Comcast News poased an interesting question: whether Abraham Lincoln might have survived his gunshot wound if he had had today’s trauma center and medical technology. This site just poses the basic question of whether he would have survived and what his capacities might be.
History buffs may have some opinions on what would have happened if President Lincoln had survived with his cognitive function completely intact. How might reconstruction under Lincoln have gone, for example, and might the civil rights of blacks have been recognized earlier than they were? I have no opinion on this, as I have not studied the reconstruction or the Lincoln years adequately. But some Dopers may be better versed and be able to offer a scenario. If you have a theory on this, please have at it.
It just a guess but I think Lincoln may have been easier and less radical in terms of the South during the start of Reconstruction. Lincoln saw his primary role as leader and protector of the concept of “The United States”. During the Civil War, his main goal was to restore unity and I doubt that he would have wanted to push controversial matters much further once unity was re-achieved. The Reconstruction era was an ugly period in the South was lots of opportunism all around. I think that Lincoln may have discouraged anything that disrupted the new peace and unity.
I can’t see Lincoln giving freed slaves special consideration any faster that it happened. Lincoln may have had some mildly liberal personal views about the role of blacks (for that time, not by today’s standards) but he was always fairly clear his job was to do whatever it took to get the nation put back together so focusing on black rights during that time wouldn’t have been his style.
Tragic as it was, Lincoln’s death protected his memory. If he had lived to carry out the rest of his second term, he would have been forced into the Reconstruction controversy. There was no perfect solution to that controversy - both sides were convinced they were right and both sides had some solid ground to base their claims on. In the end, one or both sides was going to lose.
In historical reality, it was Andrew Johnson and others who took the blame for the unsolvability of Reconstruction. Everybody invoked the late Lincoln and claimed he would have agreed with their position. So Lincoln, by being dead, got to be the one person everyone theoretically was in agreement with. A living Lincoln would have had to make choices and enemies.
That’s an interesting take. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but you have a good point.
I know Lincoln said that if he could preserve the Union without freeing any slave, he would have done so. But once the Union was preserved, do you think he might have been pro civil rights for blacks? Or would he have allowed the political chips to fall where they may?
IIRC that’s a selective quote, designed to make him look bad. I can’t find the original, but I believe the full quote was a letter where he talks about how it’s his duty as President to preserve the Union regardless of slavery, but his duty as a person to oppose it at every turn.
I think this thread proves my point. If Lincoln had lived and been President until 1868, either Shagnasty or Der Trihs (or both) would have a much lower opinion of him because of how he handled Reconstruction. But he died, so both of them can believe he would have done the right thing - even though they disagee on what the right thing was.
Here’s the letter, addressed to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1863, in response to Greeley’s editorial, “A Prayer For Twenty Millions”, which was published in the New York Tribune on August 20, which criticized Lincoln for being too lenient in the government’s enforcement of the Confiscation Act.
Otherwise (changing the scenario to where Lincoln’s bodyguard wasn’t getting drunk at the bar next door and shot Booth dead so that Lincoln wasn’t shot at all), the most immediate change would have been that Johnston would have had a far more lenient surrender (his cavalry privates would have been allowed to keep their horses and weapons, for example) so there’d have been a bit less bitterness there. He’d have probably tried to launch one of his relocation colonial projects for freed slaves to very limited results (most would not have had any interest in returning to Africa or South America) and failing that would probably have had a more pragmatic approach to the role of freed blacks in Reconstruction. (He would probably have heavily discouraged some progressions, howver: for example, he probably would have opposed blacks from Southern staes serving in state legislatures or in Congress initially, for example, knowing this would- as it did- have major resentment born consequences that would eradicate the positive changes it brought, though I can see him appointing Frederick Douglass or another educated black man to his cabinet in some capacity- I can also see him crushing the KKK swiftly and without due process but permanently and effectively in its infancy.)
I think Lincoln would have pardoned Jefferson Davis which would also have eased some hostility in America and abroad (the imprisonment of Jefferson Davis caused major international outrage- Pope Pius IX personally {i.e. with his own hands} made a crown of thorns and sent it to the Episcopalian Davis}). I can even see him offering Lee, possibly Davis, Stephens, Benjamin, and others Federal posts in Reconstruction since this would have been within his power.
There is a theory of medical thought that Lincoln would have died before or been in too poor health to seek reelection in 1868 due to Marfan Syndrome. Had he lived, there were no deaths or resignations from the SCotUS to get rid of powerful political “allied enemies” like he did with Chase so Stanton may have become a major problem.
It occurs: because of the theorized Marfan syndrome, it may actually have had as many consequences if Seward hadn’t been attacked by Payne. The scarring/constant pain/speech impediment he suffered for the rest of his life ended his presidential ambitions and probably shortened his life (Seward before and after). I can easily see Seward being Lincoln’s handpicked successor, and he was very dedicated to the cause of freed slaves (one of the staunchest abolitionists in the Cabinet who gave significant amounts of his own money [and financially supported Harriet Tubman in her later years] and a man who at one time despised but came to idolize Lincoln) and he was a truly visionary stateman (realizing the strategic and even mineral importance of Alaska, among many other things). Johnson, even had he not been hated, drunk, and eventually impeached, wasn’t much loved by Lincoln and would probably have fallen from favor.
The above should, more precisely, read “Seward arranged for the support of Harriet Tubman in her later years” as she outlived him by 40+ years. However, he sold her a house in his hometown of Auburn NY (on credit with very easy terms and 0 interest payments) and deeded her the property altogether in his will. His heirs later increased his bequests to her and she converted the sizeable house, in part with their further financial support and moreso from their political and social clout, into a self-sustaining home for indigent and elderly former slaves. (Upon occasion you’ll read that Harriet Tubman died in a home for the indigent, which is technically true- but it’s because it was a home she founded and was essentially what we would call ‘resident-manager’ of until she retired and became another much-respected resident; she was far from wealthy, but it was because she turned down fortunes in speaking engagements*, donated all she had to the poor, and preferred to live quietly.
*[HIJACK]Harriet Tubman hated her fame and lionization used it only for the good it could do for raising funds for her home and other freed-black causes. Among other factors, she was very self conscious about her illiteracy/lack of proper grammar, she had seizures (possibly cataplectic narcolepsy) due to a head wound caused by an overseer under slavery and this caused her frustration and embarassment (and probably contributed to her inability to learn reading after being freed), and then there was the actual danger factor- there were Southerners and Southern sympathizers out there who wanted her dead long after the war. She was the first woman to lead troops into battle in the U.S. and she knew how to use a pistol (I don’t believe she ever actually killed anybody with it unless it was in South Carolina during the war) but she definitely pointed it at the slaves she led when they wavered (which if it sounds harsh remember that one slave losing his/her nerve and going back to the plantation or getting caught could get the others killed and that Harriet had the equivalent of millions of dollars in today’s money in bounties on her head) and probably would have used it on a white slave hunter if need be, but even so she was one of the most truly Christlike individuals ever born in North America.
Had he lived through the fall of 1865, Lincoln would have recoiled in horror (as did all decent people) at the actions of the reconstituted Southern legislatures, elected in whites-only elections after the war. The new legislatures enacted “black codes” which, among other things, forbade African Americans from buying or even renting land, testifying in court, serving on juries, or owning firearms. Several states enacted “vagrancy” laws which provided that the children of unemployed persons could be hired out at auction. Alabama required similar punishment for “stubborn and refractory servants”.
We can best guess how Lincoln would have reacted by looking at how Republicans of similar views reacted (Lyman Trumbull, for example, or Justin Morrill). He would have supported the Fourteenth Amendment as a check on Southern white intransigence, and when the Southern states all but unanimously rejected it, he would have supported military Reconstruction.
With a supportive president in the White House, instead of Andrew Johnson, the biracial governments elected under military Reconstruction might have had a chance to succeed. One reason the biracial regimes were so weak and corrupt is that they were confronted, almost from the day they took office, by KKK and paramilitary resistance, which Andrew Johnson refused to use the Army to prevent.
So, had Lincoln lived, there is at least a chance that subsequent history would have been a lot better.
I agree with Freddy. Lincoln’s letter to Greeley reflects his innate political caution and his recognition that, for much of the Civil War, Northerners backed his military policy as a means of restoring the Union, and not for ending slavery. Public opinion in the North moved pretty steadily towards emancipation by 1865, though. Lincoln strongly backed the passage of the 13th Amendment, and would surely have backed the 14th as well when it became clear what Southerners were doing about, and to, freed slaves. In the last speech he gave before he died (Booth was in the crowd, and was outraged by it), Lincoln said he hoped that freed slaves would have an equal place in American life. He was in favor of black suffrage, particularly for black soldiers who’d served their country honorably.
Lincoln was vastly more politically skillful than Johnson, and had a visceral loathing of slavery that Johnson didn’t. Lincoln could have, and I’m convinced would have, handled Reconstruction far more adroitly than Johnson did, and that would have been a good thing for the U.S. all around.
Incidentally, Sampiro, Prof. Gabor Boritt, the Lincoln expert and author from Gettysburg College, was dismissive of the Marfan Syndrome theory when I asked him about it a few years ago. He thought it was a misapplied diagnosis, with nothing in the historical record to persuasively support it.
Thanks, Captain Amazing, for that letter. I had read it many yers ago, but I’m afraid my gray cells are topped off by quite a few gray hairs these days and don’t work as well as they once did.
Thanks also to everyone who has replied so far. This has been stimulating. When you’re taking history in school (now many years ago for me) you get one view – the teacher or professor’s. It’s interesting to see what others think.
Yeah, it’s only theorized- no way to prove or disprove without an autopsy. (Since his last descendant died a few years ago and his siblings had no children his closest living relatives are very distant cousins- Tom Hanks [a descendant of Lincoln’s maternal uncle] is one of the closest in fact- so DNA testing isn’t even possible.)
A fairly well known piece of trivia irrelevant to this thread is that of the 4 people in attendance that night (the Lincoln’s, Major Rathbone and his fiancee) two died of violence and two were confined to insane asylums. (Major Rathbone eventually married and later murdered his fiancee- incidentally, the book Manhunt paints a very unflattering portrait of the major’s actions that night.)
