WI: Lincoln isn't assasinated?

One thing that may be key; Lincoln might have treated education much more aggressively than OTL Reconstruction did. Imagine if the South had a functioning educational system at this point in time...

I think it might depend on what the educational priorities are. President Lincoln, for example, might focus education among freedmen on learning trades, with perhaps learning to read and write. While education would be significant, the focus of said education could be even more important for the course events take in later years.
 
I think it might depend on what the educational priorities are. President Lincoln, for example, might focus education among freedmen on learning trades, with perhaps learning to read and write. While education would be significant, the focus of said education could be even more important for the course events take in later years.

Well, the freedmen, generally speaking, had trades. They were farmers. But literacy IMO is key.
 
Well, the freedmen, generally speaking, had trades. They were farmers. But literacy IMO is key.

Indeed, they were farmers, but more might have become blacksmiths, or something else, if such work was available. Literacy indeed would be the essential factor.
 
One interesting butterfly could be Reparations.

According to this professor's course outline several bills to give land to freemen were passed by congress and then vetoed by Johnson (see III A). These are the source of the "40 acres and a Mule" myth.

They go in two directions: the "South" plan of subdividing plantations among the former slaves and the "West" plan of granting land out west, typically along the Union Pacific rail line (added benifit: protection of the RR).

Assuming Lincoln signs one of these bills (I have no idea if he would, but my gut says "yes"):

The Positive:

* This could mean that African Americans grow to be a class of petty yeomanry rather than suffer the quasi-serfdom of sharecropping.

* This might in turn butterfly the Black ghettos, though we probably still see a diaspora into the cities but this time by way of youth seeking adventure and advancement rather than desperate penniless refugees escaping sharecropping.

* Could an self-supporting "model minority" black population possibly avoid some of the racism that accompanied OTL's "poor ignorant" black steryotypes?


The Negative:

* Possibly lead to even greater clashes with southern whites over this "handout". This is particularly exacerbated in the South plan. Poor whites, now the principle sharecroppers ATL, might be even more bitter towards blacks.

* Increased clashes between blacks and indians in the West option. This could lead to movements among the blacks feeling they were "sent out to die" fighting indians.
 

Xen

Banned
The Radical Republicans would have had less power and Lincoln might not have faced the same threat of impeachment that Johnson did.

Thank you! Every time this subject comes up somebody mentions the radical republicans impeaching Lincoln without realizing it was Lincoln's assassination that catapulted the radical republicans to power (which was waning)
 
What people fail to take into account is how Lincoln's own views of African-Americans were changed by the war. Like, say, those thousands of black Civil War Veterans.

This is what he was planning to do OTL at the end of the war.

Why do people keep saying this?

Because, without a Northern occupation of the South and coerced support for the rights of blacks, organizations like the KKK and the feelings that drove Southern nationalists/white supremacists IOTL aren't there, so black equality isn't such a political taboo in the South, equivalent to outright betrayal. Instead, over time, memory of the war fades and it is revisioned, as IOTL, into a desperate struggle for liberty against the North, rather than the slave war it was, and the blacks don't get quite the blame they did.
 
This is what he was planning to do OTL at the end of the war.

Sure, and things hardened considerably in 1865-1867. Some of this was Lincoln's death; the other was the way blacks were being treated.

Because, without a Northern occupation of the South and coerced support for the rights of blacks, organizations like the KKK and the feelings that drove Southern nationalists/white supremacists IOTL aren't there, so black equality isn't such a political taboo in the South, equivalent to outright betrayal. Instead, over time, memory of the war fades and it is revisioned, as IOTL, into a desperate struggle for liberty against the North, rather than the slave war it was, and the blacks don't get quite the blame they did.

No offense, but this smacks of romanticism and whitewashing of a brutal campaign of terrorism to deprive millions of people of their rights, with an impliied justification that it was only due to the mean federal government's "coerced support for the rights of black" rather than a belief that the people they had been treating as property up until a few years before had no right in American culture as anything other than third class citizens.

I am also very leery of "Lincoln would not have done X". Lincoln was very, very good at keeping his cards close to his chest.
 
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One interesting butterfly could be Reparations.

According to this professor's course outline several bills to give land to freemen were passed by congress and then vetoed by Johnson (see III A). These are the source of the "40 acres and a Mule" myth.

They go in two directions: the "South" plan of subdividing plantations among the former slaves and the "West" plan of granting land out west, typically along the Union Pacific rail line (added benifit: protection of the RR).

Assuming Lincoln signs one of these bills (I have no idea if he would, but my gut says "yes"):

The Positive:

* This could mean that African Americans grow to be a class of petty yeomanry rather than suffer the quasi-serfdom of sharecropping.

* This might in turn butterfly the Black ghettos, though we probably still see a diaspora into the cities but this time by way of youth seeking adventure and advancement rather than desperate penniless refugees escaping sharecropping.

* Could an self-supporting "model minority" black population possibly avoid some of the racism that accompanied OTL's "poor ignorant" black steryotypes?


The Negative:

* Possibly lead to even greater clashes with southern whites over this "handout". This is particularly exacerbated in the South plan. Poor whites, now the principle sharecroppers ATL, might be even more bitter towards blacks.

* Increased clashes between blacks and indians in the West option. This could lead to movements among the blacks feeling they were "sent out to die" fighting indians.

Settling ex-slaves in Utah could be consequential.
 
Sure, and things hardened considerably in 1865-1867. Some of this was Lincoln's death; the other was the way blacks were being treated.



No offense, but this smacks of romanticism and whitewashing of a brutal campaign of terrorism to deprive millions of people of their rights, with an impliied justification that it was only due to the mean federal government's "coerced support for the rights of black" rather than a belief that the people they had been treating as property up until a few years before had no right in American culture as anything other than third class citizens.

I am also very leery of "Lincoln would not have done X". Lincoln was very, very good at keeping his cards close to his chest.


The thing is, he's right. It's hard to explain because it is just so stupid, but even now if you talked to the KKK, they would tell you they started out as an organization to "take back the south for the white man". For some reason, they're the persecuted underdog in this scenario. They felt that during reconsruction, black people, while being supported by the Union military, were destroying their way of life. Screwed up, I know, but it was their justification. Now I'm not sure if this feeling would totally go away if Lincoln didn't occupy the South; African-Americans would still be elected to the Congress, and some white people would fear this. But still, the government gave racists the extra reason to hate African-Americans. If you take this away, you might not see this big racist movement and the drop off of the number of African-Americans in Congress after the KKK movement gained strengh, and universal voting rights were blocked
 
The thing is, he's right. It's hard to explain because it is just so stupid, but even now if you talked to the KKK, they would tell you they started out as an organization to "take back the south for the white man".

I'm sorry, but this makes no sense. They want to take the south back for the white man because blacks, with their equal rights and voting and whatnot, have taken it away, no?

What everyone is saying "if Blacks didn't push for equal rights, then they wouldn't face the KKK."

Yes, and so?
 
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