1871):

1) More blacks lived in the South in 1878 than in 1860, but this reflected blacks who went South to help educate slaves and also to look for and reunite with their families.

2) Most black intelllectuals still lived in the North. It would not be until the later 19th Century that black intellectuals appeared in the South, and even then the initial emphasis was on securing agricultural and mechanical colleges, the first versions of Civil Rights challenging only those Jim Crow laws that applied to blacks alone. In 1878 all this was but starting, and black education shriveled up fairly quick from what it had been earlier in Reconstruction. Black education was segregated into inferior schools in both sections and this was one practice that neither wished to change.

3) Baptist, AME, and Congregationalist. This was because the congregationalist structure offered the most freedom and churches were segregated both by law and as a means for blacks to have one space that they at least had some guarantee of control over. This, too, was not sought to be altered in either section.

4) No, and illiteracy had shrunk drastically by proportion of the population.

5) This is the origin of a fully separate black culture, as segregation forced by default development of a whole parallel economy, and segregation-era limits on education meant religious figures assumed leadership by default. They were the best-educated figures in black society.

6) Yes, though their concept of the USA was far more egalitarian than whites, a pattern that has endured to a great extent still to the present day. The US Civil War laid the root of changes here, not least by at least establishing a principle of black citizenship and legal rights, as well as the abortive attempts at land reform and the success in thwarting the Black Codes, as well as in black resistance to the neo-Confederate revival, which while it failed was still a very real factor in establishing black identity. Black Civil War veterans in particular had a stronger approval of the USA than others did, for the understandable reason that most of them learned to read in the army. The USA also began a tradition of segregated black regiments here, establishing a problem that didn't go away when black troops were treated as shabbily in the army as they were in the rest of society at large, assigned to the most unpleasant duty and their units a dumping ground for an all-white island of misfit toys of the most incompetent, racist, and boorish varieties.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
I might take a look at it.



I meant if all humans disappeared other than African Americans. Including Europeans--including African Africans.

(Possibly) disregarding the "oh crap what happened is this some weird apocalypse sort of thing why did everybody who isn't black disappear" response that there would be.

Not 100% sure what you mean by "all humans ... other than African Americans. Including Europeans--including African Americans" (that second part is nonsense), but if you're asking what would happen if all non-African Americans in America disappeared, the poster who responded to you is implying that European powers like Britain would gobble them up. The (relatively) small black population, most of whom were uneducated as a consequence of slavery, would not be able to maintain an independent state given the presence of European colonial powers.

If you're asking what would happen if all non-African Americans in the world disappeared, then yes, they would "reform."

Frankly, the whole question is kind of stupid. "Would the USA government change if all the white people suddenly disappeared in the 1800s?" The obvious answer is yes. I have no idea why you would even ask that.

Edit: If you mean reform as in "reconstitute" the entity known as the United States, no. There would be mass chaos and no central government if 80 something percent of the United States suddenly disappeared, leaving only a small population which had been oppressed (and by the same token, denied access to the sort of skills necessary for running a modern government) for generations. Whatever entity the African Americans eventually form to govern themselves would not resemble the USA. That should be obvious.
 
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You necro'd this thread just to flame me?

Not 100% sure what you mean by "all humans ... other than African Americans. Including Europeans--including African Americans" (that second part is nonsense)
I said African Africans, not African Americans. Fiver thought that all non-African-Americans in the US would disappear in my hypothetical scenario, not all non-African-Americans in the world, as I meant. Thus I clarified it by stating that Europeans and non-American Africans--as well as 'all humans other than African Americans'--would disappaer also.

but if you're asking what would happen if all non-African Americans in America disappeared, the poster who responded to you is implying that European powers like Britain would gobble them up. The (relatively) small black population, most of whom were uneducated as a consequence of slavery, would not be able to maintain an independent state given the presence of European colonial powers.
Well, that's obvious. That's why I re-explained what I meant.

If you're asking what would happen if all non-African Americans in the world disappeared, then yes, they would "reform."

Frankly, the whole question is kind of stupid. "Would the USA government change if all the white people suddenly disappeared in the 1800s?" The obvious answer is yes. I have no idea why you would even ask that.

Reform has two definitions, sir. It can mean to change and improve something as you thought I meant. However, it can also mean to, well, form something again.

I meant the latter.

It's actually not an obvious question; depending on which year it happens, 1860, 1865, or 1866, the African Americans would act completely differently in their restoration of a civilization. Up to 1860, almost everything the whites had done to them was bad. They'd associate the USA with white rule, so they probably wouldn't reform it. In 1865, they probably would reform it, because the Emancipation Proclamation showed that hey, the white people aren't as bastardly as they've seemed, and, hey, the USA is defending us against the slaveowners. In 1866, there's been a bit of Reconstruction to further that a bit, so the chance is greater.
 
I believe the question about reforming the United States was just a question of what the ideal government of the African American community was at the time, rather than a question about an ATL. Is that correct?
 
I believe the question about reforming the United States was just a question of what the ideal government of the African American community was at the time, rather than a question about an ATL. Is that correct?
Yeah, that's what I was asking.
 
For intellectuals there is the Brazilian Machado de Assis, one of the greatest writers of all time but unknown in the world because he wrote his books in Portuguese. He was a mix of black and white, but leaning more towards black.
 
I wonder whether there were Spanish-speaking slaves in the US.

And I know that there was at least one ex-slave who got a good education and worked together with the abolitionists, proving that blacks weren't primitive and uneducadable.
 
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