The President Survives

Hey, how are you doing? Hopefully you are having a good day. Anyways, welcome to The President Survives. The President Survives is an alternate history timeline that deals with the implications of President Abraham Lincoln surviving his assassination on April 14, 1865, which in OTL resulted in the President's death. How would Reconstruction have gone? What rights would freed slaves be given? Would the situation end up being better or worse than in OTL? This timeline explores these questions and many more.

Point of Divergence
It's the night of April 14, 1865. The Civil War had come to a close five days earlier with the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at the McLean House. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and friends Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris are viewing the play Our American Cousin in Ford's Theater, a theater in the city of Washington, D.C.

Suddenly, the door to the Presidential Box swung open. In walked John Wilkes Booth, a well-known stage actor who had met the President prior to the assassination attempt. Initially going unnoticed, he cocked his derringer, aimed it at Lincoln's head, and pulled the trigger. But in an occurence that many felt could be nothing but a miracle, the weapon did not fire. Booth proceeded to pull out a dagger, which he used to stab Lincoln in the back of the head repeatedly. After hearing the President let out a yell, Rathbone jumped from his seat and struggled with Booth, who stabbed Rathbone in the left forearm with his dagger. Believing the President to be dead, Booth jumped onto the stage and shouted a word that many interpreted to be the Latin phrase "Sic semper tyrannis"! ("Thus always to tyrants"! in English), the Virginia state motto.