 With bachelor's and master's degrees in history, Keller says
inquiries like this one agitate the part of him that tends to "hate
hypothetical history." But, he said, Lincoln's assassination was an
indicator of the 1865 political climate and "did hinge very much on
what he did or what he could have done had he lived."
In Keller's capacity as curator, as well as through lectures he
leads and the classes he teaches, such as "The Life of Lincoln and
the Civil War" at Lincoln College, he has become encyclopedic about
Lincoln's life and the nuances that come to construct this
comprehensive question.
On April 11, 1865 -- two days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to
Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox and three days before the
assassination -- Lincoln gave his last public address from the steps
of the White House.
"He basically offered for the first time to the American public
the belief that perhaps the right to vote should be given to those
men of color who served so gallantly in the army," Keller said.
"And (John Wilkes) Booth was in the audience that night, and he
turned to his friends and said, 'That means citizenship for the
black man' -- well, that's not exactly what he said, but we'll keep
it clean -- and then he said that was the last speech Lincoln would
ever make."
As history shows, Booth followed through with his assertion. But
as Keller emphasizes, Lincoln's death was only one-fourth of the
original plan.
"(After the Civil War), I think there were some in the
Confederacy that were hoping, even within John Wilkes Booth's own
clan, that if they murdered Lincoln, murdered Vice President
(Andrew) Johnson, murdered Grant and then murdered (Lincoln's
secretary of state William H.) Seward -- the four people who were
responsible for the Union victory -- that the entire Union
government would capitulate, that the Confederacy could come in, and
after the so-called surrender, that they could still take the
victory," Keller said. "So it really wasn't such a wild plan, I
think, in Booth's own mind, to kill Lincoln for that purpose."
Ultimately, though, Johnson's assassin backed out, Grant and his
wife excused themselves from their plans with the Lincolns at Ford's
Theatre, and Seward, who at the time was on bed rest from a carriage
accident, was brutally stabbed by a man disguised as a doctor.
"But Seward did recover and became secretary of state under
Johnson," Keller said. "Grant eventually became president, and
honestly, it wasn't a good deal. And then Johnson, who on paper
looked like the perfect man to run with Lincoln -- (he was a) former
military governor of Tennessee, who was a Democrat, who was
pro-union -- turned out to be someone who was a little bit too
Southern, and a little bit too Democrat. When he became president,
he was very conciliatory to the South and basically allowed them to
reclaim their lands."
Keller said that because much of what Lincoln advocated fell away
under Johnson's weak leadership, "the country might have been better
off" if Booth and his clan had fully carried out the conspiracy.
"They took out the wrong man," Keller said. "If anybody -- and I
shouldn't say that, because you don't want anybody to be killed --
but if it was going to be one man, Johnson probably would have been
the person to cause the least havoc. So, it would have been
interesting to see (what would have happened) if they would have
followed through. Presumably, (Edwin M.) Stanton, (Lincoln's
secretary of war), would have been president, and I think he would
have been a pretty strong and effective leader. I think he would
have been a lot better than Johnson, a world of difference."
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As Keller pointed out, this theoretical line of presidential
succession is one of many sidetracks he often takes when exploring
the unknown territory surrounding Lincoln's death. As to the
original question of how history might have been different had
Lincoln lived, Keller keeps his answer on a relatively short leash.
"I do wish that Lincoln could have lived at least another year
longer," he said. "Because I do think he was on the verge of a legal
revolution in the sense that we learned to treat blacks equally
legally."
Keller defended this claim by explaining how fervently Lincoln
pushed through the House the 13th Amendment resolution to abolish
slavery. But in terms of actually changing the course of history and
civil rights, Keller says that's a tall order for anyone.
"After Lincoln died, it became this whole, tortured history we
call Reconstruction," he said. "The physical reconstruction can be
done, but of course it does take the social a lot longer. To win the
war is one thing, but to go in and tell the South, 'Now we're going
to change the entire way you think, live, act and treat other
people,' would have just been very, very difficult. So I guess maybe
to rephrase that question: 'Could this long, tortured history of Jim
Crow and discrimination all have not happened, had Lincoln lived?'
"Well, if Lincoln had enough power, had enough authority, had
enough Lincoln-esque ability of whatever he had, to bring the Union
together, to salvage what was left, to end slavery, then certainly
an argument could be made that what happened after he died could
have been averted. (But) look at what has happened since the 1960s
and the civil rights movement. It really took, I think, a generation
of young people before we finally get to the point where that is
really accepted in society."
One thing Keller says he is certain would be different had
Lincoln lived to affect Reconstruction and civil rights, is the
glorified persona Americans know today.
Referring to Lincoln's hypothesized role in carving a more direct
path to racial equality, Keller said: "I don't think he would have
been as successful as what we'd like to think. It just takes a lot
of changing of people's minds and their hearts and attitudes. And I
think that his legacy would have been tarnished.
"(Lincoln's life and death) were like a Greek drama," he
continued. "He was that great hero who was slain just when the grasp
of victory was in his hand. That sort of iconic, sort of 'what would
have been' or 'what could he have done' -- it's not there, it's
removed. But that's the stuff legacies are born with."
[By LINDSEY BOERMA]
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