President Hannibal Hamlin

So, what if Lincoln had not changed his vice-president but still won re-election, and still been assasinated? How would president Hannibal Hamlin fared, in comparison to Andrew Johnson?
 
well, Hamlin the Radical Republican would've been less conciliatory towards the South than Johnson, as a Tennesee loyalist was- perhaps he would've pushed thru Radical Reconstruction to a much greater extent so's that blacks would've been in fact much better off instead of allowing Jim Crow to rule ?
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Turtledove wrote a great short story about this entitled Must and Shall. Basically, the Radical Republicans makes sure that the South stays under military occupation and Southern whites are denied the right to vote well into the twentieth century.
 
well, Hamlin the Radical Republican would've been less conciliatory towards the South than Johnson, as a Tennesee loyalist was- perhaps he would've pushed thru Radical Reconstruction to a much greater extent so's that blacks would've been in fact much better off instead of allowing Jim Crow to rule ?

Well if so it probably gets reversed in the 1868 Elections when some Republican defeats him at the convention or a northern Democrat (Horatio Seymour perhaps) defeats him the general election so not much difference from OTL then.
 
MIght Hamlin had implemented "40 Acres and a Mule". That might have destroyed the economic basis of the old Southern elite and produced a rather succesful class of reliable Republican voters- who would not be as easily disenfranchised as Freeman were in OTL
 
MIght Hamlin had implemented "40 Acres and a Mule". That might have destroyed the economic basis of the old Southern elite and produced a rather succesful class of reliable Republican voters- who would not be as easily disenfranchised as Freeman were in OTL

Flip, i'd like to think he would've- plus also facilitating the cont'd support of the freedmen thru the presence of federal troops & US marshals in the South for a longer period, the earlier introduction of anti-KKK/secret society legislation, & the formation of black militias augmented by local sympathetic whites who could be persuaded to see that the destruction of the old planter aritocracy was in their interests as much as the ex-slaves'- thereby creating a more egalitarian South.
 
Turtledove wrote a great short story about this entitled Must and Shall. Basically, the Radical Republicans makes sure that the South stays under military occupation and Southern whites are denied the right to vote well into the twentieth century.
Radical Reconstruction did not intend for either a permanent military occupation nor denial of the vote to the white's (the latter is especially something never intended nor executed. The Southerner Whites could vote; they simply had to pledge loyalty to the United States and I believe not be a former member of the Confederate officials or senior leaders, which disenfranchised only a few thousand).
 
Civil Rights would probably be implemented and protected nearly one hundred years before OTL, and we would, as previous posters pointed out, see a breaking down of the old planting aristocracy. The latter might lead to an industrializing South, with northern aristocrats (capitalists, whatever) investing in the defeated region.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Radical Reconstruction did not intend for either a permanent military occupation nor denial of the vote to the white's (the latter is especially something never intended nor executed. The Southerner Whites could vote; they simply had to pledge loyalty to the United States and I believe not be a former member of the Confederate officials or senior leaders, which disenfranchised only a few thousand).

Well the POD is that Lincoln is sniped by Confederate soldiers while observing a battle, as opposed to a nutty actor. Therefore, the Union is infinitely more revanchist and harsh against the defeated Confederacy.
 
Well the POD is that Lincoln is sniped by Confederate soldiers while observing a battle, as opposed to a nutty actor. Therefore, the Union is infinitely more revanchist and harsh against the defeated Confederacy.

Even so, I would say that it's seriously ASB that no whites would be allowed to vote in the South at all. The north was just as thoroughly racist as the South at the time (look up some of Horatio Seymour's campaign songs...), and even with that sort of POD, I doubt they'd substitute blacks getting to vote for whites getting to vote at all. At best, with a Hamlin presidency, you have earlier civil rights and a destruction of the planter aristocracy. The latter might bring into the GOP the poor whites who hated the planters as well, now that I think about it.
 
Even so, I would say that it's seriously ASB that no whites would be allowed to vote in the South at all. The north was just as thoroughly racist as the South at the time (look up some of Horatio Seymour's campaign songs...), and even with that sort of POD, I doubt they'd substitute blacks getting to vote for whites getting to vote at all. At best, with a Hamlin presidency, you have earlier civil rights and a destruction of the planter aristocracy. The latter might bring into the GOP the poor whites who hated the planters as well, now that I think about it.

Actually, this is OTL Reconstruction. The Republican legislatures in the South usually had poor white support.
 
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