How would the USA be now if President Lincoln had shipped all African slaves back to Africa?

SGT Private RallyPoint Member — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 21:09:45 -0400

Response by CPT Jack Durish made Aug 1 at 2017 9:34 PM

CPT Jack Durish — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 21:34:39 -0400

The loses are too numerous to mention. Artists. Scientists. Musicians. Leaders. Maybe he should have shipped the KKK to Africa. Now that would have been nice.

Response by SGM Erik Marquez made Aug 1 at 2017 9:44 PM

SGM Erik Marquez — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 21:44:55 -0400

Im going to answer the question with a WAG opinion, then ask a question.
"How would the USA be now if President Lincoln had shipped all African slaves back to Africa?"
I think we would have missed out on the good, and had the inevitable bad no matter what.
The mind set that brought us Slavery as a societal ok Norm, could have just as easily decided to enslave any other demographic ..so whats to say slavery would not have happened anyway
Racism, yup that was already here, still here and would be here with out without Africans selling Africans to US slave masters.
I cant think of a single "bad thing" we had at the time of slavery that we did not already have, or would have had anyway.
And now for the question....
Could I, an old white guy have asked this very valid insightful question without backlash?
Could I have posted "How would the USA be now if President Lincoln had shipped all African slaves back to Africa?"
With no follow on context or additional info, posted just as SGT Private RallyPoint Member had? Without a hailstorm of criticisms, knee jerk reactions, accusations and general hand wringing?
If you say yes (and I have my doubts)

Could I have done the same on Twitter and received the same thoughtful replies and no backlash?

Could I have posted this anywhere that is not a hate sight, not a "extremism" site of any flavor, LEFT, RIGHT, ALT Right, Occupied Democrat ..ect? without backlash, just as SGT Jacqueem Spratley has done and received only professional, considerate responses?

Mostly a rhetorical question.. but its what the post brought to my thoughts when i read it.

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 1 at 2017 9:49 PM

SSG Private RallyPoint Member — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 21:49:40 -0400

Well, racism still would have been a thing. It may have taken longer and initially focused on different groups, but it would have happened. I agree with Jack Durish that there would have been innumerable losses. Especially to the culture of the US. Could you imagine the US without blues, rock, gospel? Heck, imagine the world without peanut butter. Light bulbs....yup; at least the filament that made them work for longer than 5 minutes - Black inventor. (and as usual Edison got the credit, because he was Edison...and an enormous egoist). The pacemaker, invented by Otis Boykin, the gas mask by Garrett Morgan, mobile refrigeration (don't remember his name now...Google it!), and many others. Where would we be without these things? How many people would be dead today if it weren't for the pacemaker? How many more Soldiers would have died in WW1 without the gas mask? And of course the modern firefighting self contained breathing apparatus was developed at least partially from the gas mask as well. How many lives has THAT saved. I'd say that the US would be so much different now that it would be crazy. And we'd be worse off.

Response by SN Greg Wright made Aug 1 at 2017 10:33 PM

SN Greg Wright — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 22:33:48 -0400

Chiming in with excellent question, because I can't even fathom the loss, as CPT Jack Durish says.

Response by LT Charles Baird made Aug 1 at 2017 10:43 PM

LT Charles Baird — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 22:43:07 -0400

Something you may find interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhEvbWD5U1Q

THE CONSPIRACY AND HIDDEN IDENTITY OF BLACKS IN THE BIBLE {Full Documentary}

Published on Jul 6, 2015 Fair Use Notice: This video in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit ...

Response by TSgt Kenneth Ellis made Aug 1 at 2017 10:48 PM

TSgt Kenneth Ellis — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 22:48:30 -0400

So you are comparing people with Gender Dysphoria to Slaves? That a stretch. There are one tenth if one tenth of one percent. In the military less then that. The military is not a social experiment. And there different standards for men and women.

Response by PO1 William "Chip" Nagel made Aug 1 at 2017 10:53 PM

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 22:53:34 -0400

I'm Not Debating With You SGT Private RallyPoint Member I Know When I'm Out of My League. I'm Just Glad to Call You Shipmate.

Response by PO1 Tony Holland made Aug 2 at 2017 2:31 AM

PO1 Tony Holland — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 02:31:33 -0400

Poorer qualitatively and quantitatively

Response by Maj John Bell made Aug 2 at 2017 7:09 AM

Maj John Bell — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 07:09:14 -0400

There were elements in America that tried to do that. I think it is fortunate they didn't succeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Colonization_Society

American Colonization Society - Wikipedia

The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, commonly known as the American Colonization Society (ACS), was a group established in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey which supported the migration of free African Americans to the continent of Africa. It helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821–22 on the coast of West Africa as a place for free-born American blacks.

Response by SSG Robert Perrotto made Aug 2 at 2017 8:47 AM

SSG Robert Perrotto — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 08:47:12 -0400

really hard to say - but I believe civil rights would have taken much longer to be enacted, we would have missed out on so many cultural, medical, intelectual enlightenments, would have suffered economic hardships. Racists are gonna be racists, they would have found targets regardless, and you just cannot fix stupid. Diversity is a strength, and also a weakness - a strength because learning different values, norms, and cultures make everyone question and critically analyse their own values and norms usually ending in making both stronger through understanding. - a weakness because when you have so many different values, norms - they tend to cause strife through self interests, making it easier to be exploited and divide. Is slavery a horrific part of our history, absolutely - but it is part of every nations history, and is still alive and well through human trafficking here in the west, actual slavery in Africa and the Middle East, and host of other places. I would like to think we, who have served, have avoided the traps and race baiting that both the liberal left and conservative right have been engaging in recently. I would like to think and believe that, through the hardships of the WoT, looking left and seeing an American and on your right an American, and whether that persons skin color was black, white, brown, yellow, red, or any shade in between, was irrelevant. The important thing was you knew they had your 6, and you had theirs. Nothing makes racial and identity politics insignificant like surviving hardships together.

Response by SGT Dave Tracy made Aug 2 at 2017 9:36 AM

SGT Dave Tracy — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 09:36:03 -0400

An interesting alt-history question. I don't know what history would have been like had that occurred, though it is safe to say much would be lost. The speculation is a bit hard for me to get a handle on.

But if going down this road, the first issue is would Lincoln do it after the Emancipation when the President proclaimed them free or prior when the slaves were still considered legal property? By this point, most if not all slaves would be native born in the US as the (foreign) slave trade was outlawed many years prior, and there would be essentially no connection with their ancestral continent for former slaves who would be repatriated. It might be problematic to justify legally and socially (in the North at any rate), particularly after the war.

History honors Crispus Attucks as the Fist Patriot to die for what would become the United States in what became known as the Boston Massacre. He was a free black man (or freely living runaway slave, historians cannot agree). So consider that while their numbers were not great, free black people lived in America well prior to the Civil War along with escaped slaves who lived free in the North. Would the (historically, legally) free black population be sent back as well? If the former would be hard to justify, the latter would be near impossible I would think.

Response by 1SG Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 2 at 2017 10:52 AM

1SG Private RallyPoint Member — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 10:52:59 -0400

Most people don't realize how close this actually came to reality. There were fairly advanced plans to do exactly that in what is now Liberia.
When President Lincoln was assassinated, the main force behind the movement died as well.
Later, economic interests held sway as freed slaves became more or less cheaply paid resident labor working for many times their former masters. It was a long time before reconstruction and later civil rights movements made real progress to change their day to day lives.
To answer the question, it would have been a grievous cultural loss for America. So many talented people would have led very different lives in Africa. We are fortunate that this did not come to fruition.

Response by CAPT Kevin B. made Aug 2 at 2017 11:15 AM

CAPT Kevin B. — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 11:15:54 -0400

Lots of responses with opinions, feelings, hunches. They're good to see. However, I'm a engineer and systems type that dabbled in history. So let's run through the numbers. By the end of the civil war there would have been about 780,000 or about 19% of the population. Moving that many people given the size and number of ships that would be available isn't an option, hence wouldn't work. If I were Darth Lincoln, an option would be to push everyone I didn't want south of the border and make it someone else's problem or future adversary. Setting that aside, if you could wave the magic wand, a drop in 19% of the population which would be primarily agrarian based as the country was would mean a greater draw on the remaining population to just grow food. If you can't do stuff to people on race, then you do it with a caste system. There'd be the Northern Caste and the Southern Caste. Then within both those, you'd have educated and non educated with an inherent incentive to keep it that way. The harder/faster you make the 19% disappear, the more polarized the castes will be from the get go. In short, history would certainly travel a different path. Although we cherish contributions to science, medicine, etc., if that person didn't do it, someone else will, given time. Einstein's E=MC2 equation was simply 5-7 years ahead of someone else. The peanut would still have been figured out and we'd have peanut butter today. "Certain tragedy", as our current social/cultural lens would depict, wouldn't be in play as the morals/norms, etc. would go a different pace and direction. For sure, the US would be something very different. Just watch the Man in the High Castle a bit and you get the idea.

Response by Sgt Martin Querin made Aug 2 at 2017 12:58 PM

Sgt Martin Querin — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 12:58:11 -0400

The US and England were responsible for ending wholesale slavery because of slavery in the US. So while it was a "black-eye" and sad practice, it wasn't invented here, but for all practical purposes it ended here. I for one am glad President Lincoln had the brass to stand up against it and that shipping all of the "slaves" back to Africa never happened, but the question assumes that all people of African descent in American were slaves, which was not the case. So racism wouldn't have ended; unfortunately it exists still and is demonstrated by people of all colors, races, religions and ethnicities...it is not singular to one ethnicity, or another.

No disrespect to the post, rather in humbly addressing it, I pray for the day when the sins of thousands of years, and in our Country 150 years ago, are no longer the major topic and we don't have to have these conversations any more. I hope we don't have to wait until we have intermarried to a point that there is no basis for discriminating...but I guess many people will find some other way to hate and others will use that as a political tool to divide people and thereby control them. Rather than ostracizing the haters and reaching out and bridging the gaps that separate the multitudes on every side that do not hate others based on physical or geographical differences.

Response by SFC Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 2 at 2017 1:26 PM

SFC Private RallyPoint Member — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 13:26:17 -0400

we wouldn't be United anymore, what would just be extremely weird.

Response by SGT James Murphy made Aug 2 at 2017 6:02 PM

SGT James Murphy — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 18:02:53 -0400

Outside of the fact that this is a racist statement, I don't know how else to respond except that you need to read up on some REAL History. Stop reading that Southern Poverty Law Center Crap.

Response by SFC Private RallyPoint Member made Aug 2 at 2017 8:30 PM

SFC Private RallyPoint Member — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:30:09 -0400

Honestly, I don't think the South would have recovered during the reconstruction period if they didn't have a massive pool of cheap labor in the form of "former" slaves who were taken advantage of as sharecroppers.

Response by SGT Private RallyPoint Member made Feb 26 at 2018 11:52 PM

SGT Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 23:52:25 -0500

The worst, "No SOUL Music".