DBWI: Lincoln is the only victim of the Booth plot

The attempted assassination of Abraham Lincoln was one of the most shocking moments in American history. It was lucky that John Frederick Parker was able to intervene mere seconds before John Wilkes Booth had the opportunity to shoot the president. His vice president and secretary of state weren't as lucky; Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt succeeded in their mission of assassinating William H Seward and Andrew Johnson. The deaths of one of the most important members of Lincoln's cabinet and one of the few southern senators who sided with the Union to the end was a tragedy that cast a shadow for the rest of Lincoln's term.

But what if was the other way around? That Seward and Johnson weren't killed, but Abraham Lincoln was? How would Andrew Johnson have handled the presidency, and how might Reconstruction have been changed? What would Seward's career been like if he wasn't gunned down?
 
I would say that Andrew Johnson would be a pretty good President, nothing special but nothing disastrous either. As one of his last acts as military governor of Tennessee, Johnson oversaw the abolition of slavery in the state, and when he met Lincoln for the first time after the inauguration, Johnson warned Lincoln not to be too lenient to the South. For example, I can see Johnson having at least one high profile Confederate *cough cough* Nathan Bedford Forrest *cough* after he rampaged through Tennessee, and Reconstruction may have been a bit harsher and drawn out.

That being said, Johnson wouldn't have been able to secure nomination in 1868, considering he would be a Democrat running for re-election as a Republican. With the Radical Republicans becoming more prominent with the death of Lincoln, I can see Seward in 1868, making a comeback from 1860 and campaigning as 'Lincoln's Third Term,' overlooking Johnson, of course.
 
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Its a bit of a toss-up, I think; a Johnson administration would be anything but steady and uninteresting, but what direction it swings would depend alot on how he managed to handle the Radical wing of the Republicans who dominated Congress. Unlike Licoln, who had the personal prestige of being the president who lead the preservation of the Union, emancipated and enfranchised the slaves (And so could never be accused of not caring enough about the blacks), and was crowned by the hall of the "martyered dead", Johnson would have to fight for control with his party over weather to pursue a soft or hard approach with the South (Since like Licoln he wanted a policy of reconciliation and local economic revival rather than revenge... though he certainly was more biased towards the poor whites than Lincoln's balanced approach).

If he wins the power struggle; say by capitalizing on Licoln's legacy and building a supportive cohaliton that includes Northern labor on the grounds that stablizng the South is key to stopping a migration of competition for jobs and land out of old cotton country, we probably see a 3-10 pledge (Midway between Lincoln's 1-10 and the radical 1-2+2) for Reformation of state governments, arrest of rebels who joined the rebellion willingly and officially (conscripts get off the hook) and the break-up of large estates into public land to either be distributed to locals, or sold by the state to help fund rebuilding efforts and internal improvements.
 
Its a bit of a toss-up, I think; a Johnson administration would be anything but steady and uninteresting, but what direction it swings would depend alot on how he managed to handle the Radical wing of the Republicans who dominated Congress. Unlike Licoln, who had the personal prestige of being the president who lead the preservation of the Union, emancipated and enfranchised the slaves (And so could never be accused of not caring enough about the blacks), and was crowned by the hall of the "martyered dead", Johnson would have to fight for control with his party over weather to pursue a soft or hard approach with the South (Since like Licoln he wanted a policy of reconciliation and local economic revival rather than revenge... though he certainly was more biased towards the poor whites than Lincoln's balanced approach).

If he wins the power struggle; say by capitalizing on Licoln's legacy and building a supportive cohaliton that includes Northern labor on the grounds that stablizng the South is key to stopping a migration of competition for jobs and land out of old cotton country, we probably see a 3-10 pledge (Midway between Lincoln's 1-10 and the radical 1-2+2) for Reformation of state governments, arrest of rebels who joined the rebellion willingly and officially (conscripts get off the hook) and the break-up of large estates into public land to either be distributed to locals, or sold by the state to help fund rebuilding efforts and internal improvements.
Might we see a Marshall Plan for the ex-Confederacy in this TL?
 
It would be very bad news for the South.

Johnson was fiercely hostile to the ex-Rebs, declaring shortly before his death that treason must be made odious and traitors must be impoverished. As POTUS he might well ally with Thaddeus Stevens, confiscate rebel property, and very likely hang Jefferson Davis.
 
It would be very bad news for the South.

Johnson was fiercely hostile to the ex-Rebs, declaring shortly before his death that treason must be made odious and traitors must be impoverished. As POTUS he might well ally with Thaddeus Stevens, confiscate rebel property, and very likely hang Jefferson Davis.

The comparison to Stevens, now that I think about it, could end up being very apt. The representative was deeply impacted by the violent assult on is close compatriot Sumner back in 56' (I've always been of the opinion that he considered it a matter of vindication when he managed to get the "Apology Amendment" tied to South Carolina's re-application for Statehood even against President Sherman's veto), so Johnson sees Licoln get assasinated and falls under too heavy Radical Republican influence you could very well see a high vengence policy. We'd certainly see more convergance between Executive and Congressional policy in that case, so more specific legislation and thus less discression being given to the Freedmen's Bureau, Military governors, and Interior Department agents that lead to the first major bump in the power of the "Administrative State" in American history.

What might the impact of hanging Davis be though? Being the only man sentenced to exile in US history made him quite the curiosity, and we'd never see the international rise of "Johnny Reb's Down in Dixie Shows" without him starting up the whole affair. It added almost as much to the American mythos as the "Wild West" and "Great White North" regional theatrics that would rise in the next couple of decades.
 
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