AH Challenge: Dictatorship out of the ACW

"I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship....And now, beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilence, go forward and give us vicotries."

-Letter to General Joseph Hooker, January 26, 1863

A frequent criticism of Lincoln, which inspires this (along with the above), is that he was trying to create a dictatorship.

My challenge is to have the United States (not the CS, mind you) become a dictatorship out of the events of the Civil War, whether with some coup by Hooker or something else.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Pro-McClellan officers in the Army of the Potomac, enraged at Lincoln's order removing him from command in October of 1862, order their troops in Washington to march on the White House and take Lincoln into "protective custody".
 
A perenial favorite for AH writers is Secretary of War Stanton seizing power after Lincoln's assassination. There is another AH that has him arranging the assassination of President Grant and then Colfax and governing the US thru a military tribunal headed by Sherman.

The North, and in particular, the Lincoln Administration did take steps that consolidated too much power in the office of the Presidency and committed a host of questionable acts.
 
It is true. Lincoln never arrested or crushed dissenters and people who disagreed with him simply because they disagreed with him or differed with him, though many pressured him too. And he suspended Habeus Corpus in the way and the only way the Founding Father's intended, which was an internal revolution, which the Civil War was.
 
It is true. Lincoln never arrested or crushed dissenters and people who disagreed with him simply because they disagreed with him or differed with him, though many pressured him too. And he suspended Habeus Corpus in the way and the only way the Founding Father's intended, which was an internal revolution, which the Civil War was.

In my opinion, it's wrong to suspend Habeus Corpus either way, regardless of what the Founding Fathers intended.

Too many people put too much moral import on the Constitution and opinion of the Founding Fathers, when they should just be considering it from a legal perspective. If the Founding Fathers intended suspension of habeus corpus in a certain way (and Lincoln's suspension was pretty unambiguously constitutional, I agree), then it makes it legal, but not right. While I doubt Lincoln would've really crossed the boundary to really unconstitutional despotism, a leader willing to suspend habeus corpus must be watched!
 
Jeff Davis suspended habeus corpus as well. His administration also instituted internal passports, income taxes, and prohibition; confiscated civilian firearms; dictated prices and profits; nationalized industry; and authorized the enslavement or execution of certain POWs without trial.
 

mowque

Banned
Jeff Davis suspended habeus corpus as well. His administration also instituted internal passports, income taxes, and prohibition; confiscated civilian firearms; dictated prices and profits; nationalized industry; and authorized the enslavement or execution of certain POWs without trial.

Not to mention that whole slavery thing...
 
Jeff Davis suspended habeus corpus as well. His administration also instituted internal passports, income taxes, and prohibition; confiscated civilian firearms; dictated prices and profits; nationalized industry; and authorized the enslavement or execution of certain POWs without trial.

Pretty irrelevant. He was defeated, and it specifically says "no CS," anyway.
 
In my opinion, it's wrong to suspend Habeus Corpus either way, regardless of what the Founding Fathers intended.

Too many people put too much moral import on the Constitution and opinion of the Founding Fathers, when they should just be considering it from a legal perspective. If the Founding Fathers intended suspension of habeus corpus in a certain way (and Lincoln's suspension was pretty unambiguously constitutional, I agree), then it makes it legal, but not right. While I doubt Lincoln would've really crossed the boundary to really unconstitutional despotism, a leader willing to suspend habeus corpus must be watched!

The country was literally tearing itself apart and the paranoia of Confederate agents and allies in the Union were justified. Unlike any paranoia of Japanese spies in WW2 or some mass of evil Muslims in the US after 9/11, these were very, very real. Under those circumstances, a temporary suspension (as it would always be temporary if ever enforced) is understandable.

Pretty irrelevant. He was defeated, and it specifically says "no CS," anyway.

I think he was responding to "Evil Lincoln" with another comparison to try to show someone else was worse.
 
In 1864, George McClellan becomes president of the United States. He quickly strikes a compromise peace deal with Jefferson Davis. The Union will be reunited with Slavery intact. This betrayal provokes an assassination attempt by a vengeful black, which kills a trusted advisor to McClellan and injures him personally.

And so begins the "White Terror". Abolitionists are dangerous terrorists who provoked the war; blacks deserve to go back on the chain. Republicans are terrorists who tried to rip the country apart. The deal between Davis and McClellan becomes a means for them to join forces--for Davis, a honorable end to a war that leaves most of what he wants intact. He gives up the right to secede and nullify federal laws, but receives a constitutional amendment allowing slavery to exist in perpetuity in the United States.

Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Grant, Garrison, Tubman, Horace Greeley, Johnson find themselves subject to a mock trial as McClellan's attempt to pin all of the blame of the war on them turns into a full scale treason trial. Confederate veterans recount atrocities, like having homes burnt to the ground and farms razed.

The 1868 election is a coronation for McClellan, the 1872 election begins the system of confirming a successor instead of electing a president. Thus, a dictatorship is born...
 
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