OOC:
Emperor Norton,
I few OOC comments:
1. I believe that you are assuming a much more rigourous Reconstruction from Lincoln than might have ocurred. Lincoln was in favor of "letting the South up easy" and was in favor of readmitting the Southern states under the 10% rule. I think that this would have resulted in less protection of freedman's rights than the Reconstruction under the Radical Republicans. Of course, Lincoln could have changed course if he saw former Confederates returnign to power too quickly. We will never know for sure.
One of the key conditions for letting the states be readmitted is if they followed the law of the land in regards to the rights of the freed slaves. Were they to ever suppress those rights (which is likely), it is probable that Lincoln will involve troops at least in some fashion or another, or attempt to coax the South into allowing those rights. But, as I'm sure sectors of the former CSA will not follow this new regard of rights for freedman, Lincoln could very well, and in my opinion would have involved troops in a form similar to that used by the Presidents during the Civil Rights era of the 50's and 60's of employing troops and militias (which in modern times were the National Guards) to enforce legal rights for the black race.
I think a problem of modern perception is that it classifies Lincoln as going to be inactive in defending the Civil Rights of freedmen once the South was back in the country with his plan. However, while he was to be forgiving to the South, he was also very interested in the rights of the freed blacks and made it even a legal condition of readmittance. So if the South violated that condition, he'd have legal warrant to enforce those rights by any means in the range of legal statute.
2. I am aware that Lincoln had expressed an interest in retiring to California. But keep in mind he was not a rich man and there were no Presidential pensions in those days. Lincoln had lived off his income as a lawyer before 1860 and I think he would have had to do so again, especially if Mary kept spending money like she did in the White House.
There's nothing to say he couldn't travel west (which anyone could do even on meager funds), and set up a practice in the west or live off money for giving speeches of things like that which seems likely.
3. I moved up the Panic of 1873 a few years and changed the name of the Credit Mobilier scandal to the Union Pacific scandal. If he had lived, Lincoln might have had a hard time explaining how he bought those lots in Iowa for such a low price near where the railroad was going to be built.
I don't know how you really explain moving said Recession up to 1868.
4. I took the liberty of having Lincoln's memoirs being a commercial failure because Lincolon was too far ahead of his time as a writer. His
Gettysburg Address was widely panned and his Second Inaugural got mixed reviews. Only recently have we understood what Lincoln was attempting to do with words. I think any Lincoln memoirs might have been above too many people's heads. Of course, if Mark Twain had had a hand in them like he is supposed to have had with Grant's, perhaps they would have been more popular. But Twain and Grant were friends and I do not think the same can be said about Lincoln and Twain. Twain alwys said that the words of Grant's memoirs were his own and his (Twain's) only contribution was his very successful scheme for selling them which made a lot of money for Twain and Grant's family.
Actually, much of that can be attributed to partisanship between Democrats and Republicans. People were moved and in awe of the Gettysburg address from accounts for example. And it was the event that reshaped the Civil war from a conflict of reuniting the nation to a sort of divine war against slavery. And that which is not a speech but a memoir seems rather more "real" and perhaps more populist and plainly spoken and fact by fact that I don't believe it would have drawn any poor reaction. And on a side note, there's nothing to say that Lincoln could not have run across Mark Twain in California when Twain achieved his celebrity later.
5. My point, perhaps poorly made, was that Lincoln died a martyr at the very height of his success. If he had lived to complete his second term, he mikght have been seen as more of a normal man. A good Predident, but not the semi mythical figure he has become. Many two term Presidents have had disappointing second terms ( Jefferson with the misguided and harmfull Embargo, Wilson with the disapointments of Versailles and the League of Nations campaign, Eisenhower with the U-2 debacle, Johnson with Viet Nam and Clinton with the Lewinski scandal) Lincln could have had a disappointing second term also.
Your humble servant
AH
Lincoln died a martyr not necessarily
because of dying at the height of popularity (he was infact only coming out of troubles with unpopularity) but because he died as sort of the last casualty of the Civil war and the war in which he was sort of the holy figure leading the armies of the Republic against evil, and had basically achieved the great feat of securing the Union. I don't see any disappointment really stemming from Lincoln's second term. It may have been far quieter (which Lincoln sought), but you would still be dealing with the echoes of the Civil war, namely with Reconstruction. And with that, I see Lincoln dealing with it rather well and with retaining his popularity and fading away in his retirement. So I don't believe his legacy in remembrance and popularity comes from
how he died or
that he died, but how he lived and what he did, which would be retained.