What if Abraham Lincoln had lived?

Thande

Donor
This occurred to me earlier and I'm really surprised I can't remember it ever coming up on the board before, it seems like a really obvious one to do. Well, maybe it has and I just haven't noticed--if so, apologies.

What if John Wilkes Booth had failed in his assassination attempt and Abraham Lincoln served out his full second term as US president until 1868? How would this affect post-ACW attitudes to the south and Reconstruction? I tend to think it could increase enmity relative to OTL as the man the Confederates regarded as the tyrant would still be ruling over them for years after their rebellion was crushed, rather than being replaced with a succession of Republicans they might have hated but did not have such a personal connexion with.
 
It may or may not have been on this board try the search index under a variety of headings however it has been suggested some time ago.

If It Had Happened Otherwise (ISBN 028397821X) is a 1931 collection of essays edited by J. C. Squire and published by Longmans, Green. Each essay in the collection could be considered alternate history or counterfactual history, a few written by leading historians of the period and one by Winston Churchill.

If Booth had Missed Lincoln by Milton Waldman: In this world, Lincoln is charged with mismanaging the recently concluded Civil War, and there is repeated friction between Lincoln and a hostile US federal Congress. Before Congress can impeach him in 1867, however, Lincoln dies, discredited and castigated as a spendthrift warmonger.

I've read Squires book and have read better AH although given that it is a very early form it is worth reading. I suspect Lincoln would have had problems in his ideas of reconstruction particularly from carpetbagging interests just a Johnston had problems but he wouldn't have been castigated as a war monger. Had he pulled of reconstruction he might just have prevented around a 100 years of white supremacy in the deep south and strangled the KKK at birth. Had he lost the war he would have been discredited as a tyrant.
 
Reconstruction would have been less harsh and vindictive. he felt that it should be treated like a bad rebellion
 
Reconstruction would have been less harsh and vindictive. he felt that it should be treated like a bad rebellion

Excepting of course Reconstruction was never harsh or vindictive. Care to name another rebellion where 1/2 a million die and the government doesn't severely punish even the leadership of the revolt?
 
Excepting of course Reconstruction was never harsh or vindictive. Care to name another rebellion where 1/2 a million die and the government doesn't severely punish even the leadership of the revolt?

I'm not sure how many can be named that weren't horribly bloody that weren't still met with consequences at least as severe as what was done in the ACW. Defeated rebellions rarely meet with good ends.

The bare minimum necessary to call it vindictive would have been hanging Lee and Johnston. Hanging Davis would be what you would expect for leading a rebellion/committing treason.

Lincoln might have an easier time than Johnson, but that's because Lincoln was more qualified, not because Lincoln was softer or because the Radicals ran amok.
 
i didn't mean that it was worse than others or that Lincoln was soft but that he would have been more able to control the radical republicans.
also there were many just that if it succeeds it is called a revolution
 
i didn't mean that it was worse than others or that Lincoln was soft but that he would have been more able to control the radical republicans.

The Radicals didn't need to be controlled. If what they did was the uncontrolled version, the only way you could tone it down still further is to apologize to Davis for winning.

When virtually any Confederate who wanted a political career after the war can succeed at it - heck, is even permitted to run for office (successfully or otherwise) - "let 'em up easy" has been implemented to say the least.

also there were many just that if it succeeds it is called a revolution
“Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

http://www.worldofquotes.com/topic/Treason/index.html


Any truth in that does not remove the fact that the Confederates got off virtually scotfree by the standards of what happens to failed rebels of the day (as opposed to ye medieval times when Davis would have been drawn and quartered or something).

If the Radical Republicans were half as vindictive as people like to portray, at the very minimum Davis would have hung.

Rightly or wrongly, overriding the law if necessary (after all, we're assuming they're vindictive hatemongers here).

I apologize if I sound obnoxious or condescending or any such thing, but that the Radicals were mean anti-Southern jerks who wanted to make the poor South bleed is one of those myths that refuses to die.
 
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In this thread that was listed by Maverick, I postulated the idea of the pistol exploding in Booth's hand.

What would make this interesting would be if the Deringer explodes in Booth's hand as he fires.

When he packs the gun, he doesn't do a good job on tamping the lead ball and powder into the barrel. This leaves an air space in the area of the powder. When the trigger is pulled the gun explodes. The ball hits Lincoln in the arm shattering his right humerus. Booth's hand is a mangled mess of metal, wood, and flesh which leaves him screaming on the ground. Henry Rathbone kicks Booth and several men take booth to the nearest jail, where a doctor sees to his wounds.

Lincoln is rushed out to Petersen House where the surgeon, Barnes, assesses him. Not sure if he can save the arm, he patches Lincoln up and they wait. The next morning the unconscious Lincoln is in obvious pain and an infection has set in. The doctors decide the arm must be removed to save the president's life.

President Lincoln serves out his term as an amputee. Many of the wounded soldiers of the ACW can now identify more with Lincoln. During his second term Nebraska is admitted as a state into the Union. He also reluctantly sends an Army to the Mexican border with an ultimatum for the French to leave Mexico. There is no Alaskan Purchase, but the Danish Virgin Islands are purchased.

After heavy questioning Booth gave the names of two accomplices. John Wilkes Booth was hung with his co-conspirators Lewis Powell and David Herold.

I wasn't sure if the pistol used percussion caps, so I assumed it didn't. At close range these pistols had almost no chance of missing the target, so Lincoln is shot in the arm and Booth loses his hand.
 
If the Radical Republicans were half as vindictive as people like to portray, at the very minimum Davis would have hung.


Ironically, the one keenest to hang him was that noted Radical Andrew Johnson. Toward the end of his life he reportedly said that his one regret was having been unable to hang Jeff Davis. He still hated Davis worse than he did the Radicals who had impeached him.

This might be one change. If Lincoln lives, Davis probably gets bailed from Fort Monroe as soon as the last Confederate forces have surrendered, rather than being held a further two years. Lincoln would have had more sense than to "martyr" him. So today the third figure on Stone Mountain is probably Jeb Stuart instead of Davis.
 
It always seemed to me that the Congressional Radicals wanted to deal much more harshly with the defeated South. Do you suppose that they were stayed by Lincoln's dead (martyred, even) hand? Thus, had they a living Lincoln with whom to contend, would they have tried harder to "punish" the Rebels?
 
It always seemed to me that the Congressional Radicals wanted to deal much more harshly with the defeated South. Do you suppose that they were stayed by Lincoln's dead (martyred, even) hand? Thus, had they a living Lincoln with whom to contend, would they have tried harder to "punish" the Rebels?

Why the quotation marks around punish?

The Radicals may have wanted to deal more harshly with the defeated Rebels than the virtually scotfree treatment that the Confederates actually got, but I doubt they were more restrained by a dead/martyred Lincoln than they would be by a living one.

Its possible, but it seems far fetched. "But Lincoln would have wanted us to be merciful..." doesn't sound like something that a Stevens, for instance, would find persuasive - whether one considers that the right or wrong course of action.
 
you all seem to think that the only punishments are to the leaders but you forget the military occupation and destruction of farms, railroads, and other improvements coupled with the uncompensated lose of primary workers crippled the south along with the corporations being discouraged to open factories down south.
i hate slavery it should have been abolished upon the singing the south would have been better with out it.
 
you all seem to think that the only punishments are to the leaders but you forget the military occupation and destruction of farms, railroads, and other improvements coupled with the uncompensated lose of primary workers crippled the south along with the corporations being discouraged to open factories down south.

There's a big difference between the ravages of war and a policy of punishing rebels.

As for corporations being discouraged: Gee, when people did come down South, they were called carpetbaggers. And we all know how they were treated.
 
In OTL the South's response to the initial moderation of NOrthern treatment was to see how near to slavery they could keep African Amrericans and also in some cases to attack white Southerners who had opposed treason.

All Republicans were opposed. Yes there were Congressinal radicals but in OTL the Party was unaninmous enough to get two thirds majorities for overiding Johnson and carrying Constitutional amendments

Though Lincoln was not a radical he has already shown steady movement towards accepting racial equality

I think he would have tried to do what Congress did in OTL and try to force the South to grant at least basic Civil Rights
 
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