Questions About John Brown

[L Verge]

(02-16-2016 03:42 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(08-13-2014 09:54 AM)Wild Bill Wrote:  But Lloyd Lewis is a great read in CW and Recon. He thinks outside the box.

(02-12-2016 03:24 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 09:03 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."