Toggle sidebar

Lincoln Assassination Eyewitness

Sad day. Not only because a sitting President was killed, but because it saw the death of the only man who had the political clout to prevent the Radical Republicans from being a bunch of vindictive jerks to a defeated South. With Lincoln out of the way, President Johnson had too little wasta to hold the Radicals at bay. Subsequent history is a sad tale of vindictiveness, hatred and spite. The ultimate losers in that tale were African-Americans of the South.
 
Tidewater said:
Sad day. Not only because a sitting President was killed, but because it saw the death of the only man who had the political clout to prevent the Radical Republicans from being a bunch of vindictive jerks to a defeated South. With Lincoln out of the way, President Johnson had too little wasta to hold the Radicals at bay. Subsequent history is a sad tale of vindictiveness, hatred and spite. The ultimate losers in that tale were African-Americans of the South.
Click to expand...

TW, I always enjoy your posts for the history lessons and wisdom they contain, and this is a good example of that.

That's interesting and I've often wondered if we would ALL have a different country right now if Lincoln had lived. I realize there was resentment towards the South which was deep-seeded and would have been there even if he had lived, but I'm sure if he had lived he could have tempered that somewhat and this country as a whole would have been better for it.

But I also wonder - do you think it would have greatly altered what history would have said about him had he lived and had overseen Reconstruction and made sure the South hadn't endured so much vindictiveness and spite? Would history spin it that he was too soft on the South? Or would they have said he was a great, forgiving man who kept the country together during and after the war?
 
SavannahDare said:
Interesting.

I love the old ads/sponsorships for cigarettes and tobacco products. My, how far we've come.
Click to expand...

I've got a DVD copy of the original broadcast of the 1970 Sugar Bowl. The ads are the best part. Cigarette ads, Alka Seltzer ads, battery ads. And in those days, they didn't have nearly the commercial interruptions we have now.
 
RollTide2U said:
TW, I always enjoy your posts for the history lessons and wisdom they contain, and this is a good example of that.

That's interesting and I've often wondered if we would ALL have a different country right now if Lincoln had lived. I realize there was resentment towards the South which was deep-seeded and would have been there even if he had lived, but I'm sure if he had lived he could have tempered that somewhat and this country as a whole would have been better for it.

But I also wonder - do you think it would have greatly altered what history would have said about him had he lived and had overseen Reconstruction and made sure the South hadn't endured so much vindictiveness and spite? Would history spin it that he was too soft on the South? Or would they have said he was a great, forgiving man who kept the country together during and after the war?
Click to expand...
A lot of folks forget that Lincoln was born in the south (Kentucky), although he grew to adulthood in Indiana and Illinois.
Lincoln's guidance to General Weitzel in Richmond in April 1865 was "Let'em up easy." Not every Republican wanted to let the south off so easily.
Lincoln's death had two enormously important consequences.
1. It really ticked off a lot of northerners, and they blamed the south (even though nobody in the Confederate government had had anything to do with the assassination plot) and Booth had spent most of the war in the north.
2. It removed the greatest obstacle to a vindictive peace policy. Andrew Johnson was a pre-war Democrat and had no wasta with the GOP.

The resulting Republican Reconstruction policy expressly intended to ensure the "ascendancy of the Union (i.e. Republican) party." Thus arrests, property confiscations, US army-enforced disfranchisement of voters were all part of a policy to make the Republican party rule the south. The Episcopal Bishop of Alabama was arrested for failing to pray for the health of the US President, his churches closed and the Army supplied good (i.e. northern) pastors.

Had President Lincoln lived, I believe he would have had the clout to restrain the Radicals like Thaddeus Stevens, Edwin Stanton, Charles Sumner. Plus, the general population of the north would not have been so angry, they would have been in a more celebratory mood. Lincoln's murder changed all that.
 
Tidewater said:
Sad day. Not only because a sitting President was killed, but because it saw the death of the only man who had the political clout to prevent the Radical Republicans from being a bunch of vindictive jerks to a defeated South. With Lincoln out of the way, President Johnson had too little wasta to hold the Radicals at bay. Subsequent history is a sad tale of vindictiveness, hatred and spite. The ultimate losers in that tale were African-Americans of the South.
Click to expand...

Amazon: Counting Up, Counting Down
Harry Turtledove Wiki: Must and Shall

You might be interested in a story by Harry Turtledove entitled "Must and Shall," which posits a world where the North won the Civil War and rather than reconstructing the South, occupied and oppressed it for generations. Vindictiveness, hatred, and spite writ large.
 
Last edited:
cbi1972 said:
Amazon: Counting Up, Counting Down
Harry Turtledove Wiki: Must and Shall

You might be interested in a story by Harry Turtledove entitled "Must and Shall," which posits a world where the North won the Civil War and rather than reconstructing the South, occupied and oppressed it for generations. Vindictiveness, hatred, and spite writ large.
Click to expand...
You mean Reconstruction wasn't full of vindictiveness, hatred and spite? It could have been worse, but if it was, I would bet that the US would have been a lot like Ireland in the 1910s. There is a scene in the film Michael Collins (one of my favorite films, by the way), in which IRB fellows walk up to British G-men in Dublin, and blow them away, blow up police cars & raid police stations in the countryside. The south could have been a lot like that if the vindicto-meter had been dialed up a bit.
Turtledove has a penchant for painting the southerners in the Nazi camp, which is odd since southerners had more of an affinity for Brits than the northerners did.
Besides, who had Generals like Carl Schurz, Adolph von Steinwehr, Franz Siegel fighting for them? Who was the "ein volk, ein reich, ein Führer" crowd in 1865?
 
Last edited:
Tidewater said:
You mean Reconstruction wasn't full of vindictiveness, hatred and spite? It could have been worse, but if it was, I would bet that the US would have been a lot like Ireland in the 1910s. There is a scene in the film Michael Collins (one of my favorite films, by the way), in which IRB fellows walk up to British G-men in Dublin, and blow them away, blow up police cars & raid police stations in the countryside. The south could have been a lot like that if the vindicto-meter had been dialed up a bit.
Turtledove has a penchant for painting the southerners in the Nazi camp, which is odd since southerners had more of an affinity for Brits than the northerners did.
Besides, who had Generals like Carl Schurz, Adolph von Steinwehr, Franz Siegel fighting for them? Who was the "ein volk, ein reich, ein Führer" crowd in 1865?
Click to expand...
The person writing the literary critique on the Turtledove wiki page agrees with you.

Turtledove has described this situation as essentially Northern Ireland in North America. The South is for all intents and purposes an Occupied Territory. Though the Confederacy was destroyed as a political and military entity, it exists underground as a focus of loyalty for the Southern Whites. The Federal Government only count on the support of the black population.
Click to expand...

And true enough, the uprising quelled in the short story is backed by Nazis.
 
cbi1972 said:
The person writing the literary critique on the Turtledove wiki page agrees with you.



And true enough, the uprising quelled in the short story is backed by Nazis.
Click to expand...
One of the great ironies from the period was from Lieutenant General Richard Taylor, one of the last Confederates to surrender in May 1865. At the surrender in Citronelle, Alabama, a German officer had the chutspa to declare to Taylor that they (the Germans) would now teach Taylor what it meant to be an American.
Taylor expressed disappointment that his father (US President Zachary Taylor) had neglected to explain this to him during his lifetime.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Posts

Advertisement

Trending content

Advertisement

Latest threads

Top Bottom
Back