DBWI: Lincoln replaces Hamlin?

In 1864 Lincoln apparently considered replacing Hamlin with a War Democrat in order to get more votes, partially out of the fear pre-Sherman's March that the North was sick and tired of the war and wanted out. Among the various considerations were Andrew Johnson (a native of Tennessee and Military Governor there) and Benjamin Butler (New Orleans military governor). Assuming that Lincolns assassination goes off as OTL, what would either of these men handle the post war situation? Obviously Booth and Co. would be hanged, but would either of these men try anything like that on the Southern Generals or the more rabid Fire Eaters?
 
Johnson maybe. He seems to have been very hostile to "traitors" in 1865, though his opposition to Radical Reconstruction drew him closer to them in the 1870s.

Less likely with Butler, though he might have kept the threat of confiscation or other penalties hanging <g> over their heads to secure their co-operation in the immediate aftermath of the war.
 
In 1864 Lincoln apparently considered replacing Hamlin with a War Democrat in order to get more votes, partially out of the fear pre-Sherman's March that the North was sick and tired of the war and wanted out. Among the various considerations were Andrew Johnson (a native of Tennessee and Military Governor there) and Benjamin Butler (New Orleans military governor). Assuming that Lincolns assassination goes off as OTL, what would either of these men handle the post war situation? Obviously Booth and Co. would be hanged, but would either of these men try anything like that on the Southern Generals or the more rabid Fire Eaters?

I think the better question is what does this do regarding the "Klan Wars" of the 1870s. Denounced in their time as "Carpetbaggers" and "Scalawags", the transformation of former slaves into equal citizens of the United States came at a very high price--but if the only way the Union could be held was through the strength of free Coloreds, so be it.

Men like Hamlin and his successor, Salmon Chase, aren't going to move from "brigands who murdered the President and deliberately attacked us" to "people we can make a deal with". And I'm sure that Butler, who had quite the record in the Klan Wars, wouldn't have shied away from that challenge.

But Johnson? The man is a southerner and largely didn't share the Lincoln-Hamlin-Chase mentality of uplifting the former slaves and ensuring a fair deal for them. The guy was an opposition figure by 1866, for goodness sakes. I think if he were president, the Confederates would get a peace that leaves them in control and neoslavery would remain intact for generations.

The Butterflies could be catastrophic from this alone; there obviously wouldn't be President Booker T. Washington elected in 1904; heck, without President Washington, fundamental social services enjoyed by most of the Western World probably wouldn't have been passed for a full generation--instead, racist hick bastards would simply divide and conquer, isolate the blacks and use them as a wedge to prevent basic social needs from being implemented.

Can you imagine how many Triangle Shirtwaist Fires there would be if Washington wasn't able to use the outrage to make fire safety codes a national requirement? How many laborers would be gunned down if the right to organize and build unions wasn't elevated to a cabinet office and defended by heroic republicans?

I think we've done rather well. Thank goodness for no Johnson--he would have been bad and might have been truly awful.
 
What has happened to Grant? Short of premature death he is inevitable in 1868.

Nor do I quite see why having Hamlin or Chase as POTUS should make any long-term difference to Reconstruction. The main reason for its failure was that people up north just lost interest, being more interested in cultivating their own gardens once the war was safely over. You can change Presidents until the cows come home without making much difference to that underlying fact.
 
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I think we've done rather well. Thank goodness for no Johnson--he would have been bad and might have been truly awful.

I wouldn't be so hard on Johnson just because he was in opposition to the radical republicans which history holds up so reverently doesn't automatically make him a terrible person. Anyone who wasn't with them was against them and their tenancies to use extralegal means to secure "equality" meant that anyone who didn't agree with their tactics was branded rebel in the making. They ruled the country like a one party state far longer than was justifiable does it tell you anything that for the longest time the only electoral opposition they received was from factions within their own party? Hamlin and his successors liked to talk of civil rights but that doesn't change the fact that they suppressed southern voting rights and systematically destroyed the democratic party in the process. The gain of former slaves came at the expense of poor whites who had to wait decades for their equality, Johnson wanted to do something about them but Union troops had something else to say about those "rebs" didn't they.

OOC: Someone has to be devils advocate ;)
 
I wouldn't be so hard on Johnson just because he was in opposition to the radical republicans which history holds up so reverently doesn't automatically make him a terrible person. Anyone who wasn't with them was against them and their tenancies to use extralegal means to secure "equality" meant that anyone who didn't agree with their tactics was branded rebel in the making. They ruled the country like a one party state far longer than was justifiable does it tell you anything that for the longest time the only electoral opposition they received was from factions within their own party? Hamlin and his successors liked to talk of civil rights but that doesn't change the fact that they suppressed southern voting rights and systematically destroyed the democratic party in the process. The gain of former slaves came at the expense of poor whites who had to wait decades for their equality, Johnson wanted to do something about them but Union troops had something else to say about those "rebs" didn't they.

OOC: Someone has to be devils advocate ;)

Bear in mind, These are the people who were being oppressed. That's right, complete pants on head racist dickbags openly flirting with racist oppression.

We can debate the merits of the postwar system as undemocratic since the Dixie Party was marginalized and the Republicans ushered in a new, unified order built on a Black South, Industrial East and Expanding West coalition. Besides base appeals to racism and attempting to whitewash people like Nathan Bedford Forest, what did Dixbags actually offer in terms of solutions to national policies?

The Silence is deafening.

It wasn't until the likes of Eugene Debs and Upton Sinclair that a real alternative emerged to the "Great Republican System", and mostly because of the great divison between the growing clout of labor vs the monied business elite.

I think this whole thing is a gimmick to see what happens when some rabid dog maniac like DC Stephenson is running the United States during the Great War. Well, I'm quite glad this didn't happen and am quite happy we never found out.
 
I wouldn't be so hard on Johnson just because he was in opposition to the radical republicans which history holds up so reverently doesn't automatically make him a terrible person. Anyone who wasn't with them was against them and their tenancies to use extralegal means to secure "equality" meant that anyone who didn't agree with their tactics was branded rebel in the making. They ruled the country like a one party state far longer than was justifiable does it tell you anything that for the longest time the only electoral opposition they received was from factions within their own party? Hamlin and his successors liked to talk of civil rights but that doesn't change the fact that they suppressed southern voting rights and systematically destroyed the democratic party in the process.


Don't 'zaggerate.

The Democrats didn't regain the White House until 1876, but that hardly equates to being "destroyed". The last Republican governments in the South were gone within four years of President Chase's death, and wouldn't have survived much longer even had he lived. So unless you imagine that having Johnson or Butler as POTUS would somehow avert the Panic of 1873 which brought the Republicans down, then I really don't see it making much odds.
 

Dirk_Pitt

Banned
I think the better question is what does this do regarding the "Klan Wars" of the 1870s. Denounced in their time as "Carpetbaggers" and "Scalawags", the transformation of former slaves into equal citizens of the United States came at a very high price--but if the only way the Union could be held was through the strength of free Coloreds, so be it.

Men like Hamlin and his successor, Salmon Chase, aren't going to move from "brigands who murdered the President and deliberately attacked us" to "people we can make a deal with". And I'm sure that Butler, who had quite the record in the Klan Wars, wouldn't have shied away from that challenge.

But Johnson? The man is a southerner and largely didn't share the Lincoln-Hamlin-Chase mentality of uplifting the former slaves and ensuring a fair deal for them. The guy was an opposition figure by 1866, for goodness sakes. I think if he were president, the Confederates would get a peace that leaves them in control and neoslavery would remain intact for generations.

The Butterflies could be catastrophic from this alone; there obviously wouldn't be President Booker T. Washington elected in 1904; heck, without President Washington, fundamental social services enjoyed by most of the Western World probably wouldn't have been passed for a full generation--instead, racist hick bastards would simply divide and conquer, isolate the blacks and use them as a wedge to prevent basic social needs from being implemented.

Can you imagine how many Triangle Shirtwaist Fires there would be if Washington wasn't able to use the outrage to make fire safety codes a national requirement? How many laborers would be gunned down if the right to organize and build unions wasn't elevated to a cabinet office and defended by heroic republicans?

I think we've done rather well. Thank goodness for no Johnson--he would have been bad and might have been truly awful.

OoC: Even with radical reconstruction there is not gonna be a black president at least till after OTL WWII. You over estimate most the Radicals. They didn't want to uplift the former slaves just for the sake of morality(though there were some), they did it for all the potential voters.

I ask that the OP retcon this.
 
Don't 'zaggerate.

The Democrats didn't regain the White House until 1876, but that hardly equates to being "destroyed". The last Republican governments in the South were gone within four years of President Chase's death, and wouldn't have survived much longer even had he lived. So unless you imagine that having Johnson or Butler as POTUS would somehow avert the Panic of 1873 which brought the Republicans down, then I really don't see it making much odds.

So long as the Republicans stood a chance at being elected, and the army a stones throw away should things get overwhelming, I consider that a success. They might have been the (literal and figurative) minority party, but they still sent plenty of Black Congressmen up for decades and were able to fight of anti-emancipation efforts with the Federal Marshalls. 1873 gimped the military governments but it wasn't how far the Redeemers and co. wanted it.

OoC: Even with radical reconstruction there is not gonna be a black president at least till after OTL WWII. You over estimate most the Radicals. They didn't want to uplift the former slaves just for the sake of morality(though there were some), they did it for all the potential voters.

I ask that the OP retcon this.

(OOC: I gotta agree, a black President elected in 1904 is highly[/] improbable. I could see the popular and erudite Washington as a Cabinet member like Secretary of State or Education (which was a Department in 1867 for a bit, and might stay around here with butterflies), that'd be revolutionary to a degree, but not President, not yet.)
 
So long as the Republicans stood a chance at being elected, and the army a stones throw away should things get overwhelming, I consider that a success. They might have been the (literal and figurative) minority party, but they still sent plenty of Black Congressmen up for decades and were able to fight of anti-emancipation efforts with the Federal Marshalls. 1873 gimped the military governments but it wasn't how far the Redeemers and co. wanted it.


What army?

By the mid-1870s it was down to about 27,000 men, of whom only about 3,000 could be spared for duty in the South. This drop in numbers went on long after Andrew Johnson had left the White House, so removing him is irrelevant to it.

As for Federal Marshalls, how does changing the name of the POTUS make them any more effective than OTL?

Interesting thought here. If we've had President Hamlin followed by a President Chase, that means Grant has been twice passed over for the Republican nomination. Given that he had little prior connection with that party - he was drawn toward it through his relationship with Lincoln, which is now fading into the past - by 1876 his ties with it will have grown very thin. Can we envisage him accepting the Democratic nomination in that year? If he does, he will probably pick up enough of the old soldiers' votes to swing states like OH. WI and CA into the Democratic column. That's an additional 38 electoral votes, more than enough to make the disputed Southern states irrelevant.

Could we get the remaining troops being withdrawn by Grant instead of Hayes?
 
OoC: Even with radical reconstruction there is not gonna be a black president at least till after OTL WWII. You over estimate most the Radicals. They didn't want to uplift the former slaves just for the sake of morality(though there were some), they did it for all the potential voters.

I ask that the OP retcon this.

Maybe we can work around this by making him President pro tempore of the United States Senate?

 
As in Irving Wallace's The Man.

Don't see it in the 19C or early 20C though. The climate was getting steadily more racist during that era.

(OOC: After Reconstruction failed in OTL it was the nadir of race relations, but here things more or less steadily progressed forward after being knocked back a few steps. Two steps forward, and one step back basically.)
 
(OOC: After Reconstruction failed in OTL it was the nadir of race relations, but here things more or less steadily progressed forward after being knocked back a few steps. Two steps forward, and one step back basically.)


Surely that's putting things the wrong way round.

The country (and the Western world in general) didn't get more racist because of the failure of Reconstruction. Reconstruction failed because racism was powerful and on the increase. It's "failure" [1] was a symptom of the problem, not the cause of anything in particular.


[1] Actually in the long run it didn't really fail. It got some valuable Constitutional Amendments enacted, ready for use as and when the nation was in a mood to take them seriously. Until then, of course, they were doomed to be mostly dead letters, but their day would come.
 
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Surely that's putting things the wrong way round.

The country (and the Western world in general) didn't get more racist because of the failure of Reconstruction. Reconstruction failed because racism was powerful and on the increase. It's "failure" [1] was a symptom of the problem, not the cause of anything in particular.


[1] Actually in the long run it didn't really fail. It got some valuable Constitutional Amendments enacted, ready for use as and when the nation was in a mood to take them seriously. Until then, of course, they were doomed to be mostly dead letters, but their day would come.

(OOC: It failed because of corruption in the military governments, corruption in the Grant Administration, political violence, and the North getting tired of holding down the South. Racism was a motivator in all of these yes, but it wasn't the direct cause of it. A more competent administration could keep some things in place, like the majority black districts voting in Republicans congressmen, prosecution of terrorists like the KKK, federal enforcement of voting rights, and such even if most of the gains were lost. Something rather than nothing.

Plus it would be much harder to continue the same logic of dumb blacks when you have them voting, electing black congressmen, building a solid black middle class and etc etera.)
 
(OOC: It failed because of corruption in the military governments, corruption in the Grant Administration, political violence, and the North getting tired of holding down the South. Racism was a motivator in all of these yes, but it wasn't the direct cause of it. A more competent administration could keep some things in place, like the majority black districts voting in Republicans congressmen, prosecution of terrorists like the KKK, federal enforcement of voting rights, and such even if most of the gains were lost. Something rather than nothing.


What could your "more competent administration" have done, and with what?

Once the Army shrank back to prewar levels, it was far too small to enforce anything much. Most of the US Administrations for the rest of the 19C were Republican, and would no doubt have liked to do what you suggest - had there been any practical way of doing it. They didn't because there wasn't. The sort of effort required to do what you propose would have required far more commitment on the part of northern politicians and voters than there was ever the remotest chance of getting. So they sensibly let the matter drop.

As for corruption, it certainly existed but what was new about it? Southern politics had always been pretty corrupt, and more often than not national politics likewise. This would have remained true no matter who was POTUS.
 
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