Comments by "Pyromania101" (@pyromania1018) on "John Wilkes Booth: America's Most Infamous Assassin" video.

  1. Such a vile excuse for a man. And I'm sorry to say this, but had Lincoln lived, things would have played out largely as they did. While Lincoln was sympathetic to African-Americans,* he wasn't in a hurry to punish the Confederacy--a lot of Southerners were angered by his death specifically because they feared his successors would give them the kicking they deserved. Arguments over how to handle reconstructing would have been common, albeit likely more polite. Honestly, things would've been better if Zachary Taylor had lived. He bluntly threatened to hang every secessionist in the nation (starting with Jefferson Davis, his son-in-law), and would've carried it out. The war would've kicked off in the early 1850s, but it would've ended faster, as Taylor would have unleashed hell upon the Confederacy, then brought the hammer down on the rebel leaders once the war had ended. Slavery would not have been abolished there and then,** but any hope of expanding it would've been checked, thus the anti-slavery groups in Congress would've been able to, sooner or later, outvote their opposition and end the institution. * Not long after the passing of the 13th Amendment, Lincoln gave a speech in which he entertained the possibility of going a step further and giving African-Americans full citizenship and civil rights. Booth was in the audience, and was so overcome with racism-fueled indignation that he decided, there and then, that Lincoln had to die. ** Taylor was a slaveowner himself, but he did believe in keeping the boundaries of slave states where they were, and he understood that it was a major issue that needed to be addressed--and he was (slightly) leaning towards the anti-slavery group in his later years.
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