|View single post by Gettysburger|
|Posted: Sat Apr 14th, 2012 02:38 pm||
|Texas, you are right once again.
It was a sad day for the south when lincoln was killed. I hardly think that was immediately evident when the news was broadcast in most parts of the South!
But as the Radicals plans to change what Lincoln had wanted, which was "quick, easy and fair", southern sensibilities had to mourn the loss of the president that would have tried to reunify the south without making it suffer more than it already had.
A. Johnson was only on the ticket in '64 as an attempt to make Lincolns election a bit easier than it was in '60. He wasn't quite the politician Lincoln was and was immediately and deeply disliked as his successor.
But you can't really know what Congress would have done had Lincoln lived?
The Radicals were swept into power in 1866 and they would have blocked most of Lincoln's attempts to bring prosperity back to the south.
Like you said, the Radicals had a lot of enmity towards the southern leaders and politicians and I'm still surprised that Jeff Davis was allowed to live a long post war life.
I am pretty certain the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments would have been passed even more quickly with Lincoln as president during Reconstruction.