President Schuyler Colfax?

[Aranfan]

The Assassination of Lincoln was also supposed to assasinate Vice-President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward. What if those other assassinations had succeed?

How would Reconstruction have unfolded with a Republican at the helm?

 

[Aranfan]

Really? No interest in a Reconstruction PoD?

 

[JSmith]

Well on an interesting note-the longest continous street in the United States is named after him
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_Avenue

Presumably there would be alot more if he was president.

 

[JSmith]

How would Reconstruction have unfolded with a Republican at the helm?

Alot better is my general thinking btw.

 

[katchen]

Well on an interesting note-the longest continous street in the United States is named after him
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_Avenue

Presumably there would be alot more if he was president.

I know. I grew up a block away from it.

 

[Mikestone8]

'Scuse please, but how is Colfax supposed to become POTUS? Do they nominate him in 1868 instead of Grant?

If so it makes little difference to Reconstruction, as its broad outlines are already a fait accompli before March 1869 - too late for Colfax to make more than a very minor difference.

 

[Nofix]

'Scuse please, but how is Colfax supposed to become POTUS? Do they nominate him in 1868 instead of Grant?

If so it makes little difference to Reconstruction, as its broad outlines are already a fait accompli before March 1869 - too late for Colfax to make more than a very minor difference.

Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward all die, but the next in line would have actually been the Senate President Pro Tem, not the Speaker of the House, I believe that was how the law went in 1865.

 

[Mikestone8]

Indeed, and even had it been otherwise, Colfax wouldn't have benefited because he wasn't Speaker in April 1865. He had been until March 4, and when the 39th Congress met in December it would make him Speaker again, but during the intervening nine months the Speakership was vacant.

In any case, however, the problem was never likely to arise, as the President of the Senate, Lafayette Foster, was at his home in Norwich, Connecticut, where the Booth conspirators had no realistic chance to harm him. When he returned to Washington after the assassination, he was given a massive military escort.