alternatehistory.com

So haven't done a project in years, but figured I would start one again. This one is written in the form of a textbook from 2015 in a world where Lincoln is assassinated on March 4, 1861 (i.e., his inauguration day). Hannibal Hamlin, his vice-president, is left to deal with the Civil War. Here is the first section. Sorry that it's so long:

THE INAUGURAL BULLET
Roger Buckley was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. The son of a wealthy merchant, Buckley had deep connections to the Southern uppercrust of Baltimore society. In 1860, Buckley joined a radical group of Southern-sympathizers led by an Italian barber named Cipriano Ferrandini, a radical Southern sympathizer with a deep, abiding hatred for President-elect Lincoln. Ferrandini’s group made it their mission to ensure that Lincoln never made it to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration in the first place. They planned to assassinate Lincoln during a scheduled public appearance in Baltimore on his trek. However Allan Pinkerton, detective and spy charged with the protection of Lincoln on his transit, had learned of this plot and urged Lincoln to travel through the city in secret. Lincoln obliged and, travelling in disguise on a night train, managed to slip through Ferrandini’s fingers.

Ferrandini’s hatred for Lincoln never waned and his group became even more radicalized. Roger Buckley was perhaps Ferrandini’s closest disciple, and they would often share drinks in a private saloon at a local hotel. Buckley was at first unsure about why Lincoln had to die; indeed, Buckley felt that terrorist efforts ought to focus more on the local government of Baltimore in order to encourage secession. However, he was a deep admirer of Ferrandini’s conviction and was eager to adopt his thought process. One night in the saloon, Buckley asked Ferrandini, “Are there no other means of saving the South except by assassination?” “No,” Ferrandini said sternly. “He must die, and die he shall. And, if necessary, we will die together.”

Pinkerton for his part was diligent in spying on the group. However his efforts were largely focused on Ferrandini himself. While the Italian was certainly not a fan of Lincoln and an ardent secessionist, it is unlikely that he would have killed the president-elect if given the opportunity. Most of Ferrandini’s boasts were just talk. “The barber’s combs have more teeth and his shears more conviction than he,” Pinkerton remarked, dismissive of any further trouble from Ferrandini’s gang.

Unfortunately for the nation, Pinkerton forgot to account for Buckley, who was determined to carry out Ferrandini’s plot even if his mentor was not. Buckley fancied himself a Southern patriot, and the embodiment of animosity to the North. For whatever reason he felt that Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy were moving much too slowly in dealing with the North. In order to remedy this, Buckley resolved to assassinate Lincoln at his inauguration to show that the North was not safe even in their capital. Buckley’s last passage in his diary clearly illustrates his convictions:

Who are we to let tyranny go unanswered? Why, when our course is so clear, do some shirk from their God-given duty? Lincoln must be dispatched for the good of the South and her way of life; there is no other course which must be taken. The treasonous North must learn that the South will not so quietly secede; indeed she will take some of those abhorrent abolitionist monsters with her as she departs. It is times like these when brave men must relinquish their life and liberty for the good of their brothers and sisters. I shall gladly accept this burden in the hopes that when I die, Lincoln dies with me. My only regret in this endeavor is that I have but one life to lose for my country.
Buckley, with the aid of two compatriots in the movement, would act on March 4, 1861. A Baltimore gun manufacturer, sympathetic to the movement’s cause, supplied the gang of three with “Mississippi” rifles, effectively serving both a symbolic and practical purpose. Practically, a skilled marksman could fire off two to three shots a minute with an effective range of 1100 yards and a maximum range of 2000. Symbolically, during his time in the army during the Mexican-American War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis clamored for a cache of these rifles for his soldiers to use. The rifles proved remarkably successful at repelling Mexican forces and thus earned the nickname “Mississippi” rifle due to Davis’ heritage. In short, the rifles would give the gang an effective weapon with which to assassinate the president-elect and further symbolize the power of the South.

Armed with these rifles, the gang set off for Washington, D.C. to prepare for Lincoln’s arrival. They holed up in a boardinghouse, situated along the inaugural parade route, owned by Buckley’s cousin who while not a member of the movement was sympathetic to its goals. They arrived on March 2 in order to give them sufficient time to prepare their rifles and refine an escape plan should the opportunity present itself. All three men were fully prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause so long as Lincoln ended up dead.

Lincoln, for his part, arrived in the city on February 23, 1861. He spent the time between then and his inauguration getting the President’s House set up for his administration and family. He and his family would never take up residence in the executive house.

On the morning of March 4, 1861, Lincoln made his way, along with President Buchanan, from Willard’s Hotel on 14th Street to the Capitol. Lincoln and Buchanan rode together in an open carriage, surrounded on all sides by scores of soldiers sworn to protect the president-elect with their lives if necessary. Along the way other soldiers were positioned on rooftops with instructions to shoot anyone crowding towards the carriage.

The procession eventually passed by the boardinghouse, giving Buckley and his gang the perfect opportunity to strike. The gang opened their windows and rested their rifle barrels, fully loaded, on the sill. Then, just as the roar of the crowd reached a fever pitch, the gang fired three bullets in all. One struck the lead horse pulling the carriage; the second whizzed by President Buchanan’s ear without causing any damage, eventually cracking the brick in a wall across the street; the third would change the course of history.

It was unclear who fired the third bullet. Northern newspapers at the time liked to attribute its firing to Buckley in an effort to further paint wealthy Southerners as villainous, bloodsucking cowards; Southern newspapers likewise attributed its firing to Buckley in order to praise him as an upstanding patriot whose actions should be admired by the rest of the country. Historians may never truly know which of Buckley’s gang fired the infamous third bullet.

What is undisputed though is that Lincoln was hit in the side of the head, just above his left ear. The bullet never left an exit wound but it did not matter; the entry wound and resultant brain damage was enough to kill the president-elect instantaneously.

The crowd was shocked. They began to run around the streets helplessly, trampling each other in a mad dash for shelter. Soldiers searched madly for the killer, but no one was quite sure from which direction the shots came. The carriage, despite the wounded horse, made a mad dash for the nearest hospital or doctor in hopes of saving the president-elect, but these efforts proved futile.

Buckley and his gang, for their part, were ecstatic about the results. None of them died and they succeeded in assassinating the “abolitionist ape from Illinois,” as some in the South had taken to calling him. The gang, feeling confident, decided not to take any chances and stay in their room the rest of the day.

Vice President-Elect Hannibal Hamlin was waiting in the Capitol’s Senate chamber for the procession to arrive so that outgoing-Vice President John Breckinridge could deliver his successor the oath of office. Approximately 20 minutes after the gunshots had been fired, a cadre of soldiers burst into the Senate chamber, completely out of breath, and shouted to a puzzled Hamlin, “Lincoln has been slain!” These soldiers had been dispatched by Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott to protect Hamlin. Scott had, of course, been charged with protecting Lincoln during the inaugural parade. Despite having failed in his mission, his resolve barely wavered. He is reported to have ordered the soldiers to the Senate chamber by angrily shouting, “They’ll take me for a godddamned Johnny Rebel if I lose two presidents in the same night. Don’t you bastards let that happen.” In the meantime Chief Justice Roger Taney, architect of the infamous Dred Scott decision, rushed to administer the presidential oath of office to Hamlin in order to provide some sense of continuity.

Throughout the coming days, Allan Pinkerton worked with the army and embarked on a relentless pursuit of Lincoln’s killer, barging into homes and businesses along the parade route. Eventually they came to Buckley’s cousin’s boardinghouse where Pinkerton did his due diligence and checked the guestbook. He quickly came across Roger Buckley’s name, which he immediately recognized from his time spying on Ferrandini’s radical group. The army arrested Buckley’s cousin, having been given the power by now-President Hamlin, and tortured him for information as to Buckley’s whereabouts.

The army eventually tracked Buckley to an abandoned Virginia farmhouse just south of D.C. He and his gang were holed up in the abandoned barn. Pinkerton resolved to smoke the gang out and force them into the hands of the waiting army and so, on March 7, Pinkerton set the barn aflame. Rather than let themselves get captured by the Union army and subsequently hanged, the gang decided to go out in a blaze of glory. Leaning out the burning windows, they pulled their rifles on the army and began firing. Two soldiers died in the exchange, as did the three members of Buckley’s gang.

All told, the events of March 4-7 resulted in the deaths of some 12 people. Six of them were civilians who were trampled in the chaos that immediately followed the assassination; three were the assassins themselves; two were soldiers for the Union; and the last was President-Elect Lincoln himself.

Lincoln’s funeral was held on March 8 in the Senate chamber. President Hamlin used this time to deliver his inaugural address in the form of a eulogy to Lincoln, reproduced here in full:
Fellow-Citizens of the United States:

We were struck a bloody blow just four short days ago. In anger and apprehension over the democratic process, the South struck down your chosen leader before he could even take the Oath. They were at once apprehensive about Abe’s politics, about his commitment to abolition of that most horrid of institutions.

Abe was first and foremost concerned with the unity of this Nation, which has endured unimpeded four score and three years. Now any hope of unity has died with Abe.

We are presently engaged in a great civil war, testing whether this nation conceived in unity and dedicated to liberty can endure terrorism perpetrated by crazed children, poisoned by -dangerous ideas of slavery and violent retaliation.

We have come here to eulogize our president-elect, and immortalize him as a martyr for the great cause of liberty. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. Yet our efforts pale in comparison to his sacrifice; his blood-stained carriage has done more to immortalize the greatest moral struggle of our time than any of our efforts ever could. History will little note what was said here in this chamber, but it can and will never forget Abe’s martyrdom.

We must now dedicate ourselves to his mission of unity and liberty – from this honored martyr we must increase our devotion to the abolitionist cause and stamping out the Southern demon. Abe shall not have died in vain. This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.

The Confederate South has fired the first shots in this war, but it will not be the last. No, the last shot fired when we march on Montgomery and that traitor Jefferson Davis lies in the streets dead where Almighty God shall judge him as He sees fit. Therefore I resolve to declare War on the Confederate States of America and exact revenge for Abe’s merciless slaughter. This government of the people, by the people, for the people that he so long defended shall, despite the best efforts of some, not perish from this world. My heart is in the coffin there with Abe, and I will not rest till it comes back to me.
This speech did a marvelous job stirring up Union loyalists for a bloody Civil War, but it only served to enrage the Confederacy more. Hamlin talked outright of abolishing slavery as one of his primary presidential goals as well as assassinating President Davis. The seven Confederate states, which had already been encouraged by the assassination of Lincoln, were thus further resolved to mobilize and end the Union before the Union could end them. There were eight states that had yet to make up their minds about which side to join in the war: Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Their allegiances would become critically important in the coming years.
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