What if abraham lincoln wasnt assassinated

He would recover after Powell pistol-whipped him. Foster only remained in the Senate for another two years, failing in a re-election attempt. He was later a judge in his home state until his death in Foster dropped out at the last moment to accept a judge's position in the state.

And what would have happened in the special presidential election of November ? The Republican Party was already split between its Radical and Moderate wings. General Grant may have run for president as a compromise candidate, but other prominent Republicans included Seward, Colfax, Thaddeus Stevens, and Benjamin Wade.

The Democrats were also divided and had been badly beaten in the presidential campaign. Pendleton, the vice presidential nominee. General Winfield Scott Hancock had presidential ambitions in later years, and he had personally supervised the executions in the Lincoln assassination case. He remains both an inspiration and an aspiration. But what if Booth had misfired on that April evening at Ford's Theatre? What if Lincoln had lived to lead? Would we still be exalting him as the greatest American president?

In a word, yes. And the same period would have tested even the politically savvy and sensitive Lincoln. But unlike Johnson, Lincoln had already sealed a preeminent reputation. Lithograph commemorating president Abraham-Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the Confederate states, As he was signing the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, , Lincoln had confided to eyewitnesses at the scene: "If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act.

Read More. And he was right. Black freedom, along with solidifying national authority and making the union permanent and powerful, would have stood as legacy achievements even if peacetime unity had unraveled during a second Lincoln administration.

That said, Lincoln would have been required to summon all his skills of persuasion to forge what he called, in the inaugural address he delivered just six weeks before his death, "a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Had Lincoln lived, the punitive Republican supermajority in Congress would have been just as reluctant to readmit Democratic Southerners to their pre-war seats, just as determined to disenfranchise Southern whites as they enfranchised Southern blacks. It's of course impossible to predict whether Lincoln's survival might have meant a cleaner path to reunion and reconciliation, and toward the truly equal biracial society that has eluded us ever since. One thing is certain: In what proved to be his final speech three evenings before his death, Lincoln had become the first president ever to support black voting.

John Wilkes Booth, who lurked on the White House lawn that night as Lincoln spoke from a second-floor window, muttered, "That means nr equality. That's the last speech he'll ever make. We should take Lincoln at his word. He would have fought for and perhaps secured black voting rights in the postwar North and South. Photos: Remembering Lincoln's assassination.

The never-ending demands of leading the country during the Civil War had clearly taken their toll on Lincoln when this "cracked plate" photograph by Alexander Gardner was taken in February , two months before the assassination. It's important to note that during his presidency, Lincoln was not universally loved, even in the North.

But his death made him a martyr. Hide Caption. Officials at Ford's Theatre readily acknowledge that visitors are drawn to the assassination site to learn more about what transpired that evening. But the officials try to make the focus more on Lincoln's legacy, his policies and his leadership. They also point out that the President loved the theater, traveling from the White House occasionally during his time in office.

Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris. He fired the fatal shot during laughter for the line "Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal -- you sockdologizing old man-trap.

Booth used this single-shot. Still, "we felt we couldn't do this without the derringer. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has partnered with Ford's Theatre to display through May 25 the carriage in which the Lincolns and their guests rode on April 14, The carriage is on loan from the Studebaker National Museum.

The open barouche model was built by Wood Brothers in and presented to the President by a group of New York merchants shortly before Lincoln's second inauguration. But the actor changed his mind after Lee's surrender. Was Mary Surratt part of the conspiracy?

Surratt was a Southern sympathizer who had owned land with her late husband in Maryland. She also owned a home in Washington that was also used as a boarding house, and she was friends with Booth. She also rented a tavern she owned in Maryland to an innkeeper. Surratt was with Booth on the day of the assassination, and she allegedly had told the innkeeper to get a pair of guns ready that night for visitors.

What was controversial was the decision to hang Surratt — a decision personally approved by President Andrew Johnson. Toggle navigation. Where was General Grant? Where was the Secret Service? How did Booth stay in hiding for so long? The original plan was to kidnap Lincoln, not kill him Booth met with his conspirators in March and came up with a plan to kidnap Lincoln as he returned from a play at the Campbell Hospital on March