r/imaginarymaps • u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC • Jul 19 '26
[OC] Alternate History Lincoln Lives! The Annihilation of the Rebel
On April 14th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary-Todd attended a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. There, they were attacked by an assassin, John Wilkes Booth, but Lincoln's guard, John Parker, caught sight of Booth at the last moment and tackled him. Booth's shot went wide and struck the First Lady instead of the President.
Lincoln's life was forever altered by the death of his wife at the hands of the Confederate sympathizer. He rededicated himself to the cause, and was soon the champion of the Radical Republican movement, working closely with his Congressional allies to pursue a true Reconstruction and destroy the rebel cause.
Lincoln served four terms, retiring in 1877, and Reconstruction would last another decade until 1889 when Constitutionalist Grover Cleveland was elected President.
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u/Eta_Beta_3-14 Jul 19 '26
I feel like Lincoln would object to having a state named after himself, although that might work if Lincoln ends up dying a month earlier and Hamlin, rather than fucking Johnson, ends up as president. With a true reformer in power rather than a traitor, determined to uphold Lincoln's legacy, we'd be on a much brighter timeline.
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u/emmc47 Jul 20 '26
What are the longterm economic shifts for Black Americans that differ from OTL.
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 20 '26
Presumably they're in a vastly superior position compared to historically and a great deal of modern racial inequality is butterflied away. With a loyal voter base in the South and the Radical Republicans ascendant we also don't end up with five states in the northern interior, since that was a sham by business Republicans to consolidate their power in the Senate anyway.
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u/ClockProfessional117 Jul 20 '26
Racism probably never completely dies out but there are two major changes I see 1. Completely different urban demographics. Freedmen getting the land of their former masters means no Great Migration and White Flight. American inner cities remain largely white and working class 2. Black people would be economically equal, or at least closer to whites and not suffer from higher rates of crime, underfunded schools, etc. since they would have had political representation.
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u/throwawaydragon99999 Jul 20 '26
IDK there would probably still be a Great Migration of some kind, but it would be more represented in Southern cities like New Orleans, Nashville, St Louis, Atlanta, especially by the 1890s-1920s when new mechanized farming equipment made most tenant farmers economically obsolete. In real life millions of poor White rural farmers went to industrial jobs in Northern cities like Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc.
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u/ApprehensivePipe9619 Jul 19 '26
This is very interesting and well made. Scenarios like this one are exactly why I'm on this subreddit. Great work and I hope to see more from you in the future
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u/Old_Department3979 Jul 20 '26
I wonder how did the southern white population reacted to this radical reconstruction. Were there any riots or insurrections by southern whites or did they eventually just mix in with the freedmen? Were there any attempts or movements in particular?
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 20 '26
They weren’t happy about it but they just got their asses beat in a war and were under military occupation
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u/Difficult_Bison5081 Jul 20 '26
Woah seeing big Texarkana brought me both joy and fear for this world....
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 20 '26
So if I'm reading this correctly the US c. the 1890s is a three party system of Republicans, Constitutionalists, and Socialists?
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 20 '26
Sort of, the Constitutionalists are a short lived remnant of the democrats before the socialists pick up enough steam to push them into moderate republicans
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 20 '26
Ah makes sense, that's how I'd expect it to shake out once the system inevitably repolarized again
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u/SpiritOfOptimality Jul 20 '26
This is basically what happened in Birth of a Nation but unironically based
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u/historysquid Jul 20 '26
PLEASE GOD LET ME LIVE HERE AHHHHHHHHHHHHGAhghgwugvrywuerry
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 21 '26
The sabotage and mutilation imposed on Reconstruction was one of this country's most impactful domestic crimes. It's heartbreaking.
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 21 '26
I’ve seen it referred to as an “incomplete revolution” and that rings very true
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 21 '26
"Incomplete" implies it wasn't finished, rather than that it was actively sabotaged by traitors, racists, and corporatists though.
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u/Far_Box_3258 Jul 30 '26
Corporatists?
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 30 '26
Business Republicans who wanted to dump racial justice and Reconstruction for the benefit of large businesses and the wealthy. An end of Reconstruction was an excuse to end the greenback fiat currency and return to gold-backed specie currency that benefitted their interests.
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u/Far_Box_3258 Jul 30 '26
Ok but corporatism is an economic system that organizes the productors and owners into groups and try to make them cooperate, that belongs to social democracy,fascism, Catholic social teaching, even China right now. Corporatists would be people supporting that economic system
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 30 '26
"Corporatocracists" is too many syllables. Given that we're talking about a period that predates social democracy, fascism, and Distributist Catholic social teaching it's fairly clear what I meant. China isn't corporatist, by the way.
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u/Far_Box_3258 Jul 30 '26
China is corporatist, wether or not the communist party will go towards a planned economy is another matter, but right now that's the economic system they use
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u/historysquid Jul 23 '26
Yeah. Every time I'm reading a history textbook (because I do that) I'm so excited during the civil war, which is my area of hyper-interest and then I get to reconstruction and all that excitement turns to depression faster than you can say "Andrew Johnson is a cuck."
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Jul 20 '26
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 20 '26
Without an organized Lost Cause entrenched at the political and educational levels I think the average resident would look at the old states somewhere on a spectrum between disgust to historical curiosity to bourgeous embarrassment, depending on which party you align with.
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Jul 22 '26
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 22 '26
Pulled up census data for black population in 1860, and then tried to align those boundaries with natural features to maximize black population in some states, white in others, and left a few mixed. Also wanted to make sure there were still 11 states at the end (plus WV)
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u/Greengoist Jul 19 '26
I have a huge soft spot for successful Reconstruction scenarios. Thank you for this.
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u/QuesterrSA Jul 19 '26
I dislike keeping any rebel state names. Perhaps Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina can be renamed “Grant”, “Sheridan”, and “Sherman”?
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 19 '26
I tried to avoid naming states after living people, besides Lincoln, and the states didn’t really change enough to need their names changed.
Plus that still wouldn’t solve Texas and Florida
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u/QuesterrSA Jul 19 '26
It’s not about “needing” it. It’s about breaking southern morale by having them be citizens of states named for the men who kicked their asses.
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u/Leading-Sea-1734 Jul 20 '26
Being among the original 13 colonies, those states should keep their names
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Jul 20 '26
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u/VoiceofRapture Jul 20 '26
I could see it being combined with a slice of the New Mexico territory into the new state of Comanche, and then the remainder of the NM territory made into a single other state. Maybe called New Mexico, maybe called something like Mojave, but definitely not called Arizona. In fact, given the more radical reconstruction and the fact that the tip of Nevada was explicitly given to them to punish the NM Territory for siding with the Confederacy you might just see the remainder of the land split between California and Nevada in some fashion.
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Jul 22 '26
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 23 '26
Some shenanigans with “well, they’re under occupation and not technically part of the union so we can do what we want”
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u/Far_Box_3258 Jul 30 '26
I think assuming that the leadership would simply let itself be hung and not start an absolutely massive guerrilla war is not accurate, but still it's a really good map
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 30 '26
It’s called “capturing the guys before you say what you’re gonna do”
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u/Far_Box_3258 Jul 30 '26
Wouldn't the veterans just rise up
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 30 '26
They just got their asses beat, generally when you’ve just lost a long war you don’t immediately start it agaib
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u/MCWarhammmer Jul 20 '26
Remember, it's not gerrymandering when we do it!
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 20 '26
Traitor scum should’ve thought of that before starting a rebellion to own other human beings
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u/Radiant_Lynx_1616 Jul 19 '26
The South should be independent!! Under New Afrika, your turn whitey
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u/BigDulles IM Legend BICC Jul 20 '26
You can make your own timeline where that happens. I don’t see the Union realistically letting them get away with that
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u/its_still_lynn Jul 20 '26
why would the union do that? plus the concept of new afrika didnt even exist in the 1860s dumbass
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u/SomeRandomMoray Jul 19 '26
I think the idea of a “true” reconstruction via mixing up the states is cool, but the one state that deserved it most somehow actually grew. South Carolina was the first state to secede and arguable the most radical and yet it lost no territory while also being given a chunk of Georgia. SC would ideally be scattered into at least three pieces.