Let Us Strive (2.0)

OOC: Yes, after five months of sitting back, I'm taking another shot at my timeline. Hope you like it

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"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln

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26th U.S. Colored Volunteer Infantry on Parade - Camp William Penn, PA, 1865

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us strive to make them free,
While God is marching on.”

from the Battle Hymn of the Republic, current version; changed from “let us die to make men free” some time in the early 20th Century [1]

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(the following is from The Lincoln Presidency, by Richard N Goodwin)

The month of April 1865 was a highly eventful one…

On April 14, John Wilkes Booth and his associates in a conspiracy made attempt to kill the President, the Secretary of State, and possibly the Vice President. None of them went as planned: Atzerodt, if he was supposed to, failed to confront Andrew Johnson, while Lewis Powell only managed to further injure Secretary Seward with his knife. As to Booth’s attempt on the President himself…

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(taken from Presidential Trivia by Seymour Morris)

It seems someone followed him into the theater, and as the assailant entered the hall outside the targeted balcony, this man shouted “He’s trying to kill the President” -- leading the Lincolns’ companion, Henry Rathbone, to rise and open the door behind them, leading him to be shot by Booth’s one bullet, which was followed by the would be assassin lunging toward the Commander in Chief with his knife -- all this madness concluded when the man John Wilkes intended to kill grabbed hold of his arm and threw him head first over the balcony. And so did Abraham Lincoln, already the second US President to survive a thwarted assassination attempt, follow Jackson again in attacking his would be assailant…

The man who had called out the warning averting this disaster was never conclusively identified.

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(again, from The Lincoln Presidency, by Goodwin)


General William Tecumseh Sherman

Three days later, William T Sherman meets with Joseph E Johnston at Bennet Place. Over the next three days, they negotiated the surrender of the bulk of the remaining Confederate forces. Johnston insisted that certain political issues , such as the re-establishment of state governments after the war, needed to be resolved; Lincoln, when he was informed, sent his conditions for this surrender via telegraph, in what would become known as the ten-percent solution. On April 20 -- against the express instructions of Jefferson Davis -- Joseph E Johnston surrendered to William T Sherman, effectively ending to US Civil War…

Meanwhile, Vice President Andrew Johnson, feeling his reputation threatened by insinuations that he was involved in the failed “Actor’s Plot” (as it grew to be called), resigned from his office, directly after reading his infamous “Country and Honor” speech...

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OOC: [1] OTL, it became “let us live to make men free” in the early 1920’s

Also, yes this is largely a cut and paste of the first post of my last thread -- as I don't take issue with how my last attempt started, but have reservations over how it developed, the divergences will increase as I go along, hopefully to the point where I chronologically surpass it

This is a pretty darn good introduction; however I fear this will be another meticulous tiny-political-changes timeline.

Is this assumption correct or will the survival of assassination by Abraham Lincoln butterfly into more and more changes?

Oh, I can assure you, I intend for some very large butterflies down the line

(the following are quotations of President Abraham Lincoln)



“It is better for the newly free to seek their relatives in the country than vice-versa…”

(from a letter to…)

“And how, pray, are we to tell between a quarter negro, a half negro, or a negro of some other fraction? Do we ask men at the polls to produce a daguerrotype of their grandmother? If the conducting of these elections are to be comprehensible, they cannot make such distinctions…” [1]

(quoted from the memoirs of John Hay)

“The Democrats speak so often in terror of an opposition that seeks to lead the country into miscegenation, a prospect which would be terrifying to myself, appalled in the greatest -- had it any basis in fact… The plain truth is this: white women have nothing to fear in negro men, as they are as opposed to such an act as they imagine as their fathers… Such a tragedy that their much-vaunted reverence for southern womanhood apparently does not include being faithful to their wives.” [1]

(excerpt from document of unclear purpose)

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(the following is taken from New South Rising: The Quarter Century following the Civil War in the Former Confederacy by David Blight)



By December 1865, when Lincoln gave his fifth State of the Union Address, a consensus Reconstruction Plan seemed to have emerged.

1) Ten Percent Solution -- when 10 percent of the male population from a state had taken an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and pledged to abide by emancipation (of note, only those eligible to vote were counted as having taken the pledge), then that state could be reintegrated into the Union

2) Suffrage for Union Soldiers -- the one other provision for all new states, aside from the oaths, was that no man who had served in the Union armed forces should be denied the franchise. This primarily affected the nearly 200,000 soldiers and sailors though in many instances it was applied to others who could prove service (e.g. the black dispatchers), and in many states, a number of whites could vote for the first time after this as well. As it turned out, when roughly one in ten freedmen was given the franchise...

3) "Difficult States" Provision -- a provision that should certain states prove "difficulty" in meeting these two requirements, the military would provide for elections, where every male resident of the state was eligible to vote, for state constitutional conventions...

4) "Abe's Nudge" -- so called by early relatively recent, so-called revisionist, historians; an unofficial, but, in its initial phases, surprisingly effective policy of the government, where states were given incentives to expand the franchise to blocs of intelligent men, the prime example of this being the gens du couleur in Louisiana... These states would generally pass literacy tests with "grandfather clauses", exempting 1860 voters...

5) Modification to the Homestead Act -- a provision whereby former slave-owning landowners in the south who wished to move west could receive land in the west, in exchange for turning their plantations to the Freedman's Bureau...

6) Settlement of the Indian Territory -- the only expressly punitive aspect of early Reconstruction (aside, arguably, from the Emancipation itself), whereby "Indian nations whose people in large number supported treason against the United States" would have their land taken "in proportion to said treason" and turned over to applying freedmen...

It is interesting the debate history has had -- the pages and pages written -- on whether President Lincoln intended these policies to create the Scramble for Freedom that followed...

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(taken from a speech by Benjamin Tanner [2])

Negro manhood says “I am an American citizen.” Modern Democracy [i.e. the Democratic Party] says “you are not.” Negro manhood says “I demand all my rights, civil and political.” Modern Democracy says “you have no rights, except what I choose to give you.” Negro manhood says “I must build churches for myself and schoolhouses for my children.” Modern Democracy says “if you do, I will burn them down.” Negro manhood says “I will exercise the rights vouchsafed.” Modern Democracy says “if you do I will mob and murder you.”

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(taken from The Rebuilding, a novel by Samuel Clemmons)



Eliza cried out, “You have no right, son! This is my life, and I my love to give…”
Silas didn’t let her finish; “I don’t got the right? I don’t got the right? You don’t got no freedom but what I and my brothers bled for! And that sure as hell don’t mean you got any cliam -- none whatsoever -- to disgrace us, or your kin, just ‘cause dad idn’t with us no more…”
The white man stepped in front of his mother, hands raised, and tried to approach; Silas raised his pistol. “Dammit, ain’t you caused enough? It’s hard enough for me not to kill you as is…”

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(taken from A Man’s War by Barbara Fields)

Of course, none of this should be overstated; Lincoln’s comment regarding Wyoming’s debate over women’s suffrage for instance, while not encouraging, was meant to be, and by all records was understood at the time to be, neutral. (In any event, did nothing to discourage the citizens of Wyoming, who voted to expand the suffrage within the year.) …

…


Fredrick Douglas often clashed with President Lincoln during the Civil War, during Reconstruction, and, towards the end, over the rights of women

...

Historians often speak of inter-racial love and women’s rights as the two key progressive ideas of his day that Lincoln never had a chance to embrace in his remarkable evolution of social views; I would submit that these two holdouts are actually the same idea, and that they were more ingrained in Lincoln then is often realized…

What was thus emerging -- and this is putting it very simplistically -- was a society that combined (the idea of) equality of the races with the dominion of men and male values, as whites were used to claiming for themselves. The result was a kind of de facto segregation with shared masculine values…

It should come as no surprise, given all this, that the United States would soon be returning to its militarist past with renewed enthusiasm…

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(the following is taken from The Story of Three Amendments by Akhil Reed Amar)

Further infuriating the radicals, as part of an outreach to the south, President Lincoln appointed [3] John Marshall Harlan, Attorney General of Kentucky, impeccable Unionist -- and former slave holder -- to the Supreme Court on June 25, 1865; he was confirmed by the Senate in September...



Part of his rationale came, as many such other rationales did, from Lincoln's problems with the radicals -- the House was considering what the President considered a "monstrosity of an amendment". These terms were used, at least in part, to describe the sheer length of the proposal, at one point running at over four hundred words, but also in part what he considered the political madness of what most of them were devoted to, namely, constricting the political power of the southern states... Needless to say, the President considered such a measure extremely counterproductive...

As part of his plan to defeat the especially problematic proposals, the President, through a number of meetings, got the Congress to break off the first section of the amendment into a different proposal, which he in turn would support...

I believe there is evidence though that such political considerations were not the entirety of Lincoln's motivations -- John Bingham, the Representative who had proposed most of the language in the new proposed amendment...

Well before the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, the movement had already begun to pass the Fifteenth…

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(taken from a speech by Robert Smalls at a Voting Rights Rally in 1866)



Let me be absolutely clear -- I am grateful for our President’s leadership, for facing the hostile critics so that those who served this nation might get their due -- but it is not, I am distressed to say, enough. -- For I did not fight so that I alone might be free, but for the freedom of my wife, my family, my children -- I did not bleed for my franchise alone, but so that my brothers might vote as well -- I did not charge into the valley of death for my citizenship alone, but so that all who had faced the whip, lash, and chains that I faced would likewise see their rights recognized.

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(taken from a letter from President Lincoln to Horace Greely)



It seems the passage of such a thing [i.e. Universal Male Suffrage] is inevitable, and became inevitable the moment we first invoked the Difficulty Provision [in South Carolina]; for no state will long suffer something, anything. thrust upon them which said thrusters will not themselves endure. Indeed, I find myself surprised saying this, but such is the power of events…

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(the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution reads [4])

"Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

"Section 2: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

"Section 3: No state shall deny to any such persons within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

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OOC: [1] With thanks to Mikestone

[2] a real OTL quote, via lectures of David Blight

[3]The Judiciary Circuit Act of 1866, TTL, does not shrink the size of the Supreme Court...

[4] in its entirety

I like the sort of scattered style of things from different sources. I think I actually like that better than a coherent block like most TLs.

(taken from The Great War of 1867 by Fenton Bressler)

While the Battle of Tacámbaro (April 11, 1865) proved a much needed win for the Republican forces, essentially destroying the Belgian Foreign Legion, and demoralizing remaining European troops -- despite all this, the War in Mexico was far from over…

The Lincoln Administration moved slowly on Mexico, at first, issuing warning to the French, in May of 65, that…

But it wasn’t until September that the President felt New Orleans was safe enough to allow Phillip Sheridan to move his troops to the Rio Grande; and while his quip that “the French, for the time being, are at least staying away from the river” was strictly speaking true, this slowness to act allowed the French and their allies to regroup…


Benito Juarez

1866 proved to be a difficult year for both sides -- while American supplies were pouring in from the north since the final months of the previous year, the Republican forces still made slow progress… By the spring of 1867, when the war was all but lost for the French, Napoleon III announced that French troops would begin withdrawing in June…


Napoleon III

It was a slow process; and, as a near perfect illustration of the effect an occupying army has on morale, the Mexican Empire was able to make small, but noticeable progress in the ongoing war with the Republicans in this time, more than they had made in over a year…


Emperor Maximillian

And so came a time when there was still a significant contingent of French troops left in the country, and the French Emperor had come to believe the Mexican Empire had a chance of surviving, provided the European troops got out of the way -- and it was at this time that a crisis hit...

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(taken from Rebels in Exile by Fenton Bressler)



When John Surratt, with his mother Mary, arrived in London in September of 1865, there was already a very notable Confederate exile community… Most notably, most of the former CSA Cabinet and a number of other former CSA politicians, despite the official disbanding of the government as of May 10, still met semi-formally on a regular basis...

Though almost to a man they flatly denied claiming any standing as a government in exile, as terrorist organizations like the KKK grew in prominence throughout 1866, many Americans, including a number of prominent Republicans, voiced suspicion of LCS [London Confederate Society] involvement...

Whatever Seward’s intentions, or whatever the willingness of the British to investigate in any serious way, or for that matter whatever the guilt of the LCS members -- the vote to relocate to Paris was taken. (Jefferson Davis was also re-elected Society President, for good measure)...



The United States, for its part, seemed to be moving on -- Congress was busy with Reconstruction and with the midterms, the latter looking to be the first relatively uneventful national election in recent memory (the Republicans lost some seats, but held on to Congress)...

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(taken from Wikipedia)



George Gordon was born in Pulaski, Tennessee. He graduated from the Western Military Institute in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1859, and practiced civil engineering… At the start of the Civil War, Gordon enlisted in the military service of the Confederacy and became drillmaster of the 11th Regiment, Tennessee Infantry, before rising to brigadier general. He was the one of the youngest Confederate brigadier generals at the end of the war. He led Vaughn's Brigade, under Maj. Gen. John C. Brown, at the Battle of Franklin (November 30, 1864), where he was wounded and captured… [1]

…

Christopher Columbus Nash was born July 21, 1838 in Saline Parish, Louisiana; at the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Sabine Rifles and was shipped to Virginia, where he fought in numerous battles, including Bull Run, Antietem, and Gettysburg, before being captured by Union troops in November 1863; he remained a POW for the duration of the war, and on July 13, 1865, he swore loyalty to the United States and was released. [2]

It is said that after the war, he returned home for a time, but faced family difficulties, and he soon found himself spending his nights bar hopping in New Orleans. Whatever the truth, records do show him, in the course of 1866, as a named suspect in a number of early violent attacks linked with the KKK, initially in Louisiana, then in Tennessee, and finally in Virginia… [3]

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OOC: [1] This part is from Wikipedia
[2] This part is not, but it is true OTL
[3] This is neither

(taken from Day of Terror by Anthony Pitch)

The origins of the conspiracy go back only a month earlier, at the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee; the event was historic to begin with as the first national meeting of the KKK…

However, this changed when one of the attendees, Christopher Columbus Nash, made a motion… George Gordon was elected mission leader, and recruitment began…

The historians’ consensus is that the LCS (by then in Paris) did indeed send John Surratt to the meeting, but solely as an observer; his involvement in the conspiracy, it is generally agreed, was done on his own volition and in violation of orders… It is unknown what Surratt was reflecting on as he sat next to CC Nash in that box car traveling to Washington DC…

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(taken from The Lincoln Presidency, by Richard N Goodwin)

The President’s trip was planned with a number of concerns in mind -- getting first hand knowledge of the progress of the transcontinental railroad, the chance to consolidate Republican support in the west, especially California… There were other concerns too, historic in their own right, for example, as aides convinced Lincoln it would help the party for the newspapers to print photographs of him as he traveled the gap in the railroad by coach across the west -- what was to be the office’s first use of the photo-op… Cheyenne was meant to be a mostly uneventful stop…



To this day, it is unclear who first leaked the travel information, but documents show that it was Rep. _____ who passed along the information at the Maxwell Hotel Summit…

The President of the United States boarded the train on September 4, 1867…

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(again, taken from Day of Terror by Anthony Pitch)

The day’s horror began that morning in Washington DC… as the new President Pro Tempore leader Benjamin Wade was murdered on his way to the Capitol building; CC Nash had approached him, raised a pistol to his temple, and without warning executed the senator at close range… a seamstress unfortunate enough to be passing by, shrieked, Nash calmly dropped his gun and walked away; none of the witnesses followed him…


Benjamin Wade (1800-67)

As Speaker Schuyler Coalfax stepped off of the train and onto the National Mall, John Surratt approached him, gun raised -- a major mistake on his part, and a good fortune for the Speaker; Coalfax saw him, and, instinctively it seems, threw himself to the ground; the bullet grazed the back of his jacket, just before a porter threw himself on Surratt and disarmed him…



...

For all that has thereafter written about the lack of telegram to Cheyenne to inform the President, it should be remembered that it is unlikely, in any event, that Lincoln would have read the document in time…

George Gordon and his men had arrived the day before, and were dispersed throughout the crowd…


Streets of Cheyenne

Murran [1] invited the President to an ad hoc podium and make a few brief remarks. As Gordon made his way forward in the crowd, he saw the mayor approaching the end of the stage, in what he believed to be an attempt to intercept him -- panicking, he raised his pistol and fired on the President...

OOC: [1] Luke Murran -- Cheyenne’s new mayor at the time

I'm going to start up again tomorrow -- I look forward to your feedback

(And yes, for those who remember my last version, the posts are similar -- don't worry, I'm on the cusp of a major divergence..)

I love Abe Lincoln surviving.

Here's hoping the assasin missed!

Very interesting. I hope Lincoln's vision of Reconstruction becomes reality TTL, which is a very good thing. I'm very curious about what this "major divergence' is.

(taken from Day of Terror by Anthony Pitch)

The President had been hit -- members of the crowd seized Gordon, mayor Murran jostled the crowd to keep a citizens arrest from turning into a lynching, the first lady was ran to her husband's side screaming -- and two doctors carried the wounded Lincoln to the offices of the Rocky Mountain Star, ready to perform a dangerous surgery...


photo of the printing office hours before the incident

Good start (again )

Oh, dear. He's survived an assassination attempt, will he survive this one?

(taken from Day of Terror by Anthony Pitch)

The surgery went on for hours -- an experience made all the more brutal by the fact that the doctors did not have any anasthetic on hand at the time, meaning that President Lincoln was conscious during the entire procedure...



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(from an account by one of the attending physicians, as reported in the New York Tribune)

He gritted his teeth and vocalized far less than what I would have expected of a man in his condition... During lulls in the operation, when myself and my colleagues were searching for instruments to perform the next stage, he would attempt to bring levity to what was, admittedly, a situation bordering on panic...

John Fredrick Parker said:

(taken from Day of Terror by Anthony Pitch)

The surgery went on for hours -- an experience made all the more brutal by the fact that the doctors did not have any anasthetic on hand at the time, meaning that President Lincoln was conscious during the entire procedure...

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(from an account by one of the attending physicians, as reported in the New York Tribune)

He gritted his teeth and vocalized far less than what I would have expected of a man in his condition... During lulls in the operation, when myself and my colleagues were searching for instruments to perform the next stage, he would attempt to bring levity to what was, admittedly, a situation bordering on panic...

Click to expand...

Sounds like Lincoln.

(taken from The Lincoln Presidency, by Richard N Goodwin)

When the telegraph came, the cabinet had already gathered at the request of Secretary Speed and the worst case scenario was being breached. Witnesses recount how the Attorney General was at great discomfort talking about the procedural questions on the crisis, but that he remained cogent enough to walk through the preliminaries.



He only stopped when the messenger announced the telegram was from Cheyenne. The room fell silent; Seward was handed the paper, and read it aloud:

"The President's condition, we are told, is stable..."

The reactions were immediate -- Speed let out a sigh of relief, and thanked God; McCullough began applauding, with others joining him; Seward smiled and continued reading:

"The injuries are serious, and it may be some time before he is well enough to travel, but the doctors' forecast are auspicious, if cautious."

It would not be until several hours later that the implications of this became clear to any of the Cabinet; with the President unable to leave Cheyenne, in uncertain health, and only able to communicate with the executive agencies at opportune times via telegraph, it would be left to the cabinet and congress to hold the fort -- and in the aftermath of an attack on the Commander in Chief, the very powerful sense in Washington was that a reaction was warranted...

This would lead to a series of events over the next weeks that would come to be known as "The Cheyenne Crisis".

(taken from The Great War of 1867 by Fenton Bressler)

When State Secretary Seward issued Napoleon III an ultimatum to hand over the members of the LCS, he likely did not realize that the French Emperor might consider interests other than normalizing relations with the United States -- even though, at the time Mexican Republicans were still receiving arms from north of the border, the President still assumed that Louis understood that relations could become worse still… Ironically, it was because of Napoleon’s concerns in the Hemisphere that he tried to hedge his thinking was illustrated in a late September cabinet meeting: “If the Americans want to try these rebels so badly, they’ll be willing to let us pursue our interests in Mexico”…



It says something about the way Americans think that the notion that Prussia and her German allies went to war over the Confederate question continues to persist; beyond its easily demonstrable inaccuracy, it is such an absurdity… During all this, Jefferson Davis and his companions nervously awaited their fate from within their cells…


Execution of Maximilian

The fact remains that tensions between France and Germany had been brewing ever since the end of the Austro-Prussian War, and that the keystone issues were and remained the Duchy of Baden and the Kingdom of Württemberg, and their political movements that sought to join the North German Confederation...

One need only look to the war’s origins in June of 1868, in the cities of Straßburg and Kehl… The evidence is overwhelming that Napoleon was seeking an excuse to militarily intervene in Baden to secure the pro-Austrian (and more importantly, Prusso-sceptic) government. It should likewise come as no surprise that Prussia and her allies saw this meddling as a naked attack on their vital interests and declare war...



While overtures made by Baden and Confederation to comply with the American requests to turn over the LCS members may have played some role in massing support for the war, it is difficult to conceive of the absence of this minor cause having any real impact on the outbreak of the war...

Napoleon found himself short of allies… He could not get Spanish help, as Queen Isabella was occupied by yet another liberal rebellion (and would remain so occupied for the duration of the war) [1]…



OOC: [1] OTL this became The Glorious Revolution; TTL, not so much

Very interesting developments in Europe. Methinks this is going to become a much wider European war, given the title. Can we assume that the Seven Weeks' War went essentially as OTL? I wonder how the US will react to the war.