For old readers I hope the next update now at about complete
Hey everyone, remember when I said this and it seemed like I was actually ready to do this?
Yeah, obviously I was correct on that.
I had to rewrite my Capstone paper, basically completely and had to scour through the State Archives and dozens of old Newspaper Archives for weeks instead. That and I read a whole hell of alot of JSTOR that dragged my focus to events in 1862-1866 which of course is useless for a timeline thats still firmly planted in 1860.
Anyway, supposedly, I am intending to go and rewrite what I have, change a few things and have the damn next update coming. This is not dead.
But for now a discussion question for you my abused and neglected readers:
What do you think of changing a mans character?
That is to say for example, if I have someone who supported Slavery or at least lacked the moral courage to ever take a real stand against it, and never wavered in that until his death, without ever showing too much of a sign of changing course, does anyone think I can have the right to redeem this politician?
On one hand I see Lincoln shifting from being a "Free Territories Republican" in 1860-61 to pushing Emancipation in 1862
(The Colonization and "Its the Slaves' Fault stuff, and the "If I can free some but leave others..." letter in 1862 is something I'm not counting as meaningful because if one notes he said all of that between deciding on the Emancipation as a course of action and the Battle of Antietam) and by 1865 supporting Voting rights for educated Blacks and Veterans
(Which between the USCT and the Freedmen's Bureau actually means by 1868 giving them all the right to vote).
On the other hand I have a feeling that these are Human beings, as much as I am writing fiction here I can't separate myself from the field I am training in, as a Historian I feel on a level that I would me massively misconstruing things if I took a man who did one thing and completely rebuild him in a way that he's not IOTL. And in doing so, it would seem fake. It would be like all the Liberal Republicans and "New Departure" Democrats in 1870-1874 who claimed on some level to have changed but really just rebranded themselves. Even with everything that happened they were still holding the same views, there was no real change. If I write change into someone is really all I can do, be to make them have their own internal New Departure?