DBWI: What if Lincoln was successfully assassinated?

[Deleted member 175282]

Hello! As many of us know, in 1865 John Wilkes Booth, a former confederate, entered Ford Theater and successfully assassinated Vice President Andrew Johnson, which led to Lincoln taking a more radical and punitive approach to Reconstruction, passing Congress’s reconstruction plans, leading to creation of new black-majority and pro-GOP white majority states, leading to creation of the states we know and love today, along with the guarantee and protection of the rights of Freedmen and African-Americans in general, leading to them becoming highly successful both economically, politically, and socially. This also lead to the decline and eventual death of the Democrats and rise of the Populists.

However, John Wilkes Booth had an array of other targets, including President Abraham Lincoln, which he barely missed due to poor timing. What would happen if Wilkes successfully shot Lincoln? How would Reconstruction turn out? What would be the future for African-Americans and their rights? How would American politics develop?

(Clarifications: first Black President was Robert Smalls, elected in 1900, served two terms, several Black Presidents elected in the future. African-Americans generally have equal rights and standing in society in this timeline, they’re a lot more wealthier and successful socially and economically.)

 

[DanMcCollum]

It wasnt just bad timing. Booth shot Johnson first - a bad miscalculation on his part - before turning to shoot Lincoln. This gave Henry Rathbone, who was present, a chance to rise up and swing at Booth's arm, deflecting the shot. He then tackled Booth and held him down while help was called, and Lincoln went to care for Johnson. There were calls to hang Booth immediately, but Lincoln calmed the crowd and prevented a lynching on the spot.

Sorry - Rathbone often gets overlooked these days, but he was a hero that day and he rode that reputation into a political and business career [OOC: Sorry, the story of Rathbone is so sad in OTL I needed to give him and his family a happier ending here!]

Now, so if Lincoln is shot and killed as well as Johnson, then the Presidency passes to ... who, exactly? Would it have been Seward (assuming HE survived the assassination attempt which left he and his son badly stabbed in OTL)?

 

[Mikestone8]

Now, so if Lincoln is shot and killed as well as Johnson, then the Presidency passes to ... who, exactly? Would it have been Seward (assuming HE survived the assassination attempt which left he and his son badly stabbed in OTL)?

Small point. Johnson wasn't in Ford' Theatre so there's no way Booth could have shot him.

In any case, he was bitterly hostile to "traitors", sating they should be "impoverished", so things might have been even harsher under him than under Lincoln. He probably ends up allied with Thaddeus Stevens and imposing land reform on the South - though of course the Supreme Court would most likely have overturned this once the hubbub had died down

Had Lincoln and Johnson both died, the Successor was Lafayette S Foster, President Pro-tem of the Senate. However, he would only have served for a year, as the act of 1792 provided for a new election in Nov 1865, when presumably General Grant would have been elected.

 

[Shiva]

Small point. Johnson wasn't in Ford' Theatre so there's no way Booth could have shot him.

In any case, he was bitterly hostile to "traitors", sating they should be "impoverished", so things might have been even harsher under him than under Lincoln. He probably ends up allied with Thaddeus Stevens and imposing land reform on the South - though of course the Supreme Court would most likely have overturned this once the hubbub had died down

Had Lincoln and Johnson both died, the Successor was Lafayette S Foster, President Pro-tem of the Senate. However, he would only have served for a year, as the act of 1792 provided for a new election in Nov 1865, when presumably General Grant would have been elected.

A point on this, Johnson himself was from the South and while he wanted to enact draconian punishments on the members of the Confederate Government and the leadership of the Confederate Army, it was never clear how much he wanted to extend that to the various wealthy former slave owners and the actual people that lived in the South.

Also he was very racist and I just don't see him going along with the Radical Republicans even if they mutually agreed on punishing the leaders of the CSA, everything else they would have clashed far too badly for a working relationship.

 

[DanMcCollum]

Small point. Johnson wasn't in Ford' Theatre so there's no way Booth could have shot him.

In any case, he was bitterly hostile to "traitors", sating they should be "impoverished", so things might have been even harsher under him than under Lincoln. He probably ends up allied with Thaddeus Stevens and imposing land reform on the South - though of course the Supreme Court would most likely have overturned this once the hubbub had died down

Had Lincoln and Johnson both died, the Successor was Lafayette S Foster, President Pro-tem of the Senate. However, he would only have served for a year, as the act of 1792 provided for a new election in Nov 1865, when presumably General Grant would have been elected.

[OOC: According to the OP, Johnson was shot and killed in Ford Theatre while Lincoln narrowly escaped. So I figured that in this ATL, Lincoln invited Johnson to the theater that night and was present]

 

[Mikestone8]

A point on this, Johnson himself was from the South and while he wanted to enact draconian punishments on the members of the Confederate Government and the leadership of the Confederate Army, it was never clear how much he wanted to extend that to the various wealthy former slave owners and the actual people that lived in the South.

Also he was very racist and I just don't see him going along with the Radical Republicans even if they mutually agreed on punishing the leaders of the CSA, everything else they would have clashed far too badly for a working relationship.

That is OTL hindsight.

At the time, some Radicals *did* see Johnson's accession as a good thing. George W Julian famously told him "We have faith in you. Now there will be no trouble running this government." And Ben Wade took a similar view, saying that Lincoln had had "too much milk of human kindness in him."

Little did they know. And had Johnson remained buried in the Vice-Presidency, they might never have known.

 

[Shiva]

That is OTL hindsight.

At the time, some Radicals *did* see Johnson's accession as a good thing. George W Julian famously told him "We have faith in you. Now there will be no trouble running this government." And Ben Wade took a similar view, saying that Lincoln had had "too much milk of human kindness in him."

Little did they know. And had Johnson remained buried in the Vice-Presidency, they might never have known.

I think you'd still be able to reach at some of this conclusion even in the DBWI, but some of it does require RL knowledge, I'll grant you that.

EDIT: I just THINK that with the limited knowledge of Andrew Johnson that this TL would have, you could still conclude that outside of wanting to 'punish' the leaders of the CSA, Johnson and the Radical Republicans would wind up clashing over personality differences, if nothing else.

 

[marktaha]

See short story If Booth had Missed Lincoln

 

[Tosa Inu]

Sorry - Rathbone often gets overlooked these days, but he was a hero that day and he rode that reputation into a political and business career

We knew that Henry Rathbone the elder was a good man who saved President Lincoln, and becoming one of the richest Tycoon during the gilded age afterwards, but his actions were often overlooked because of his grandson, President Henry Rathbone (II), unfortunately becoming US President just before the start of the Great Depression, and thus, being blamed for the majority of the nation's woes.

 

[Alternator]

Chatter aside, the South BURNS. Lincoln's immediate calls for calm worked in large part because he had the gravitas and respect to force everyone to listen; kill him off, and there's nobody to calm the mob from lynching Booth, nor the political mob from seeking revenge. Yes, Lincoln was willing to go along with the Radicals, but he remained a moderating influence, with his motives being more to uplift the victims than punish the average southern white (he reserved that treatment for the old planter aristocracy). Increase the anger and remove the peacemaker and you get a violent suppression, quite possibly an ongoing insurrection from ex-Confederates and sympathizers.

Texas and the border states would have been pacified, and Florida didn't have the population to sustain that level of hate in the face of migration, but the rest? Hoo boy.

 

[Mikestone8]

he reserved that treatment for the old planter aristocracy

And even sparing many of *them*, especially those who had been his Whig colleagues before the war, had supported John Bell, the antisec-ession candidate, in 1860 and were readily re-accepting the Union.

BTW why would Lincoln be going after the planters? Booth was not a planter, nor afaik were any of his fellow conspirators.

 

[Mikestone8]

EDIT: I just THINK that with the limited knowledge of Andrew Johnson that this TL would have, you could still conclude that outside of wanting to 'punish' the leaders of the CSA, Johnson and the Radical Republicans would wind up clashing over personality differences, if nothing else.

Would anyone even bother to research the views of an obscure Vice-President?

 

[Shiva]

Would anyone even bother to research the views of an obscure Vice-President?

If you are doing a TL about him, then yes you would.

 

[Don Corleone]

Johnson wanted to hang Jeff Davis. Problem was that in order to convict him of treason you would have to prove secession was illegal, and there was no constitutional provision or federal statute explicitly forbidding it in 1861. The court precedent came after the fact.

Davis died of natural causes at Fort Monroe, although most historians believe this was an "unfortunate accident" to get around the legal issues. With Booth taking out Lincoln, the entire Confederate leadership meets a similar fate. With no assassinations, Davis is eventually exiled and is universally reviled - by Confederates for losing the war and by everyone else for being the CSA president.

 

[Alternator]

BTW why would Lincoln be going after the planters? Booth was not a planter, nor afaik were any of his fellow conspirators.

Lincoln went after the big planters for pure pragmatism: the Radicals needed a target and they were the ones who really pushed the idea of secession. It let him redirect the punitive measures away from the small farmers and urban laborers - the civil rights extended to freedmen were unpopular enough in the South, he didn't want to push so hard as to incite an ongoing terrorist campaign.

Throwing the most guilty group to the wolves and extending an olive branch to the rest broke the power of the big planters, which allowed the alliance of freedmen, carpetbaggers, and sympathetic locals (which really meant those willing to tolerate the freedmen in exchange for economic advancement) to dominate the South for decades.

 

[Mikestone8]

Throwing the most guilty group to the wolves and extending an olive branch to the rest broke the power of the big planters,

The big planters were *not* the most guilty group. Prewar they had tended to vote Whig and later CU, and were at best reluctant secessionists. They had of course gone along with their states in 1861, but postwar they were the natural leaders of a Union party. AIUI It was the smaller farmers - wannabe planters rather than actual ones - - who voted for Breckenridge and were the most pro-secession. Why should Lincoln want to "break the power" of potential allies?

It was Johnson, not Lincoln, who required owners of over $20,000 worth of property to apply for individual pardons rather than including them in sn amnesty. Lincoln's Amnesty proclamations never made any distinction between planters and others.

 

[Tosa Inu]

The big planters were *not* the most guilty group. Prewar they had tended to vote Whig and later CU, and were at best reluctant secessionists

Still, many PROVEN accusations of brutality against slaves, cruel practices of Separating Slave families and selling young children to other planters, regular rape of Slave Women, basically made the Planter Class more or less the most acceptable target to put the blame on.

And even on that, Lincoln worked hard and exonerated most small planters who didn't commit "crimes against humanity", that are not systematically torture their slaves, and more or less treating their slaves as extended family members (which is surprisingly quite common in small farms and households, in contrast with richest planter class who owns tens or hundreds of slaves).

Today, people often think Lincoln was too hard with basically breaking properties of some guilty big planters and redistribute them to their ex slaves, but that was restorative justice at their finest.

 

[Mikestone8]

And even on that, Lincoln worked hard and exonerated most small planters

Why? Many of them were just as mean as big ones

And many of the *bad* ones were probably ex-Whigs whom Lincoln would be looking to as the basis of a loyal Union party. How they might have treated their Blacks in the days of slavery would be biographically interesting but politically irrelevant.

And Lincoln knew perfectly well that permanent confiscation was unconstitutional, which was why he always set his face against bills providing for it. Note that in the EP he advised freedmen to "labor faithfully for reasonable wages". He did not expect most of them to be getting land of their own, and had no intention of challenging the Constitution by confiscating it for them. The whole idea is an ASB fantasy.

 

[Tosa Inu]

Why? Many of them were just as mean as big ones

Well, when you have cases of really nasty big planters hiring overseers to regularly torture disobedient slaves and systematically raping the black women under their powers, a small-farmowner who owns just a family of Blacks, with the White Patriarch treating them practically no different than his children (whip them when they being problematic, but he also whip his own naughty children the same way), is deemed as non-issue. Punishing the worst slaveowners to satisfy the radicals while pushing more reconciliatory attitude towards the rest is actually a wise plan in the long run.

Note that in the EP he advised freedmen to "labor faithfully for reasonable wages". He did not expect most of them to be getting land of their own, and had no intention of challenging the Constitution by confiscating it for them.

There's a reason for why significant portion of Freed Blacks actually choose to remain working in their ex-owners farm for a fair wage rather than emigrating into the Black-Majority states.

Those whom their owners actually treated them like human beings, who drink and eat together after sharing hard work at the farm, many whom actually grew together with their masters, and actually keep their personal friendship after they were freed and technically free to go away.

Yes we knew nowadays that they were under the psychological effect of loyalty over familiarity. Something that was published in Stockholm Journal of Science, I think... but at that time, it was taken as genuine friendships.

 

[Mikestone8]

Punishing the worst slaveowners to satisfy the radicals

Would he particularly need to satisfy the Radicals?

When Thaddeus Stevens proposed land redistribution in Feb 1866, the measure gained all of 37 votes out of 163 cast - IOW even the great majority of*Republicans* were against it.

And AIUI much of the Radicals' clout was due to the need for two-thirds majorities to override Andrew Johnson's continual vetoes. With Lincoln *signing* most Republican measures, only simple majorities would be needed, and in most cases these would probably be obtainable even without Radical support.