Lincoln lay dying across the street from Ford Theatre. Borne diagonally across the bed on account of his night, the man still breathed, but it was simply a matter of time before he perished. His cabinet and his son huddled around him, waiting for the inevitable. Across town Johnson lay dead already, killed by the blade of George Atzerodt, who was now drunkenly sobbing while tied up in the Kirkwood House Bar. Had Johnson held out just a bit longer he might have held the notoriety of having the shortest term, so short that he never even took the oath. But he did not hold on, and so received no such place in history. Seward still lived, his recent carriage accident revealing itself to be a blessing as his attackers blade could not break a cast on his jaw, saving his life.
Lincoln died, finally. "Now," Stanton said. "He belongs to the ages."
But to whom belonged Washington?
Legally speaking, Lafayette S. Foster, Senator from Connecticut and President pro Tempore was now Acting President. He was in town, but needed to be roused from bed and security needed to be arranged, and he was not a decisive leader in any event. Sherman was in the Carolinas, trying to pin and crush Joe Johnson, the last great Confederate General. Grant's train trundled towards Burlington, the general unaware that his date with political power had been advanced by 4 years. Congress was out of session.
So it was Stanton who seized the moment. The bearded Ohioan was an odd choice for the War Department, considering his lack of military experience, and his membership in the Democratic Party. Still, he had proved able enough, and his skill showed on that April morning. He acted quickly, placing Washington into a full lockdown. The police took George Atzerodt off the hands of the panicked Kirkwood House Staff, then the army took him off of the hands of the police. From his drunken crys they recived the names of most of the other conspirators were captured by day break. But John Wilkes Booth and David Herold remained at large. In do course they would be captured, Herold, and killed, Booth, much as they were in our timeline. So we shall not dwell on them.
As Stanton placed Washington on lockdown, Grant returned with all haste towards Washington. His family carried on to Burlington, but the General sped South, perhaps wondering if his absence from Ford's Theatre had led to Lincoln's death. The attacks heralded a post-war world where peace was only relative, and where some would try to accomplish what could not be done on the battlefield by single bullets in the night. Of, course, they did not know it then, and we shall not swell on ot now.
Instead we turn to Lafayette S. Foster, the newly inaugurated Acting President. An unknown man for an unknown position. The former Whig stood firmly in the Conservative Wing of the Republican Party, having maintained a zealous faith in the long dead Missouri Compromise up until the start of the Civil War. His firm belief in the Constitutionality of Slavery had led to membership in the Committee of 13, that last futile gasp of compromise before the War. His only notable wartime service had been as a fleeing spectator at Bull Run. He was selected as President pro Tempore in March 1865, as the new Congress took office. However Congress was not scheduled to meet again until December, having adjourned after a brief special session for inauguration season, so he had no real experience in the position, or leadership at all. He was, it must be said, a nonentity.
But he would lead the country nonetheless. At least, in an Acting capacity.
The Succession Act of 1792 clearly stated that, should both the President and Vice President perish, then the President Pro Tempore would become Acting President. What this meant was unknown. Where did the line end between Acting and True. Could he appoint judges? Command the military? Sign bills? The act was silent. An enigma of law, waiting to be unraveled. There was not even a clause requiring Foster to resign his Senate seat, which he would, for the good of separation of powers. For now such distinctions were swept under the rug, but they remained, the second greatest ticking noise behind Foster's rule.
The greatest, of course, was that the 1792 Act demanded that a Presidential election be held the next November. On the 6th America was to choose a man to lead her, and not in an Acting Capacity. By the dawn of the 16th every man, woman, child, and dog in Washington knew, and the whole country soon thereafter. No one bore the Acting President much thought in the long run. The Blairs, Republicanism's first family, readied themselves to prevent a radical dominance of their party. In Congress Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner mustered their New England morality to war, determined to reforge the South into something not yet known to any man. Seward writhed in agony, his carriage accident wounds combined with the assassination attempt to produce immense pain. But still he wondered. Power over the party had slipped from his grasp before, perhaps he could regain it. The Democrats drew their long knives, hoping for a chink in the armor to undo what the war had wrought.
And of course there was Grant. He had deftly avoided being drawn into politics during the war, but unlike his friend Sherman, he was not totally adverse to the idea of a government position. And all men saw in Grant the savior of their faction. The Democrats found a man who had married into the planter class of Missouri and given leniency at Appomattox. The conservatives discovered a stoic and reasonable fighter. The radical saw a breaker of chains, and harbinger of liberty behind the beard. And to the great masses? Why he was the heir to Lincoln in a way Foster could not hope to be.
So Foster's Acting Presidency was hobbled from the moment it began. Not by any fault of his own, but by the whims of the law and the people.
But hobbled did not mean useless.
