Booth plot 100% successful: Consequences?

Oldred

PoD: In addition to Pres. Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward & Vice Pres. Johnson are also killed by Booth's co-conspirators.

How harsh is Reconstruction?

Do the Radical Republicans gain a blank check to go 100% harsh on the former CSA? Executions for treason for CSA politicians and general officers, dissolving the rebellious states and giving their territory to states that remained loyal, etc?

AFAIK, the line of presidential succession at the time was only defined down to the 3rd in line. With no clear claimant to the presidency, how is the constitutional crisis resolved?

As part of the punishment for the South, do the Radical Republicans pass something akin to the civil rights act of 1964, but in 1865?

Any other consequences anyone can think of, and also speculation of how TTL will look by 2017?
 
Tjakari

Tjakari

Any other consequences?

Just from my armchair, in the immediate term I feel like Stanton would have served in the same capacity as he did with the assassination of Lincoln. That's what I think would be most interesting, because while reconstruction may be a tad bit harsher, it can only go so far. What would be more intriguing is to see who power falls to organically in the absence of a smooth succession. The crisis is solved by a very fractious congress which leaves next to no one satisfied with the outcome. They'd probably end up calling a special election or something along those lines.
 

EMTSATX

Banned
Edwin Stanton seizes even more power than what he IOTL. He might even keep power until 1868. At that point he might decide to make it official and run for President (even though he would die in his first term.)

But, he would be running a dictatorship in essence. The South would suffer horribly under the radical Republicans.
 

Alex Zetsu

Wait, isn't Schuyler Colfax the new president? I mean, he's a Stanton puppet anyways, but the succession is still clear
 

Maniakes

I think it would be Lafayette Foster. Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the line of succession after the VP was the President Pro Tem of the Senate (Foster), followed by the Speaker of the House (Colfax). Foster would be Acting President pending a special election in December 1865. The winner of the special election would serve a full four-year term starting March 4, 1866. I'm pretty sure PSA 1792 was current law until 1886, when the Cabinet secretaries were added to the line of succession in place of the President Pro Tem and the Speaker and the special election provisions were repealed. The current line of succession (Speaker, Pres Pro Tem, Cabinet) was set in 1947.

In theory, there are a couple solutions if the plotters successfully targeted Foster and Colfax as well as Lincoln and Johnson: the House could elect a new Speaker, the Senate could elect a new President Pro Tem, or Congress could pass a new succession act that would automatically become law after 10 business days (under the provision that the President has 10 days, Sundays excepted, to sign or veto a bill, at the end of which it becomes law automatically without his signature). But all three of these require Congress to be in session, which doesn't appear to be the case when Lincoln was assassinated, and there would be no President to call a special session.

What would probably happen would be someone assuming extraconstitutional emergency powers and calling a special session of Congress in the President's place. Grant had the clout to do it and his position as General in Chief would have made him hard to argue with, but he was on Booth's hit list, so a fully successful plot would have gotten him, too. Stanton's probably the best candidate apart from Grant. After Lincoln and Seward, Stanton probably had the strongest political position within the Republican Party, and as Secretary of War he's got a strong legal argument to take charge at least for the purposes of running what was left of the war, being #2 in the chain of command after the now-vacant Presidency. He'd also have the power to appoint a temporary replacement for Grant (off the top of my head, the most likely candidates are probably Halleck, Sherman, or Meade).
 

Mikestone8

Alex Zetsu said:
Foster and Colfax were spared, we don't need a new succession line
Click to expand...


Congress being in recess, Foster was at home in CT at the time, so most unlikely to be in any danger.

Colfax was no longer Speaker since the last HoR had expired, and he wasn't reappointed until December, when the new Congress met. However, in such a case Foster is likely to convene Congress early, to allow a lawful successor to be chosen in case anything should happen to him.

As to Reconstruction, probably not a lot changes. The horror at Lincoln's murder was such that nothing could have added to it . As the saying goes you can't wet a river. However, there is just a possibility that, if Foster recalls Congress, you get something similar to the 14th Amendment passed a year earlier. If the Southern states, still dazed from their recent defeat and with no Andrew Johnson egging them on to resist, ratify this, then they may be readmitted w/o having to give Freedmen the vote.
 

Maniakes

I was talking about a secondary scenario, if you expanded the Booth plot to actually take out the entire statutory line of succession, not just its OTL targets. Alex Zetsu is correct about the specific scenario Oldred originally asked about: neither Foster nor Colfax were on the target list, so Foster would become Acting President, with Colfax next in line in case Foster meets with some tragic misadventure.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Mikestone8 said:
As to Reconstruction, probably not a lot changes. The horror at Lincoln's murder was such that nothing could have added to it . As the saying goes you can't wet a river. However, there is just a possibility that, if Foster recalls Congress, you get something similar to the 14th Amendment passed a year earlier. If the Southern states, still dazed from their recent defeat and with no Andrew Johnson egging them on to resist, ratify this, then they may be readmitted w/o having to give Freedmen the vote.
Click to expand...

Well... Let me make a counter suggestion. In the ATL, the plot is going to look like more than just Booth, right?
 

Mikestone8

Faeelin said:
Well... Let me make a counter suggestion. In the ATL, the plot is going to look like more than just Booth, right?
Click to expand...

It did anyway. Seward was attacked at the same time as Lincoln, and for some time was expected to also die, while of course his son did die. And it wasn't long before George Atzerodt, who had been assigned to kill Andrew Johnson, was also arrested. So they knew from the outset that it was more than just one man. And initially there was at least a widespread suspicion that Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government were somehow behind it.
 
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