Posted on 04/23/2015 8:10:28 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Would the Civil Rights movement have taken place if Abraham Lincoln survived the assassin’s bullet by John Wilkes Booth? Allen Guelzo, a civil war era professor at Gettysburg College, posed this question in a recent lecture at Hillsdale’s Kirby Center.
Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, failed to bring the Union together after the end of the Civil War and “barely survived impeachment” from his own Republican Party. Guelzo wondered, “Could Lincoln have found…some practical system” to reconcile the South and North when the war ended. Lincoln had already tried at least one Reconstruction proposal in 1863, which was “bitterly criticized” by Congress for executive overreach.
Lincoln’s proposal was to “reconstruct the Union” while integrating universal suffrage (i.e. voting rights) for freed slaves. Congress proposed a different framework for the unified country, which Lincoln vetoed. As Guelzo noted, Lincoln saw “Reconstruction as a process of subduing the South and returning its states” to the Union and the control of the federal government. He had already begun the Reconstruction process in Southern territories seized by the Union army, such as in Tennessee and pockets in Louisiana. There, Union loyalists began “temporary military government” with state conventions, but the loyalist governments did not follow Lincoln’s instructions to push for universal suffrage. This, in Lincoln’s view, “would be as though the Union had never been disrupted.” Again, Congress “balked” at this move and went on to reject universal suffrage as well.
But, we may never know what Lincoln’s post-war plans were for the Union. In an 1865 address, Lincoln “had some new announcement” regarding the South, but had “nothing more specific to offer” at that time to avoid blowback like in his previous proposals. As one of Lincoln’s judges (who he later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court) David Davis said, “[Lincoln] was the most reticent, secretive man I ever saw.” Guelzo felt that Lincoln aimed to give freed slaves, many of whom served in Union armies, a reward of “full civil liberties, voting rights, especially.” Also, it could have had large implications in politics, as it would have changed the existing three-fifths rule, where slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person. With universal suffrage, that requirement would be eliminated and could have led to a “long term Republican hegemony” in the South.
In several southern states, blacks were a majority or close enough to win free elections. In a less polarized South, Republicans could have presumably drawn enough white votes to win in several more states.
The point, I guess, is that the South would have had more representatives in the House after the war than before, due to the 4M newly counted as 5/5 rather 3/5. But I think he’s stretching a point to assume the additional congressmen would be GOP.
Since they weren't slaves anymore, whether that was true or not was irrelevant. Couldn't ship them anywhere without their agreement.
Lincoln, in common with a great many other white and a few black men, fantasized about sending volunteer free blacks back to Africa or to Haiti or Central America. Note the volunteer part.
They even made a couple of abortive/disastrous attempts.
Whole thing foundered on two key point: 1. Very few blacks were interested. 2. The costs would have been ridiculous. Even today, in an immensely more wealthy country, the costs of shipping 12% or 15% of the population to another continent and getting them going economically would be crippling.
““barely survived impeachment” from his own Republican Party”
Johnson was a Democrat.”
I got there, and said to myself, should I read further? Can such a sloppy writer/thinker be worthy of my time and attention?
“Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, failed to bring the Union together after the end of the Civil War and “barely survived impeachment” from his own Republican Party.”
His own Republican Party?
No. Andrew Johnson never was a Republican. Johnson was war Democrat and a southern unionist. He and Lincoln were elected on the National Union Party ticket in 1864.
“Lincoln definitely seemed inclined to keep the radical reconstructionists (future progressives) in check “
Giving them a motive to want Lincoln out of the way... which spawned several conspiracy theories implicating Sec War Stanton and some other Radical Republicans.
“The net effect of the 3/5ths rule was to give the South a disproportionate level of representation in the House. How did that punish the South? “
Counting slaves as full persons for the purpose of apportionment would have increased the number of Representatives from the South. The 3/5 rule reduced that number. Debates over the issue ranged from a count of none to one.
On the other hand, no one much talks about the legacy of McKinkley or Garfield.
It's rather startling to consider that 3 presidents were assassinated in the space of 36 years. Put another way, 30 percent of presidents between 1865 and 1901 were murdered.
Were slaves considered people or property? Did they have any rights in need of protection in Congress? The answer to both is "no". So why should they have been counted at all for determining Congressional representation?
The Founders argued over that, too:
"The three-fifths ratio originated with a 1783 amendment proposed to the Articles of Confederation. The amendment was to have changed the basis for determining the wealth of each state, and hence its tax obligations, from real estate to population, as a measure of ability to produce wealth. The proposal by a committee of the Congress had suggested that taxes "shall be supplied by the several colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex, and quality, except Indians not paying taxes." The South immediately objected to this formula since it would include slaves, who were viewed primarily as property, in calculating the amount of taxes to be paid. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his notes on the debates, the southern states would be taxed "according to their numbers and their wealth conjunctly, while the northern would be taxed on numbers only."
"So why should they have been counted at all for determining Congressional representation?"
Because without the Compromise the Founders would not have come to an agreement on re-forming the national government. This wasn't a philosophical exercise, it was a pragmatic solution to the complex issues involved so that they could have a national government that worked. The United States wasn't working well under the Articles of Confederation and a replacement government was needed. There were all sorts of compromises involved in drafting the Constitution, including the anti-Federalist's demand for the Bill of Rights.
I believe Lincoln discussed moving slaves (or ex-slaves) back to Africa with Frederick Douglass, but the latter said that was simply not a logical or workable option. One basic reason is that returning the descendants of Africans removed in the 1600s or 1700s to Liberia en masse would’ve been absurd. They had nothing in common with the native Africans except for skin color.
Research Liberian history: those American Blacks that did relocate there, you’ve had a constant political/cultural conflict between them and the native Africans from the get-go up through to the present day. They were aliens.
Quite right. However, a good many of the slaves resettled in Liberia were taken off slave ships. As the British did in Sierra Leone.
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