If Abe Lincoln was defeated, what would the US look like today?

[Robert W]

We can easily ask about Abe Lincoln, who was assassinated over his war, what would the USA look like today had the Union been defeated?

I will let readers chat this over.

A good article for us to read is here:

Why Did the South Lose the Civil War?

paw.princeton.edu

"That is, if the North had lost the war — which came close to happening on more than one occasion — the same thesis of internal conflict could be used to explain northern defeat. Bitter divisions and dissent existed in the North over conscription, taxes, suspension of habeas corpus, martial law — and significantly in the case of the North, over emancipation of the slaves as a war aim. If anything, the opposition was more powerful and effective in the North than in the South. Lincoln endured greater vilification than Davis during much of the war. And he had to face a campaign for reelection in the midst of the most crucial military operations of the war — an election that for a time it appeared he would lose. This did not happen, but its narrow avoidance is evidence of intense conflict within the northern polity, a reality that tended to neutralize the similar but probably less divisive conflicts in the South as a cause of Confederate defeat."

 

[egp320i]

From what I remember from school the south had better generals but lacked the manpower and resources. they were just outgunned and eventually became overwhelmed

as for what would have happened, slavery would have continued probably into maybe 1920 or so before it was abolished, maybe later. The south would have more food supplies for the country but eventually with machinery slaves would not have been needed and phased out. whether they were allowed to go free or sent back to their homeland like there was a push to do we will never know

 

[Robert W]

From what I remember from school the south had better generals but lacked the manpower and resources. they were just outgunned and eventually became overwhelmed

as for what would have happened, slavery would have continued probably into maybe 1920 or so before it was abolished, maybe later. The south would have more food supplies for the country but eventually with machinery slaves would not have been needed and phased out. whether they were allowed to go free or sent back to their homeland like there was a push to do we will never know

There would be far more good than bad had the South won. I won't argue over when Slavery would have ended. Acts by the Congress could easily have ended it just as it did in fact. But the bitterness among blacks???? I doubt it would exist. They would be very pleased to be free. Free at last, thank god we are free at last was said by King. Today thanks to Abe winning, the nation is wracked by racism mainly from Blacks and Democrats.

Democrats like to lie saying they converted to being Republicans. But if they told the truth, they know no republican would sit still for changing to democrats. It would be blasted by Republicans and telling Democrats to get the hell out. Still Democrats lie saying they now are Republicans. Abe Lincoln's intentions were to deport blacks.

 

[Robert W]

See OP which is post #1 for credit of the following part of the article.

But perhaps the most important weakness of the internal-alienation thesis is that same fallacy of reversibility I have already mentioned. Large blocs of northerners were bitterly, aggressively alienated from the Lincoln Administration’s war policies. Their opposition weakened and at times threatened to paralyze the Union war effort. Perhaps one-third of the border-state whites actively supported the Confederacy, and many of the remainder were at best lukewarm unionists, especially after emancipation became a Republican war aim. Guerrilla warfare behind Unions lines occurred on a far larger scale than behind Confederate lines.

In the free states, the Democratic Party made conscription, emancipation, certain war taxes, the suspension of habeas corpus, and other wartime measures the basis for a relentless attempt to cripple the Lincoln Administration. The peace wing of the party, the Copperheads, opposed the war itself as a means of restoring the Unions. If the South had its class conflict over the theme of a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight (or its perception as such), so did the North. If the Confederacy had its bread riots, the Union had its draft riots, which were much larger and more violent. If many soldiers deserted from southern armies, an equally large percentage deserted from northern armies until the fall of 1864, when the southern rate increased because of a perception that the war was lost. Desertion here was primarily a result of defeat, not a cause. If the South had its slaves who wanted Yankee victory and freedom, the North had its Democrats and border-state unionists who bitterly opposed emancipation and withheld their support from the war because of it. The similar and probably greater alienation within the North thus neutralizes this theory.

Another category of explanations for southern defeat might be described as the “lack of will” thesis. It hold that the Confederacy could have won if the southern people had possessed the will to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve victory. The South lost the war, said E. Merton Coulter (a southerner) in The Confederate States of America (1950), because its “people did not will hard enough and long enough to win.”

Three principal themes have emerged in this lack-of-will thesis. First is the argument that the Confederacy lacked a strong sense of nationalism. The Confederate States of America, in this interpretation, did not exist long enough to give its people that mystical faith we call nationalism, or patriotism. Southerners did not have as firm a conviction of fighting for a country or a deep-rooted political and cultural tradition as northerners did. Southerners had been Americans before they became Confederates, and many of them had opposed secession. So when the going got tough, their residual Americanism reemerged and triumphed over their newly minted Confederate nationalism. To clinch the argument, proponents of the lack-of-will thesis point to the Confederate Constitution, which in most respect was a verbatim copy of the United States Constitution; the Confederate national flag, which was similar to the American flag; and the Confederate currency, which bore portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and other American heroes.

But this argument misses the point. Confederates regarded themselves as the true heirs of American nationalism. The South, said Jefferson Davis in his first message to the Confederate Congress after Fort Sumter, was fighting for the same “sacred right of self-government” that its forefathers of 1776 had fought for. When the Yankees repudiated the ideals of their revolutionary fathers, southerners seceded to form a government that would conserve the genuine American heritage.

 

[toobfreak]

If Abe Lincoln was defeated, what would the US look like today?​

Wow! We really did nearly bite the bullet! Thank You, President Trump!

 

[foggedinn]

Southern animosity towards the north is palpable, In the north, the civil war (war between the states)
is history. In the south, it is current events.

I believe that it will eventually bring about the desolation of the union. Rather than one country we will be five or six and California will dominate the north American continent.