WI: Booth arrested before Lincoln shot

Arrested for what? He hadn't done anything yet.

I SUPPOSE that he might have boasted about his plans in a bar, and someone informed the authorities and his home got raided, but isn't that a bit unlikely?
 
I was nosing around for responses to "Lincoln survives" but there were no takers. (The thread is called "The Dear Old Sage of Springfield", and it's now fairly submerged.)

You can look for a very different approach toward Reconstruction, with federal troops out of the South perhaps within a year or two. I think that the civil rights legislation of the 1860s would have been less sweeping but more enduring.
 
Booth could have been arrested before hand, his co-conspirators were not the greatest men in a pinch. Say one of them gets picked up before hand, Atzerodt gets drunk a little earlier when he goes to kill Johnson and starts blabbing. Confederate sympathizer overhears and tries to take him out lest he ruin something (even if the sympatico doesn't know what it is, he knows it sounds good for the cause) and gets caught in the act by soldiers. (Washington is crawling with them) Slight interogation, brutal with the suspension of habeus corpus, gets everyones dander up. Security tighter at Fords, maybe Booth busted, maybe he just walks away to fight another day.

If Lincoln doesn't die, I don't think he survives the politicking that goes on after the war. Lot of people ticked off about his policies and heavy handedness, or reverse that, lots of people pissed about the soft line he wants to use on Confederate Leadership. Any which way, he is not the iconic Lincoln passed down through the ages.
 
Lincoln probably had more political capital when he died than almost any other prez...he would have gotten his way, and it presumably would be alot gentler, more successful reconstruction. Malice toward none and all.
 
If Lincoln doesn't die, I don't think he survives the politicking that goes on after the war. Lot of people ticked off about his policies and heavy handedness, or reverse that, lots of people pissed about the soft line he wants to use on Confederate Leadership. Any which way, he is not the iconic Lincoln passed down through the ages.

Lots of people were pissed , but he was extraordinarily popular, even before his murder. He was savvy enough to go after those goals he could achieve, and he could well have achieved them.
 
What would be the ramifications for:

Reconstruction?

The Reconstruction is far more peaceful, no carpetbeggars or much racial violence in this TL. Blacks might not get as much civil rights in this period but on the other hand there will be no extreme Jim Crow laws probably.


As for the rest of the US, Westward expansion will be encouraged. Could Lincoln try to have a more humane policy for Indians?


Depends on butterflies.
 
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