What if reconstruction looked a little bit different

The North (the "Union") was a **** society and government and had little interest in advancing the civil rights of blacks - or at least the Radical method of pitting race against race for political power.

Let's not forget or ignore-

The Union used slave labor during the war. The Union used contraband labor of which many (or most) of the laborers were never paid which created a situation much worse than plantation slavery.
 
The Union used slave labor during the war. The Union used contraband labor of which many (or most) of the laborers were never paid which created a situation much worse than plantation slavery.
Regardless of the similarities, there was one crucial difference: the former slaves working as laborers for the U. S. Army were free and for the first time they had tangible evidence that their lot was going to get better: They had hope!
 
Regardless of the similarities, there was one crucial difference: the former slaves working as laborers for the U. S. Army were free and for the first time they had tangible evidence that their lot was going to get better: They had hope!
Yeah, but antebellum and Civil War North was not the most tolerant of countries just ask the people of Cincinnati, New York City, or Detroit.
 
Regardless of the similarities, there was one crucial difference: the former slaves working as laborers for the U. S. Army were free and for the first time they had tangible evidence that their lot was going to get better: They had hope!
If they survived. One year the US Congress proposed $50,000 (a paltry sum) for medicine for contraband laborers, but it was later taken out.

"The number of colored refugees employed by Captain Morton, and who have died without receiving their pay, is estimated at from six to eight hundred. This would be twenty-five per cent of the entire number employed by him; surely a most extraordinary mortality, the predicate for which we could not ascertain." -from a report on contraband laborers at Nashville, TN
 
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