Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
Meanwhile, the United States was experiencing a period of rapid westward expansion. Some states, like Oregon, passed racist laws forbidding black people from moving there. The Oregon black exclusion law would not be repealed until 1926. Concurrently, the Homestead Acts were giving away land (land that was stolen from Native Americans, but that's an entirely different topic) for free to white European settlers. If you were a white peasant farmer from Ukraine, the US government gave you 160 acres of farmland. If you were a black peasant farmer from Mississippi, you got to go back to work for the landowner who abused and exploited you for years.
|
Thomas Jefferson actually proposed reparations and colonization of unpopulated areas of the U.S. using freed slaves trained as farmers as early as 1,800. He owned more than 600 slaves in his life time and believed in racial superiority, but he also acknowledged that the institution was not sustainable and that uprisings were inevitable (especially after Haitian independence). He also thought that a sudden and immediate emancipation would cause issues and proposed a gradual transition.