“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these~It might have been!” Tennyson

It's history and it can't be changed...

After the war, after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, when the beaten Confederate soldiers made their way to their homes, what if Lincoln hadn’t been murdered, what kind of country might we have become?

You see, history isn’t about what might have been; history is simply what was…

I recall, we in the west laughed a lot at the Soviets attempt to re-write history. To wipe clean the slate of the old Russia and start all over again, brand spanking new.  It didn’t work well for them.  We made fun of them in our movies and television shows. Same in China under Mao. 

But Russian history remained what it was and so did Chinese history.  

And we can’t re-write our history either.  There was a war, not really about slavery. No matter what Negro Americans want to believe. They were simply a side issue. The war really was about States Rights and the rights of the individuals living in those states. No more, no less.

The ‘What if’ game is fun to play.  What if the South had won?  What kind of country would we have been?  Doesn’t matter!  Can’t change history.

And Lincoln. What if he hadn’t been murdered? How would it have been different?

We know a great deal about Abraham Lincoln from his speeches, his writings.  We know he was a compassionate man, a man deeply scarred by the horror of the war just finished, a war that he had never imagined lasting so long and costing so much in the way of human life.  

We know, or we think we know that Reconstruction under his leadership would have been different that what actually happened under Andrew Johnson, his successor.

Lincoln was a uniter, a compromiser, a man of Law who always strove for fair and balanced solutions to problems.  A man not given to doling out punishment to transgressors if it could be avoided.

Andrew Johnson was not Abraham Lincoln.  Andrew Johnson wanted to punish the south for their transgression. Reconstruction under Johnson was likened to standing over a beaten man and kicking him until you tired yourself out.  

The new president favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. His plans did not give protection to the former slaves, and he came into conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, and the House of Representatives impeached him. The first American president to be impeached, he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.

Johnson used an Obama tactic to implement his own form of Reconstruction – a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to re-form their civil governments. When Southern states returned many of their old leaders, and passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties, Congress refused to seat legislators from those states and advanced legislation to overrule the Southern actions. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Congress overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency. (Sound familiar) Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment which gave citizenship to former slaves. As the conflict between the branches of government grew, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act restricting Johnson's ability to fire Cabinet officials. When he persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he was impeached by the House of Representatives, and narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate and removal from office. 

 Although Johnson's ranking has fluctuated over time, he is generally considered among the worst American presidents for his opposition to federally guaranteed rights for Negro Americans. Seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Doesn’t really matter, does it?  It’s history. It’s done and can’t be changed!