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Reparations are a hundred years too late.

As I was recently driving across the country, I was wondering how things would have been different if we had opened the west and given the slave s forty acres and a mule.

The slaves and their descendants have already received their reparations, much of which provided from men, women, children and families who were in no way involved in their slavery. I have read, though I can not cite, that the United States was the only country to go to all out war to free slaves.

330,000 WHITE UNION military knowingly went to their deaths to free the African American slaves during the Civil War, they FOLLOWED the directives and emancipation orders of their government, a government THEY ELECTED. I have never heard an establishment, professional, progressive/ African-American, or White Progressive ever ACKNOWLEDGE, much less “thank” these dead men for their sacrifices, nor recognize the 260,000 White Union military who were wounded and/or grievously disabled, nor the widows, nor the children, nor the families of the military who also suffered.
I BELIEVE OBAMA WOULD NOT TRAVEL TO GETTYSBURG TO COMMERATE THE 150 YEAR ANNIVERSARY BECAUSE IT WOULD HAVE HIGHLIGHTED THE SACRFICES AND THE REASONS THE MEN FOUGHT AND DIED.

Vermont Lt: "I was wondering how things would have been different if we had opened the west and given the slave s forty acres and a mule."

By 1910 a million blacks lived on 15,000,000 acres of farmland they owned in Alabama, Mississippi, North & South Carolina alone.
That's an area of land well more than the size of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware & Rhodes Island combined.
It averages to well over "40 acres and a mule" for families of, say, four.

Also, US land prices were vastly lower in 1865 than today, even considering inflation.
So "40 acres and a mule" in today's values is equivalent to circa $100,000 per family of four.
Multiply $100,000 times say, 10 million black families, that's about a trillion dollars total.

Since the US has already paid vastly more than that in various "Great Society" programs, I'd say that whatever debt was incurred in 1865 has been long since "paid in full" -- no matter how you figure it.