Union and Liberty: An American TL
- Thread starter wilcoxchar
- Start date
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Congratulations on finishing BTW. Quite the achievement, and frankly something that feels alien as a concept to me.
I joined in February 2009 after being a lurker for a couple years, and this was the first TL I ever followed. It's the end of an era here.
So wilcoxchar, what's your next ATL going to be if you don't mind me asking?
Once the epilogue posts are done I'll get back to working on the Green Revolution on the Golden Gate TL that's in my sig. It's been interesting and challenging to research for it so far since it's mainly on the state and local level.
Woah - the end of an era!
Will there be a continuation to the modern day, or just the epilogue?
Will there be a continuation to the modern day, or just the epilogue?
Parts of the epilogue will be closer to the present day, I think the latest one I have is in the 80s. A lot of them are just isolated ideas that I planned on using if I had taken it further.
Right, I've been following this timeline for a good long while, and have mostly just been lurking. But, now that it's come to an end (mostly), I figured I may as well sing my praise. Amazing works,k and thanks for that entertaining read. I believe this is the first timeline that really got me interested all the way through. Thanks, and good luck in your future projects!
Epilogue Post #1
Epilogue Post #1:
Updated list of Chief Justices:
John Jay (1789-1795)
John Rutledge (1795-1795)
Oliver Ellsworth (1796-1800)
John Marshall (1801-1835)
Roger Taney (1836-1861)
Abraham Lincoln (1861-1879)
David Davis (1879-1889)
Stephen Field (1889-1895)
Horace Gray (1895-1903)
Rufus Wheeler Peckham (1903-1906)
Daniel Lindsey Russell (1906-????)[1]
And a list of the current composition of the Supreme Court as of 1912:
Chief Justice Daniel Lindsey Russell (Roosevelt, 1906)
Chester Alan Arthur (Edmunds, 1885)
Russell S. Taft (Edmunds, 1888)
Richard Olney (Cleveland, 1895)
Judson Harmon (Cleveland, 1895)
John Fitzpatrick (Cleveland, 1896)[2]
John Marshall Harlan (Bryan, 1900)
Henry Billings Brown (McKinley, 1903)
Fred Gorham Folsom (Roosevelt, 1910)[3]
And finally, the text portion of this post:
The Midnight Ride of Theodore Roosevelt:
When Edwin Warfield was elected to the presidency in 1912, one of the concerns for the nation soon became what would happen to Theodore Roosevelt's legacy. Roosevelt had already made his mark on history with his leadership of the United States during the Great War and putting the United States firmly in the position as the dominant power on the North American continent. However, with the war taking so much focus for the Roosevelt administration, his domestic legacy was more uncertain. Roosevelt had increased the power of the executive office and with William Howard Taft made the vice presidency more involved in actual policy and less of a ceremonial position. To cement his legacy, however, Theodore Roosevelt needed something that could continue long after his time in office had ended and was not in danger of being undone by Edwin Warfield or whoever succeeded him.
This moment would came in the eleventh hour of President Roosevelt's term, and only happened by chance. On December 11, 1912, Supreme Court Justice Richard Olney caught a severe case of pneumonia during an exceptionally cold winter in Washington. Olney died five days later. This Supreme Court vacancy was the third in Roosevelt's term, and the President as well as the Progressive members of Congress were determined to fill it before Warfield could take office and nominate his own candidate. This midnight appointment was unusual enough, and President Roosevelt could have made a routine nomination to keep it from becoming controversial. But Theodore Roosevelt was never that kind of man. Opting for a grand personal and political gesture, Roosevelt announced in a public address to an extraordinary session of Congress his intention to nominate Vice President William Howard Taft to the Supreme Court.
Taft had been dutiful while Vice President and Secretary of War, but all through his service in his administration, Roosevelt had known of Taft's discontent with being in the Cabinet and his personal aspiration to the Supreme Court. As such, Roosevelt took a final chance to give his colleague the position he so desired, and stirred up a controversy in the process. Several Congressmen spoke out in uproar at the clearly political appointment of a sitting Cabinet member - the Vice President no less! - to an august body of judges. Conservative Democrats in the southern United States decried Taft's positions to their constituents, calling on Warfield to nominate someone else to the Supreme Court once he took office.
However, more liberal northern Democrats and Republicans were more conciliatory toward Taft's appointment. Roosevelt ultimately made a pragmatic choice in William Howard Taft, for Taft himself was a Republican before joining the Progressive Party to be Roosevelt's War Secretary. Additionally, many Republicans felt that Taft would make a better Supreme Court appointment than any likely appointments President Warfield would make when he took office. Edwin Warfield for his part remained silent on the issue of the Court, preferring to not galvanize the opposition to act if he misspoke. Roosevelt announced the appointment on December 20, 1912, one day before the Senate went into its Christmas recess. When the new Congress began its session on January 6, one of the first orders of business of the new Senate was to officially nominate Taft. Taft had formally resigned from the Vice Presidency in the meantime to avoid any complications with holding that office. In the meantime, Progressive members of Congress and supporters had been busy lobbying other members of the Senate to support Taft's nomination in one of the more political Supreme Court appointments of the era.
The 1912 Senate elections had delivered a smaller plurality for the Republicans, but still a plurality. Thus, much of the lobbying for Taft took the form of convincing Republican Senators to support Taft out of the worry of potential Warfield appointments. At this stage, another oddity for the era occurred during Taft's nomination process. For the first time, a Supreme Court nominee was questioned in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Taft was questioned for 4 hours, primarily on whether he could maintain proper impartiality on the Supreme Court when he had so recently held the vice presidency. The Judiciary Committee ended up nominating Taft after the hearing, and the following week, the Senate held a full vote. With the support of all Senate Progressives, a slight majority of Republicans, and a smattering of Senate Democrats, William Howard Taft was confirmed with a vote of 55 to 41 and was sworn in the next day. Taft's appointment to the Supreme Court would soon have ramifications as a landmark case was brought up in the early months of President Warfield's administration.
[1] In OTL Daniel Lindsey Russell was the Republican-Populist fusionist governor of North Carolina who fought against the Wilmington Insurrection in 1898 and fought to protect the rights of blacks in North Carolina, unfortunately failing in the face of the Democratic machine and white supremacist riots. Here I decided to give him a more influential and lasting role as Chief Justice.
[2] John Fitzpatrick was a mayor of New Orleans from 1892 to 1896.
[3] More Colorado favoritism! Fred Folsom was CU Boulder's first athletic director and the university's football and baseball coach. Folsom Field, CU's football stadium, is named after him. He also taught law at CU from 1905 to 1943 and his son Fred Folsom Jr. was an attorney in the DoJ and played a key role in the department promoting civil rights.
Updated list of Chief Justices:
John Jay (1789-1795)
John Rutledge (1795-1795)
Oliver Ellsworth (1796-1800)
John Marshall (1801-1835)
Roger Taney (1836-1861)
Abraham Lincoln (1861-1879)
David Davis (1879-1889)
Stephen Field (1889-1895)
Horace Gray (1895-1903)
Rufus Wheeler Peckham (1903-1906)
Daniel Lindsey Russell (1906-????)[1]
And a list of the current composition of the Supreme Court as of 1912:
Chief Justice Daniel Lindsey Russell (Roosevelt, 1906)
Chester Alan Arthur (Edmunds, 1885)
Russell S. Taft (Edmunds, 1888)
Richard Olney (Cleveland, 1895)
Judson Harmon (Cleveland, 1895)
John Fitzpatrick (Cleveland, 1896)[2]
John Marshall Harlan (Bryan, 1900)
Henry Billings Brown (McKinley, 1903)
Fred Gorham Folsom (Roosevelt, 1910)[3]
And finally, the text portion of this post:
The Midnight Ride of Theodore Roosevelt:
When Edwin Warfield was elected to the presidency in 1912, one of the concerns for the nation soon became what would happen to Theodore Roosevelt's legacy. Roosevelt had already made his mark on history with his leadership of the United States during the Great War and putting the United States firmly in the position as the dominant power on the North American continent. However, with the war taking so much focus for the Roosevelt administration, his domestic legacy was more uncertain. Roosevelt had increased the power of the executive office and with William Howard Taft made the vice presidency more involved in actual policy and less of a ceremonial position. To cement his legacy, however, Theodore Roosevelt needed something that could continue long after his time in office had ended and was not in danger of being undone by Edwin Warfield or whoever succeeded him.
This moment would came in the eleventh hour of President Roosevelt's term, and only happened by chance. On December 11, 1912, Supreme Court Justice Richard Olney caught a severe case of pneumonia during an exceptionally cold winter in Washington. Olney died five days later. This Supreme Court vacancy was the third in Roosevelt's term, and the President as well as the Progressive members of Congress were determined to fill it before Warfield could take office and nominate his own candidate. This midnight appointment was unusual enough, and President Roosevelt could have made a routine nomination to keep it from becoming controversial. But Theodore Roosevelt was never that kind of man. Opting for a grand personal and political gesture, Roosevelt announced in a public address to an extraordinary session of Congress his intention to nominate Vice President William Howard Taft to the Supreme Court.
Taft had been dutiful while Vice President and Secretary of War, but all through his service in his administration, Roosevelt had known of Taft's discontent with being in the Cabinet and his personal aspiration to the Supreme Court. As such, Roosevelt took a final chance to give his colleague the position he so desired, and stirred up a controversy in the process. Several Congressmen spoke out in uproar at the clearly political appointment of a sitting Cabinet member - the Vice President no less! - to an august body of judges. Conservative Democrats in the southern United States decried Taft's positions to their constituents, calling on Warfield to nominate someone else to the Supreme Court once he took office.
However, more liberal northern Democrats and Republicans were more conciliatory toward Taft's appointment. Roosevelt ultimately made a pragmatic choice in William Howard Taft, for Taft himself was a Republican before joining the Progressive Party to be Roosevelt's War Secretary. Additionally, many Republicans felt that Taft would make a better Supreme Court appointment than any likely appointments President Warfield would make when he took office. Edwin Warfield for his part remained silent on the issue of the Court, preferring to not galvanize the opposition to act if he misspoke. Roosevelt announced the appointment on December 20, 1912, one day before the Senate went into its Christmas recess. When the new Congress began its session on January 6, one of the first orders of business of the new Senate was to officially nominate Taft. Taft had formally resigned from the Vice Presidency in the meantime to avoid any complications with holding that office. In the meantime, Progressive members of Congress and supporters had been busy lobbying other members of the Senate to support Taft's nomination in one of the more political Supreme Court appointments of the era.
The 1912 Senate elections had delivered a smaller plurality for the Republicans, but still a plurality. Thus, much of the lobbying for Taft took the form of convincing Republican Senators to support Taft out of the worry of potential Warfield appointments. At this stage, another oddity for the era occurred during Taft's nomination process. For the first time, a Supreme Court nominee was questioned in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Taft was questioned for 4 hours, primarily on whether he could maintain proper impartiality on the Supreme Court when he had so recently held the vice presidency. The Judiciary Committee ended up nominating Taft after the hearing, and the following week, the Senate held a full vote. With the support of all Senate Progressives, a slight majority of Republicans, and a smattering of Senate Democrats, William Howard Taft was confirmed with a vote of 55 to 41 and was sworn in the next day. Taft's appointment to the Supreme Court would soon have ramifications as a landmark case was brought up in the early months of President Warfield's administration.
[1] In OTL Daniel Lindsey Russell was the Republican-Populist fusionist governor of North Carolina who fought against the Wilmington Insurrection in 1898 and fought to protect the rights of blacks in North Carolina, unfortunately failing in the face of the Democratic machine and white supremacist riots. Here I decided to give him a more influential and lasting role as Chief Justice.
[2] John Fitzpatrick was a mayor of New Orleans from 1892 to 1896.
[3] More Colorado favoritism! Fred Folsom was CU Boulder's first athletic director and the university's football and baseball coach. Folsom Field, CU's football stadium, is named after him. He also taught law at CU from 1905 to 1943 and his son Fred Folsom Jr. was an attorney in the DoJ and played a key role in the department promoting civil rights.
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Cool update, @wilcoxchar, I really enjoy getting the opportunity to have some more details filled in.
Also, thanks for putting in the Threadmarks. I should really go back and read this over again sometime.
Also, thanks for putting in the Threadmarks. I should really go back and read this over again sometime.
Yes please do, Wilcoxchar. What an amazing Timeline this has been.
My Threads: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/need-ideas-for-new-timeline.406271/#post-13892492
I actually have a good place to fit the California president list in the epilogue. Expect that to be covered around post 4 or 5 of the epilogue.
Epilogue Post #2
Epilogue Post #2
The Congo Slave Cases:
Edwin Warfield had hopes of entering the presidency with little fanfare to evoke a return to the calmer times before the Great War. However, prior events had other plans. In the first year of the Warfield administration, the nation was rocked by a scandal that was unknown to both Warfield and former president Roosevelt, and unfortunately for President Warfield was a consequence of the previous time that the Democrats had held the executive office.
After its acquisition by the United States and its incorporation into a territory by the Cleveland administration, the Congo Territory was largely neglected by subsequent administrations and left to develop in its own devices. Francis Seiberling and later governors were left free to act in the Congo Territory as they wished, with the post of governor of the Congo becoming a political appointment[1]. Corporations seeking to profit from the rubber boom through developments in the Congo were given free rein by absentee territorial governors and company towns sprang up in the small territory. While this fueled the development of the port of Banana at the mouth of the Congo River as well as the company towns further inland, it led to unforeseen consequences. The situation, already rife with exploitation of local African workers in the company towns, became much worse under the governorship of John Tyler Morgan. Morgan, who had negotiated the original transfer of the Congo Territory to the United States in 1893, had been appointed governor of the Congo Territory in 1901 by President McKinley at the beginning of his term. The appointment was partly as a favor to Morgan for shoring up Democratic support in the South, particularly Tennessee and North Carolina, after the Democrats lost both states in 1896.
John Tyler Morgan's governorship of the territory was more involved than his predecessors, but he only made it worse. Morgan took a personal interest in developing the company towns not only as a way to develop the colony, but also as a way to promote his doctrine of white supremacy. Morgan secured federal appropriations for the Congo Territory and used them to attract the corporations associated with the growing automobile industry in the United States. Producers of rubber products such as Naugatuck[2] and Goodyear had representatives in the Congo Territory to manage their company towns. Even with better transportation and communication advances of the turn of the century, contact between the central African colony and the mainland United States was slow. The corporations took advantage of this. Using the provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, even after the Lincoln court's expansion of the amendment to abolish slavery for all United States citizens, the question remained of whether those born in territories are citizens. Thus, company towns in the Congo Territory effectively became de facto plantations during the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations. Native Congolese, as well as blacks in the southern United States who were convicted of crimes and later "sentenced" to these company towns, were enslaved by the white American upper class[3]. The extremely stratified and segregated society of the early 20th century Congo Territory is one of the darkest moments of American history since the National War.
The slavery in company towns in the Congo lasted for over a dozen years in that state under three successive presidential administrations. The resulting scandal of native enslavement in the Congo Territory finally broke when journalist and former Naugatuck Consolidated Rubber Company employee Charles Dow traveled to the Congo to investigate the business prospect of the rubber industry. Dow wrote extensively about the enslaved workers and their conditions at the Naugatuck plantation near present day Kinzao. Swathes of the Mayumbe forest in American territory had been cut back to make way for rows of rubber trees all along the approaches to the mouth of the Congo River. Slaves were subject to difficult conditions, being "paid" in company housing and with company ration stamps. While corporate economic structure elsewhere such as the company mining towns in Pennsylvania and the Hudson Bay Company's "social credit" system strove to provide services and improve workers' conditions, the Congolese company towns did not, only providing the barest of facilities for the Congolese slaves and the American prison laborers in order to maximize profits from rubber extraction in the American Congo[4]. Dow's reports came out in the summer of 1913, timed so American readers would understand the hot and humid conditions of the rubber plantations the most.
The Dow Report invigorated labor and black rights activists in the continental United States. The news of not just Africans but also African-Americans being subjected to slavery nearly fifty years after its supposed abolition shocked much of the budding African-American intellectual class, many of whom were also heavily involved in labor groups and unions. In July 1913, black dockworkers in Brooklyn led by Sheridan Leary[5] went on strike to protest slavery in the Congo, refusing to work on a dock that handled shipping from the American Congo or companies involved in the Congo. The Brooklyn strike turned violent after Brooklyn police officers were ordered to forcibly end the strike. Fourteen strikers and three police officers were killed in the ensuing riot, which also burned a number of warehouses on the Brooklyn docks.
While many ordinary African-Americans such as Leary and the Brooklyn strikers sought immediate action against the companies, others including Charles Dow sought justice through the legal system. Dow, working with lawyer Robert Latham Owen and journalist and black activist Ida B. Wells, constructed a test case to sue the Congo Territory and the rubber companies for illegally enslaving Americans and violating the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Dow found a suitable client, a Kinzao plantation worker named Abraham Kasavubu, to bring the case against the Congo Territory[6]. The case of Kasavubu vs. Congo Territory was brought up through the courts to the Supreme Court in May of 1914. During this time, racial tensions especially in the southern United States simmered with occasional violent acts from both blacks and whites that highly charged the proceedings. President Warfield, wisely for a Democrat at the time, condemned the conditions of the workers in the Congo, but did not go so far as to recall the governor he had appointed at the beginning of his administration. Nor did President Warfield pick a side publicly on if Abraham Kasavubu was a United States citizen.
For it was not just slavery that was the heart of Kasavubu vs. Congo Territory. The more technical crux of the case was whether someone born in a United States territory was a United States citizen or not. The ramifications of the decision were great, only being made even greater when one took the recent annexation of California into account. If Kasavubu was deemed to not be a citizen, were Californians, both Anglo and Ibero, and their children citizens before the territories were admitted to the United States? For that matter, were the people living in Fremont, Dakhota, and El Paso territories United States citizens, and if not could they be enslaved?
The case was so highly publicized at the time that even the men arguing the case before the Supreme Court became household named. Arguing in favor of Kasavubu was Robert Latham Owen, who argued that all citizens born within the territories of the United States were citizens, that the Congolese were citizens, and that the slavery in the Congo Territory did in fact violate the Thirteenth Amendment. This was based on previous precedent establishing that the residents of newly acquired territories were automatically granted citizenship, and on previous attempts to clarify the natural born citizen clause for presidential eligibility. Former South Carolina attorney general Asbury Lever argued for the Congo Territory. Lever argued that the Congolese were not citizens just as any American colonial territory citing indigenous tribal lands as precedent. Lever also had a backup argument in case that failed; that Kasavubu had no right to sue because by signing a contract with the Naugatuck Rubber Company under legal Congo Territory law, he had entered into a legal employment status and that by seeking employment with Naugatuck, Abraham Kasavubu accepted the conditions of the company town. Some commentators such as former Shoshone territorial governor Willis van Deventer claimed the Congolese plantations held no different legal status than the company towns in the United States, arguing that the freedom of contract should not be thrown out.
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Russell heard the case, and on June 12, 1914, issued its decision on Kasavubu vs. Congo Territory. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Daniel Lindsey Russell, stated that Abraham Kasavubu was a citizen of the United States and that the "enslavement for all practical purposes" violated the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States. Russell was joined in the opinion by Justice Folsom, Justice Arthur, and both Justices Taft. In Russell's opinion, "as United States territories are overseen and under the jurisdiction of the federal government, all citizens of those territories are thusly citizens of the United States, and furthermore under the Thirteenth Amendment slavery is prohibited in those territories." The dissent written by Justice Brown and joined by Justices Fitzpatrick and Harmon, cited the previous case of Red Deer vs. Perry which held that Indians were not citizens without consent from the United States government[7]. Justice Harlan filed another dissenting opinion separate from Brown's. Harlan made it clear that he agreed with the majority that Kasavubu was a citizen of the United States by birth in the Congo Territory, but argued that Kasavubu had willingly entered into a contract with the Naugatuck Rubber Company and that the Court should not strike down the freedom of contract that underpinned free enterprise and the American economy[8].
The case of Kasavubu vs. Congo Territory became one of the most important cases in the history of the United States. It not only affirmed United States citizenship in territories achieving a landmark civil rights victory, but also had lasting cultural effects. The realization that slavery had existed in the United States so long after the National War was a shock to the country's consciousness, especially to the African-American community. It led to a revitalized interest and studies in African culture by blacks in the United States, leading to another infusion of African culture into American and especially Cuban music and literature. The revelation of slavery in the Congo also strengthened the anti-imperialist movement in the United States. In particular paving the way for home rule in the Congo Territory and its eventual independence as the Banana Republic[9], but it also brought other anti-imperialist causes to the forefront and may have directly influenced William Jennings Bryan return to politics.
[1] See this post
[2] Naugatuck, Connecticut was a major rubber town both in TTL and in OTL, thanks in part to Charles Goodyear living there.
[3] A friend actually brought this to my attention way back that the loophole for slavery in territories remained with the rewording of the Thirteenth Amendment. The convict slavery, on the other hand, was also used in OTL in the South after the Civil War to effectively reenslave blacks by using charges like vagrancy.
[4] I realized this actually puts a really broad spectrum of what company towns are like into the public eye ITTL. Public opinion on company towns in general probably vary a lot more than OTL.
[5] Fictional son of mixed race North Carolina lawyer John S. Leary.
[6] Plessy v. Ferguson also began through orchestrating a test case.
[7] This is essentially an analogue to OTL's Elk v. Wilkins case which had the same result.
[8] I admit Harlan is probably not the best Justice to use for this partial dissent, but after listing the Justices I had trouble figuring out who I wanted to have do it. Let's say he doesn't flip quite as much as he did on slavery and civil rights as OTL after the National War (during the Civil War Harlan supported slavery but was pro-Union), and this goes somewhat with his OTL rulings on US v. Wong Kim Ark and his only partial dissent in Lochner v. New York.
[9] I completely forgot about Banana becoming a bigger port than Boma until rereading the other posts on the Congo. This punchline was entirely the reason I did that.
The Congo Slave Cases:
Edwin Warfield had hopes of entering the presidency with little fanfare to evoke a return to the calmer times before the Great War. However, prior events had other plans. In the first year of the Warfield administration, the nation was rocked by a scandal that was unknown to both Warfield and former president Roosevelt, and unfortunately for President Warfield was a consequence of the previous time that the Democrats had held the executive office.
After its acquisition by the United States and its incorporation into a territory by the Cleveland administration, the Congo Territory was largely neglected by subsequent administrations and left to develop in its own devices. Francis Seiberling and later governors were left free to act in the Congo Territory as they wished, with the post of governor of the Congo becoming a political appointment[1]. Corporations seeking to profit from the rubber boom through developments in the Congo were given free rein by absentee territorial governors and company towns sprang up in the small territory. While this fueled the development of the port of Banana at the mouth of the Congo River as well as the company towns further inland, it led to unforeseen consequences. The situation, already rife with exploitation of local African workers in the company towns, became much worse under the governorship of John Tyler Morgan. Morgan, who had negotiated the original transfer of the Congo Territory to the United States in 1893, had been appointed governor of the Congo Territory in 1901 by President McKinley at the beginning of his term. The appointment was partly as a favor to Morgan for shoring up Democratic support in the South, particularly Tennessee and North Carolina, after the Democrats lost both states in 1896.
John Tyler Morgan's governorship of the territory was more involved than his predecessors, but he only made it worse. Morgan took a personal interest in developing the company towns not only as a way to develop the colony, but also as a way to promote his doctrine of white supremacy. Morgan secured federal appropriations for the Congo Territory and used them to attract the corporations associated with the growing automobile industry in the United States. Producers of rubber products such as Naugatuck[2] and Goodyear had representatives in the Congo Territory to manage their company towns. Even with better transportation and communication advances of the turn of the century, contact between the central African colony and the mainland United States was slow. The corporations took advantage of this. Using the provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, even after the Lincoln court's expansion of the amendment to abolish slavery for all United States citizens, the question remained of whether those born in territories are citizens. Thus, company towns in the Congo Territory effectively became de facto plantations during the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations. Native Congolese, as well as blacks in the southern United States who were convicted of crimes and later "sentenced" to these company towns, were enslaved by the white American upper class[3]. The extremely stratified and segregated society of the early 20th century Congo Territory is one of the darkest moments of American history since the National War.
The slavery in company towns in the Congo lasted for over a dozen years in that state under three successive presidential administrations. The resulting scandal of native enslavement in the Congo Territory finally broke when journalist and former Naugatuck Consolidated Rubber Company employee Charles Dow traveled to the Congo to investigate the business prospect of the rubber industry. Dow wrote extensively about the enslaved workers and their conditions at the Naugatuck plantation near present day Kinzao. Swathes of the Mayumbe forest in American territory had been cut back to make way for rows of rubber trees all along the approaches to the mouth of the Congo River. Slaves were subject to difficult conditions, being "paid" in company housing and with company ration stamps. While corporate economic structure elsewhere such as the company mining towns in Pennsylvania and the Hudson Bay Company's "social credit" system strove to provide services and improve workers' conditions, the Congolese company towns did not, only providing the barest of facilities for the Congolese slaves and the American prison laborers in order to maximize profits from rubber extraction in the American Congo[4]. Dow's reports came out in the summer of 1913, timed so American readers would understand the hot and humid conditions of the rubber plantations the most.
The Dow Report invigorated labor and black rights activists in the continental United States. The news of not just Africans but also African-Americans being subjected to slavery nearly fifty years after its supposed abolition shocked much of the budding African-American intellectual class, many of whom were also heavily involved in labor groups and unions. In July 1913, black dockworkers in Brooklyn led by Sheridan Leary[5] went on strike to protest slavery in the Congo, refusing to work on a dock that handled shipping from the American Congo or companies involved in the Congo. The Brooklyn strike turned violent after Brooklyn police officers were ordered to forcibly end the strike. Fourteen strikers and three police officers were killed in the ensuing riot, which also burned a number of warehouses on the Brooklyn docks.
While many ordinary African-Americans such as Leary and the Brooklyn strikers sought immediate action against the companies, others including Charles Dow sought justice through the legal system. Dow, working with lawyer Robert Latham Owen and journalist and black activist Ida B. Wells, constructed a test case to sue the Congo Territory and the rubber companies for illegally enslaving Americans and violating the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Dow found a suitable client, a Kinzao plantation worker named Abraham Kasavubu, to bring the case against the Congo Territory[6]. The case of Kasavubu vs. Congo Territory was brought up through the courts to the Supreme Court in May of 1914. During this time, racial tensions especially in the southern United States simmered with occasional violent acts from both blacks and whites that highly charged the proceedings. President Warfield, wisely for a Democrat at the time, condemned the conditions of the workers in the Congo, but did not go so far as to recall the governor he had appointed at the beginning of his administration. Nor did President Warfield pick a side publicly on if Abraham Kasavubu was a United States citizen.
For it was not just slavery that was the heart of Kasavubu vs. Congo Territory. The more technical crux of the case was whether someone born in a United States territory was a United States citizen or not. The ramifications of the decision were great, only being made even greater when one took the recent annexation of California into account. If Kasavubu was deemed to not be a citizen, were Californians, both Anglo and Ibero, and their children citizens before the territories were admitted to the United States? For that matter, were the people living in Fremont, Dakhota, and El Paso territories United States citizens, and if not could they be enslaved?
The case was so highly publicized at the time that even the men arguing the case before the Supreme Court became household named. Arguing in favor of Kasavubu was Robert Latham Owen, who argued that all citizens born within the territories of the United States were citizens, that the Congolese were citizens, and that the slavery in the Congo Territory did in fact violate the Thirteenth Amendment. This was based on previous precedent establishing that the residents of newly acquired territories were automatically granted citizenship, and on previous attempts to clarify the natural born citizen clause for presidential eligibility. Former South Carolina attorney general Asbury Lever argued for the Congo Territory. Lever argued that the Congolese were not citizens just as any American colonial territory citing indigenous tribal lands as precedent. Lever also had a backup argument in case that failed; that Kasavubu had no right to sue because by signing a contract with the Naugatuck Rubber Company under legal Congo Territory law, he had entered into a legal employment status and that by seeking employment with Naugatuck, Abraham Kasavubu accepted the conditions of the company town. Some commentators such as former Shoshone territorial governor Willis van Deventer claimed the Congolese plantations held no different legal status than the company towns in the United States, arguing that the freedom of contract should not be thrown out.
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Russell heard the case, and on June 12, 1914, issued its decision on Kasavubu vs. Congo Territory. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Daniel Lindsey Russell, stated that Abraham Kasavubu was a citizen of the United States and that the "enslavement for all practical purposes" violated the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States. Russell was joined in the opinion by Justice Folsom, Justice Arthur, and both Justices Taft. In Russell's opinion, "as United States territories are overseen and under the jurisdiction of the federal government, all citizens of those territories are thusly citizens of the United States, and furthermore under the Thirteenth Amendment slavery is prohibited in those territories." The dissent written by Justice Brown and joined by Justices Fitzpatrick and Harmon, cited the previous case of Red Deer vs. Perry which held that Indians were not citizens without consent from the United States government[7]. Justice Harlan filed another dissenting opinion separate from Brown's. Harlan made it clear that he agreed with the majority that Kasavubu was a citizen of the United States by birth in the Congo Territory, but argued that Kasavubu had willingly entered into a contract with the Naugatuck Rubber Company and that the Court should not strike down the freedom of contract that underpinned free enterprise and the American economy[8].
The case of Kasavubu vs. Congo Territory became one of the most important cases in the history of the United States. It not only affirmed United States citizenship in territories achieving a landmark civil rights victory, but also had lasting cultural effects. The realization that slavery had existed in the United States so long after the National War was a shock to the country's consciousness, especially to the African-American community. It led to a revitalized interest and studies in African culture by blacks in the United States, leading to another infusion of African culture into American and especially Cuban music and literature. The revelation of slavery in the Congo also strengthened the anti-imperialist movement in the United States. In particular paving the way for home rule in the Congo Territory and its eventual independence as the Banana Republic[9], but it also brought other anti-imperialist causes to the forefront and may have directly influenced William Jennings Bryan return to politics.
[1] See this post
[2] Naugatuck, Connecticut was a major rubber town both in TTL and in OTL, thanks in part to Charles Goodyear living there.
[3] A friend actually brought this to my attention way back that the loophole for slavery in territories remained with the rewording of the Thirteenth Amendment. The convict slavery, on the other hand, was also used in OTL in the South after the Civil War to effectively reenslave blacks by using charges like vagrancy.
[4] I realized this actually puts a really broad spectrum of what company towns are like into the public eye ITTL. Public opinion on company towns in general probably vary a lot more than OTL.
[5] Fictional son of mixed race North Carolina lawyer John S. Leary.
[6] Plessy v. Ferguson also began through orchestrating a test case.
[7] This is essentially an analogue to OTL's Elk v. Wilkins case which had the same result.
[8] I admit Harlan is probably not the best Justice to use for this partial dissent, but after listing the Justices I had trouble figuring out who I wanted to have do it. Let's say he doesn't flip quite as much as he did on slavery and civil rights as OTL after the National War (during the Civil War Harlan supported slavery but was pro-Union), and this goes somewhat with his OTL rulings on US v. Wong Kim Ark and his only partial dissent in Lochner v. New York.
[9] I completely forgot about Banana becoming a bigger port than Boma until rereading the other posts on the Congo. This punchline was entirely the reason I did that.
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I shall Keep an Eye open for that. Does anyone Know how to add a 'My Threads' [in my Case since I don't have any Timelines in the Works for now] link at the End of this Reply?
Hover the mouse over your username in the top right, in the drop-down menu that shows up there's an option that says "Signature".
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