WI: Abraham Lincoln Lives Through Second Term

He doesn't fall out with Congress half as badly as Johnson did. He almost certainly signs the Freedmans Bureau and Civil Rights Acts, and probably supports a 14th Amendment of some kind - though he's likely to oppose Section 3 as an infringement on his pardoning power. He will also favour the enfranchisement of at least some Blacks, in particular those who have served in the Union Army. Even Johnson suggested a limited enfranchisement, but was too "States Rights" minded to insist. Lincoln would probably make it an order.
Ah, but what if Mrs. Lincoln is the one hit.
 
Can't see it affecting his political decisions in any big way. He'd be deeply distressed, but the job still has to be done.
I have a lot of respect for Lincoln, but I am leery of the idea that he is carved from granite.

Perversely, he may be more of a tragic figure in the ATL than OTL. Hrm.
 
I have a lot of respect for Lincoln, but I am leery of the idea that he is carved from granite.

Perversely, he may be more of a tragic figure in the ATL than OTL. Hrm.

He doesn't have to be carved from granite. But the action of some nutjob of an actor and his down-at-heel accomplices have no obvious bearing on the big picture. None of the ex-Rebs whom he has to decide to pardon or not pardon had any connection with the plot.

However angry he might have been, he could hardly be more so than, OTL, the North as a whole was about his own assassination. Yet the North took no revenge except on the actual conspirators, and there's no reason to suppose that Lincoln would.

It will be seen as a personal tragedy, along with his son's death in the White House, but would scarcely make him more of a tragic hero than his own death did.
 
Considering the amount of prestige Lincoln had in the black community, I think he might be able to convince them that such a move might actually be in their best interest. At the very least, the "Great Emancipator" putting it into official policy would give the Back to Africa movement more moral and historical credibility than it enjoyed IOTL. Considering the treatment the blacks who stayed behind could still very well suffer, we might just be saying he was the enlightened one who realized that whites and blacks can only co-exist peacefully when they're seperated from one another.

Of course, that depends on just how well Liberia does with a greater and more organized influx of settlers.

Lincoln did have prestige in the black community, but hardly any of them were interested in emmigration and Congress was not interested in funding it.
 
He may have died anyway. He had disproportionately long arms and legs, unusually long middle fingers, and a sunken chest - all typical of Marfan's syndrome sufferers. He also complained of frequent fatigue, severe headaches, and cold hands and feet, all of which implies he was already dying of heart disease.

It is unlikely that Lincoln had Marfan's, due to his strength and his lack of visual and cardiovascular symptoms.
 

dcharleos

Donor
No, it's more "One race was explicitly targeted for political and economic exclusion by the federal government, state governments and private businesses for several centuries up to just a few decades ago, and as a result the economic and social disadvantages they face are qualitatively different and need explicit discussion to find solutions."

I find it a bit odd in a historical conversation that is explicitly talking about how people were kept as property on account of their race to say that it's a 'race obsession' to discuss the legacy of that.

Thank you.

I'm a PoC, and I get the feeling that this message boards is less than diverse. Its not exactly a conservative group either, but you just tend to notice certain...trends. I appreciate the awareness.
 
No, it's more "One race was explicitly targeted for political and economic exclusion by the federal government, state governments and private businesses for several centuries up to just a few decades ago, and as a result the economic and social disadvantages they face are qualitatively different and need explicit discussion to find solutions."

I find it a bit odd in a historical conversation that is explicitly talking about how people were kept as property on account of their race to say that it's a 'race obsession' to discuss the legacy of that.

Which is not true of which country in history? Almost every country on the planet is probably guilty of this.
 
Thank you.

I'm a PoC, and I get the feeling that this message boards is less than diverse. Its not exactly a conservative group either, but you just tend to notice certain...trends. I appreciate the awareness.

New flash for you, every race on the planet is guilty of this. Black Africans discriminated against Indians. Arabs discriminated against Blacks . The Chinese discriminated against practically everyone . IIRC the word "Comanche" means "Human Being" in Comanche which means everyone who wasn't a Comanche wasn't considered human by them. Like it or not bigotry seems a part of human nature. Something you should fight against but it is hardly a White Monopoly.
 

dcharleos

Donor
New flash for you, every race on the planet is guilty of this. Black Africans discriminated against Indians. Arabs discriminated against Blacks . The Chinese discriminated against practically everyone . IIRC the word "Comanche" means "Human Being" in Comanche which means everyone who wasn't a Comanche wasn't considered human by them. Like it or not bigotry seems a part of human nature. Something you should fight against but it is hardly a White Monopoly.

Jesus. What are you even talking about?
 

dcharleos

Donor
He's making a legitimate point regarding previous posts, including yours. Please be more civil.

Really? I made a comment about how I appreciated someone's post.

The dude starts [x]splaining to me about the history of human bigotry--fyi, most people of color are pretty well acquainted with bigotry--as if the fact that Arabs have at some point discriminated against black people is at all relevant to my expression of appreciation to another poster for their awareness of the fact that race plays a unique role in the history of US society, and how that unique role is relevant to a discussion about what might have happened if Lincoln wasn't assassinated.

I did not pompously step into the discussion with sarcastic declarations of "newsflashes." Nor did I ever state that bigotry was something white people had a monopoly on.

So I was pretty confused when I was very much uncivilly chastised for that.

The notion that Chinese people may or may not discriminate against non-Chinese is pretty much irrelevant to the problem here in the US. And honestly, bigotry is not the main issue here in the US either. That's a common mistake, especially among (but not exclusively among) white people. The problem is racism, and the fact that racism was the prevailing ideology here in the US for the better part of its existence.

Bigotry is actually a side issue. It describes an individual's prejudice against another groups. Those groups can be racial, religious, ethnic, gendered, sexual, or national. Many individual people can try and do eliminate bigotry from their hearts, which is good.

Racism--the idea that racial superiority and inferiority explain human history--is the problem here because our entire legal and social system was developed during a period of time when people thought race explained it all. This is emphatically not the case for most countries. Their histories stretch back into times when most people weren't even aware of the existence of other races.

We started off with more of a blank slate than a lot of places (partially because of our racially motivated genocide of indigenous Americans) and it means that our legal and social structures are far more influenced by racist thought than those of other countries.

Those disproportionate influences here are felt well into today.

And that is why Americans (and all the people of color like myself who are in such dire need of newsflashes) are not hysterical or obsessed with race. We are appropriately focused on race because race has affected us far more than it has affected other places.

And this conversation has spiraled way off topic to the thread. We (or anyone who would like) can continue it on a PM.
 
There's also a tendency for assassinated controversial presidents to quickly become lionized. OTL Lincoln was incredibly hated, and I've seen some arguments that a lot of the -R vote in the 1864 election - especially among soldiers - was driven not by a comparison of Lincoln v McClellan but by the general understanding that a President McClellan could be assassinated and put his deeply unpopular DNC-mandated VP in the White House!
(Even with McClellan's campaign a self-contradiction, as he repudiated the central 'Peace' plank of his own party's platform, the election was really quite close.)

t.

Where on earth are you getting this from? Some kind of source would be worth while with this kind of claim (the hated statement)
 
He won't be remembered as the great man we know because the fights he'll have to do in the postwar era and the mistakes he will do (as he is wont to do) will diminish his fame, a lot of the blame which goes today on his successors who let to the current absurd race obsession in the US (and to the troubles associated) will fall on him. Yet his presence will also be a big factor in discussions after the end of his term, so he may help steer the US toward a better path.

Winning the Civil War guarantees "Great Man" status, no matter the tarnish on his image later.
 
According to General Butler, in 1865 Lincoln raised with him the possibility of digging a Panama Canal and employing coloured troops on this project, who could be offered the opportunity to settle there. Butler seems to have been a bit confused, as he responded by pointing out the impossibility of exporting the entire coloured population - though even by Butler's own account, Lincoln was not proposing this. Interesting thought.

Interesting. You got a source for this?

If it was something like this, I wonder if the succeeding administration, continuing on the legacy of the prior (assuming this project gets any start at all), and that dovetails into the Santo Domingo proposal.

As specious as the actual annexation proposal was (it wasn't exactly one made in the interests of the people of Santo Domingo, after all), it did nearly pass through Congress, I believe only failing by one vote. As such... Let's consider the implications.

If this Panama Canal proposal actually manages to begin, we see the canal's territory being leased or purchased from Colombia (I'm not sure how the US affords this at this point in time, though), the US would want a Naval Port in order to guarantee access to the Canal (as possessing the canal is directly correlated to protecting it). As such, the Santo Domingo deal actually would be coming at an opportune time, allowing a maritime link to be maintained with the Canal Zone, analogous to Guantanamo and Puerto Rico 3 decades later.

Of course, the actual annexation even might not go well, but it would provide an example of a first non-white majority state (though Afro-Caribbean and Spanish speaking, if I recall correctly). And that could, not necessarily would, but could lead to the Panama zone to become the same. If it isn't a long-term lease.
 
The problem was, which Lincoln certainly knew, that there was no way in hell the US government could round up all the slaves and send them somewhere overseas. Look at what's involved. First you have to round them up, then you have to put them in local camps, then you have to rail them to big camps near the ports, then you have to put them on ships with enough supplies that they can survive a year or so until the next crop comes in which means food, seed, and farm tools at the least and then ship them to wherever you are going to ship them. It would cost an absolute fortune that congress would never agree to pay. Also it would tie up most of the US rail system and ship capacity. It is just not doable.

I'm more talking about how we'd view the whole "Back to Africa" movement if it's most vocal and visable advocate was The Man Who Saved Our Nation and The Great Emancipator: basically, the one political leader you really coulden't accuse of being primarily motivated by a hostile racism to create a racist structure (At the absolute worst, he felt Africans were naturally inferior and shoulden't be in the white man's systems not because is presence was toxic, but because they could never reach their full potential or escape racism so long as they were competing directly with whites). The idea of actually "Separate but Equal" could be seen as an escape from the inescapable spector of Racism: in essence, we might remember Martin Luther King Sr. as opposed to his son.
 
I'm more talking about how we'd view the whole "Back to Africa" movement if it's most vocal and visable advocate was The Man Who Saved Our Nation and The Great Emancipator: basically, the one political leader you really coulden't accuse of being primarily motivated by a hostile racism to create a racist structure (At the absolute worst, he felt Africans were naturally inferior and shoulden't be in the white man's systems not because is presence was toxic, but because they could never reach their full potential or escape racism so long as they were competing directly with whites). The idea of actually "Separate but Equal" could be seen as an escape from the inescapable spector of Racism: in essence, we might remember Martin Luther King Sr. as opposed to his son.

The point is that it was never truly a serious proposal. As one Republican at the time put it "It is a humbug" but it will pass muster. What I just said is what anyone who thought it through could come up with. The thing is 99% of the general public won't think it through so you can get away with it. The government did studies earlier that basically said it was impossible. Lincoln knew that quite well. he was a very intelligent , well read man and what I said was no secret.
 
Interesting. You got a source for this?

Howard P Nash Stormy Petrel; The Life and Times of General Benjamin F Butler, Ch 17.

On rereading, I find that I misremembered it slightly. According to Butler, Lincoln did raise the question of whether the entire black population could be moved (eg to Santo Domingo), but they both quickly agreed that this was impractical. The Panama idea came from Butler, not from Lincoln, but the President was interested in the idea and said that there "was meat in it". However, he did not communicate any decision on the matter before his assassination.
 
Thank you.

I'm a PoC, and I get the feeling that this message boards is less than diverse. Its not exactly a conservative group either, but you just tend to notice certain...trends. I appreciate the awareness.

No worries. I am as white as they come, but you do notice certain remarks sometimes. I mentioned that America had struggled with a strong strain of white supremacy up to the present day and got kicked for a week for it. I understand the need to keep current events to a minimum, but when discussing alternative political history I think it's important to understand the ramifications and effects linked to these past events. The dark legacy we are currently experiencing shines a light on the meaning of the past.

I'd also just like to say that millions of us middle of the road white Americans stand with the minorities under attack in these times.
 
Which is not true of which country in history? Almost every country on the planet is probably guilty of this.

There are plenty of countries that have not explicitly targeted one race in recent history. Ireland is the first off the top of my head.

Besides, this is kind of missing the point. Other countries also doing something wrong doesn't change the reality of the solutions needed.
 
Top