Suppose Lincoln had lived?

Ian Osborne said:
Agreed. Without Hitler, a communist revolution seems more likely, leading to a very different 20th Century.
Click to expand...


There was a work of fiction I read in which Hitler and the other leaders were killed during the Beer Hall Putsch. The Communists took over Germany and they and Russia gradually divided a good portion of Eastern Europe between them, before eventually waging war against each other, with other countries taking various sides. The ultimate result was nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare across a good portion of Europe and Asia and a rabidly anti-Communist fascist government coming to power in the US. Trotsky returned to Russia and overthrew Stalin early in the history, and I remember a Communist assassinating Queen Elizabeth at her coronation.
 
Armitage72 said:
There was a work of fiction I read in which Hitler and the other leaders were killed during the Beer Hall Putsch. The Communists took over Germany and they and Russia gradually divided a good portion of Eastern Europe between them, before eventually waging war against each other, with other countries taking various sides. The ultimate result was nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare across a good portion of Europe and Asia and a rabidly anti-Communist fascist government coming to power in the US. Trotsky returned to Russia and overthrew Stalin early in the history, and I remember a Communist assassinating Queen Elizabeth at her coronation.
Click to expand...

Can you remember the title? It sounds awesome.
 
smartcooky said:
Well there are three possible sets of circumstances to deal with.

1. No-one ever attempted to assassinate Lincoln

2. Someone stopped Booth before he could attempt the assassination

3. Booth attempted the assassination, but Lincoln survived

IMO, the timeline might proceed very differently depending on which of the above scenarios we are discussing, but generally, thing might be different today than they are in reality.

Generally speaking the following might have happened IMO...

Reconstruction might have gone a lot more smoothly and been a lot more forgiving of the south (more like the way the US treated Japan after WW2 than the way Germany was treated after WW1).

We may have seen the Whigs in political power in the South, with Lincoln's support, as they were seen as reluctant secessionists rather than the Democrats who were enthusiastic.

The Civil Rights movement might have happened a lot earlier, say, in the 1920s, and have been far less widespread. It is even possible the there might have been no Civil Rights movement at all because the emancipation of slaves as well as their suffrage, might have happened a lot sooner - and segragation might never have happened.

Remember, the radical Republicans at the time wanted to confiscate the plantations and divide them among the former slaves - that would have been a disaster, and may eventually have led to second Civil War.

There are people in the South who, after almost 160 years, are still deeply resentful of the way in which the region was treated after the Civil War. If Lincoln had lived, and he helped to make that treatment less harsh, then the deep seated resentment we see now might either be far less than it is, of even not exist at all.

With all of the above a possibility, if we fast forward to 2020, American society might not be as racially divided as it is now, because much of the South's current resentment of the North would not be there to fuel it.

EDIT: I could add more about other aspects including education and the economy of the South, but I'll wait to see if others want to join the discussion. So far, there have just been silly remarks so I'm not wasting time on it of no-one wants genuine discussion.
Click to expand...

The South had it coming. Freakin Bumpkins..
 
Ian Osborne said:
Can you remember the title? It sounds awesome.
Click to expand...


It was actually an adventure for the Champions tabletop RPG called "Wings of the Valkyrie", published in 1987. It can be hard to find a copy because the publisher recalled it and destroyed it after negative fan response. Time travelers kill Hitler, creating the timeline that I described. The players then have to go back in time themselves, save Hitler, and make sure World War II and the Holocaust happen normally. The altered historical events were detailed in a multipage appendix at the end.
 
Armitage72 said:
It was actually an adventure for the Champions tabletop RPG called "Wings of the Valkyrie", published in 1987. It can be hard to find a copy because the publisher recalled it and destroyed it after negative fan response. Time travelers kill Hitler, creating the timeline that I described. The players then have to go back in time themselves, save Hitler, and make sure World War II and the Holocaust happen normally. The altered historical events were detailed in a multipage appendix at the end.
Click to expand...

Available in paperback from Bezos' Bookstore

https://www.amazon.com/Wings-Valkyrie-NM-Rob-Bell/dp/0915795949

Its pricey!
 
smartcooky said:
Well there are three possible sets of circumstances to deal with.

1. No-one ever attempted to assassinate Lincoln

2. Someone stopped Booth before he could attempt the assassination

3. Booth attempted the assassination, but Lincoln survived

IMO, the timeline might proceed very differently depending on which of the above scenarios we are discussing, but generally, thing might be different today than they are in reality.

Generally speaking the following might have happened IMO...

Reconstruction might have gone a lot more smoothly and been a lot more forgiving of the south (more like the way the US treated Japan after WW2 than the way Germany was treated after WW1).

We may have seen the Whigs in political power in the South, with Lincoln's support, as they were seen as reluctant secessionists rather than the Democrats who were enthusiastic.

The Civil Rights movement might have happened a lot earlier, say, in the 1920s, and have been far less widespread. It is even possible the there might have been no Civil Rights movement at all because the emancipation of slaves as well as their suffrage, might have happened a lot sooner - and segragation might never have happened.

Remember, the radical Republicans at the time wanted to confiscate the plantations and divide them among the former slaves - that would have been a disaster, and may eventually have led to second Civil War.

There are people in the South who, after almost 160 years, are still deeply resentful of the way in which the region was treated after the Civil War. If Lincoln had lived, and he helped to make that treatment less harsh, then the deep seated resentment we see now might either be far less than it is, of even not exist at all.

With all of the above a possibility, if we fast forward to 2020, American society might not be as racially divided as it is now, because much of the South's current resentment of the North would not be there to fuel it.

EDIT: I could add more about other aspects including education and the economy of the South, but I'll wait to see if others want to join the discussion. So far, there have just been silly remarks so I'm not wasting time on it of no-one wants genuine discussion.
Click to expand...


Lincoln was the subject of numerous assassination plots going back to before his first inaugural. I was assuming that Booth never got to Ford's Theatre, for whatever reason.

For the purposes of the question, I was assuming that Lincoln's governent would have supervised the education and training of freed slaves and would have enforced their rights, including the right to vote, and would have kept the South from establishing the Black Codes, the Jim Crow laws, blocking black voters, etc., not to mention prohibiting lynching. It's conceivable that some freed slaves might have continued to work on the plantations as free laborers earning fair wages.

I'm not so sure that giving land to the freed slaves would have been such a radical idea. That's where "40 acres and mule" came from. It was a serious proposal. Suppose freed slaves had been helped financially to settle in the western territories, like white homesteaders?

And was the South really treated harshly after the war? I don't think anybody was shot or hanged for treason, and only a few people went to jail, even then only for a short time. Jefferson Davis became a businessman in England. Robert E. Lee became a college president. Pres. Johnson issued two proclamations of amnesty and pardon. If the South was mad about anything, it was that it lost the ability to own human beings. But it didn't pay nearly the price it should have, or could have.

I'm thinking that if Lincoln's Reconstruction had been allowed to proceed, former slaves and their children would ultimately have been fully integrated into the larger society much earlier. It wouldn't have taken a Civil Rights movement a hundred years later. But, as noted above, we can never know.
 
Bob001 said:
And was the South really treated harshly after the war? I don't think anybody was shot or hanged for treason
Click to expand...

The only person executed after the war was Henry Wirz (not for treason). You're right overall, though; the South wasn't treated harshly after the war. During the war was another matter, with much of its infrastructure destroyed.
 
Ian Osborne said:
The only person executed after the war was Henry Wirz (not for treason). You're right overall, though; the South wasn't treated harshly after the war. During the war was another matter, with much of its infrastructure destroyed.
Click to expand...

Almost correct, but Champ Ferguson was also executed for war crimes.
 
Bob001 said:
Lincoln was the subject of numerous assassination plots going back to before his first inaugural. I was assuming that Booth never got to Ford's Theatre, for whatever reason.

For the purposes of the question, I was assuming that Lincoln's governent would have supervised the education and training of freed slaves and would have enforced their rights, including the right to vote, and would have kept the South from establishing the Black Codes, the Jim Crow laws, blocking black voters, etc., not to mention prohibiting lynching. It's conceivable that some freed slaves might have continued to work on the plantations as free laborers earning fair wages.

I'm not so sure that giving land to the freed slaves would have been such a radical idea. That's where "40 acres and mule" came from. It was a serious proposal. Suppose freed slaves had been helped financially to settle in the western territories, like white homesteaders?

And was the South really treated harshly after the war? I don't think anybody was shot or hanged for treason, and only a few people went to jail, even then only for a short time. Jefferson Davis became a businessman in England. Robert E. Lee became a college president. Pres. Johnson issued two proclamations of amnesty and pardon. If the South was mad about anything, it was that it lost the ability to own human beings. But it didn't pay nearly the price it should have, or could have.

I'm thinking that if Lincoln's Reconstruction had been allowed to proceed, former slaves and their children would ultimately have been fully integrated into the larger society much earlier. It wouldn't have taken a Civil Rights movement a hundred years later. But, as noted above, we can never know.
Click to expand...

It's hard to say. It should be noted that during the early reconstruction years, a fair amount of progress toward civil rights was made. However, this was forced on the South along with a lot of punitive measures, which made the white southerners very resentful. How much a presumably more enlightened reconstruction policy under Lincoln would have changed this is uncertain.

However, in my mind what really sealed the disaster was the 1876 election, and the subsequent deal that Hayes made, where he ended Reconstruction in exchange for the Presidency. So you had about a decade of heavy handed reconstruction, which fueled a lot of resentment among white southerners, followed by the whole thing, along with any sort of civil rights protection for black people, being abandoned, and the white southern esablishment took all their resentment out on black people, with segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings, and all the other bad things that happened for the next several decades. I think it's very likely that Lincoln would have handled the early years of that better than Johnson, and maybe better than Grant. Would it have been enough better to make a difference? Hard to say.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom