Lincoln Lives: Reconstruction

Can Lincoln run for a third term?

Legally he can, though there's not the slightest evidence that he intended to. He sees to have already been thinking of what he'd do post-retirement.

Also, of course, he was an old Whig, and the Whigs had traditionally frowned even upon second terms, never mind third ones. Had the war been over, he probably wouldn't have run again even in 1864.

And if he's avoided Andrew Johnson's head-on collision with Congress, then by 1868 all the Rebel States are probably readmitted on some terms or other, so to all appearances there is nothing in particular for Lincoln to do that Grant couldn't do equally well. So he has no reason to stay on, given that after leading the Union to glorious victory, reputation-wise there is nowhere to go but down. I think we may take it as certain that he steps down in 1869.
 
You might actually see the 1875 Civil Rights Act implemented earlier and properly, while Henry Cabot Lodge's pledge in 1890 for federal election officials to ensure federal elections were conducted fairly might happen.
 
You might actually see the 1875 Civil Rights Act implemented earlier and properly, while Henry Cabot Lodge's pledge in 1890 for federal election officials to ensure federal elections were conducted fairly might happen.



How exactly will having a different POTUS in 1965-9 have the slightest effect on either of these?

Once the Army is back to peacetime levels (and most of that needed out west) Washington has little or no means of enforcing such mandates even if it wants to.

And pretty soon it won't want to. Most northerners didn't give a hoot about blacks - they just wanted a South that would be reasonably loyal to the Union, so that they wouldn't be dragged from their farms again to defeat another secession. Once they were confident they had this, they had little reason to concern themselves with Southern race relations, so it was a dead cert, if anything ever was, that they would lose interest in promoting Black rights long before southerners lost interest in opposing them.

When Lincoln said "Let 'em up easy" he wasn't just being Mr Nice Guy. He was recognising that in the long term, once the troops had gone home, there was no real alternative.
 
Couple of points.

Any thoughts on how the 14th Amendment emerges in this TL? Lincoln will certainly oppose Section 3, since even if he has no other objection, it is a clear encroachment on his pardoning power. I wonder if he might push for an alternative section, granting ex-Rebs full civil and political rights - but also forbidding disfranchisement on grounds of race or colour. So ratifying it secures their property and political rights at the price of swallowing black suffrage.

The other point relates to the SCOTUS. During the war years it had ten members, the largest it has ever been. However, to avoid having to accept an Andrew Johnson nominee, Congress reduced it to seven members. The number was increased again under Grant, but only to nine. If Lincoln lives, does the Tenth seat survive to this day?
 
Interesting idea, though it has been brought up many times.

I've been thinking of an alternative take on this.

There is an old saying from somewhere that to end the resistance by plains Indians to American westbound immigration, one had to kill every last buffalo, the idea being that removing their food source would cripple their culture, which it did.

How about a different take?

How about to remove the last bit of southern resistance to American rule, one had to remove every last Negro from the south?

For example, many freed blacks were stuck as sharecroppers, doing the same job as before and largely continuing previous social patterns.

How about a surviving Lincoln issues the old "forty acres and a mule" offer with the take that the freed slaves move west into the still-largely empty plains states/territories of the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, etc, etc, etc.

Lacking their age-old labor force, the "States-rights" aristocratic champions of the south would lose their income source and a shift in power to the middle-class and lower classes, permanently destroying the previous social fabric?

The blacks become a propertied class and the southern gentry is destroyed.

Kill two birds with one stone.

Land is great, and being offered it on equal terms with whites would no doubt have increased black migration West, but it's still hard to move states away and establish yourself with absolutely no capital, so unless Congress added a mule to that 40 acres, the vast majority of the black population would likely stay as sharecroppers in the South.
 
Top