Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (1809-????) was the sixteenth President of the United States.

Historical Figure
Abraham Lincoln of OTL was killed after the American Civil War by a southern zealot; the legend goes that his murderer, John Wilkes Booth, exclaimed upon murdering him the state motto of Virginia, Sic semper tyrannis ("Thus always to tyrants!") - the same words Frederick Douglass used in How Few Remain upon first crossing the river into Louisville in the wake of the US-troops in the second civil war.

Harry Turtledove used only slightly adapted original speeches of Lincoln in How Few Remain for Lincoln to rally the labourers in order to stress how likely this course of a surviving, defeated Lincoln would have been.

Since the 1960s, it is seen as possible or probable for Abraham Lincoln to also have suffered from Marfan syndrome due to the fact that he was much taller than most men of his day, with long limbs, an abnormally-shaped chest, and loose (lax) joints (based on written descriptions).

Lincoln in The Guns of the South
Lincoln remained in Washington even after the Federal military collapse in the face of Confederate AK-47s at the battle of Bealeton, Maryland. Upon the arrival of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, Lincoln invited the rebel commander into the White House to negotiate an armistice, ending major combat in what became the Second American Revolution.

He spent the lame-duck period between the armistice and the election attempting to gain favorable terms from the Confederacy in the final peace.

In the election of November, 1864, Lincoln was defeated by Horatio Seymour. After his term of office expired, he toured Missouri and Kentucky, agitating tirelessly in favor of the two disputed states remaining in the Union.

Following the post-war plebiscites (in which Missouri voteed to remain in the Union and Kentucky chose the Confederacy), Lincoln returned to obscurity in Illinois, practicing law, and growing old. Upon receiving news of the Richmond Massacre, in which Anna Lee was killed, he sents a telegram of condolence to his former enemy, Robert E. Lee, now president of Confederacy.

Lincoln in "Must and Shall"
Lincoln was killed by sniper fire when examining the walls around Washington, D.C.. He was succeeded by Hannibal Hamlin.

Lincoln in Southern Victory
Lincoln's election galvanized the Southern states who refused to accept the result of the election. Seven southern states seceded from the Union. These states fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Lincoln promised military retaliation, prompting another four states to join these seven. In 1862 they formed the Confederate States.

Lincoln's leadership during the War of Secession is widely criticized. One of the most frequent criticisms heard is that he allowed General George McClellan to remain in command of the Army of the Potomac even after he'd proven he was no match for his Confederate counterpart, Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia, during the Peninsula campaign in the spring of 1862.

McClellan was defeated by Lee at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania in the fall of 1862, and Lee was able to capture the city of Philadelphia. This prompted Britain and France to extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederate States. Lincoln himself was forced to do the same under threat of war delivered by British ambassador Lord Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons.

Lincoln was soundly defeated by Democrat Horatio Seymour in the 1864 election. Lincoln spent the next two decades travelling the country advocating workers' rights. He was not a particularly effective advocate because hatred of Lincoln was nearly universal, even among many members of his own Republican Party. However, on one such trip, he met a young man named Hosea Blackford, whom he inspired to enter politics. In 1928, Blackford was elected President of the United States.

When the Second Mexican War broke out, Lincoln was in Utah. He had several meetings with Mormon leader John Taylor. He was suspected of treason by Utah's military authorities, John Pope (who had a good deal of bad blood with Lincoln following Lincoln's sacking of Pope after Pope's defeat at the battle of Second Bull Run during the war of Secession) and George Custer. They were not allowed to execute him, but were allowed to exile him to his choice of Idaho or New Mexico.

Lincoln did not remain in exile for long. He travelled to Chicago, where, after one last attempt to convince Republican Party leaders to make workers' rights the central issue of their platform, he defected to the Socialist Party, effectively ending the Republican Party as a major force in American politics.

Lincoln is widely reviled in the US (and of course universally among Confederate whites). However, the Socialist Party, which became a major party because of liberal Republicans who followed him into its fold, takes a kinder view of Lincoln, and he is quite popular among Confederate blacks.

Hosea Blackford considered himself and his mentor to be the two greatest failures in the history of the US Presidency. In fact many historians consider James G. Blaine to have been the next-greatest failure after Lincoln. Nonetheless, Lincoln joins George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt as history's most memorable presidents--though of the four only Roosevelt is looked on in a positive light.

Those who blame Lincoln for the loss of the war do so unfairly. He was a strong and complex character who prosecuted the war to the best of his ability, though he was hampered in this by countless political grandstanders who worked at cross-purposes with him. If nothing else, he ended a period in US history in which the smaller South controlled the Federal government and left the Northern majority out in the cold--roughly the same dynamic as US-CS relations 1862-1914, but without the South having proven itself on the battlefield.