John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy is successful

So, John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln is widely remembered due to the fact that it was the first time a sitting US President had ever been assassinated, but not many people remember that Lincoln's assassination was part of a wider conspiracy.

John Wilkes Booth, Lewis Powell, David Herold and George Atzerodt planned to aid the dying Confederate cause by crippling the US government. They planned to do this by assassinating Lincoln, Secretary of State William H Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson, the three most important officials in the US government.

However, Booth was the only one to successfully assassinate his target. Seward was only wounded by Powell and Herold. Atzerodt, who was assigned to assassinate Johnson, lost his nerve. While Booth escaped only to be hunted down and killed in a shootout, Booth's co-conspirators were tried, convicted by a military tribunal and hanged at Fort McNair in Washington DC.

But what if Booth's co-conspirators were successful in assassinating their targets? Would the government retaliate by hanging the Confederate leadership, since it was their actions that inspired the assassinations?
 
I wonder who becomes President in the first place.

That's been answered in dozens of threads.

The President of the Senate - Lafayette S Foster of CT - would become President, pending an election in Nov 1865. The new POTUS - almost certainly Grant - would take office in March 1866 for a four-year term.


But what if Booth's co-conspirators were successful in assassinating their targets? Would the government retaliate by hanging the Confederate leadership, since it was their actions that inspired the assassinations?

No. The killings of Lincoln and of Frederick Seward, plus the near-fatal attack on Secretary Seward, did not produce such a response. The additional death of a not very popular VP wouldn't make a lot of difference. Everyone was incandescent with anger already, to the point where "you can't wet a river". The reaction would be much the same as OTL.
 
No. The killings of Lincoln and of Frederick Seward, plus the near-fatal attack on Secretary Seward, did not produce such a response. The additional death of a not very popular VP wouldn't make a lot of difference. Everyone was incandescent with anger already, to the point where "you can't wet a river". The reaction would be much the same as OTL.
If not more so.

There's a difference between one failed assassination and a successful and 3 successes.

One tends to be a bit more.... angry at that.
 
If not more so.

There's a difference between one failed assassination and a successful and 3 successes.

One tends to be a bit more.... angry at that.


It was not immediately clear that Seward's assassination had failed. He hovered at death's door for quite a while before it was clear he would live. In the immediate aftermath it was seen as a double murder - indeed triple including Seward's son, the Ass't Sec of State.

And as already noted, Lincoln's death had already sent the country almost insane with rage and horror. The death of an unimpressive VP couldn't make it significantly more intense than it was anyway.

Nor are Davis and other Confederate leaders any more likely to be implicated than they were OTL.
 
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