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?