Saving Abraham Lincoln

[superboyprime]

Comments

[misterbug]

I'm finding myself discomforted by the idea that Abraham "Intellectual" Lincoln's response to 'You will get shot at the theatre tomorrow' is 'Well, I'm still going, but I'll bring a General. That should do it.'

Especially as, according to legend, he had had not one but TWO disturbing premonitions of his death beforehand.

[thosefew]

My impression from the legend was that he thought he could not avoid death at his appointed hour.

...although maybe he was sick to death of all the time travellers/dimension jumpers/premonitions trying to save him.

[misterbug]

"I keep telling you clowns, sometimes things have just gotta happen. I was born in a freaking log cabin and I know more about causality than you? What kind of dang-blasted future do you even come from, anyway?"

[miramira]

I'd read that story.

[cainofdreaming]

And then Time Lincoln pokes his head in and causality goes screaming into the dark night.

[tsunamiwombat]

Probably right, but it's a shame- if Lincoln had lived, the path the south took would've been very different, and civil rights may have been set foreward several decades. As it is it'd be another 100 or more years before we ever really made a real dent on equality.

[tsunamiwombat]

And i'm sure the "and we still havn't" comment is incoming, but lets just be glad we have a black president for a second, take a breath and THEN press on to the work at hand.

[tsunamiwombat]

Scratch that, lets be glad we have a black HEIMDALL, which is far more important.

And awesome.

[halloweenjack]

You still need to get rid of that unnecessary apostrophe in "sees". I'm just sayin'.

[arilou_skiff]

I'm not so sure of that. Lincoln's reconstruction would have been a lot more lenient than what happened. (Which admittedly didn't last, but at least there were black congress reps for a couple couple of years in the meantime...)

[tsunamiwombat]

Thats what I meant, I can see how my language might have been confusing. I meant if Lincoln had lived, the Civil Rights movement would've been accellerated by a few decades, and the South would;ve stabilized much sooner.

[arilou_skiff]

No, that's what we had HISTORICALLY. I'm not sure we'd even have a reconstruction period as we knew it with Lincoln.

[tsunamiwombat]

As great a man as Lincoln was, I regretfully believe we still wouldn't have had immediate civil equality. It was just too engrained in the south to get rid of, and race mentality up north wasn't that great either. Lincoln was highly progressive, unlike many of his cabinet and generals.

[arilou_skiff]

My point is that I suspect Lincoln would have been more concerned with placating the southerners. As was the northerners pretty much spent a decade or so empowering blacks as a "Fuck you!" to the Lincoln-killers.

[tsunamiwombat]

Yes and the economic backlash made the south a wasteland for years. Punishing the conquored never works, no matter how much they deserve it. See also; Germany, WW1. Improving the lives and quality of civilization of everyone would've gone towards improving race relations

[arilou_skiff]

But reconstruction did allow the creation of a black middle class, that persisted even after it ended.

[jlbarnett]

Lincoln wanted both. Happy southerners and empowered black people. There likely would have been little punishment for people who had been Confederate soldiers, but massive punishments for people who formed things like the KKK. There might have been a bit more continuity between policy and attitudes of the immediate successors

[baxter2814]

THIS. You win the internet. Have a cookie.

[notactuallyauser]

There is a Doctor Who audio where this happens to Richard III, who was constantly visited by people resaerching the (alledged) murder of the princes in the Tower. And then we find out the truth...

[proteus_lives]

In Mongolia's entry in the Onion World Atlas, they mentioned this about Genghis Khan.

"He conquered much of the world and would have conquered more but he was constantly being kidnapped by time travelers."

[darklorelei]

The Kingmaker is my faaaaavorite.

[notactuallyauser]

Have you heard "Peri and the Piscon Paradox" by the same guy, released in January? That's possibly dislodged The Kingmaker as my favourite.

[darklorelei]

I haven't, but thanks very much for the recommendation! I'll have to listen to it.

[agharta75]

Historically, the Grants were invited by Lincoln to the Ford's Theatre performance, but Grant "regretfully" turned down the invitation. (Supposedly Mrs. Grant couldn't stand Mrs. Lincoln.)

[icon_uk]

I wonder if she's the one who first asked "But other than that, what did you think of the show Mrs Lincoln?"

[arilou_skiff]

From what I understand Mrs. Lincoln wasn't exactly easy to get along with.

[majingojira]

actually, they got along rather well. Their wives, on the other hand...

[kamino_neko]

Mrs Grant and Mrs Lincoln had wives?

Wow, the Civil War era US was a lot more progressive than I thought.

[majingojira]

Only one word can properly express my emotions know:

D'oh!

[tsunamiwombat]

Lincoln was also prone to depression, and often predicted "I will end this war, but it shall consume me in the process", and was in very rare good spirits the night of his assasination.

Frankly, I think the man was ready to die.

[proteus_lives]

The Presidency sucks the life out of men during peaceful times. Lincoln, FDR, LBJ. The office consumed them.

[tsunamiwombat]

Lincoln was clinically depressive even before he was president, dating back to being a young man. It didn't help that life liked to kick him when he was down- sickness took both his children, and his wife was famously mentally ill.

[proteus_lives]

Plus losing his mother and his first love.

He had the hard-knock life.

[arilou_skiff]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_26cPnDLJaM

Relevant song is relevant (and contemporary, and in swedish)

MY HAIR! MY BEAUTIFUL HAIR!!!

[mola_ram]

First panel, first page; That look is the look I'd expect from someone who saw a Lovecraftian horror, not one who had her hair cut...

THAT'S WHAT MAKES IT SO FUNNY!!! :D

Re: MY HAIR! MY BEAUTIFUL HAIR!!!

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

To be fair, she's just a little kid.

Re: MY HAIR! MY BEAUTIFUL HAIR!!!

[mola_ram]

Bah. She wouldn't last five minutes in the Sankara stone mines... ;o)

[espanolbot]

I read the first series a little while ago...

...Err... It's really something.

[proteus_lives]

Save Lincoln! He must continue the fight against the Confederate vampires!

And travel to the future to rap-battle Chuck Norris!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj2Zf9tlg2Y

[halloweenjack]

Whether or not Grant was the notorious drunk of legend, I still think that Lincoln would have done much better if he'd had someone a bit more on the ball than John Frederick Parker, who snuck out to a tavern at exactly the wrong time.

[althechi]

Lincoln this and Lincoln that. The next time-traveler who goes to the 19th century to stop a presidential assassination would probably have better luck with James Abram Garfield.

(Icon is relavant for once! =O)

[althechi]

Furthermore, the bare minimum amount of research she should've done would be to read the comic book that Rick Geary did about it; it even names the boarding house Booth was in at the time.