Page 40 - All About History - Issue 18-14

What if…

Abraham Lincoln

hadn’t been

assassinated?

UNITED STATES, 1865

Written by Dom Reseigh-Lincoln

What if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t been assassinated? stillgoingon.Manyhistoriansthereforetaketheviewthat
It’s a question that many historians – and many writers – have Lincoln’splanshouldbetakenwithagrainofsalt:hewas
PROFESSOR
pondered over since that fateful day in 1866. In short, had quitelikelydanglingitasacarrot,toinducesomeorallofthe
STEPHEN L CARTER
Stephen L Carter Lincolnsurvivedhisassassination(orifsomeoneelsehad states in rebellion to surrender. We don’t know for sure what
is a professor of
law, a newspaper been shot in his place, such as the original intended target, he would have done later.
columnist and Andrew Johnson) history would have certainly deviated. This plan had three essential elements. The best known
a best-selling
novelist. He However, Lincoln’s actions before and during the Civil War is probably the “ten per cent” rule, holding that a state in
currently teaches law at would have ultimately sealed his position as one of the most rebellion could be readmitted once ten per cent of its eligible
Stanford University’s Yale tenacious yet pragmatic politicians to have ever held office in voters foreswore the Confederacy and pledged allegiance
School of Law. His fifth
novel, The Impeachment Of the United States. to the Union. At that point, the state would be allowed to
Abraham Lincoln, follows an form a new government, create a constitution and send
alternative reality where the Had Lincoln lived, would there have been further representatives to Congress. Second, Lincoln promised to
iconic political figure must
defend his seat of office and attempts on his life? pardon all those who took part in the rebellion, apart from
his legacy against a seemingly From the records we have, it appears that most of the the high-ranking leaders. Third, he promised to protect private
inescapable political trap.
former leaders of the Confederacy, including many of the property other than slaves.
members of the planter aristocracy, were appalled at Lincoln’s This last point was particularly clever. It’s often forgotten
assassination. This was not, as some Southern apologists that slaves were owned mainly by the planter aristocracy. The
used to argue, because of some sense of honour, still less poor and working-class men who fought for the Confederacy
from a moral squeamishness. The leaders saw Lincoln, who were very unlikely to come from slaveholding families.
had so crushed them, as their best hope of holding off radical Throughout the South, resentment of the slave-holding class
demands for further punishment of the South. was considerable. This resentment helped the northwestern
Incidentally, some of Lincoln’s rivals did worry that he corner of Virginia to secede from the state during the war
might seek a third term in office, contrary to what was then (laying the foundation for the state of West Virginia), and
still the unbroken practice of US presidents. There were even might easily have led to secession (and return to the Union)
rumours that he planned to serve as president for life. How of the western hills of North Carolina, where poor farms were
these fears would have played out had he lived – or even plentiful and slaves were few.
whether he would have run again in 1868 – there is no way to
know [whether that would have happened]. Would Lincoln have been willing to compromise?
Lincoln was a wily politician – one of the best at the art of
What were Lincoln’s reconstruction plans for the horse-trading. Had he lived, he likely would have reached a
country after the Civil War had ended? compromise with the radicals. He preferred, as he liked to
Carter: Lincoln was somewhat cagey on his precise plan say, an oath in which a man would pledge to do no wrong
for reconstruction. He began publicly discussing how to hereafter (as opposed to an oath insisting he had never done
reconstruct the South in 1863 and 1864, while the war was wrong), but he also made it clear that he could live with the

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