What would have happenned had Lincoln not been shot?

[dazzleman]

I think that had Lincoln lived through his second term, he would have reined in the power of the radicals who wanted to severely punish the south for the civil war.

Reconstruction would have been much more benign, and there would have been less bitterness in the south over the war and its aftermath.  I have long contended that it's not so much the effects of the war that are with us today, but its aftermath.  This is especially true on the race issue.

A more benign reconstruction would have meant better treatment of blacks.  Blacks bore the brunt of southern bitterness toward the north, which the white southerners were powerless to redress against those they considered the perpetrators.  So they chose blacks instead, and the bad results of this are with us to this day.  Had blacks been treated properly after the civil war, we would have long since gotten over the whole slavery issue.  It's not the slavery issue that plagues us today, but the fact that it's only been one generation since we decided that maybe we should actually treat blacks as human beings.

Without harsh reconstruction and the stultifying effects of segregation and the willful suppression of the talents of a significant portion of its population, the economy of the south would have developed much better after the war.

I think the assassination of Lincoln was one of the great tragedies of history.  Roosevelt's death in 1945 had nowhere near the effect of Lincoln's death, since in Roosevelt's case, the Cold War would have happened anyway, and I don't think history would have turned out a lot differently had Roosevelt served another four years.  But Lincoln's death resulted in a radical change for the worse that is with us to this day.