Lincoln Lives

[Paul V McNutt]

The POD for preventing the assassination of Lincoln and for that matter Garfiled, McKinley and Kennedy is better security. I would have a federal officer guarding the entrance to the box. He does not let Booth in. Booth dies in a shot out with that officer. The way Lincoln was evolving on the issue of votes for Blacks. I could see the 14th Amendment barring discrimination in voting based on skin color or previous condition of servitude. Lincoln has a good working relationship with Congress. He remains in charge of Reconstruction. There is no Tenure of Office Act and of course no impeachment. This is one of those short lived PODs. In 1868, Grant is elected. He brings his commitment to civil rights and his corrupt cronies with him. So starting on March 4, 1869, OTL returns.

 

[Jonathan]

I would have a federal officer guarding the entrance to the box. He does not let Booth in. Booth dies in a shot out with that officer.

With Officer John Frederick Parker, becomes famous as the man who stopped the assassination of President Lincoln.

The way Lincoln was evolving on the issue of votes for Blacks. I could see the 14th Amendment barring discrimination in voting based on skin color or previous condition of servitude.

So in the south there are more black voters, this means that Democrats will find a decline in votes in their southern department. So the United States presidential election of 1876, may not be as close as it was in OTL.
You might also find more off an militant Ku Klux Klan, with them having to not only deal with black voters but also the army and police, who are brought in similar to "little rock"

Lincoln has a good working relationship with Congress. He remains in charge of Reconstruction. There is no Tenure of Office Act and of course no impeachment.

This is one of those short lived PODs. In 1868, Grant is elected. He brings his commitment to civil rights and his corrupt cronies with him. So starting on March 4, 1869, OTL returns.

No POD is ever short lived, this POD will still change things later on, since what does Lincoln do out of office?
Does he travel Europe and the Middle East? If so this will have him interact with people who would in OTL never meet him.
Will a foreign politician wish to be like Lincoln and tries to rise higher to power? Or does a child or member of the public, on seeing him wish to enter politics when in OTL, it was never an idea.

Is Grant nominated as easily as he was IOTL, does Lincoln push for a second term of National Unity Party and if so, which Democrat does Grant choose as his nomination?

Does Lincoln, suggest his Vice President Johnson, to do more with his career?

The POD for preventing the assassination of Lincoln and for that matter Garfiled, McKinley and Kennedy is better security.

How can better security help against crazed individuals who have it in their head, that they must kill the president.

Guiteau had stalked Garfield for weeks, armed with a .44 caliber Webley Bulldog revolver, no matter how much better the security is, you will always have opportunities for these events to happen.

President William McKinley died on September 14 from gangrene caused by the bullet wounds, so McKinley could have became infected after any other minor accident where his skin is open.
Also McKinley was shaking hands with the public when he was shot by Leon Czolgosz, so unless you have a security that scrutinises all of the public, you cant be safe from anything

Kennedy had security, what he did not have, was the ego that would happy sit in a roofed car.

 

[Mikestone8]

So in the south there are more black voters, this means that Democrats will find a decline in votes in their southern department. So the United States presidential election of 1876, may not be as close as it was in OTL.
You might also find more off an militant Ku Klux Klan, with them having to not only deal with black voters but also the army and police, who are brought in similar to "little rock".

How is any of this different from OTL?

Blacks were given the vote anyway by the 15th Amendment - only two years after the 14th - and there's no obvious reason why getting it a couple of years sooner would make it any more secure.

Ditto re the Army and Militia. Both were used OTL, but the Army got less and less relevant as it shrank back to peacetime size, and the million or so Confederate veterans could generally look after themselves against any Militia that could be set up.

How does changing the name of the POTUS lead to any major alteration?

 

[Alt History Buff]

Johnson let the Freedman's bureau die. That was the southern blacks best shot at progress and the best opposition to the Klan.

 

[Zulufoxtrot]

The POD for preventing the assassination of Lincoln and for that matter Garfiled, McKinley and Kennedy is better security. I would have a federal officer guarding the entrance to the box. He does not let Booth in. Booth dies in a shot out with that officer. The way Lincoln was evolving on the issue of votes for Blacks. I could see the 14th Amendment barring discrimination in voting based on skin color or previous condition of servitude. Lincoln has a good working relationship with Congress. He remains in charge of Reconstruction. There is no Tenure of Office Act and of course no impeachment. This is one of those short lived PODs. In 1868, Grant is elected. He brings his commitment to civil rights and his corrupt cronies with him. So starting on March 4, 1869, OTL returns.

Wait. So Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy still become president with a POD where Lincoln lives, and there's a completely different start to reconstruction

 

[kodak]

Lincoln's survival would certainly have a huge influence on President Wilson. The civil war and reconstruction IOTL combined with him being raised in the south led him to become very racist and later on believe in American superiority in the world.

 

[Glass Onion]

You could make the case that a surviving Lincoln would be marginally worse for the freedmen than Johnson was-if only because Johnson's conflict with Congress radicalized and unified the Congressional Republican response. I'd be concerned that with Lincoln in the White House you wouldn't see the reconstruction era amendments, because Lincoln would be willing to compromise with Congress before things reached that stage. Voting for example wasn't widely supported in the North. As I understand it Johnson's obstinate behavior and a desire to mitigate the apparent resumption of power on the part of the confederate elite in the south motivated the Republican Party to drift much more quickly towards supporting the extension of the franchise than they otherwise would have. Yes, Lincoln supported such a qualified extension at the end of his life, but without the context of Andrew Johnson, I'm not sure the Republican Party would have went as far as it ended up doing.

In the period between the end of reconstruction and whenever or if a 20th century civil rights movement emerges that doesn't matter, because the South prevented the majority of ex-slaves and their descendants from voting as it was. But in the long run no 15th amendment could make it much harder to secure the franchise later on.

I could be misreading things though and I apologize if I am.

 

[Mikestone8]

I could be misreading things though and I apologize if I am.

You aren't.

Andrew Johnson is right up there alongside Stevens and Sumner as a progenitor of Radical Reconstruction. If Stevens and Sumner were its parents, Johnson was the midwife - and without him it might well have been stillborn.

 

[Mikestone8]

Johnson let the Freedman's bureau die. That was the southern blacks best shot at progress and the best opposition to the Klan.

Yet the Radicals had a veto-proof majority, so could presumably have kept it going had they so decided. Or the Grant Administration could have revived it. They didn't.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Memories of my first TL attempt...

 

[Paul V McNutt]

Wait. So Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy still become president with a POD where Lincoln lives, and there's a completely different start to reconstruction

Yes, I don't thinks this effects anything after March 4, 1869. Tell me why I am wrong.

 

[Paul V McNutt]

Lincoln's survival would certainly have a huge influence on President Wilson. The civil war and reconstruction IOTL combined with him being raised in the south led him to become very racist and later on believe in American superiority in the world.

Lincoln living longer would not end racism.

 

[Stolengood]

Yes, I don't thinks this effects anything after March 4, 1869. Tell me why I am wrong.

Because you are always wrong about these things. I don't know why "return-to-OTL" seems to be such an obsession with you...

If Lincoln were to live, do you think his leniency would make things worse? Or do you think he'd come to his senses a bit and harden on the South?

 

[Paul V McNutt]

Because you are always wrong about these things. I don't know why "return-to-OTL" seems to be such an obsession with you...

If Lincoln were to live, do you think his leniency would make things worse? Or do you think he'd come to his senses a bit and harden on the South?

You didn't tell me why I am wrong. What effect does Lincoln's extended life have after he leaves office?

 

[Zulufoxtrot]

Yes, I don't thinks this effects anything after March 4, 1869. Tell me why I am wrong.

With Lincoln alive you have an entirely different relationship with congress for the remained of his second term. That alone will result in a different political makeup as the butterflies become more pronounced with the decades. Not to mention the various different appointments, such as district judges, that me might pick as opposed to Johnson. Regardless of the problems with reconstruction, he also was responsible for quite a few government changes outside of the civil war as well. The Transcontinental Railroad, Department of Agriculture, and IIRC he also had some plans for reforming Indian territory. Unless he's a vegetable for the rest of his term there's no reason to assume he won't continue with such. Not to mention that with a different Commander in Chief the various Indian Wars could play out differently. Perhaps not in their outcome, but in the participants, and the way campaigns are conducted.

You could potentially have a different outcome involving the French in Mexico if Lincoln's less inclined to go with Seward's policy as opposed to Johnson. IIRC there was also something about the Dutch West Indies that fell through as a result of senate shenanigans that might be able to get through with Lincoln being President.

There are so many different possibilities involved with Lincoln being alive. I have to ask, why do you assume everything would just go as per OTL with a different man in the Whitehouse for such a crucial period of time?

 

[Stolengood]

You didn't tell me why I am wrong.

You are wrong because you completely ignore butterflies. The impact of Lincoln dying was that a President actually got KILLED in office, that an assassination attempt succeeded; remove that, and you make far less likely anyone else gunning for an attempt, because they'll just see it as just as unlikely as all the others.

 

[Mikestone8]

Maybe a bit "tougher" in the sense of delaying pardons until all the Southern state governments were up and running. He might also instruct military governors to enrol as voters every male over 21 who could read and write a portion of the Constitution - with Union Army veterans (who met residence and age requirements) maybe exempted from the literacy test. That gets a "foot in the door" for Black suffrage, and, together with signing the Trumbull Bills instead of vetoing them, probably satisfies enough Congressmen to secure the states' readmission.

I don't see him doing anything which would require a prolonged military occupation to enforce. If nothing else, he knows that the Army will soon be largely demobbed, to the point here it won't be big enough for such a role; so before too long the South will have to be pretty much left to govern itself. "Let them up easy" was not a personal whim, it was the only practical option at the end of the day.

 

[Fordicus]

This one has been well worked over.

My first TL as well. Here.