WI: Reconstruction done right?

There's nothing you can do to prevent them from trying.

But look at this: "Hahn's Administration made serious attempts at ensuring enfranchisement of black Louisianans and laid the foundation for a black school system and began an aborted Reconstruction in Louisiana."

This isn't someone who is going to let them take over if he has anything to say about it.

Not to mention the possibilities this would mean for other states. At least with North Carolina and Tennessee the Union might switch during the war to guys like Parson Brownlow and after it to William Holden. They were as liberal as could be hoped for from the standard of Southern whites at the time. Give them slightly longer in office and they can do a bit more good, particularly if in it while Radicalism is at its height, as there will be a temporary postwar crest of Radical Republicanism like IOTL.

Of course this is still the 1860s and there's not going to be much of this for the long term, but even a year or two is equivalent to much longer in less revolutionary times. And both Brownlow and Holden IOTL were more effective as governors in the postwar world than would have been expected, and ITTL they've more time to do some very, very necessary things.
 
In otl as well as the deep oppression of fomrer slaves you had huge economic issues.

The old ruling class had land but no capital (it having been rightly confiscated becasue so much of it consisted of human beings)

Now if the old ruling class, not all former slaveowner but just the big planters had been thoroughly divested of their dubiously gotten gains in terms of land and other propertyu and probably exiled for a period and former slaves who of course provided labour had also had land a more successful society might have developed.

It would have been hard to do politically, Legally of course they would have got off lightly.

They had made war on the United States, by the law and traditions of the time they could have been hanged.

Morally it would not have been unjust for their loss of property to be combined with some decades of hard jail tme.

If former slaves had established property denying them other right woudl have been much harder.

If the old leadership had been destroyed as a class (without hurting a hair on the head of any who survived the war itself) the United State would likely have been an incredible beacon for oppressed ethinc groups everywhere
 
If the old leadership had been destroyed as a class (without hurting a hair on the head of any who survived the war itself) the United State would likely have been an incredible beacon for oppressed ethinc groups everywhere


The old leadership did lose power in the South around the turn of the century, but the Blacks gained nothing whatsoever from the change. If anything the new state governments were more racist rather than less.

Incidentally, large amounts of land did change hands after the ACW, mostly through inability to pay taxes. But of course there was never any question of giving it away. It was sold at auction (to recover the unpaid tax) and very few Freedmen could afford to buy it.
 
The irony in all this talk (in this and the other thread of similar nature on freed slaves getting the land) of who writes history is that one fact missing in all of this is that Reconstruction governments often were the ones w3ho even started a free public educations ystem in the South, as I understand it.

I'm not sure who wrote the books that were used then, and history books can not only be biased but far behind. (I remember a history book in a richer yet public school in the "rust belt" in the late 1970s that still had Presidents only up to Nixon, as it was 5-7 eyars old).

However, education would be necessary for the Freedmen to know some basic things, even if they did know the basics of farming. It's easy to see why so many in this era put such an emphasis on education before anything.

It makes me wonder, without Reconstruction, would the richer elites even care about universal public education? if Hahn is left to his devices, and Brownlow perhaps wins election as in OTL, perhaps they get it started in their states; same with Holden, who could. However, I wonder what other states would. Would the Deep South, if made to abolish harshest Black Codes and that's all before readmission, even have free public education before, say, 1900?
 
The irony in all this talk (in this and the other thread of similar nature on freed slaves getting the land) of who writes history is that one fact missing in all of this is that Reconstruction governments often were the ones w3ho even started a free public educations ystem in the South, as I understand it.

I'm not sure who wrote the books that were used then, and history books can not only be biased but far behind. (I remember a history book in a richer yet public school in the "rust belt" in the late 1970s that still had Presidents only up to Nixon, as it was 5-7 eyars old).

However, education would be necessary for the Freedmen to know some basic things, even if they did know the basics of farming. It's easy to see why so many in this era put such an emphasis on education before anything.

It makes me wonder, without Reconstruction, would the richer elites even care about universal public education? if Hahn is left to his devices, and Brownlow perhaps wins election as in OTL, perhaps they get it started in their states; same with Holden, who could. However, I wonder what other states would. Would the Deep South, if made to abolish harshest Black Codes and that's all before readmission, even have free public education before, say, 1900?

Not necessarily, no. In all likelihood this would be one continuity of slavery that would hurt the Deep South worse in those timelines.
 
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