The Great Emancipator

The American Civil War caused a rupture in the country that has continued to reverberate throughout the rest of its history. But just as reverberating was the period that immediately followed the Civil War, Reconstruction, which last from 1865 until 1877 and saw several federal attempts to reform or restructure Southern government and society in a way that would either make up for the Civil War or ensure that it never happened again. Although a second civil war never occurred, the legacies of Reconstruction like institutional discrimination, sharecropping, and the creation of the Ku Klux Klan, continue to ripple through history to today. But this is just one world's version of Reconstruction. One that followed the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the presidency of Andrew Johnson, and the attempts by Ulysses S. Grant to keep the country together afterwards. What if Reconstruction had taken a different path? What if Lincoln hadn't been assassinated and lived to oversee Reconstruction? This timeline seeks to answer that question.

"Split in Twain"
An angry, young man rides toward his brother's house in New York City. Passionate and filled with anger at the world around him, the man tells the driver of his taxi to stop outside of his brother's house. The man's being there is dangerous, for just months before he was told never to return to this household again. The man walks up to the front door and angrily bangs on it until a servant appears. The servant tells the man to leave, "Mr. Booth would not take to your being here, sir." The man insists on seeing his brother, a loaded pistol burning a hole in his cloak pocket. The brother appears from a doorway upstairs, seaming with anger and stomping down his stairs, demanding to know why his brother has returned. "This," the man replies. He pulls out his pistol and fires, but misses his brother due to the intervention of the servant. The brother wrestles the gun from the man's hand, but he won't be subdued. Desperate, the brother takes a letter opener from a nearby drawer and stabs the man in his chest. He yells at the servant to find a police officer, hoping to save the man's life. But it is too late. The man slowly bleeds out and dies in his brother's foyer. The brother's name was Edwin and the angry, young man was John Wilkes Booth. Just months before arriving, Edwin had told John never to return to his New York residence over a political dispute. Edwin was an ardent Unionist, while his brother John was an avid supporter of the Confederacy with a heart full of spite for President Lincoln. Booth had hoped to make use of his anger in working for the Confederacy, but found himself and rejected and with nowhere to put his anger except with a bullet in his brother's heart. His plan foiled, the tragedy of the Booth brothers soon spread and became part of the larger national tragedy unfolding in 1864. Newspapers ran headlines decrying the "Bloody Demise of an Acting Family," with many drawing notice to the brother's renowned performance in Julius Caesar in which Edwin had played Brutus and John playing Marc Antony, just months before the tragedy. As the story spread, it inevitably reached Washington, D.C., where President Lincoln remarked on the tragedy: "It is devastating to see this awful war brought to a family's doorstep, leaving them split in twain. This accursed war knows no bounds and sees no end." The event was called a Shakespearean tragedy by many, but soon became just one of many in the larger tragedy of the American Civil War.

This was in October 1864. One month later, President Lincoln would find himself re-elected with Tennessee Senator Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as his running mate. Their ticket was a symbol of hope, a sign of reunification in what they hoped would soon be a reunified country. Five months later, on April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered himself and his command to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, bringing the country's bloodiest war to an effective close. On May 9, President Jefferson Davis officially surrendered the government of the Confederate States of America. The news led President Lincoln to officially declare an end to the war, and the next day to declare a period of military rule in the South for at least nine months. The day after that, on May 11, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, responded defiantly, and relocated himself and 1,200 of his remaining men to northern Alabama, promising insurrection until death. Four days later, on May 15, Abraham Lincoln called for a joint meeting of his Cabinet and Republican congressional leadership to discuss the issues facing the reintegration of the nation's southern states. Thus officially began the process of Reconstruction.

The Timeline

 * 1865-1869: The Lincoln Administration
 * 1869-1877: The Grant Administration