When I was growing up, it was common for history textbooks to make the statement that Lincoln’s assassination was a national tragedy largely because he could have reconciled the North and the South. The question for today is, is that really plausible?
Let me break that down into three more narrow questions, in descending order of importance:
- Would Lincoln have found it easier to work with Congress to create a viable Reconstruction program than President Johnson?
- Would Lincoln have been able to persuade Congress and the voters in the North to continue that program over the long haul?
- Would Lincoln have succeeded in persuading the citizens of the Confederacy to accept Reconstruction?
These are not difficult questions to answer. My responses are as follows:
- Clearly, yes. Given his responsibility for winning the war, Lincoln would have had far more credibility with the Radical Republicans than Johnson did.
- Issues with Reconstruction persisted long after Lincoln would have left office. It is implausible to suggest that the voters in the North would have supported a lengthy and expensive occupation, and contentious political change, for the indefinite future; if you don’t believe that, look at Iraq and Afghanistan. The answer to this question is no.
- Are you kidding? The South was being required to accept dramatic changes in its political and socio-economic systems after a bloody war of which Lincoln was, in their eyes, the personification. A few fine words about reconciliation weren’t going to make much of a difference.
The bottom line is that the strife associated with Reconstruction, and its ultimate shortcomings, were both inevitable, and would have occurred with or without Lincoln as President.