Hannibal Hamlin as President

Factual Questions
1

This was inspired by the 1864 Election post. Wondering how the Civil War might have turned out differently, suppose that Hamlin had been president? Although Lincoln was reviled left and right at the time, in hindsight it seems that he did an almost perfect job of handling a complex and delicate political balancing act.

In our history, Lincoln was warned of an assassination plot to kill him before the inauguration, and took a midnight train into DC through the heavily pro-slavery state of Maryland. Suppose he hadn’t, and had actually been killed, so that Hannibal Hamlin was the captain of the ship of state for those four years? Do we know enough about Hamlin to suppose how he might have handled the job? Might have made some crucial decisions differently?

2

Hamlin was known to be much more in the Radical Republican camp than Lincoln or Johnson was.

I believe that Hamlin would have been almost the polar opposite of Andrew Johnson. I don’t know enough to compare him to Lincoln.

3

Hamlin, as BobT pointed out, was a Radical Republican. Harry Turtledove, in his story Must and Shall, invented a history where Lincoln was killed in 1863 and President Hamlin enacted a much harsher policy towards the southern states after the civil war. The story is set in 1942, where the south is still occupied territory under martial law and the Axis is smuggling arms into New Orleans to aid the guerillas who still fighting.