So obviously killing president Lincoln was devastating but there were also plans to kill his VP and Secretary of State. Apparently General Grant was also invited to the theater by Lincoln but decided to visit his son in NJ instead. So what if The President, Vice President, Secretary of State, and Commander of the Army are all killed in the same night?
WI: Lincoln’s assassins get all their targets?
- Thread starter p0lish_runn3r
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Small problem. If Grant is there, the sentry won't dare leave his post as he did OTL. So Booth is unlikely to get into Lincoln's box.
BTW, I had always vaguely understood that Grant didn't go because his wife and Lincoln's didn't get on.
If it somehow did happen, then /senator Lafayette of CT is Acting POTUS. With Grant gone, he is likely nominated for the Election which will take place in Nov 1865.
Well with the vice-president dead, he won't be around to sabotage reconstruction. The Radical Republicans will be able to push hard with little opposition after such an outrageous act of barbarism by the defeated south.
So Radical Reconstruction *may* start a couple of years sooner. Not necessarily (From what I can gather Foster wasn't all that Radical. He voted to override Johnson's vetoes of the1866 Civil Rights and Freedmans Bureau Acts, and in favour of the 14th Amendment, but so did almost all Republicans, not just Radicals) and even if it does, probably not a big enough difference is made to change the outcome.
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Not to mention that Grant was constantly accompanied by his cipher officer, Samuel Beckwith, who was an army captain. John Parker, the DC Police Officer, definitely wouldn't dare leave his post, leaving Booth to fight one definitely armed police officer, and a probably armed army officer with just a single shot pistol and a knife.
Also yes, you are correct that Mary Lincoln and Julia Grant did not get along.
It seems unlikely. The legal thinking throughout the war was that the Union was indivisible. The states in rebellion had never actually left and so would not be subject to being denied statehood. A military occupation as seen IOTL is the most likely outcome.
Few points. Foster's first action on becoming Acting POTUS will probably be to recall Congress, if only to secure the election of a House Speaker to be next in line of succession after him. So we may well get the 14th Amendment a year ahead of OTL. And Foster, instead of egging on the South to reject it (as Johnson did) will presumably be twisting arms in *favour* of ratification. Given that at this point the South is still in a state of shock post-Appomattox. the Rebel States may well ratify, in which case they may be readmitted without Black suffrage (except maybe for the literate and Union veterans). which makes for a *very* different Reconstruction.
Minor point. Under the Act of 1792 a Presidential election should be held in Nov 1865. However this would put that and subsequent elections out of synch with Congressional ones, which many pols might not want*. So might Foster's interim Presidency be extended for another year in order to avoid this? After all if he is getting on reasonably well with Congress there is no urgent reason to replace him.**
*It is true that in those days many states had elected their Congressmen in the odd-numbered year, but iirc, by 1865 only two *Northern* states, CT and RI, still did this. and of course the South wouldn't be voting on the matter.
**If indeed they replaced him at all. If they don't have Grant, then the Acting POTUS who had seen them through the crisis might seem as good a choice as any.
Ironically, Johnson stands a good chance of being treated as a martyr by the radicals.
Indeed. Iirc some Radicals privately *welcomed* Lincoln's death, fearing that he would have been too soft on the South, and that Johnson would treat the Rebels as they deserved. Little did they know.
One more thought. Could this result in the 1886 Succession Act (or something akin to it) being passed twenty years sooner, to guard against the risk of the line of succession being entirely wiped out?
It becomes the Union's Gunpowder Plot, only successful, and the rage against the South will be incandescent.
ObWI: plotters don't trust Booth's marksmanship and decide to just blow up Ford's Theater.
It was incandescent anyway. The death of Lincoln was too horrific for any extra killings to add much to it. You can't wet a river.
The assassins of course, would still have been hanged, but as OTL no one else could have been implicated.