makes sense it was an actor. An actor literally destroyed this country. Lincoln was about to do certain things, and after his death, those things didn’t happen. We would have been better off if he had done what he planned.
(cough-cough, Liberia, cough)
Lincoln's plan was to bring the south back into the Union without punishment. He wanted the Union returned to normal as soon as possible. It was the radical Republicans who would have stood in his way. Had Lincoln lived, he would have faced an uphill battle with his own party on the issue. Andrew Johnson followed Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction, and again, it was the radical Republicans who fought him over it. They desperately wanted to punish the south.
Republicans hated Johnson because he was a Southerner. They wanted to get rid of him badly. When they got wind that he was planning on firing Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, Senate Republicans passed the Tenure of Office Act that banned a President from firing anyone in his Cabinet without the consent of the Senate. Johnson vetoed the Bill, but Congress passed it over his veto. Johnson fired Stanton anyway, and replaced him with U.S. Grant. Congress impeached him for it. He was acquitted by one vote in the Senate. The Tenure of Office Act was repealed partly in 1869 and entirely in 1887 and was also declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1926 to have been unconstitutional.
Republicans can be their own worst enemy. They don't need RATS to stand in their way. They do it to themselves.