WI: Confederate Bomb Plot Succeeds

Greenville

Banned
What if Abraham Lincoln and most of his cabinet are killed during in a successful assassination plot after a White House bombing in 1862 or so?
 

B-29_Bomber

Banned
Does most of the Cabinet include Hamlin?

I'd imagine he'd be in a separate location, at least that's the modern procedure and I can't see why they wouldn't simply have him conveniently visiting some place like a veteran's hospital or something during the meeting.

I mean it is war time with the enemy quite literally on your doorstep.

B-29 Bomber
 
Any chance at foreign recognition goes out the window, Galusha A. Grow becomes President of the US and the North is really pissed and the gloves come off early.
 
Any chance at foreign recognition goes out the window, Galusha A. Grow becomes President of the US and the North is really pissed and the gloves come off early.

Grow was Speaker of the House. The succession law at that time placed the President pro tem of the Senate next. At that time, it would be Solomon Foot of Vermont.
 

No, at this time the VP was not considered part of the Cabinet, and Hamlin had no role to speak of in the Lincoln administration. He would not be present at a Cabinet meeting. When Congress was in session, he presided over the Senate. When Congress was not in session, he often went home to Maine to take care of personal business.

A big question is who besides Lincoln is killed. Seward? Chase? Stanton? Bates? Blair? Welles?
 
Grow was Speaker of the House. The succession law at that time placed the President pro tem of the Senate next. At that time, it would be Solomon Foot of Vermont.


Also, under the Act of 1792, a double vacancy would trigger a Presidential election. If the vacancy arose before October 1862, it would be held in November of that year; if later, then in Nov 1863.

Any thoughts on who the candidates would be? Or would Congress simply cancel it?
 
How far into 1862 are we? Has Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation?

No, at this time the VP was not considered part of the Cabinet, and Hamlin had no role to speak of in the Lincoln administration. He would not be present at a Cabinet meeting. When Congress was in session, he presided over the Senate. When Congress was not in session, he often went home to Maine to take care of personal business.

A big question is who besides Lincoln is killed. Seward? Chase? Stanton? Bates? Blair? Welles?
If any of these 6 men were to succeed Linciln, the presidency would be in safe hands as Lincoln had surrounded himself with strong-minded men, even those whose credentials for office appeared to be much more impressive than his own.

Caleb blood Smith was still in the cabinet as Secretary of the Interior, if he was to succeed it could be interesting.

It is said that IOTL When Lincoln showed the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet, the conservative Smith considered resignation upon its public announcement, but accepted the decision in the end.
Smith would resign in December 1862 due to poor health.
 
Caleb blood Smith was still in the cabinet as Secretary of the Interior, if he was to succeed it could be interesting.

He can't "succeed". Cabinet officers were not in the line of succession until 1886.

It is said that IOTL When Lincoln showed the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet, the conservative Smith considered resignation upon its public announcement, but accepted the decision in the end.
Smith would resign in December 1862 due to poor health.

In that case he would never be POTUS. Under the 1792 Act, the election would be in Nov 1862, and the POTUS-elect would not take office until March 1863.
 
I'd just predict a harsh militant Reconstruction, no matter who is president. (No doubt at all, it would be a radical(ised) Republican.)
 
OTL had an aborted reconstruction that lead directly to Jim Crow and the South effectively winning the peace.

And why would the "bomb plot" make any difference to that?

It will cause shock and horror, but not all that much more (if at all) than the murder of Lincoln did OTL. As the saying goes "You can't wet a river". And assuming the duration of the war is much as OTL (no reason why it wouldn't be) then by war's end the bombing will be some three years in the past - quite bloody years - and the initial shock will have had time to fade. By 1865 the northern mood is probably little different from OTL.


Probably not sabotaged by a random Democrat lucking into the White House.

Could just as easily be a conservative Republican. Everyone will be raising their hands in horror at the bombing, so there will be no clear distinction between Radicals and other Republicans. OTL, remember, even Andrew Johnson was making some quite radical noises during the war - "Traitors must be impoverished" and all that - and in 1865 some Radicals welcomed his succession in the belief that he would take a tougher line with the South than Lincoln would have done.

So the POTUS elected in 1862 may not be that much different from Johnson. And even if he is, that just means Radical Reconstruction will start a year or two sooner than OTL It won't stop the Union Army (and with it the Federal government's powers of enforcement) steadily dwindling as wartime enlistments expire, and such soldiers as remain from being needed out west. Nor will it stop Northern voters getting bored with the whole business and impatient to be about their own affairs. In short, any change is likely to be pretty marginal, with a strong tendency for things to "converge" back to the OTL situation.

The biggest change will be to Lincoln's historical reputation. If he dies before the EP, he won't be "The Great Emancipator", and he certainly won't be the man who saved the Union. He'll be an historical footnote, and people on this forum will be debating whether he'd ever have freed the slaves if he had lived.
 
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