Errors of Judgement - An Alternate Reconstruction

Japhy

Banned
This Timeline is a more recent incarnation of a fun project I had developed for other sites, but mostly on my own based on a differing end to the American Civil War. The timeline itself, at least in its early stages, will focus on changing the situation that allowed as many historians have said for "The South to Win the Peace" and on different directions that reconstruction could have gone. As an added bonus it allows for a look at an alternate United States where a major component of American Exceptionalism is removed decades before the 20th Century. Anyway, here's a brief opener for this, hope you all enjoy. Comments, thoughts and criticisms are always welcome.
-Steve
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"My failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent."
-Ulysses S. Grant, 1876


(From: The National Archives of the United States)


The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Passed by Congress: August 7th 1866.

Ratified by the States: January 9th 1867.

Section I. In the case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall assume the office of President.

Section II. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section III. In the case of the removal, death, or resignation of both the President and Vice President, the President of the Senate pro tempore shall assume the office of the President. In the event that there is no President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall assume the office of the President.

Section IV. In the case of the removal of both the President and Vice President, and the event that there is no President pro tempore of the Senate or Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shall assume the office of President. In the case that there is not presently a Chief Justice, the most senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court shall assume the office of President.

Section V. In the case that Sections I, III, and IV cannot be enacted the office of the President shall be assumed by the head of the most senior executive department until the Senate shall, from its membership nominate a President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

(From: Stanton: Lincoln’s Warlord by Gavin D. Elwood. Price Publishinghouse. 1984)

“Stanton by all accounts reacted swiftly to the events known to the Good Friday Murders. As soon as he and his naval department counterpart Gideon Welles arrived at the Petersen House, it was he whom assumed unofficially the role of leader of the nation . It was on his order that the hysterical Mrs. Lincoln was removed from the side of her husband. Doctors, politicians, and various army generals were gathered. Messages were dispatched once to various men of the government and army. And it was there, in the small boardinghouse’s parlor that the enormity of the evening’s events were first realized [1].

As the doctors waited for the President to pass, word came from other quarters. The messenger sent to the Lafayette Park found the most senior cabinet member, Secretary of State William Seward and his son shot by a gunmen in their own home [2]. At Kirkwood House, Vice President Andrew Johnson was found in his own quarters, having been stabbed repeatedly and with his throat slit [3]. President pro tempore Lafayette Foster was killed when what had been presumed to be a burglar had broken down his door and fought him in his front hall with a knife [4].

Stanton and Welles recognized as soon as they received word of Seward’s death that there could be no other alternative but conspiracy. The Secretary of War sent orders out placing the capital under martial law. Troops of the garrison and marines at the naval yard were ordered to take to the streets in search of the assassins, who’s leader was already John Wilkes Booth. Nearby Regimental Officers were ordered to find any and all members of Senate, House and the Supreme Court and deliver them under protective guard to Congress [5]. Various officers of the Army were ordered to make it to the Petersen House at once. All army units from the garrison forts of Maine and San Diego to regiments operating in Florida and Texas were ordered to be alerted to look for Booth or any other men suspected.

At 7:22 on the morning of the 15th as the Nation awoke to discover the horror of the previous night, President Lincoln passed away, surrounded by Stanton, Welles, Attorney General James Speed, Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch, Army Chief of Staff Henry Halleck, General Montgomery C. Meigs, Governor of Illinois Richard J. Oglesby, and his eldest son Robert. Not present in the room, nor in Washington itself, was one man that Stanton was most keen to have present. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant had left on an Evening Train to see his children in New Jersey, having declined with his wife an invitation to join the Lincoln’s at Ford’s Theater the night before.”

(From: A Struggle For American History by Clark Wavell. Lighthouse Books. Sixth Edition. 2006.)

“Historians have long called the four years following the murder of President Lincoln the ‘American Interregnum’. It is a term that has long framed our interpretation of the final period of the war and the first years of peace which would follow. Since it was coined in the late 1880’s it has served to preserve the American ideal from the precedents that were then set and to lessen the historical value of the regime that followed the passing of the Emergency Government Act. It serves as a bastion between the American Republic of present and of Lincoln against the dark era of dictatorship. Without the era that was the Emergency Government the ideals of America are safe and untainted in the whitewashed history of the nation. It would be far too hard to explain to our children that America has always been great without this protection. While so many of the issues that we have studied here can be ignored or apologized for by the historical establishment, the Emergency Government is not so easy to brush under the rug as the long history of the slave trade, the nation’s history of exclusion, or of the genocide committed against the Indians. Therefor the only option to keep America a greater nation then all others whom have ever slipped into the rule of the autocrat, is to downplay the Emergency Government, to make it insignificant and to rewrite the very events that defined it, to move positives backwards or forwards to civil administrations and fair elections and to take the unpleasant and push it deep into the back of our historical consciousness[…]

It is important to note at this stage that the historical editing of the ‘interregnum is not limited to what would have been the remainder of Lincoln’s term. If one looks at the news reports of Appomattox, mere days before the Good Friday murders , a reader today would be shocked at the praise of men like Stanton, Grant, and Sherman, the common criticisms of Lincoln, McClellan, and Chase, the absolute failure to see that just because the war was ending in Virginia and the Carolinas, that it was not over in far off Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. This shock is due, entirely to the editing of the Civil War to minimize all aspects as to what was then the unknown future."

(From: The American Historic Dictionary. Library of Congress. 2001.)

Mugwump [6]: From the Natick word mugumquomp (War-leader, Person of Importance, and Kingpin). First used in late 1865 to describe supporters of the Emergency Government Acts and the Martial Regime that was in place by political and absentationist opposition. Would be used by the most hard-line supporters of the Temporary Government as a political badge. (See: MUGWUMP PARTIES). Has seen varied use following the end of the Martial Period, generally as a political slur.

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Notes


1- This is all what happened IRL, though you’ll note that the term is “Good Friday Murders” not “The Lincoln Assassination”. There will be no prizes awarded for figuring out what that means.


2- IRL Lewis Powell, the man who attempted to assassinate Seward had a gun with him, but it Jammed when he tried to kill the Secretary’s son Frederick Seward, at which point he then used it to club the son and Assistant Secretary, which bent the barrel and made the gun useless. Here, the first round fires.


3- George Atzerodt had been dispatched by Booth to murder the VP, though Booth had little faith in him doing the job (And in fact sent a letter to the Vice President in a weak attempt to incriminate him in the conspiracy as a fail-safe). Booth’s judgment was quite right, as Atzerodt just got drunk in the bar that night, and asked enough questions that he was arrested in the aftermath.


4- This one is not based on a historical attempt but is my own creation. At the Time, it was Foster who would have been third in line to succeeded the president, and the law only went so far as to extend the line of succession to himself and the Speaker of the house, and at the time of the assassination, there was no Speaker. For plot purposes it is John Surratt, a known conspirator and son of Mary Surratt who is the 4th assassin.


5- All but the last part are from IOTL, which I consider reasonable considering the Federal Government has just been decapitated. Incidentally, the Capitol Building was where the Supreme Court held its secessions until the 20th Century.


6- Mugwump originally entered the US Political language in 1884, as a label for urban elite, pro-reform republicans who refused to support the tainted candidate of their party, James G Blaine and instead supported the Anti-Tammany democrat Grover Cleveland. The term then was based on the idea that these people were important and were kingpins. In this Timeline the term will be based in part on those definitions but also the first.
 
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