WI: United States W/Civil Rights Since Its Founding

Ever since its inception, the United States has striven to promote liberty, equality and individual rights for its citizens. It sought to be the land of opportunity, but only a select population enjoyed this privilege.

Moral outrages ranging from the mass enslavement of African-Americans, to male-only suffrage until 1920, were some of the great inequities throughout US history. While the 1960s Civil Rights movement went a long way towards righting these historical wrongs, it's been mere decades since the milestone has been made.

So, what if the United States had, ever since its inception, guaranteed civil rights for all--regardless of race, gender, color or creed--from the very beginning?
 
Ever since its inception, the United States has striven to promote liberty, equality and individual rights for its citizens. It sought to be the land of opportunity, but only a select population enjoyed this privilege.

Moral outrages ranging from the mass enslavement of African-Americans, to male-only suffrage until 1920, were some of the great inequities throughout US history. While the 1960s Civil Rights movement went a long way towards righting these historical wrongs, it's been mere decades since the milestone has been made.

So, what if the United States had, ever since its inception, guaranteed civil rights for all--regardless of race, gender, color or creed--from the very beginning?

While it would certainly be very wonderful, they would need to find a way to deal with the slave owners and get them to release the slaves. Besides that. gender could probably become less of an issue depending on individuals.
 
While it would certainly be very wonderful, they would need to find a way to deal with the slave owners and get them to release the slaves. Besides that. gender could probably become less of an issue depending on individuals.
Perhaps financial compensation to the slaveowners and having the freedmen working a certain amount of time on their former slaveowners' lands?
 
You mean what would happen if 21st century ideals were transplanted to the 18th century?

That’s a pretty big what if.
 
You mean what would happen if 21st century ideals were transplanted to the 18th century?

That’s a pretty big what if.

I have to ask why would they do this? At the time no country had these rights or anything even close.

I'm aware that actually making this happen is pretty ASB--I should've put it into that forum, in fact. That said, I'm just assuming a premise and asking about the results. Like with my "Free Market Capitalistic China" thread, I'm less interested in how we get there.
 
Perhaps financial compensation to the slaveowners and having the freedmen working a certain amount of time on their former slaveowners' lands?

And where is the Federal government supposed to get that kind of money to "buy out" the salve owners, even if we presume they can be forced to sell through some warped interpretation of eminent domain?
 
I'm aware that actually making this happen is pretty ASB--I should've put it into that forum, in fact. That said, I'm just assuming a premise and asking about the results. Like with my "Free Market Capitalistic China" thread, I'm less interested in how we get there.

As much as I can appreciate that, how we get there is pretty important in explaining what that world would be like. It's one thing to ignore the how when it's a small, seemingly inconsequential difference, but this isn't that. It definitely should've gone in ASB.

With that said...An American state that lacks slavery and racial/gender/religious discrimination from its inception is a completely different one in basically every way. For all we know, a transgender black woman could be its very first President. If there's enough support for civil rights from the start to avoid all the nastiness of much of American history, why not? It's an incredibly difficult question to answer for the basic fact that we don't know how we reached that point.
 
As much as I can appreciate that, how we get there is pretty important in explaining what that world would be like. It's one thing to ignore the how when it's a small, seemingly inconsequential difference, but this isn't that. It definitely should've gone in ASB.

With that said...An American state that lacks slavery and racial/gender/religious discrimination from its inception is a completely different one in basically every way. For all we know, a transgender black woman could be its very first President. If there's enough support for civil rights from the start to avoid all the nastiness of much of American history, why not? It's an incredibly difficult question to answer for the basic fact that we don't know how we reached that point.

You've made a good point. I suppose the only realistic (though by no means assured) way to do this is have a POD(s) from centuries earlier. I'm at a loss on the specifics of this, however.
 
My guess could be to have Quakers serve as the primary foundational cultural influence rather than the Puritians. Quakers were anti-slavery and generally pretty nice so I could see them better arrange things with the natives. As for the gender thing, my guess would be that that could be influenced by a few key individuals. Like legally while women could vote nad hold office, it was viewed as unusual so it sets a precedent for ambitions individuals to prove themselves
 
My guess could be to have Quakers serve as the primary foundational cultural influence rather than the Puritians. Quakers were anti-slavery and generally pretty nice so I could see them better arrange things with the natives. As for the gender thing, my guess would be that that could be influenced by a few key individuals. Like legally while women could vote nad hold office, it was viewed as unusual so it sets a precedent for ambitions individuals to prove themselves

Historians would remember it as a Proto-Communist Utopian Society that was quickly crushed by the colonial government.

This topic is as anachronistic as a Fascist Genghis Khan.
 
You've made a good point. I suppose the only realistic (though by no means assured) way to do this is have a POD(s) from centuries earlier. I'm at a loss on the specifics of this, however.

My guess could be to have Quakers serve as the primary foundational cultural influence rather than the Puritians. Quakers were anti-slavery and generally pretty nice so I could see them better arrange things with the natives. As for the gender thing, my guess would be that that could be influenced by a few key individuals. Like legally while women could vote nad hold office, it was viewed as unusual so it sets a precedent for ambitions individuals to prove themselves

I think it would definitely to go into ASB, but that did give me an interesting idea. Maybe this guy could play a role.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lay
 
In the history (as opposed to AH) world this sort of thinking is known as "presentism", where you take the values and ethos of today and project it backwards. Yes, there are a lot of things that happened in the past we can see as morally wrong no matter what, like slavery which existed widely from the depths of time until the 20th century, or genocide. Having said that, you have to place things in their appropriate historical context - putting 21st century social thought in to the 18th century is just as wrong as the other way around..."what, women voting and owning property independently, are you mad sir, barking mad?"

When you look at the principles of the USA, and yes we all know they were not always lived up to even in 2018, they were highly advanced for the day. No established religion/state religion and no religious test for government service. No de jure special rights for any social class. Equal justice under the law. The reality is there were no serious political thinkers of philosophers in the late 18th century who would have been advocating equal rights for women, same sex marriage and free exercise of sexuality/gender. The racism of the late 19th/20th century ("Jewish race", "Slavic race", etc) is not there yet, however differences on skin color are obvious - slavery is seen as something that will fade away and the abolitionist movement is just getting underway in some places in the world.
 
@sloreck is absolutely right, there are few greater fallacies amongst the alternate history community IMO than presentist thought in creating or discussing alternate history where it doesn't belong. Approaching a country or region through modern eyes and mores (instead of in the context of the relevant era) is both ignorant and unfair.

To wit, NOBODY (America or otherwise) had any practical implementation of "equal rights for all" in the sense the OP meant before the early-mid 20th century. You could see perhaps spot improvements relatively speaking, depending on the PoD, but nothing all-encompassing. Discussing something as commonly accepted as womens equality (let alone something like LGBT rights) in a pre-1900 context would be utterly alien, and that's frankly to be expected. Much of the modern understanding of civil rights is evolutionary and dependent on a multi-century set of trends that might not even exist in an AH, delaying or diverting social attitudes from OTL along the way.
 
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