Thank you, Bill. That interpretation makes more sense to me and is more in line with the wheeling and dealing of politics -- which is what may have made Lincoln slow in dealing with other matters. And I don't include the firing on Sumter in that statement because I'm one of those renegades who thinks Lincoln plotted to get the South to fire first.

(08-13-2014 10:54 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  But Lloyd Lewis is a great read in CW and Recon. He thinks outside the box.

(02-12-2016 04:24 PM)Wild Bill Wrote:  Laurie, try these:
For ideas as to what a Lincolnian Reconstruction might have entailed or actually did entail, depending on one's viewpoint, see Lloyd Lewis, “If Lincoln Had Lived,” in Edward Wagenknecht (ed), Abraham Lincoln: His Life, Work, and Character (New York: Creative Press, 1947), 533-40;

(02-16-2016 10:03 AM)L Verge Wrote:  This is what frustrates me about Lincoln and Reconstruction. With his talent for words and his political skills, I just can't believe that he was heading into restoring the Union with no key points on paper.

Laurie, long ago Rob Wick sent me the text of Lloyd Lewis' address entitled "If Lincoln Had Lived." I sure agree with Bill that Lewis thought outside the box as Lewis suggested Lincoln may possibly have succeeded in Reconstruction by forming a new political party. Lewis said:

"If Lincoln had lived, he would, I think, have found it impossible to do anything but form a political party based on reunion of the Southern planter and the Northern farmer. To have triumphed with his Reconstruction plans he would have either to read the Black Republican faction out of his party or to form a new conservative party by uniting the anti-Radical Republicans and the Democrats. There is reason for imagining that such a party would have been successful."

The entire Lloyd Lewis' address can be read here. The speculation on a new political party begins on p. 28. But if Lewis' guess were really in Lincoln's mind it might explain why he was holding off and had no "set in stone" points written down in April of 1865.(?)

(02-16-2016 12:13 PM)Thomas Kearney Wrote:  All in favor for making Gene the symposium jukebox say "I".

Thank you, and of coarse the reminds me of a song
(you had to know this was coming)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMiEFyTuuh8

(02-16-2016 04:42 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(08-13-2014 10:54 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  But Lloyd Lewis is a great read in CW and Recon. He thinks outside the box.

(02-12-2016 04:24 PM)Wild Bill Wrote:  Laurie, try these:
For ideas as to what a Lincolnian Reconstruction might have entailed or actually did entail, depending on one's viewpoint, see Lloyd Lewis, “If Lincoln Had Lived,” in Edward Wagenknecht (ed), Abraham Lincoln: His Life, Work, and Character (New York: Creative Press, 1947), 533-40;

(02-16-2016 10:03 AM)L Verge Wrote:  This is what frustrates me about Lincoln and Reconstruction. With his talent for words and his political skills, I just can't believe that he was heading into restoring the Union with no key points on paper.

Laurie, long ago Rob Wick sent me the text of Lloyd Lewis' address entitled "If Lincoln Had Lived." I sure agree with Bill that Lewis thought outside the box as Lewis suggested Lincoln may possibly have succeeded in Reconstruction by forming a new political party. Lewis said:

"If Lincoln had lived, he would, I think, have found it impossible to do anything but form a political party based on reunion of the Southern planter and the Northern farmer. To have triumphed with his Reconstruction plans he would have either to read the Black Republican faction out of his party or to form a new conservative party by uniting the anti-Radical Republicans and the Democrats. There is reason for imagining that such a party would have been successful."

The entire Lloyd Lewis' address can be read here. The speculation on a new political party begins on p. 28. But if Lewis' guess were really in Lincoln's mind it might explain why he was holding off and had no "set in stone" points written down in April of 1865.(?)

Thanks, guys. Isn't this what the renaming of the Republican Party was all about at the Baltimore Convention in 1864? It became the National Union Party, and Lincoln was renominated, causing the convention's temporary chairman, Robert Jefferson Breckinridge of Kentucky, to explain that he could support Lincoln on this new ticket because:

"As a Union party I will follow you to the ends of the earth, and to the gates of death. But as an Abolition party, as a Republican party, as a Whig party, as a Democratic party, as an American [Know-Nothing] party, I will not follow you one foot."

Very interesting Lloyd Lewis article suffers from the usual defects of "the Getting right with Lincoln" syndrome that assumes Lincoln shared the views of whoever was admiring him at the moment.

Whatever our views of what we think Lincoln would have done on reconstruction, I find it incredible that Abraham Lincoln,whose earliest political hero was Henry Clay, would have abandoned Clay's American System, whose tenets Lincoln and the Republican party did so much to carry out during the war. He was too shrewd to abandon constituencies who followed him for his then advanced views on race in the hope that people whom he had waged war upon would support him.

The T Harry Williams speculation supplied by Bill is interesting. We can only wonder if Lincoln contemplated pulling off what FDR achieved:the simultaneous support of both Blacks and Southern whites,

Tom

(02-16-2016 08:45 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(02-16-2016 12:13 PM)Thomas Kearney Wrote:  All in favor for making Gene the symposium jukebox say "I".

Thank you, and of coarse the reminds me of a song
(you had to know this was coming)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMiEFyTuuh8

Never gets old!