Conference smurf::civil_war

    Lincoln was a very controversial leader.  He was hated in some quarters
    and loved in others.  Even his own cabinet members schemed more than
    once to subvert his policies or worse.  He would have had the favor of
    many people behind him, but politicians being what they are, his
    political agenda would have been subject to a great deal of bitter
    infighting.
    
    He was also probably the cleverest, most savvy and people-smart
    politician who ever came down the pike in the U.S.  It's inconceivable
    that he would have allowed something he didn't want to happen, and I
    personally feel that he was, what is almost the antithesis of a
    politician, an honorable man.  I don't think the man who suspended
    habeas corpus would have tolerated the unethical and inhuman abuses of
    Reconstruction once he didn't ahve to struggle to keep the country from
    falling apart.
    
    I think he might very well have changed the entire course of racial
    relations in the Western world - what happened in South Africa could
    not have happened nearly as easily in the face of what Lincoln would
    have done in the U.S.
    
    -dick

    I personally think that many of the racial problems wouldn't occur
    today.  Partly because I think many of the issues of race would have
    been dealt with sooner.  Also many of the black politicians would not
    have been ousted out of office.  After the Civil War and during
    Reconstruction, many blacks were elected to political office for the
    first time.  But due to the machinations of white politicians, they
    were forced out of office and segregation was forced upon the blacks
    which resulted in less political power for blacks.

    
    There are limits on what any man can do, even a great one. Actually,
    I believe the effects of a 2nd or even 3rd term would be greater
    because of breaking the chain of presidents as we've known them than
    what he could have done during those terms. I doubt he'd have lasted
    a 3rd term anyway. Photos I've seen show me one TIRED man. Preserving
    the Union through four terrible years of civil war must have drained
    him severely. A kinder, gentler Reconstruction? Maybe. Better race
    relations today? I think that would be too big an order. All-in-all, 
    I think when he was killed he was at his peak.
    
    Tom   
    

    
    This is a fascinating question ..... it is certainly true that 
    Lincoln would probably not have fallen out with Congress as
    Andrew Johnson did, and the South would probably have escaped 
    the full rigours of Congressional Reconstruction.
    
    However, in pursuing a unity of approach, Lincoln would 
    undoubtedly have compromised with the Radicals in Congress
    (Stevens, Sumner etc.) so that Reconstruction would have been
    more stringent than Johnson wished, and would probably have
    been more effective.
    
    One thing stands out starkly from the Reconstruction era:
    The South was more determined to preserve racial inequality
    and to struggle for State's Rights within the Constitution
    than it ever was to fight for the Confederacy outside the
    Constitution. Whether Lincoln would have stayed in office
    long enough to overcome the South's resistance is doubtful.
    
    After the Civil War the pendulum had swung in favour of the
    blacks, however when one considers the ambivalence with 
    which Northerners viewed Negros, it was inevitable that the
    pendulum would swing back somewhat - to what degree depended
    on how far the North was prepared to go to defend Negro
    rights. Lincoln would probably have been a major voice in
    support of the Negro, but it must be pointed that he was
    essentially a moderate, and that as a politician, he lived
    by compromise.
    
    Thus I conclude that if Lincoln had lived, the USA might
    have been spared some of the terrible bitterness that
    pervaded the Reconstruction era, however I do not believe that
    subsequent history would have been essentially different.
    The Civil War was also a Revolution, which are never
    kind to those who live through them and particularly to 
    those who try to lead them in moderate directions.
    
    Toby

    I agree that the reconstruction period might have been a little kinder
    and gentler....but beyond that not much difference, especially in the
    area of race relations.  Lincoln was no big supporter of the Blacks.
    As I recall he supported a plan to move them out of the country, either
    back to Africa and/or to Central America.

    
    To clarify the previous note, Lincoln did support colonisation for
    blacks, but not on an involuntary basis i.e. he preferred blacks
    to leave under their own volition, and he never went to great lengths
    to advocate the encouragement of colonisation. He had no racial
    feeling himself, but could not understand why blacks would stay
    in a country where they were the brunt of such hatred and misery.
    Thus his view on colonisation came from his opinion on what was
    best for blacks, not for whites.
    
    The tragedy of Reconstruction was that the South was so opposed
    to equality that the North could either choose to struggle maybe
    for years against a determined people, a course which could only
    end in the re-occupation of some of the states (local forces
    could not combat such organisations as the Klu Klux Klan without
    Federal support), or give up the Blacks to be at the mercy of 
    the former Confederates. In the 1870's, there could be no doubt
    as to the course chosen by a weary North, now beset by economic
    depression.
    
    At this point, Lincoln's presidency would have been at an end anyway.
    One can only wonder what he might have thought of the "new birth of 
    freedom" he believed the North had fought for. It was true that
    the North had saved the Union and destroyed slavery, but the South
    had fought a strong rearguard action and won a victory for States'
    Rights and Racial Inequality in 1876.
    
    I must add that many of the "Redeemer" governments (like that of
    Wade Hampton in South Carolina) were not as totally racist as
    some of their successors, even up to the 1960s. True segregation
    became the norm from the rise of Populism in the 1890 period -
    but that's another story.
    
    Toby

   What would you do if your 93-year-old mother wanted to sleep on the floor?

   [paraphrased from Paul Harvey's Rest of the Story, errors mine]

   Martha Ellen Young thought the Civil War was very uncivil. As a 9-year-old
   girl in Missouri, her family's farm was raided 5 times by Union troops
   and their livestock killed, sometimes just for sport. A Union general
   ordered that the property of most people in several counties be confiscated,
   and although her father had signed a loyalty oath to the Union, she was
   sent to a concentration camp far from home near Kansas City.

   Over 80 years later, she went to visit her son Harry's new digs in
   Washington, D.C. He offered her the finest accommodations in the place,
   the Lincoln bed in the Lincoln bedroom, but she said she'd rather sleep
   on the floor!  [I don't know if she did]

    I'd let her sleep on the floor.  :-)  But I'd offer a pallet to keep
    her back from getting thrown out.
    
    But, on the other hand, I'd point out that it is a refusal to let
    bygones be bygones that is responsible for the vast majority of strife
    in the world today.