Booth's plan works flawlessly

Dorozhand

Banned
What if, for whatever reason, Atzerodt and Powell had managed to kill Johnson and Seward, as was planned, after Booth killed Lincoln? Who would be POTUS next, and what raminifications would this have?
 
Lafayette S. Foster would become President. The bridge between the North and South is burned to its limit. I don't know much about Foster, other then he was a Whig and a New England (Connecticut) Republican.
 
First off, Seward dying wouldn't alter the line of succession (Secretaries of State weren't so far up in line at this time); live or die, if Johnson dies too then the next President is the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Lafayette S. Foster.
 

katchen

Banned
Are you sure of that?
I was under the impression that the Speaker of the House was first in line after the Vice President at that time as he is today. In that case, it would be Schuyler Colfax, who was an extreme opponent of slavery and opposed Kansas's Lecompton Constitution according to Wikipedia. In an interesting butterfly, Lincoln wanted Colfax to accompany him to Ford's Theatre the night he was assassinated, but Colfax begged off at the last minute. If Colfax had been there, Booth might have shot him too.

Of course if Booth's conspiracy works flawlessly, all the conspirators get clean away, too.So that also has to be factored in.
 
The Presidential Succession Act of 1792 held the line of succession was VP-Pres. Pro Tem-Speaker of the House. If Johnson died, then-President Pro Tempore of the Senate Lafayette S. Foster would become President (Remember that the Pres. Pro Tem's were chosen for 2 year terms in the Senate based on whatever criteria the Senate chose, the informal rule that the Most Senior member of the Party was elected was not yet in place. Lafayette was PPT for 1865-1867, Ben Wade was 1867-1869).
 
Well it sucks for the Southern Aristacracy that is for sure. The Radical Republicans run things down south for a while.
 
Well it sucks for the Southern Aristacracy that is for sure. The Radical Republicans run things down south for a while.

OH BOY!!! One of the only good things Andrew Johnson did as President, was to cool the split between the North and South post-war. After this, hell no. The RR are going to be bloodthirsty, and in power.

Something else I forgot to mention. The Succession act of 1792 also made it so if a President comes in after the VP, an election has to be...sometime. I didn't really understand it myself the way Wikipedia explained it.
 
If Booth's plan worked flawlessly, he would have needed confederates far more capable than Paine, Herod, and Atzerodt. Might as well try to figure out how to get Ulysses S. Grant to surrender at Appomattox CH while you're at it.

Something else I forgot to mention. The Succession act of 1792 also made it so if a President comes in after the VP, an election has to be...sometime. I didn't really understand it myself the way Wikipedia explained it.

The assassinations happen in April, Section 9 gets invoked, the election happens in December. Sounds pretty straightforward, though I'd imagine the government of 1865 might not think so.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
That'd be awesome. The government could confiscate all the property of the southern "owners" and disribute it among the freed slaves. You'd have a lot of very angry southrons, but any and all killings of African-Americans would be met with ruthless retribution. It makes me all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it :)
 

katchen

Banned
OK, the succession is reversed in 1865. It WAS the President Pro Temp who was next in line. What is interesting is that the Secretary of State was somehow expected to arrange for another Presidential election? Or so Booth thought, apparently. And he expected electoral chaos with both William Seward and VP Andrew Johnson dead. But I suspect that Booth would have been disappointed, and the Union would have continued with far less chaos than the resulting impeachment of Andrew Johnson ITTL.

(BTW, we'll never know of course, but Booth may have been hoping to kill someone else sitting alongside Lincoln at Ford's Theatre that night. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was amongst the people Lincoln invited to Ford's Theatre, but he declined. So did Ulysses S. Grant. Plenty of butterflies if Grant had accepted and been killed with Lincoln).

I suspect that Lafayette S Foster would have gotten along far better with the Radicals in Congress over Reconstruction. He would have left no reason for the House to impeach HIM. In fact under Foster, we might have seen the Southern States broken up, recombined and reduced in electoral strength, particularly the anti-Union parts of the South and slave owners treated far more severely.

Since Foster served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Civil War, he likely knew the Russian Ambassador Count Steckl. Thus, when Steckl approached him and whoever he appointed as Secretary of State with an offer to sell Alaska to the United States, Foster would likely approve of it and because of his Senatorial seniority and connections, would probably be able to shepherd it through ratification with much less trouble than Seward did. He might have been able to avoid the hard feelings and buyers remorse about Alaska that resulted in Congress refusing for the next 20 years to appropriate any money to administer Alaska Territory and might even have been able to work out a settlement of border issues with Canada and British Columbia that could have led to a land grant for a railroad to Alaska when the Southern Pacific and Northern Pacific railroad land grant bill came before Congress.

Foster might well have been elected to a term in his own right, serving until 1872.
 
Reconstruction becomes brutal like no other. The North has no sympathy and the House of Dixie is steamrolled. Someone above talked about slave owners having their land confiscated and being given to newly freedmen and that to me sounds like one of the nicer things the North would do.
 
There's an article about Foster at

http://www.lincoln-assassination.com/bboard/index.php?topic=1550.0;wap2

Sorry to disappoint the more bloodthirsty contributors to this thread, but he seems to have been very far from Radical.

However, it would matter far less than in Johnson's case, since under the Act of 1792 he would serve only until March 1866 [1], and then hand over to a new President (presumably US Grant) and VP elected in November 1865.

Also, in order to secure the succession, Foster might well feel obliged to summon Congress, so that the House could choose a Speaker to be next in line after him. If so, he wouldn't have as much freedom of action as Johnson did in the first eight months of his Administration.


[1] Unless Congress amended the Act to move up the inauguration to Jan 20 or other date, anticipating the 20th Amendment by 70 years or so. However, this would have applied only to the POTUS and VP, while Senators and Congressmen would have continued to serve until March.
 

katchen

Banned
Foster could run for President that November. There would be nothing stopping him from seeking his party's nomination. By the way, is that Act still in force? If anything happened to President Obama and Vice President Biden, would we get a special election within a year? Or would we be stuck with President Boehner until the next scheduled General Election?
 
Foster could run for President that November. There would be nothing stopping him from seeking his party's nomination. By the way, is that Act still in force? If anything happened to President Obama and Vice President Biden, would we get a special election within a year? Or would we be stuck with President Boehner until the next scheduled General Election?


He could, but at this time he was still a Republican, and that party is virtually certain to choose Grant. I suppose it is remotely possible that the Democrats might nominate him (he would eventually join that party, but not until 1874) but even if they did neither he nor any other Dem would have the slightest chance of defeating Grant.

The Act of 1792 was repealed in 1886. The subsequent Presidential Succession Acts of 1886 and 1947 make no provision for a special election. It would indeed be Boehner until Jan 2017.
 
In that atmosphere Foster might feel a bit more radical, it is very likely that the Congress elected in 1864 would be called into session
 
In that atmosphere Foster might feel a bit more radical, it is very likely that the Congress elected in 1864 would be called into session

Well, he's been in the Senate for over a decade, and been sufficiently "mainstream" to be acceptable as President Pro-tem, so he'll probably be more realistic than Johnson about what Congress will or won't swallow.

At a guess, he may tell the Union generals down south to enrol as voters all men over 21 (of whatever colour) who can read and write a portion of the US Constitution. His legal right to do this is less than clear, but if he does it first and argues afterwards, he'll almost certainly get away with it. That will probably satisfy enough Republicans to get the Southern Congressmen admitted. If the Civil Rights and Freedmens' Bureau Bills reach his desk before he leaves office, he's more likely to sign them than Johnson was. Anyway there'd be no point in refusing, as they'd only be repassed a few weeks later and signed by President Grant.

He doesn't sound the type to be any keener on executions than Lincoln would have been, so no one dies except the actual assassins, with Doctor Mudd and Mary Surratt standing a chance of pardon. But he'll probably let Henry Wirz hang as well.
 
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