All of the books that African heritage Americans have read or ever been exposed to since year 1619 when first slaves were imported from Africa into the British seaport of Jamestown Virginia, has mattered to us that their history be told.  The terms of endearment by most American historians and writers including Margaret Mitchell with “Gone With the Wind” should matter to readers about beginnings and endings that never happened (alternate histories) in great battles for life, liberty and pursuits of happiness up from slavery.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Thomas Jefferson wrote and published those immortal thirty-five words to be read.  After  receiving a copy shortly after July 4, 1776, General George Washington, in the field since year 1775, called for it to be read aloud to the entire Continental Army. 

I choose to believe at least one of our known ancestors (William Lee) heard the call for liberty and wanted same for himself, his wife, brother and their many descendants like Robert Lee Vann, owner of Pittsburgh Courier newspaper.   

At the time of Declaration of Independence in year 1776 total population in the 13 rebellious states was estimated to be 2.5 million of which 19 percent or less were of African heritage.  Some slaves like William Lee and James Lafayette, were body servants and spies for George Washington and other officers in the colonial rebel forces.  But, from among the enslaved population Washington encouraged/approved enlistment of 5,000 in the Continental Army.   

The story of Henry Hill is about American reparations paid to young men via land warrants for volunteer services that mattered in beginning of United States, not ending of slavery by their ancestors. At time in question, the United States Government and most states had no financial currencies or other abilities to pay the revolutionary war veterans and thus chose to afford reparations via land grants.

 In fact, with the ex-colonial states winning the war against Great Britain, American importation of slaves from Africa mushroomed to the extent that it became a demonstrated public evil by time of the first census in year 1790.  Evidence of said evil was passage of the first pro-slavery law by Congress against run-away slaves seeking liberty in USA and Canada. It is unknown how many of the runaway slaves had served in the Continental armed forces as the chosen few but forcibly returned to status as chattel property slaves when the war ended.

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Ghana American Foundation
The first people to arrive from the region then known as the Gold Coast were brought as slaves via the Atlantic slave trade. Several ethnic groups such as the Akan, the Ganga^[4] or the Ga people were imported as well to the modern United States and the third of these groups appear to have an influence on the language of the Gullah people.^[5][6] Because Ghanaian ports were major routes for European slave traders. Captives from ethnic groups and tribes from all over West Africa were brought there to be held and sent to the New World. Most them were imported to South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, although other places in the United States, such as Spanish Florida and French Louisiana also had many slaves of this origin.

If the South Had Won the Civil War – Wikipedia

I was a teenager in year 1960 when alternate history novelist MacKinley Kantor of Life Magazine published his very popular book of books that shocked me to understand the views that I was to not believe about me, my ancestry and folks like Kantor or anyone else who downplayed the American determined and very bloody Civil War that ended chattel slavery in the United States.   I was angered to wonder if writer ever dared to imagine writing a novel “If the Fascist Alliance had won World War II”?   What would have occurred among Jewish survivors of the well documented European Jewish population?  Would Nazi Germany have changed to become more humanized about “the least of us seeking liberty.” 

With that fallacy in mind, we chose to start with the beginning of the Confederate hoped for ending that never happened at Gettysburg,   According to make-believe novelists like Kantor, the great General Robert E. Lee leading his famed Army of Northern Virginia easily pushed through his opposition at the Battle of Gettysburg.  Such could only have happened if the Union Army with zealous engineers like Andrew Carnegie had planned but not built the railway connecting links and lines that would have been needed to get Union Army reinforcements to Gettysburg by the second day of battle to surprise and defeat Lee.

With his great intelligence gathering cavalry under Brig Gen Jeb Stuart guarding his right flanks, Lee theoretically had pushed onward into Union Army depots gathering shoes, munitions and other supplies desperately needed by the men fighting under his battle flag.  Stuart claimed that he attacked and disrupted Union Army forces on Lee’s flanks.

Pennsylvania National Guard troops, having lost their respected leader Brig General Reynolds on the first night of the Gettysburg Battle.  Without Reynolds and his regiments lost, PA. Guard remnants were no match for Lee reinforced with captured Union Army artillery.

The Governor of Pa. as Commander-in-Chief would have quickly urged his PA. Guardsmen to surrender Harrisburg and Philadelphia. PA Civil War Guardsmen living in Harrisburg and Philadelphia would thus have abandoned their oaths to the United States as the rebel confederates had done at the beginning of  attacks in South Carolina that started the Civil War.  Newspapers would have heralded such as a Union Army rebellion against President Abraham Lincoln.

  President Abraham Lincoln was both surprised and angered that Army staff in Washington speculating about “Bobby Lee Intentions” and General Meade based in Maryland were caught by surprise at Gettysburg.   Meade was planned and ready to defend Washington, D.C. the capitol if Lee came straight up from Richmond to fight like his many battles before.  The worst challenge to President Lincoln in July 1963, more than Bobby Lee was the upcoming Presidential elections for a second-term, doomed when and if he lost at Gettysburg; and Governors of PA and MD would call for Congress to impeach him, and voters to deny him a second-term.

There would be no election year speech by President Lincoln at Gettysburg to rally the nation behind him as its Commander-in-Chief; and he would not have an opportunity to advise his cabinet members of Frederick Douglass advice that he issue an Emancipation Proclamation as a military necessity to win the war.  The great genius of President Lincoln was his wisdom to appoint General Ulysses Grant, Commander of the Union Army of the Tennessee (containing my great grandfather Charles Kyle and his brother Ellis Kyle}z; to split the Confederate States by clearing their control and use of the Mississippi River from New Orleans north. Grant’s victory was climaxed by Battle of Vicksburg costing the lives of many Black and White Union warriors. Lincoln quickly chose Grant to command and unify all union forces to defeat the Confederate government.

Army’s need manpower to not only fight with weapons but also to load, carry, haul, store, and do a thousand and one other tasks to move, shoot and communicate with their commanders.  The Union forces had imaginative “young Turks” in the army like Signal Corps leader Brig Gen Albert J. Meyer, MD and genius of Andrew Carnegie who built telegraph, bridging and railway connections.  Albert J. Myer – Wikipedia.

And, they needed often unknown organizational genius like Andrew Carnegie in or out of uniform to make functional matters like food for troops to receive and eat.  Napoleon said, “armies move on their stomachs.”   And, General Grant told General Phil Sheridan to invade and close the Shenandoah Valley food supply source for Virginia and other Confederate States.  I have the name Robert in honor of my ancestor Robert Kyle who with his two brothers, Charles and Ellis ran away from slavery in Salem, Virginia when Union Army cavalry began their campaigns to chase the confederate troops out of the valley.   But, what if Sheridan had been beaten back and defeated in the Shenandoah Valley; and the victorious Confederate Army moved quickly to reinforce Lee at Gettysburg? 

By time of the Gettysburg Battle, Frederick Douglas the political genius had already convinced AME bishops in cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that men of color needed to be ready for a call to arms in the great war of liberation from slavery.   Many others of the enslaved, indentured and former slaves, men and women, saw the war all around them as they were employed and deployed to help bury the dead, care for the wounded, cook/feed and clothe the needy.  Some like Sister Sojourner Truth were close enough to battle zones to proclaim “I have heard the thunder.”  And, Sister Harriet Tubman saw and heard the thunder incoming and outgoing by Union and Confederate artillery.

With President Lincoln voted out of office, there would be no Emancipation Proclamation Order issued on Jan 1, 1864; and no U.S. Colored Troop Regiments for 200,000 young boys to men inspired by Frederick Douglass for the army and navy to pay, train and use fighting and praying for the liberation of some 4 million male and female free colored, enslaved and runaway souls of Confederacy origin.  

In theory only, The Confederate States under President Jefferson Davis would have offered generous peace terms and conditions to the United States Government.  It should stop and abolish all U.S. Colored Troops and Sailors. It would immediately stop the trade embargo on their shipments of cotton to European markets, remove Union troops from forts along the Mississippi River and enforce the 1850 federal law against runaway slaves seeking liberty in the otherwise Union States runaways to Canada.  It would also immediately halt U.S. Navy boarding American owned ships carrying passengers identified as illegal contraband.

The few regiments of colored troops organized in Massachusetts like the 51^st and 52^nd regiments and other states would not be integrated into the Union Army with federal pay and benefits.   Frederick Douglass would have told his sons and other young men to “keep the faith” because God was with them in their prayers.  Opponents to Frederic Douglass, both Black and White, may likely have countered that peace proposals being reviewed by Congressional Committees were the best chance for peace and prosperity to those colored people already free from slavery.

Free Colored residents in Virginia and the Carolina’s living as indentured servants would have been told to get ready for  great reparations back to Africa, particularly Liberia where they could go and prepare a Christian home-coming place for American field hand slaves that could be freed with ending of the Civil War.  Even worse false hopes of ex-American slaves going back to Africa would have fostered an imagined vision of enterprising Black slave owners using the experiences and technologies to be contractors using slave labor as practiced in Brazil where outright slavery did not end until the 1880s.

Slavery in Liberia – Bing images

It is upsetting to even think about what would have happened in Africa if the Confederate States of America, with a foot-hold in Africa such as impoverished Liberia had fostered a people and place for an alliance with Portugal, Brazil and others with ships, sailors and guns to make and manufacture such for clients/traders like the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey with its godless King and ruthless Amazon warriors.  The CSA would have soon had a foot-hold in Africa similar to the rubber plantations established by Firestone Corporation in real life.  

The Dahomey Amazons (Fon:”Mino” or “Minon” or “Agoji”) were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey which existed from the 1700s until 1904. They are the only documented all female army in world history. They were named Amazons by Western Europeans who dared imagine women to alike in killing and enslaving other human beings.

Dahomey Amazons

Combat and Structure – Amazons

Disbandment and Legacy – Amazons

Recruitment – Amazons

Political Role – Amazons

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest captivated youth men and women of the Confederate States of America and with political wisdom and speed had organized them into viewing him as the logical defender of their southern way of life.  He was universally appraised as the best general in the great war; and best person to defend and protect their beloved Dixie.  He had been a slave owner and trader before the war began and understood how critical slavery was to raising cotton and making profits for White folks.  His Presidency of the Confederacy made them forget about old and tired Robert E. Lee who, like Hindenberg after World War I in Germany, did not really want to become a politician. 

The new Peace Treaty negotiated with the United States Government acknowledged the liberty of Confederate States of America to interact and trade with the Kingdoms of Portugal and Dahomey and other African kingdoms in fostering peaceful  trading in servants and commodities for territories like Brazil. The U.S. Government would discourage the AME Church from sending religious missionaries into places in the America’s and Africa that interfered with trade missions encouraged by the Confederate States of America.  

The United States Government would establish a Treasury Commission to hear and pay reparations in Confederate – Dollar exchangeable currency to Confederate States of America slave owners damaged and harmed by the illegal traffic in runaway slaves from time of the 1850 Act to current closure of the War Between the States in year 1865. Congress would not consider or establish any form of a Freemen’s Bureau to help poor and hurting ex-Black slaves living in vicinity of Washington, DC. and so no Hampton Institute was ever formed to pull up and onward the Frederick Douglass hoped for Booker T. Washington “Up From Slavery Story”.

In the 1880s, the Confederate States of America would almost magically link arm in arm with Brazil would anxiously have joined in schemes of European royalty and others to divide and colonize all of Africa to be owned and ruled by White men with the force of military arms and pretentious Christian caring. 

War reparations – Wikipedia

It is “Silly Sally Nonsense” to imagine reparations for slavery that began in Africa which was not a nation state; and ended in the United States with the Civil War between the Union States and rebel Confederate States seeking to keep slavery whole and holy as property.   Chattel slavery was godless and not a war fought and lost or won by states of being. 

But, our final chapter is that Confederate States of America did not win the American Civil War they initiated and fought against the United States Government to maintain and continue slavery.  The big question then and now was and is whose side does GOD reside in bodies and souls?  Silly Sally? as a Hollywood make-believe King?

https://vimeo.com/566887430