A Radical Republican President

What if, instead of forming a political alliance with the Democrats in 1864, Lincoln decides to placate the radical wing of his party by running with a Radical Republican as his VP? I'd assume he still wins the election with the support gained after Sherman takes Atlanta and the overall support of the Army vote. However, I think there are a few questions that then have to be answered:

1. Who is Lincoln's VP? I'd say Fremont is most likely as he was the electoral candidate of the radical wing IOTL and thus would be Lincoln's number 1 pick to unify his party. Both Sumner and Stevens IMO are too valuable in the Senate/House.

2. Is Lincoln still assassinated, or does a more hardline replacement disincentive Booth and other terrorists? If he is killed, when?

3. How does Reconstruction proceed? How is future American history impacted?
 
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1. Who is Lincoln's VP? I'd say Fremont is most likely as he was the electoral candidate of the radical wing IOTL and thus would be Lincoln's number 1 pick to unify his party. Both Sumner and Stevens IMO are too valuable in the Senate.

Frankly none of those men would be good fits as president, they all had personality defects that made them hard to work with. Fremont might be seen as too much of a wild card for Lincoln's advisers to stomach. Sumner is probably the more reliable pick if they were going to pick an RR.

2. Is Lincoln still assassinated, or does a more hardline replacement disincentive Booth and other terrorists? If he is killed, when?

Booth had in a mind a conspiracy to assassinate not just Lincoln but also Johnson and Seward. I imagine if either Sumner or Fremont is VP he will be even more committed to killing them all.

I think Lincoln's assassination can go either way here. He might still attend a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater since I see no obvious reason why having a different VP would change his leisure plans.

3. How does Reconstruction proceed? How is future American history impacted?

Massive butterflies. Johnson was a racist twat who stymied every attempt to protect freedmen. A RR president would vigorously enforce legislation protecting civil rights for blacks and more. We might see greater land redistribution for black farmers at the expense of former plantation estates. Former rebel leaders would be kept out of reconstructed state governments.
 
The Radical who has most often been mentioned as a possible Lincoln running mate in 1864 is Ben Butler. Former Governor William M. Stone of Iowa in an 1891 interview said that Lincoln had told him in 1864 that it might be best to have some prominent Union Democrat on the ticket. "He then named as vice-presidential possibilities Joseph Holt of Kentucky, and John A. Dix, Daniel S. Dickinson, and Lyman Tremaine of New York in addition to [Ben] Butler and Johnson. The President also mentioned 'some others of lesser note that I am not now able to recall.'" H. Draper Hunt, *Hannibal Hamlin of Maine: Lincoln's First Vice-President* (Syracuse University Press 1969).

Personally, I am skeptical Butler would be chosen because (1) his war record was, to say the least, controversial, (2) while he did have a certain demagogic popularity with the working classes of New England, the election was hardly likely to hinge on New England, and (3) according to Stone, Lincoln said that in addition to rewarding Union Democrats, another of his purposes was to conciliate Southerners--a goal which would certainly not be well served by naming "Beast" Butler...

And yet--Butler did have a certain appeal to the working classes that other Radicals lacked. "Repectables" in the North (and in England and France) may have been horrified by General Order No. 28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._28 but I can see a lot of working people thinking that this is just what those stuck-up southern belles deserved...
 
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Booth had in a mind a conspiracy to assassinate not just Lincoln but also Johnson and Seward. I imagine if either Sumner or Fremont is VP he will be even more committed to killing them all.

Maybe Payne goes after the VP. an Atzerodt after the Sec of State, rather than vice versa.



Massive butterflies. Johnson was a racist twat who stymied every attempt to protect freedmen. A RR president would vigorously enforce legislation protecting civil rights for blacks and more. We might see greater land redistribution for black farmers at the expense of former plantation estates. Former rebel leaders would be kept out of reconstructed state governments.

Former rebel leaders were excluded - see Sec 3 of the 14th Amendment. Yet VA, TN, NC and GA were all "redeemed" even before these restrictions were lifted. There were lots of other men ready to replace the disqualified ones.

The first years of reconstruction may be quite a lot different, but as northern men lose interest in the matter, things will gradually converge back to something like OTL. When one side cares and the other doesn't, the outcome is kind of predictable. Changing presidents makes little difference in the longer term.
 
Frankly none of those men would be good fits as president, they all had personality defects that made them hard to work with. Fremont might be seen as too much of a wild card for Lincoln's advisers to stomach. Sumner is probably the more reliable pick if they were going to pick an RR.

I mean, it wasn't like Johnson was a good fit as President. The reason I thought of Fremont was because he did actually run in 1864 on a minor ticket and thus would have been the one for Lincoln to reconcile if he wanted to not face any opposition on the more radical side of the party. As for Sumner, I'd think he'd be rather valuable in the Senate more than as VP.

The first years of reconstruction may be quite a lot different, but as northern men lose interest in the matter, things will gradually converge back to something like OTL. When one side cares and the other doesn't, the outcome is kind of predictable. Changing presidents makes little difference in the longer term.

Yes, but if Radical Reconstruction lasts long enough to benefit poor whites especially those who supported the Union (IOTL the Freedman's Bureau was also supposed to help them) then the richer whites are going to have a much harder time using racism to divide the electorate even after the Northern troops leave. Thus you could see a long term divide of a different sort--one on class rather than racial lines--grow in the South.

Ultimately, one might wonder if this history would set a broader precedent for socialist or social-democratic parties to emerge in the US.
 
Yes, but if Radical Reconstruction lasts long enough to benefit poor whites especially those who supported the Union (IOTL the Freedman's Bureau was also supposed to help them) then the richer whites are going to have a much harder time using racism to divide the electorate even after the Northern troops leave. Thus you could see a long term divide of a different sort--one on class rather than racial lines--grow in the South.


Benefit them how exactly? Having Republican legislatures instead of Democratic ones won't make them any less impoverished. Economically they'll still be bottom on the pile regardless of which party is in. No State legislature can alter that in any major way.

As for dividing on class lines - forget it. The Populists tried that, but the moment a divided white vote led to Republicans getting in - some of them Black - Populist support collapsed. Race always trumped class when the chips were down.

BTW why should Reconstruction last longer? Whoever this alternative POTUS is, he'll be gone by 1869 when Grant moves in. So he'll leave the stage when Reconstruction has barely started. And the army will still be dwindling back to peacetime size regardless of who is POTUS.
 
The Freedman's Bureau IOTL was designed to implement substantial land reform and break up the collective land and power of the plantation-owning elite. Both freed blacks and poor whites could benefit from these reforms, and a united radical Republican congress and WH could pass further economic reforms. Do I think they'd become fat-of-the-land rich? No. However, only a generation has to pass for people to get used to thinking of their situations in class rather than racial terms. Even before the Civil War this had been common to some extent; it was the reinvention of the South between 1876 and 1896 that really cemented the racial divide IMO. The populists in 1896 couldn't change that, but I'd argue it's a different story for the Republicans in 1876.
 
Booth had in a mind a conspiracy to assassinate not just Lincoln but also Johnson and Seward. I imagine if either Sumner or Fremont is VP he will be even more committed to killing them all.
A minor note: at the time of the Lincoln assassination, no one had any reason to believe that Johnson would be soft on the South (in fact, he had a dislike for the planting aristocracy, so in his early presidency, the radical Republicans thought that he would be more malleable to their will than Lincoln) and the main goal of the Booth plot was to cripple the US government by taking out its leaders, so having a radical Republican in the vice presidency probably wouldn't have a direct impact on his plans.
Whoever this alternative POTUS is, he'll be gone by 1869 when Grant moves in.
Is there any reason to think that the Republicans would still draft Grant ITTL, when they have an incumbent who's been in office for three years?
 
Is there any reason to think that the Republicans would still draft Grant ITTL, when they have an incumbent who's been in office for three years?


There certainly is.

This was an era of one-term Presidents. Between Jackson and McKinley, only two presidents - Lincoln and Grant - succeeded themselves - and Lincoln probably wouldn't have done w/o the War. And of the four19C VPs who succeeded to the Presidency, none was even renominated, much less re-elected. A single term was very much the norm.

And Grant, after all, would be the first authentic national hero in the White House since Andrew Jackson. Why should he be passed over for an accidental President who may well be making himself controversial?

Keen in mind that under a Radical POTUS, the South has had no opportunity to elect high-ranking Rebs to Congress, or to pass Black Codes, or in general to do any of the things which OTL got the North's back up and created sympathy for the Radicals. Rather, his heavy-handed measures will be arousing sympathy for the prostrate South, with people reflecting (rightly or wrongly - that won't matter) that this isn't what Lincoln would be doing, and is hardly calculated to bind up the nation's wounds, or let 'em up easy.

When Grant is inaugurated, in this atmosphere he may well still say "Let us have peace" but perhaps in rather a different sense from OTL.
 
wi Somhow Ben Wade got to be PRes pro tem in 1865 and Johonson was also murdered in April 1865

Do we know anything about how and why Wade got chosen in 1867? Did it automatically go by seniority in those days?

I've occasionally speculated that it might have been partly the work of moderates hoping to head off an impeachment of Johnson - creating a "They'll never kill me to make thee king" situation. But that's only a wild surmise and may be completely wrong.
 
My wet dream is Thaddeus Stevens becoming POTUS ITTL. I know, I know- this
is as ASB as you can get. But I find it nice to
think about!
 
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