WI Ford Theatre

Would be the effects of Lincoln not going to Ford Theatre the night he got shot, due to maybe a cold or something. Would Booth still find him? If not, would Lincoln get re-elected in '68? Would he go to war against France in Mexico, or support the rebels there?

Assuming he doesn't die of another assassination or something else (for example, there is speculation he was dying of Marfan Syndrome) he probably wouldn't run again. Washington only served twice, and this was an unwritten rule until Roosevelt.

I wonder if Lincoln would be as (justifiably) well-remembered if he hadn't been assasinated. After all, the TRULY ugly business of reconstruction was just beginning, and in this he would have run afoul of the radical republicans, a very nasty group of people indeed. It might be argued that Johnson's impeachment was more the result of him following Lincoln's policies than anything else... This being the case, perhaps Lincoln might have retired after a contentious second term, remembered as an ultimately failed president who successfully conducted a war, but couldn't prevent the peace from descending into partisan bickering...

Just goes to show that on occasion getting shot can do wonders for your reputation. Lincoln deserves his rep, don't get me wrong, but like Kennedy (who didn't deserve his), it is likely he is treated much more graciously by history as a result of the manner of his demise...

Corporate Lawyer

OTOH Lincoln was a very good politican, probally a order or two better than Johnson. He would also have the {saved the Union} lusture. I think he would have been able to get his policies passed with the nessacary comprimises. Which would have completly changed the post war US.

Cannot agree with you that Lincoln was a terribly good politician. He was a VERY good human being, a brilliant president, and a terrific war leader. His political skills were somewhat limited (take a long look at his manuvering during the runup to the 1862 elections for instance), but he made the most with what he had.

The real problem was that post ACW just wasn't a 'winnable' scenario for any president, no matter what his skills. The Radical Republicans (RR) had more than enough votes to push through just about anything they really wanted, and what they wanted (for many reasons, ranging from real conviction to simple greed and lust for power, all the way to plain vindictiveness) was the utterly demolition of the South as a political, economic, and cultural component of the US. The idea of 'state suicide' (i.e. the seceding states had essentially 'comitted suicide' by leaving the Union, and thus had no legal existence upon their reconquest, the brainchild of Hamblin), is a perfect example of this sort of thinking. No president who wasn't willing to go along with this policy was going to avoid a truly awful beating at the hands of a bunch of unscrupulous and vindictive ideologues.

Of course J.W.Booth was a very famous individual, like an 1860s Brad Pitt or some other. An opportunity to get close to the President of the USA for someone like that would be considerably easier than some unknown. What sets Lincoln's assasination apart from other Presidential assasinations was the fact that it was attempted in conjunction with attempts on the life of other members of Lincoln's cabinate. If a later assasination was carried out, it might not have resulted in the same fear or hostility. If J. Davis was already a prisoner it might have been harder to blame him for the assasination and if no attempts had been made on the lives of Seward and Johnson they may have been less hostile to the south