And what if the had just been allowed to secede?
I remember reading somewhere that the issue of education for former slaves was important to him.
I don’t think it would have made any difference. Lincoln would have been lenient during Reconstruction, which would have resulted in all the former Democrats coming back into the government even sooner than they eventually did. The country was going to stay unreconstructed for over 100 years regardless of who was President.
I once wasted about 15 minutes of my life trying to convince a leftidiot acquaintance of mine (not a friend) that Lincoln was a Republican. Showed him all kinds of links etc. He just would not believe it. This ladies and gents is the level of delusion we are up against.
Absolutely. Andrew Johnson was pro-slavery and obstructed the Reconstruction efforts of the Republican-controlled Congress.
By 1866 with election that year, they had achieved enough support to impose their military and civil program on the defeated South. When it became known that Johnson wanted to fire Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, they deliberately passed the Tenure of Office Act that banned the President from firing any Cabinet member without permission of Congress. The Radical Republicans saw Stanton as an ally in the Cabinet. Johnson, despite the passage of the Act, went ahead and fired Stanton, and replaced Stanton with General U.S. Grant. Johnson was impeached the following year, the main charge being his violation of the Tenure of Office Act. As we all know, he was acquitted 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 The Tenure of Office Act was repealed partly in 1869 and entirely in 1887 and was also declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1926 to have been unconstitutional.
In my eyes, the Radical Republicans acted exactly like the Democrats do today. RATS will change the rules and laws to suit their immediate need. Then, when the rule or law they just put in place, comes back and bites one of them in the ass, they whine that the law isn't fair, and want to change it again.
Even if Lincoln had lived, it's likely the Radical Republicans, had they gained support in the 1866 election, would have fought him tooth and nail on his reconstruction plans, and it's anybody's guess as to how things would have turned out. Maybe the idiots would have impeached Lincoln to get their way. As usual, our government is its own worst enemy, and just like today, retaining power is the most important thing to the two parties, not what's good for the nation.
Lincoln’s assassination also had many international aspects as well.
Fearing a stronger United States (and revenge for their support of the Confederacy) only 18 months after the Union Victory, they created country of Canada out of several colonies, with the North American Act in Parliament.
France too supported the Confederacy, hoping for a weakened United States which would not challenge its plans to colonize Mexico.
Lincoln’s death served their purposes of a more divided and distracted United States.
It would have probably turned out far better for the nation. Lincoln would have likely moderated the excesses during "reconstruction." The rights of the Southerners would likely have been better respected and the thefts and abuses less than they turned out to be.
The real tragedy of the Lincoln assassination is that it happened five years too late.
The changes Lincoln wanted was to excise them from society completely. Lincoln was obsessed with ideas for getting them out of the country, and he even experimented with a plan to move them to Central America, which turned into a disaster requiring him to send ships to rescue them and bring them back.
Lincoln was a white separatist. He absolutely did not want blacks and whites together in society.
You think race relations were peachy up north?
They didn’t want them up there
They wanted them stay put
Votes
Let’s not forget that Andrew Johnson did not want to exactly be hard on the South. The Republican Congress and the rest of Lincoln’s Cabinet drove a lot of this. Johnson was impeached, and darn near convicted. Lincoln would have likely built up more good will, but I am not sure he would be beyond impeachment if the Republicans in Congress thought he was being to lenient with the “rebels”.
The consensus in the 1950s was that Lincoln and Johnson were the good guys and the “Radical Republicans” were the bad guys. That’s been turned upside-down since then. Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner, once despised, are now considered heroes. “Radical Republicans,” like the abolitionists, did get a raw deal in the version of history that predominated from about 1910 to 1970, so it’s good if they are getting more credit now.
Lincoln would have had his hands full dealing with the radicals, but it’s possible that he could have managed things. Andrew Johnson, like John Tyler, the first VP to become president, was essentially in the wrong party. Both were basically Democrats who ended up on the other party’s ticket because of disagreements with their fellow Democrats. When they became president, they quickly became hated by members of both parties.
Lincoln would have been more able to deal with Republicans who took a harder line on Reconstruction. I wonder though, if the “reconstructed” America would have lasted, whoever was president from 1865 to 1869. Nineteenth century trends came to favor abolitionism, but didn’t favor racial equality and an egalitarian multiracial society.
Interesting article. I did not know that there were other attempts on his life!
One quibble - his life was not cut short by “events” but by John Wilkes Booth!
Well people would have enjoyed the play more.
He would have f’d up Reconstruction, frankly they would have fought another brief but ugly war at the end of Lincoln’s term, and gotten better terms from Johnson on a second treaty.