WI: President Hannibal Hamlin?

Let's say that, for whatever reason, Lincoln chooses not to switch horses in mid-stream and keeps Hamlin on the ticket in 1864. I'll be upfront that, AIUI, this is a stretch, since there was considerable pressure to put a War Democrat on the ticket, but let's roll with it for the sake of argument. Despite this, history proceeds as OTL, and Lincoln is still assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. How does Hamlin handle being thrust into the Presidency? How does his Reconstruction policy differ from Johnson's? What are the knock on effects moving into the Reconstruction era?
 
As it happens, I finished a TL on the subject of President Hamlin today (but in my timeline Hamlin became President in 1861, rather than 1865). I've done a lot of research on Hamlin, and I would say that Hamlin would be a rather different President from Lincoln. Hamlin was strongly in favor of Radical Reconstruction, and greatly opposed Johnson's reconstruction plan. Radical Reconstruction was more punitive toward ex-Confederates than Johnson's (and Lincoln's) plan for the post-war South. There would probably have been more legislation protecting newly-freed former slaves from discrimination.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Hamlin was friendly with the Radicals and well-regarded by them, but I wouldn't call him a Radical Republican myself. Folks like Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Ben Wade would have trusted him in a way they never could have trusted Andrew Johnson. I think we'd see a greater chance of Reconstruction being done along the lines that Lincoln himself wanted, rather than having Congress take control of the process.
 
Top