WI: Andrew Johnson hanged after Lincoln's first inauguration

I just recently read that in 1861, when Andrew Johnson was taking a stop from his train ride from Washington back to Tennessee, in Virginia he was mobbed by a gang of Democrat-supporting citizens who said they were going to hang him, but they were dissuaded when someone told them he was going to be hanged in Tennessee, his home state, and said that it was the Tennesseans' right to hang him. Obviously, that did not happen.

What would have happened if he was killed before the Civil War? How does this screw over Reconstruction, if the American Civil War happens as it does OTL? Are there any major ramifications to the War?
 
Hamlin probably stays as Vice-President, and becomes the most awesomely-named President in history, assuming that the whole assassination of Lincoln isn't butterflied away.

I don't know very much about him, though. According to Wiki, he was one of the Radicals, so if he was in charge of Reconstruction it would have been Radical-dominated from the start, with the whole impeachment fiasco avoided.

So we either get pure Radical Reconstruction, or Lincoln stays alive.
 
How does this screw over Reconstruction

um I'm going to say that Reconstruction was hard screwed in OTL, you know the 100 years it took to get black civil rights

any ways Johnson is a pretty minor figure before Lincoln's death, so I'm unsure if him dying would change much, he was pretty much randomly picked from the War Democrats to try and make it look like a national ticket, and so some other War Dem will get picked, maybe a Southern boy like Johnson, but the best for the nation would be Benjamin Franklin Butler.
 
um I'm going to say that Reconstruction was hard screwed in OTL, you know the 100 years it took to get black civil rights

any ways Johnson is a pretty minor figure before Lincoln's death, so I'm unsure if him dying would change much, he was pretty much randomly picked from the War Democrats to try and make it look like a national ticket, and so some other War Dem will get picked, maybe a Southern boy like Johnson, but the best for the nation would be Benjamin Franklin Butler.

Ben Butler


Benjamin Butler


Benjamin Franklin Butler


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER?!?!?!!?!?!


I admit I like the guy, but the South would either commit mass Suicide, or spend 100 years in guerrilla warfare before letting him, one of the most hated men ever in the south, let rule with an open hand. That is not even counting how the outside world was reviled at his actions at New Orleans. This could either develop into something good (with his civil rights promotion), or very very bad (Greenbacks, if fiat ain't your thing).
 
I admit I like the guy, but the South would either commit mass Suicide, or spend 100 years in guerrilla warfare before letting him, one of the most hated men ever in the south, let rule with an open hand. That is not even counting how the outside world was reviled at his actions at New Orleans. This could either develop into something good (with his civil rights promotion), or very very bad (Greenbacks, if fiat ain't your thing).

good for them, I think people over play the South's power (still do) but yes Lincoln is too much of a softy to pick Butler, he'd be looking for some one from the south or the border states, and some one maybe openly soft on Reconstruction, also Butler's record was that bad, the South loved to cry about it
 
Whoever is picked instead won't be a Radical. They have little choice but to vote for Lincoln, who needs to keep more conservative elements fro switching to Little Mac.

Joseph Holt of Kentucky would be an obvious possibility, or maybe Daniel S Dickinson of NY. The latter would be interesting, as he dies in June 1866, which triggers a new election that November.
 
Whoever is picked instead won't be a Radical. They have little choice but to vote for Lincoln, who needs to keep more conservative elements fro switching to Little Mac.

Joseph Holt of Kentucky would be an obvious possibility, or maybe Daniel S Dickinson of NY. The latter would be interesting, as he dies in June 1866, which triggers a new election that November.
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No, this isn't England. If he dies whoever he picked as VP takes over.
 
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No, this isn't England. If he dies whoever he picked as VP takes over.

There was no 25th amendment for choosing a new VP. The the successsion law called for a new election if there were neither a President or a Vice President with the President Pro tem of the Senate holding office whilst the election was organized and the election was to be for a full 4 year term
 
One person who was a moderate - and a Democrat - at first was Uysses S. Grant. He became mroe in line witht he radicals only after seeing the carnage from the KKK, I think.

He got some votes for VP OTL, the only question is, even int he days when there wasn't much campaigning by the candidates themselves, would the Republicans pick him knowing they could still be fighting on Inauguration Day? And, given the dangers of the man dying, I doubt he'd ben chosen unless the war is clearly almsot over.

Holt gets my vote.IIRC he turned downa position or two, but he might take one that high, and Lincoln was always trying hard to please Kentucky and keep them in the Union.
ISTR the wartime governor of Maryland was mentioned, too - though maybe that was just here at AH.com.

Edit: Hmmm, I see on his Wikip age Dickinson was considered, though, even OTL. Maybe he would have been the one, then. If so, given the law at the time it likely just pushes Grant's election up 2 years.
 
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Abraham Lincoln apparently had actually asked Benjamin Butler to run on the ticket with him in '64 before later settling on Johnson. So it is a matter of convincing Butler to take the leap or not. Reconstruction I imagine will be very much in the Radical mold.

Edit: Found his response:

Please say to Mr. Lincoln that while I appreciate with the fullest sensibilities his act of friendship and the high compliment he pays me, yet I must decline. Tell him that I said laughingly that with the prospects of a campaign before me I would not quit the field to be Vice-President even with himself as President, unless he would give me bond in sureties in the full sum of his four years' salary that within three months after his inauguration he will die unresigned.

Found here.

So it is a matter of Benjamin Butler being more politically astute, or sensible. That and the final line gives me the chills slightly.
 
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