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Editor says, what if Abraham Lincoln had been the first Confederate President? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the July 2011 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1922, on this day seventy-nine year Bob Lincoln attended the dedication of the Washington Liberty Memorial built by Confederate engineers in honour of his father.
Deo Vindice
Under God, our VindicatorBorn in Hardin County, his father had been adopted by fellow Kentuckian family the Davises who then moved first to Louisiana and then finally to a plantation in northern Mississippi. Meanwhile his blood family moved across the Ohio River where they were lost to history. Only eight months apart in age, Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln would be as close as brothers for their adult lives.
By a cruel twist of fate, Senator Jefferson Davis was arrested in Washington City for gun running on the eve of the Civil War and in his absence, Lincoln was chosen to serve as first Confederate President. The irony was that the better connected and more aristocratic Davis was much more effective as Secretary of War than he could ever have been as President, and their balanced partnership was a key part of their national survival.
The Civil War ended shortly after the occupation of Maryland leaving the rump Union to go its own way with the capital restored to Philadelphia. Lincoln himself gained no benefit from the occupation, he was shot dead during a performance of "Our Confederate Cousin" at the Ford Theatre by Ulysses S. Grant, a discredited former Union General whose reputation had been destroyed by the disasterous Federal defeat at Vicksburg.
Vanquished on the battlefield, but not in spirit, the Union built their own memorial, a colossal, neoclassical sculpture of Thomas Jefferson standing astride New York Harbour.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, America, Washington, Liberty. Editor says, 1) Jeff Provine suggested that Ulysses S. Grant might fit the role of assassin.
2) "Under God, our Vindicator"was the Confederate Motto.
~ I think you mean standing _in_ New York Harbor...standing astraddle, it wouldn't stay up and would block the harbor for shipping. And Lincoln would have made a better POTCS than Davis ever would have; he could have jollied and dealt with the touchy, proud men that Davis offended.
~ Not to mention bullying the loose confederation into actually acting like a nation instead of a bunch of go-it-alone rebels
~ "Our" Jefferson Davis must be turning over in his grave. . . .
But if this Jefferson Davis had been arested for gun-running, how was he available to serve as CSA War Secretary? With civil war in the offing, he'd have faced charges of treason, and even if he beat that rp, the gun charges alone, in a wartime context, would surely have gotten him locked up at least for the duration of the conflict.
And would the Union really have built a huge monument to a Virginian? Even Jefferson?
~ I don't know. My favorite American Civil War WI has become, "What If when the southern states announced secession, the Union response had been 'don't let the border hit you in the ass on the way out,' though of course more diplomatically worded."
But yeah, Lincoln (if he had the same personality; he might not) would have been a better prez than Davis.
~ Wonder if the Union would further dissipate: New Englanders turning on the West, for example.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
