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Foreign policy consequences of a successful Reconstruction

The problem with wondering how a more progressive government would handle that, of course is in 1884 Leopold was the progressive choice, the toast of the African American community.

Ah. That could get quite messy if the community are a bigger voting block & include more politicians and the US is more involved in helping Leopold's "anti-slavery" crusade, and then it all comes out.
 
Ah. That could get quite messy if the community are a bigger voting block & include more politicians and the US is more involved in helping Leopold's "anti-slavery" crusade, and then it all comes out.

As @Japhy said African-Americans were some of the first people to report back on the truth of what was happening (George Washington Williams being the most famous one though he wasn't alone) but they'd gone there in the first place because they believed that the Free State was a great place for Africans and they were sounding out the possibility of African Americans moving there.

I agree with him that an USA with a black population that is allowed to vote and be politically involved is going to have more people with larger platforms who are willing to believe them and get angry in 1890 once those reports come back.

Like I said the USA was the first country to recognise Leopold in OTL, it's going to feel personal and we know that Leopold was a target in the way other colonists states weren't because he was weaker and because he had sold himself as something he wasn't. Both of those motives would be exaggerated here.
 
I don't wish to ruin the scenario, but was a successful Reconstruction ever, really, possible? The problem is that the North was not willing to keep troops in the South indefinitely and, once they were withdrawn, the white Southerners would be free to do whatever they wanted to the blacks.
 
I don't wish to ruin the scenario, but was a successful Reconstruction ever, really, possible? The problem is that the North was not willing to keep troops in the South indefinitely and, once they were withdrawn, the white Southerners would be free to do whatever they wanted to the blacks.
With ease. The Old South went to the mattresses in 1876 and the years before because Reconstruction was working and they didn't have much time to try and recover their internal political standing.
 
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Thing is, that was while there were federal troops stationed in the South. Once they left, how were the blacks going to defend themselves?
Because if a biracial political and societal system entrenches itself they wouldn't have been alone and would have had the structures of new state governments on their side. But surely this is derailing the discussion.
 
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