Abraham Lincoln was the first National Unionist President of the United States of America having previously been Republican during the 1860 Presidential election. He was nominated by the National Union Party with former Democrat Andrew Johnson as the Vice Presidential candidate. In the 1864 election he became the first National Unionist president and saw the Union through the Civil War and on into reconstruction.
Biography[]
1864 Presidential Election[]
Nomination[]
"I am very grateful for the renewed confidence which has been accorded to me, both by the convention and by the National [Union] League. I am not insensible at all to the personal compliment there is in this; yet I do not allow myself to believe that any but a small portion of it is to be appropriated as a personal compliment. The convention and the nation, I am assured, are alike animated by a higher view of the interests of the country for the present and the great future, and that part I am entitled to appropriate as a compliment is only that part which I may lay hold of as being the opinion of the convention and of the League, that I am not entirely unworthy to be instructed with the place I have occupied for the last three years. I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that "it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams." [1]
Inauguration[]
"Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3000 years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether". With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." [2]
Reconstruction[]
(Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction was the Ten Percent Plan which was supported by Moderate Republicans and War Democrats yet opposed by Radical Republicans prior to the 1864 election. The plan was lenient in that a state had to follow through with the Emancipation Proclamation which declared all slaves in the rebel states to be freed. While this process is ongoing the state would draft and approve a new Unionist government for their state [by 1864 Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana had already gotten that far in the process]. Once drafted the state would hold a vote where in if at least 10% of the 1860 voting population voted to join the Union the state would be re-admitted. Lincoln assured the inhabitants of the Confederate States - the states in rebellion - that their land but not their slaves would be protected property as many feared that as the Radical Republicans proposed their land would be redistributed to the freedmen. The Radical Republicans felt the plan to be too lenient and in OTL after Lincoln's assassination the Radicals dismantled his plan. In this timeline Lincoln's plan carries through; he had prior to his death in OTL vetoed the Radical's counter proposal. Lincoln's plan called for the Freedman's Bureau to last one year with the intent of fostering an employer/employee relationship between planters and their former slaves while also preparing newly freedmen for the life of a full citizen of the United States - teaching them how to read, registering marriages, etc with the idea that with money earned working the plantations they'll eventually purchase their own land as freedmen. In OTL the Freedman's Bureau faced the challenge of Black Codes and its existence had to be extended beyond the original one year. Radical Republicans where weary of the plan due in part to how short a time this Bureau was to be active as they felt the president strongly over estimated how quickly the newly freedmen would be capable of learning. They feared that after that year the Planter Aristocracy would return to power and undo the progress made. They also feared that the situation would continue to tie the families of former slaves to planter land as such plantations would offer the most readily available source of income to the newly freedmen. They believed that in such a situation the freedmen and their families would be unlikely to want to move to their own lands and thus continue to be tied to Planter lands while Northern Democrats feared that the freedmen would take factory work from Northerners in a massive migration North. Free Soilers, whom Lincoln had formerly been associated with, believed that freedmen could be given incentives to migrate west and that such a program would diminish the concerns of Northern Democrats. In regards to voting rights Lincoln shared a belief expressed by Frederick Douglas- that educated freemen should vote. That only someone who can read can be an informed voter. As such certain laws known in OTL as 'Jim Crow' laws will still come to pass. This will cause Abraham to, as he did when vetoing the Radical Republican Reconstruction plan, be at odds with the radicals in his 2nd term due to this moderate approach. In OTL laws passed during reconstruction regarding reading, and writing are seen as the work of those not wanting blacks to vote despite the fact that such laws applied to whites and men of color meaning that under them an uneducated white would be unable to vote. The real victim though perhaps not the intended target of those laws regarding voters having to be able to read and write are the uneducated- typically the poor as the US in that era did not have a public education system. As with Louisiana the wealthy and educated Afro population will enjoy the right to vote along side the white population capable of reading).
Source Citation[]
- Abraham Lincoln (June 27, 1864). "Letter Accepting the Presidential Nomination." Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
- Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings (Library of America edition, 2009) p 45