What if Lincoln had a Radical Republican VP

E. Burke

Banned
Crucially had the planter class been destroyed (not executed by losing their lands and exiled) there would be no leadership.

Further if former slaves had land they would not be dependent on the old ruling class as they were in otl. They would be harder to intimidate out of their rights.

With intelligent political leadership you would have as many people who 'really' supported slavery and sessession in 1885 and Germans who were 'really' Nazis in 1965

Basically this, also build up an alliance of poor whites and freedmen. It's not it wasn't their, "those who didn't own slaves hated those who did". You'd just have to be smart. Get both groups into school together and build up a mythology of mutual opposition to the planters. Mythologize Bacon's Rebellion and shit. Make the confederacy out to be a rich man's scheme. Might not be perfect, but isn't awful.
 
Crucially had the planter class been destroyed (not executed by losing their lands and exiled) there would be no leadership.

Further if former slaves had land they would not be dependent on the old ruling class as they were in otl. They would be harder to intimidate out of their rights.

With intelligent political leadership you would have as many people who 'really' supported slavery and sessession in 1885 and Germans who were 'really' Nazis in 1965

This is too confusing.
 
Basically this, also build up an alliance of poor whites and freedmen. It's not it wasn't their, "those who didn't own slaves hated those who did". You'd just have to be smart. Get both groups into school together and build up a mythology of mutual opposition to the planters. Mythologize Bacon's Rebellion and shit. Make the confederacy out to be a rich man's scheme. Might not be perfect, but isn't awful.

So basically have the Republicans become proto-Socialists.
 

E. Burke

Banned
So basically have the Republicans become proto-Socialists.

It's not like it's without precedent. Marx supported the union, lots of union generals were communists who had fled Germany after 1848 failed. Socialists had allot of influence over the Republicans. I believe Lincoln's secretary of war was a socialist. Karl Marx wrote several in the Republican daily, including what would become Das Kapital.
 
A wish to help former slaves and to punish treason must have been widespread.

Expropriation of the planters and land to former slaves might be seen as paying back wages.

Creating a class of voters that will always seem likely to loyal to Republicans seems to be something that American politicians might do.
 
Crucially had the planter class been destroyed (not executed by losing their lands and exiled) there would be no leadership.

Further if former slaves had land they would not be dependent on the old ruling class as they were in otl. They would be harder to intimidate out of their rights.

With intelligent political leadership you would have as many people who 'really' supported slavery and sessession in 1885 and Germans who were 'really' Nazis in 1965



'Scuse, but the thread is only asking what happens if there's a different individual in the White House. For these sort of schemes you need the whole Northern political leadership to be totally different from what they actually were. Changing a President or two is nowhere near enough.

Note that even the relatively mild political disabilities imposed by Sec3 of the 14th Amendment were virtually all rescinded by 1872. And even a proposal in 1866 to strengthen that provision by disfranchising Rebels till 1870 was unacceptable to the Senate, despite that body being overwhelmingly Republican. And that was only a year after the murder of Lincoln. The will to take more extreme steps simply doesn't exist and (afaics at least) cannot be made to exist.

You don't just need a new POTUS for this stuff, but a whole new political class. How exactly do you get it?
 

E. Burke

Banned
'Scuse, but the thread is only asking what happens if there's a different individual in the White House. For these sort of schemes you need the whole Northern political leadership to be totally different from what they actually were. Changing a President or two is nowhere near enough.

Note that even the relatively mild political disabilities imposed by Sec3 of the 14th Amendment were virtually all rescinded by 1872. And even a proposal in 1866 to strengthen that provision by disfranchising Rebels till 1870 was unacceptable to the Senate, despite that body being overwhelmingly Republican. And that was only a year after the murder of Lincoln. The will to take more extreme steps simply doesn't exist and (afaics at least) cannot be made to exist.

You don't just need a new POTUS for this stuff, but a whole new political class. How exactly do you get it?



How do you get radicals in control of both houses of congress?
 
The POD happens in the Spring of 1865. The US has won but is angry, it is the aftermath of the murder of Lincoln.

Initial expropriation simply requires conditions be attached to pardons and the threat of prosecution for people who clearly had made war on the USA.

A smart move would be stronger guarantees specifically for former slaves and their descendants in the states that had legal slavery in 1860.

Lots of Northern whites would be happy for freedman to stay in the South
 
How do you get radicals in control of both houses of congress?

You don't. That's precisely my point.

Congress went along temporarily with some Radical measures, thanks mainly to the provocations they got from Andrew Johnson and the State governments he set up. But their hearts were never really in it, and interest soon faded as it became clear that most ex-Rebs really had accepted reunion and weren't plotting another secession, so that there was no real reason to keep them out of power.
 
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