Benjamin Butler, President?

I was reading wikipedia and it mentioned that Lincoln was considering Butler for VP in 1864. What would have happened if he was elected and events followed OTL? He was very liberal on civil rights, and quite frankly anyone is better than Johnson.
 
I was reading wikipedia and it mentioned that Lincoln was considering Butler for VP in 1864.

Then Wikipedia is wrong. According to Bruce Catton, in the summer of 1864, Butler was maneuvering to get the nomination for President - which may be why Lincoln gave him command of the Army of the James (the Bermuda Hundred expedition - later subsumed into Grant's Petersburg campaign).

At that time, a lot of people were expressing disappointment with Lincoln. One group of "radical Republicans" even nominated 1856 candidate John Frémont for President (but he withdrew well before the election). Butler was a notorious intriguer, and Lincoln may well have viewed him as a threat.

Catton also noted that the Republican convention dropped Vice President Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for "War Democrat" Andrew Johnson of Tennessee "without visible guidance from the White House". Neither Lincoln nor his managers had "picked" Hamlin in 1860, anyway. At this time, Presidential candidates did not attend the convention, as a rule, and the idea that the candidate got to pick his running mate was unheard of. As late as 1944, Roosevelt did not simply dictate the choice of Harry Truman - he issued a pseudo-endorsement of incumbent Henry Wallace, and then backed Truman through a covert cabal of party insiders.

What would have happened if he was elected and events followed OTL? He was very liberal on civil rights, and quite frankly anyone is better than Johnson.

Butler's "good" record on civil rights was almost certainly pure opportunism. Until 1861, Butler was a pure "Doughface" - a northern Democrat allied with pro-slavery Democrats. At the 1860 Democrat convention, he voted 57 times for the nomination of Jefferson Davis. (Davis later ordered that if Butler was ever captured, he was to be hanged as a war criminal - how ungrateful!).

In the 1860 election, he worked for Breckenridge, the pro-slavery Democrat candidate.

But when the war started, Butler immediately became a passionate Unionist, raised Union troops, and got himself appointed a major general.

When the Union expedition against New Orleans was in progress, Butler commanded the land forces. (Farragut, of course, commanded the naval forces.) The Confederate commander at one point wrote that the Union forces could not be a real threat, because the "Black Republicans" wouldn't have given Butler the command.

The Confederates soon learned how thoroughly Butler had changed sides, in deeds if not actual sentiment.

They (and the Union) also learned that Butler was a very clever man. New Orleans had been a great trading center. The Union blockade and occupation shut that down - but demand for cotton abroad and imported goods in the South remained huge, and there were enormous profits to be made. These profits were made, but somehow no one could ever prove anything against Butler himself - even though his brother was one of the biggest profiteers.

Still, the idea of Butler for Vice President is not completely absurd. As an eastern ex-Democrat (like Hamlin), he would balance the ticket. (Lincoln was a western ex-Whig.) And he was by 1864 a player among the Radical Republicans, so it would placate them.

Then, if Lincoln was assassinated as OTL, he would become President.

Up to that point, his principles had been whatever would advance his career. Now that he was at the top, what would he do? His chief
interest would be in developing a political base to secure re-election.

ISTM he would have two choices.

One would be to double back, rejoin the Democrats, help them secure control of the South, and contest the North. Other wartime Unionists or pre-war Free-Soilers went back over to the Democrats; for instance Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and Frank Blair of Missouri.

His other choice would be to embrace the Radical program, and try to secure Republican control of the South. Assuming blacks got the vote, there were black majorities in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and near-majorities in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. With some white "Scalawags" and "Carpetbaggers" in support, ex-Confederates disfranchised, and Federal patronage and authority stretched to the maximum in Republican favor - that area could become solidly Republican.

In the Upper South, there was great potential for the Republicans - Tennessee was a battleground state for decades, with elections for governor hotly contested. So Butler could try to build there.

However, bear in mind that (IMO) Butler would have no scruples at all about corruption in the "reconstructed" state governments.

OTL there was enough flagrant corruption to discredit the Republican Reconstruction governments, and allow national acceptance of the establishment by force of white-supremacist "Redeemer" governments. (The corruption was a mere excuse. Some of the most corrupt figures in the Reconstruction governments were welcomed into Redeemer ranks once they embraced white supremacy.)

Most of it happened under Grant, who was personally honest, but whose trust was abused by his friends and Republican colleagues. Combined with scandals in the Federal government - this led to a split in the party in 1872. The reform-minded "Mugwumps" bolted the party and nominated Horace Greeley as "Liberal Republican" candidate. The Democrats adopted the LR label and endorsed Greeley too. Greeley was a hapless candidate, and lost disastrously.

Under Butler - there would be no trust to abuse, there would be willing collaboration. The scandals that split the Republican party would erupt sooner and bigger. There would be a fusion ticket of Democrats and reformist Republicans.

The scandals of Butlerian Reconstruction could be so blatant that the Democrats win in 1868, and end Reconstruction right then.
 
^What sources are you using? IIRC, Butler's been rehabilitated moreso on the board here, and the VP selection of Butler was taken as a possibility by Snake.
 
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