• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

'The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln' review

Especially considering the radicals DID hate him for stuff but the author didn't have the guts to have Lincoln be active to oppose a hard reconstruction.

EDIT: Fuck, I'm not sure he would have. I actually don't really think Lincoln would have wound up being a Liberal Republican. But of course, I wouldn't think Charles Sumner would have become one either and there he went. The ultimate unanswered question is how Lincoln would respond when forced to confront the choice of the rights of the Freedmen vs the rights of the Ex-Confederates. Considering his insistence on not giving up Emancipation to the bitter end makes me think that when his soft reconstruction policies failed he would have stood with the oppressed but, I fully admit that people who disagree with me are standing on about as strong a position. If you were going to do a story about his impeachment having him go down that path and then having Congress destroy him for it is the way to go.

Having Lincoln Impeached because he suspended Habeus Corpus and his other "extra-constitutional" actions comes off as a 21st Century Lawyer trying to make a big point out of "LiNcOlN wAsN't BeLoVeD wHeN hE wAs AlIvE!!!!" and at that point, you might as well write a tell-all about how GW didn't have a homicidal urge to destroy fruit trees as a child.
 
Last edited:
I had a chapter on Lincoln not being assassinated in Other Lives (2013). I accept that as a white British man, I might not be felt to have legitimacy in commenting on the period in the USA. However, in my mind, whatever Lincoln might have turned out to be, even if mediocre, he would have been far better for the USA than Johnson proved to be. Johnson betrayed a lot of what certainly the post-1863 Union fight had been for and really 'let off' the Confederate States, let alone their leaders.

Of course, Lincoln's survival would not have resolved all the challenges that the USA faced in the following decades, but it would have got it off to a better start and just perhaps would have reduced some of the racial discrimination and violence that followed. At least, it would have blocked the worst of the Confederates from gaining/retaining significant roles and perhaps may have reduced their freedom to introduce Jim Crow legislation and effectively disenfranchise many Black voters through the 20th Century and beyond.

No politician is without flaws. Perhaps this novel is shaped by recent events, notably the almost immediate attempt by some in Congress to impeach President Biden or those to the left of the Democrat Party who felt even Obama did not go far enough. It certainly does seem to highlight the tendency of Americans these days to prefer legal challenges over making a case at the ballot box, so I am coming to see it as less a book about Lincoln and more about 'what if 21st Century US political behaviour had begun 150+ years earlier?'
 
No politician is without flaws. Perhaps this novel is shaped by recent events, notably the almost immediate attempt by some in Congress to impeach President Biden or those to the left of the Democrat Party who felt even Obama did not go far enough. It certainly does seem to highlight the tendency of Americans these days to prefer legal challenges over making a case at the ballot box, so I am coming to see it as less a book about Lincoln and more about 'what if 21st Century US political behaviour had begun 150+ years earlier?'

The novel came out in 2012, so it's not a Trump commentary - but you could easily see it as a commentary of Republican obstruction of Obama.
 
Back
Top