Do you think the Reconstruction would have been different if Abraham Lincoln had survived his assassination?

racefortheironthrone:

Yes, but not in the way that most people think. 

Ok, apparently my gnomic utterance confused people. 

All too often, when people ask about how Lincoln would have done Reconstruction differently, they’ve usually operating under the false assumption that it would have meant a more “lenient” Reconstruction and that the real problem with Reconstruction was those extremist Radical Republicans punishing the South by…giving black people and poor whites voting rights, establishing public schools and hospitals, making the tax system more progressive, and investing in infrastructure. (The horrors!)

But the reality is that Lincoln was replaced by Johnson, whose policy was to pardon the Confederate leadership, let the South pass Black Codes that tried to re-establish slavery in all but name, and obstruct Congress to the point where they impeached him, so that’s what would have been avoided had Lincoln lived.

As scholars like Eric Foner have pointed out, Lincoln’s Reconstruction policies were extremely flexible and largely aimed at trying to end the war quickly by enticing the Confederates to surrender already. So while Lincoln did fight with the Radicals over the Wade-Davis Bill, he also worked with Radicals to establish the Freedman’s Bureau and pass the 13th Amendment, and he was moving in the direction of black suffrage, another point where he had common ground with the Radicals.

I think this phenomenon would have continued in a second Lincoln administration, with him backing some Radical measures and opposing others, and changing his positions as facts on the ground changed (the Black Codes, the emergence of the Klan, etc.); likewise, I think Radical policies and politics would be quite different if they didn’t have to deal with Andrew Johnson vetoing everything they did.