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If they would have been declared equal by law without any special treatment I believe today they would be truly equal. Generations of dependency on government has hit the AA's harder than slavery hit them and has been more damaging.
One thing that is important in this discussion, is the importance of sending a message, or two; 1) rebellion against the United States will result in severe consequences; 2) the South cannot go back to the old ways.
That message was never carried out. While I understand the difficulty in prosecuting "a million men in the Confederate Army", it is very interesting that the top echelon of the confederacy were treated lightly. Jeff Davis, the president, gets only two years for treason. Had General Forrest been prosecuted and punished for the slaughter at Fort Pillow, we would not have had a Ku Klux Klan terrorizing people! And what happens to General Lee?....he gets not one, not two, but three "pardons" (Lincoln pardons him but the paperwork is misfiled. Johnson gives him amnesty, and then Gerry Ford, a century later, correct any "errors" and grants Lee citizenship). What's the worst thing that happens to Lee? His house gets taken over and used as a burial.
I'm sure there were Radical Rebublicans that were ready to go, as we would now call it, "Nurenburg style", and prosecute a bunch of the confederate leadership early and hard, before time, money and support ran out. But thanks to an uncooperative President and the failure to remove him, that never happened.
Actually, Andrew Johnson would have agreed with you, at least about Jefferson Davis. Later in life, he said his greates regret was not having been able to hang Davis. He made no objection to the hanging of Henry Wirz.
In this respect, Johnson went even further than Thaddeus Stevens, who was willing to disfranchise rebel leaders and bar them from office, but once said that were Davis ever put on trial for his life, that he (Stevens) would be willing to act as defence counsel without fee. Most people simply didn't want anything like that.
The lack of interest in revenge was not specific to Johnson. As early as 1872, when the Republicans were still firmly in conrol of Congress, it gave two-thirds votes in both houses to rescind the disabilities imposed on ex-Rebs by the 14th Amendment.
Nor is there the slightest reason to suppose that Johnson's removal in 1868 would have made any difference. Wade would have been President only for nine months, and couldn't have persuaded Congress to pass anything significantly more drastic thasn they did anyway.
If they would have been declared equal by law without any special treatment I believe today they would be truly equal.
I've been reading posts in this thread and the topic bothers me. I think what bothers me about it is the ignorance implicit in the thread. The thread seems to suggest that we had slavery and the long period of racial segregation that followed it because of laws that were passed. Far from it, slavery would have existed whether there were laws, legislatures, and courts. If you studied the history of slavery that's exactly what you would see. Laws were kind of "ancillary" to the whole thing. Laws did help give slavery a legitimacy that might not otherwise have had, but that's about it. The thread describes a hypothetical situation which was literally impossible.
Since slavery wasn't dependent on law for its origins, passing laws that made it illegal or that attempted to grant former slaves equal rights in that era and context were doomed to failure. What allowed slavery and the latter unequal treatment of African Americans (post ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment) were simply long held beliefs and customs. Virtually no one in the South and very few in the North could make room for the idea that a black man was ever meant to be the social/cultural/or political equal of a white man. If we want to go further back and look at the sources for slavery and disparate treatment of blacks, we'd literally need to go back to the Bible and the fact that colors like "white" are associated with words like "clean and good" and that colors like black are associated with words like "dirty and evil" by some people.
In other words, there was simply no way that Black Americans could "retain" or obtain equal rights immediately following the Civil War. It took about 100 years, until the 1960's, for people to seriously think in terms of equal rights for African Americans. Anyone who believes something different has little understanding of either history or culture.
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Generations of dependency on government has hit the AA's harder than slavery hit them and has been more damaging.
Now, you're shifting topics. However, this too deserves a response. I'm going to make a bet. I think you are white and you would probably describe yourself as a political conservative. I'm going to suggest that you have no personal basis for comparing slavery and "government dependency". Perhaps, you could tell me though if you think being beaten with a whip, being forced to pick cotton from sunrise to sundown, living in a shack on a plantation, not being able to learn to read or write (because slaves were not allowed too), and being unable to travel anywhere off the plantation sounds preferable to you than let's say being on food stamps for a couple of years. The answer is pretty self-evident unless one is willfully ignorant.
Many African American people are in tough shape, but its for a lot of reasons. "Government dependency" may be a partial explanation. However, anyone who fails to lay a good part of the blame on slavery and the discrimination the group endured after slavery ended is truly blind.
America's Declaration of Independence states that "All men are created equal". I think the best way to view that statement is as a statement of what we aspire too than where we have been or are currently. The election of our current President shows that the "color line" has disappeared for many. Contrary to that statement of principle, most groups have had to wait to obtain their rights in America. Many states denied the right to vote in the beginning of our nation's history to men who were not property owners. African Americans didn't get the right to vote until after they freed following the Civil War. Women didn't get the vote until 1920. The story of America when it comes to equal rights for different groups is a much more complex story than one might think. It is best described by paraphrasing the lines in the Robert Frost poem:
We have promises to keep, promises to keep,
And miles to go before we sleep.
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Then Jim crow just would have came earlier and I guess then civil rights would came earlier than they may have been fine because they are decades ahead of the crack epidemic (I read that set SOME of them back in the 80s?). So they may have faired better. Who's knows ?
What would America be like today (at least in the black community) if all Black Americans retained true equal rights from the end of the Civil War to today?
If we assume that the rate of African American successes during the period between 1865 and 1876 and add to that the achievement levels of attained by African Americans post 1965 (give or take a reversal of fortunes or two) debates and discussions such as we frequently have here would have been a hot topic in 1912 but pretty much kicked to the dust bin of history by now. But then again, I'm really a hopeless idealist.
It's an intersting question to be sure but unrealistic. The vast majority of blacks at the time were uneducated and had no idea of what their rights actually were. The nothern blacks had better oportunities for a decent living but were generally held to be inferior in all aspects by most whites. It's always intersted me that people would look at another race, say african blacks or American indians, who were not classically educated and whos society was generally lacking in modern sciences and conveniences and view them as lesser beings simply because they dont have social economic parity. We all have the same potential at birth and end up differently based more on societal makeup then any racial disparity. But whites viewing blacks as lesser beings would not have changed any faster simply because the law said so. In fact it may have caused more resentment and ill will than there already was and delay it further. All of this would also have meant there was a push by northern whites to make it so. There wasn't. For the most part northern whites didn't care all that much what happened to the blacks they freed. Even a lot of Abolutionsits couldn't be bothered with the subject after actual slavery was outlawed, feeling they had done their part or accomplished their goal. Very little actual effort was made to give the blacks TRUE equality, which would have meant a serious push to educate and then include them in the workforce to create economic parity. Thats not to say there werent orginizations out there that tried this but with no real government backing it was going to take a long time to accomplish. Even during the war the north really only used the issue of slavery to keep the european powers out of supporting the south. There were a few northern leaders who took the effort to abolish slavery to heart but if they trully cared much at all they would have had a plan to help educate and create economic parity for the blacks and not just go "look what we did, we freed you, aren't we great?" and leave it at that. Make no mistake, the government at the time fought the war to preserve the union not to free slaves. The states rights issue escalated things to a point where the southern leaders felt they had the right to secede from the union. The main issue there being the southern slave owners felt they had the right to bring their slaves to a free slave state and not have it taken away from them and the free slave states felt they had the right to free that slave if they crossed their border. Personally i agree with the free slave states. If you take your slave to a free slave state then you should expect to lose them just as your state has the right to allow slaves within its broders and a free slave advocate could not come there and take your slave away from you. It has to work both ways. That argument and the governments attempts to halt the expansion of slavery into the newly forming western states was the central reason that lead to succesion. Lincoln himself was more about maintaining the union then freeing slaves. When he took office his attempt at reconciliation with the seceding states was to allow slavery in the states that already had it. He tried through the Crown amendment to the constitution. His hand was forced into war when the south attacked Fort Sumter. He would not and with good reason accept southern agression on federal property. But i am getting away from my main point. The govenment can say this man is equal and has the same rights but if there is no attempt to equalize that man in society it will not mean much. The rediculous belief that black people are dumb or less capable persisted till the middle of the last century. There has always been an allowence for this based on class. If a group of people tend to be viewed as uneducated or economically unequal it MUST be because they are incapable of anything else right? I don't know how that theory still exists today but it does. So in my opinion nothing would have changed for them simply because they were officially and by law equals.
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