If Lincoln had not died

[Thomas Thorne]

Wild Bill's post # 19 is the best he has ever written.

I see a certain convergence between the views of Wild Bill,Sean Wilentz and myself, the oddest of odd bedfellows, rejecting the notion of Lincoln's "pro Confederate" policy of reconstruction which if pursued by Lincoln, would have produced for Lincoln the same fate as Andrew Johnson-repudiation and impeachment by his own party.

Lincoln's last speech enraged JWB for its espousal of Black suffrage. I find it inconceivable that Lincoln would not have shared the Republican outrage over the post-war Black Codes which reduced the freedmen to virtual slavery. I agree with Eric Mckitrick's surmise in "Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction" that Pres. Lincoln, unlike AJ, would have informed the defeated South that the Black codes were utterly unacceptable to the victorious North. Mckitrick made interesting comparisons between the actions of a defeated Japan which in 1945 adopted democracy because the victorious occupying power,the USA,demanded it do so and the defeated South. Andrew Johnson had no problems with the Black Codes. Johnson's silence misled the White South into believing that such practices were acceptable to the North.

Unlike Johnson, Abraham Lincoln was perhaps,with the possible exception of FDR, the most accomplished driver of the political stagecoach of fractious politicians of all our presidents. What made the Spielberg "Lincoln" so fascinating was its celebration of Lincoln as politician so foreign to our folklore depiction of Lincoln and ingrained distrust of politicians. Would Lincoln have been impeached by his own party? Will Madonna become a nun?

Happy New Year to you all. Let's have a great 2013 forum.
Tom