AHC: Cultural-military-political consequences of Union victory in mid-1864.

The POD as follows is pretty simple: General Reynolds is not killed at Gettysburg, which leads to minimal butterflies in that battle. When Grant begins his 1864 campaigns (because the butterflies of one officer in that ranking not dying is hardly likely to affect the Chickamauga or Chattanooga Campaigns), he picks Reynolds, as opposed to Ben Butler, to head the Army of the James.

Thus Lee is faced with Reynolds moving on Petersburg immediately, as opposed to letting himself be trapped, while Grant is moving through to his own offensive. Lee is faced with two armies moving simultaneously to confront his army, which leaves him with a major dilemma, and given Lee's fetish for attacking when faced with such situations, he tries this against the Army of the Potomac on open ground, due to his RL contempt for Yankees and the AoP in Particular.

The result is an Eastern Theater Nashville and Lee surrenders somewhere around Danville by July unable to replace his army significantly and following the capture of Richmond. The Civil War proper is over by November with the last Confederate armies deciding when Lincoln wins it's best just to give up the ghost.

What would the cultural and political butterflies be in ITTL if Grant does in fact win this kind of victory? If a Lost Cause shows up, would it focus on Lee, who would ITTL really have buggered the Confederacy badly, or would the Western War become the major focus of the "Coulda Woulda Shoulda" types? For that matter, what would be the view of the generals in the ATL? Especially Lee and Grant?

Given that this POD would also end the war before the March to the Sea and the Valley Campaigns, how does that affect the postwar economic recovery?
 
One immediate big effect is going to be on the election of 1864. The election is going to be about how to manage the obviously imminent peace rather than how to win the war. Lincoln is going to seem like much more of a sure deal - he'll probably still get rid of Hamlin, since he didn't like him anyway, but possibly he won't go with Johnson as VP, maybe a different war democrat or a Republican.
 
Assuming Lincoln doesn't die, he's probably still going to be repping something like his 10% Plan. However, things in general might be a little more Radical - one reason Lincoln took such a lenient stance was he was afraid of electoral defeat in 1864, which he'll fear less here. Maybe he'll push for a constitutional amendment, which might also help (somewhat) placate the Radicals who voted for OTL's Wade-Davis Bill. You might see more support for Radicals in general, since with the Republicans and the Union victorious people may worry less about supporting splinter factions. But Lincoln is still going to push for a less punishing Reconstruction than we had in OTL (he thought the states should be rapidly readmitted), and he's still going to run into a lot of conflicts with the Radical congress. So no, he probably wouldn't be quite as revered, especially without Johnson making so many people wish Lincoln was still in charge.

And if the states do get readmitted faster, that has big effects on the next few elections.

EDIT: There's also the question of whether post-war Lincoln would turn once again to colonization efforts of free blacks, but since accounts differ as to whether he still supported that post-1864, it's anybody's guess.
 
Assuming Lincoln doesn't die, he's probably still going to be repping something like his 10% Plan. However, things in general might be a little more Radical - one reason Lincoln took such a lenient stance was he was afraid of electoral defeat in 1864, which he'll fear less here. Maybe he'll push for a constitutional amendment, which might also help (somewhat) placate the Radicals who voted for OTL's Wade-Davis Bill. You might see more support for Radicals in general, since with the Republicans and the Union victorious people may worry less about supporting splinter factions. But Lincoln is still going to push for a less punishing Reconstruction than we had in OTL (he thought the states should be rapidly readmitted), and he's still going to run into a lot of conflicts with the Radical congress. So no, he probably wouldn't be quite as revered, especially without Johnson making so many people wish Lincoln was still in charge.

And if the states do get readmitted faster, that has big effects on the next few elections.

EDIT: There's also the question of whether post-war Lincoln would turn once again to colonization efforts of free blacks, but since accounts differ as to whether he still supported that post-1864, it's anybody's guess.

Yes, it would. OTOH, if the South *does* get curbstomped in 1864 by Grant they may well be less likely to try fighting at least abolition, reasoning that they were in actual fact defeated too badly to want to try that again. In some ways I could see him responsible for a Reconstruction that while harsher than the 10 Percent plan would be rather less so than OTL Radical Reconstruction, which could lead to a much more racially repressive South in one sense but in a different (very) long-term sense less so in others.
 
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