D. B.W. I. President Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was President Seward's main competitor for the 1860 Republican Nomination. He went on to be Seward's Attorney General and Chief Justice from 1864 until his death in 1881. What if he won the nomination and then won the election? He was known for his excellent political skills. Could he have made a deal to avoid the ACW?
 
Abraham Lincoln was President Seward's main competitor for the 1860 Republican Nomination. He went on to be Seward's Attorney General and Chief Justice from 1864 until his death in 1881. What if he won the nomination and then won the election? He was known for his excellent political skills. Could he have made a deal to avoid the ACW?

Had Lincoln got into office the federal government he probably would've never put up that much of a fight in trying to subdue the confederacy. Without a strong president, the confederacy would've far longer than the 8 years it did and would still be around today.
 
Abraham Lincoln was President Seward's main competitor for the 1860 Republican Nomination. He went on to be Seward's Attorney General and Chief Justice from 1864 until his death in 1881. What if he won the nomination and then won the election? He was known for his excellent political skills. Could he have made a deal to avoid the ACW?

Of course not. Lincoln had almost no political experience. Besides, it was Buchanan who really made it inevitable.

However, he'd probably give up fighting the Confederacy and make a peace agreement in 1862. His political inexperience and the fact that the US had crappy generals like McClellan at the beginning of the war would convince him to give up.

Overall, Lincoln was more of a lawyer than a politician. Unlike Seward, he would not get rid of generals like McClellan and replace them with generals like Grant and Sherman. He would suck horribly and he would ruin the war effort before giving up like a coward and wimp. Hell, I don't even see how he was even a frontrunner in 1860. Honestly, he lost the 1858 senatorial elections over Illinois and he was chosen because he had a few good speeches.
 
We might have had a Confederate insurgency had Lee's army not been decimated by Meade and Buell after Gettysburg. With Lee's surrender, the capture of Vicksburg, and the collapse of trans-Mississippi all in the same week it was a miracle that the peace was as easy as it was. Seward's easy "reintegration" allowed for the South to start rebuilding quickly, though ad we all know the true expansion of civil rights would take another century with the Imam of Omaha at the helm.
 
We might have had a Confederate insurgency had Lee's army not been decimated by Meade and Buell after Gettysburg. With Lee's surrender, the capture of Vicksburg, and the collapse of trans-Mississippi all in the same week it was a miracle that the peace was as easy as it was. Seward's easy "reintegration" allowed for the South to start rebuilding quickly, though ad we all know the true expansion of civil rights would take another century with the Imam of Omaha at the helm.

That is true, though considering that the Northern states, while treating African-Americans somewhat better than the south did, were still very bigoted and cold towards them until the 1930's due to their service in the Great War, I don't think we could've gotten rights too much earlier unfortunately. Heck, major cities in the north like Detroit and Pittsburgh still needed to be forced open by the Guard to enforce desegregation like in the more well known Nashville and Omaha scenarios.

Maybe if emancipation happened earlier, rather than a slow phase down that ended in 1876, this might have sped up the process. But considering how close states like Kentucky and Missouri were to swapping sides, and how we wanted to get the South back up and running asap, I can't see that happening.
 
That is true, though considering that the Northern states, while treating African-Americans somewhat better than the south did, were still very bigoted and cold towards them until the 1930's due to their service in the Great War, I don't think we could've gotten rights too much earlier unfortunately. Heck, major cities in the north like Detroit and Pittsburgh still needed to be forced open by the Guard to enforce desegregation like in the more well known Nashville and Omaha scenarios.

Maybe if emancipation happened earlier, rather than a slow phase down that ended in 1876, this might have sped up the process. But considering how close states like Kentucky and Missouri were to swapping sides, and how we wanted to get the South back up and running asap, I can't see that happening.

Erm.....there are a few issues here that I need to address:

For one, Missouri and Kentucky did not really come all that close to switching, as a whole. Now, granted, there were a fair number of C.S. sympathizers in western KY, and in southern and eastern Missouri(especially around Cape Girardeau and Festus, if one remembers the attempted burning of Ste. Genevieve in Feb. 1864), but neither of these states would have seceded outright, not without a POD going back a bit, especially not in Missouri's case; many of the Protestant Prussians in that were sympathetic to the Confederacy, but they were a statistical minority, and nearly everyone else, including the Catholic German Americans, strongly disliked them.

Also, you are also overplaying Northern racism/prejudice a bit as well(yes, yes, I may be a leftie, but bear with me!); I am not saying it did not exist.....sadly, it did, but overall, it was usually far less severe and rather more casual than in most of the South.

Furthermore, I would add that a majority of white residents in not just Pittsburgh, but also Detroit and Omaha as well supported desegregation(though it was never mandatory, or formalized in any northern states outside of Utah, Ohio, or Idaho, and Ohio did not forbid individual counties from not allowing segregation, and Idaho's 1909 law was mainly targeted for Mexicans and Japanese, as African-Americans were about 18% of the population, and only 4% for Mexicans.) by the end of the 1940s; in fact, the large majority of the 5,000 rioters in Omaha in particular were directly affiliated with the White Citizens' Council, a group that became despised by most Americans by the '60s.

Now, granted, this didn't stop crooked real estate brokers and companies from trying to foul with people's land values or bad cops from abusing black and Latino citizens in disproportionate numbers, but the Civil Rights Act of 1952 was a good start.

I should mention, too, that when the Supreme Court upheld the 1952 Kefauver Bill(died in committee in March '53, passed in July '56 in 1956, which allowed for the nationwide recognition of interracial marriage, despite about 63% of Americans solidly disagreeing with interracial marriage as a concept, according to a 1990 research paper done by sociologist Jack Sobell from the University of Northern California, Santa Clara(a original Gallup poll from 1955 put that number at 87%, though that is now widely understood to have been inaccurate.), very few major incidents of unrest were reported outside a few cities in the South, and Ogden, Utah.....which definitely says something.

OOC: Just trying to help keep things realistic, that's all.
 
OOC: Just trying to help keep things realistic, that's all.

OOC: What's several decades worth of butterflies that can readily alter sentiments, feelings, and migration patterns by region based on what would likely be a very different handling of a war that ends on different terms with notably smaller death toll with a different approach to both reintegrating the south and the peculiar institution in a universe whose rules are both novel and vaguely defined by this point due to only a few iron clad and accepted points throughout it, mostly aimed towards this TL's perceptions of Lincoln?
 
Conflighting IIC's???

Had Lincoln got into office the federal government he probably would've never put up that much of a fight in trying to subdue the confederacy. Without a strong president, the confederacy would've far longer than the 8 years it did and would still be around today.

OOC: This conflicts with M79's post.:confused: Pistols at dawn?:rolleyes:

We might have had a Confederate insurgency had Lee's army not been decimated by Meade and Buell after Gettysburg.

OOC: Buell?:confused: And are you saying Lee is destroyed there?

With Lee's surrender, the capture of Vicksburg, and the collapse of trans-Mississippi (1)

1) OOC: How does such a vast territory collapse so quickly?

all in the same week it was a miracle that the peace was as easy as it was. Seward's easy "reintegration" allowed for the South to start rebuilding quickly, though ad we all know the true expansion of civil rights would take another century with the Imam (2) of Omaha at the helm.

2) OOC: "Imam"!?:eek::rolleyes::p
 
OOC: What's several decades worth of butterflies that can readily alter sentiments, feelings, and migration patterns by region based on what would likely be a very different handling of a war that ends on different terms with notably smaller death toll with a different approach to both reintegrating the south and the peculiar institution in a universe whose rules are both novel and vaguely defined by this point due to only a few iron clad and accepted points throughout it, mostly aimed towards this TL's perceptions of Lincoln?

OOC: Maybe to some extent, but there was nothing in my post that actually contradicted that general idea, however(after all, we had the Great War during the '30s ITTL, did we not?), or even much of anything in prior posts.....in fact, all I really did was add some depth and nuance, that's all.

Anyway, moving on now.....

IC: The "Imam"? Issa Mehmet(born John Little)? Sure, he did play somewhat of a role regarding Omaha's debate regarding the (unofficial) segregation in that area, but the Black Muslim community was rather small until the 1960s, and they primarily only grew in the South and some parts of the East Coast.
 
OOC: Maybe to some extent, but there was nothing in my post that actually contradicted that general idea, however(after all, we had the Great War during the '30s ITTL, did we not?), or even much of anything in prior posts.....in fact, all I really did was add some depth and nuance, that's all.

Anyway, moving on now.....

IC: The "Imam"? Issa Mehmet(born John Little)? Sure, he did play somewhat of a role regarding Omaha's debate regarding the (unofficial) segregation in that area, but the Black Muslim community was rather small until the 1960s, and they primarily only grew in the South and some parts of the East Coast.

OOC: I guess I took it the wrong way. Sorry 'bout that :eek:.

IC: The community was small, but it proved to be one the three key components to the Civil Rights movement, though you are right they became far more important in the 1960's, especially when the spectres of education reform (not just for minority dominated schools but throughout the country) and workplace discrimination became a big boogeyman as our industries began to stagnate due to China becoming an economic powerhouse and providing cheaper and more plentiful products.

The other two components, and far more important to the 50s, were the intellectuals that formed the bulk of the original wave of civil rights activists and policy makers, and the Liberty Five, the five big figures in American politics who really pushed for reform during the 40s.
 
Top