What If Lincoln Had Lived? He Probably Would Have Ended Up a Lot Like Joe Biden, Sorry to Say

Lincoln and Biden shared an unrealistic view that people driven by hate, bitterness and resentment could be partners in healing a divided nation. It would have doomed Lincoln, as it did Biden.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” — Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, March 4, 1865

“My whole soul is in it today, on this January day. My whole soul is in this. Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the foes we face - anger, resentment and hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness, and hopelessness.”— Joe Biden’s inaugural address, Jan. 20, 2021.

I came across an interesting podcast recently that speculated how American history might have been different had Abraham Lincoln not been assassinated at the end of the Civil War. Would Lincoln have navigated the pitfalls of Reconstruction as deftly as he had the war? Would he have been able to fulfill the promise of his soaring Second Inaugural Address in which he called on the people of the North and South “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and secure a “lasting peace among ourselves?”

The historian interviewed for the podcast was doubtful. The forces that ultimately doomed Reconstruction without Lincoln— white bitterness and resentment toward the outcome of the Civil War, plus a fierce determination to deny freed slaves any semblance of real equality — would have doomed it with him. His lofty words would have inevitably run into a buzzsaw of Southern defiance.

We will never know for sure, but the example of Joe Biden’s presidency provides the closest clue we have ever had to answering that question. Much as Lincoln sought to bind up the nation’s wounds from the Civil War, Biden was tasked on Jan. 20, 2021 with binding up the wounds from the greatest attack on American democracy since the Civil War — the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021 that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

As you can see by the quote at the top of this post, Biden expressed the same optimism in the potential for national unity and healing that Lincoln had more than a century earlier. But while an assassin’s bullet denied Lincoln the chance to see whether he could make good on his inaugural promise of “malice toward none,” Biden got his opportunity. And the four years of his presidency showed just how misguided and unfounded the words he uttered upon taking the oath of office were when it came to his dream of “uniting our people, uniting our nation.”

Those whom Biden sought to unite — those who were all too willing ditch American democracy and the rule of law through Donald Trump’s election lies — didn’t take long to give him their answer. It was “Let’s Go Brandon” (aka, “Fuck Joe Biden”).

Surely, Lincoln would have received the same response from Southern whites if he had lived to take on the task of reconstructing the United States. They would have answered with the “Black Codes” and the Ku Klux Klan, regardless of what Lincoln said and did (just as they did without him). Because national unity was a non-starter if it meant accepting the demise of slavery and the rights of Black people to become American citizens. Just as national unity was a non-starter for the MAGA movement that placed the power of white nationalism above democracy.

What would Lincoln have done? His political career, much like Biden’s, was ultimately one of pragmatism above ideology, but there would have been no pragmatic solutions to the problems he faced. There would have been no way for him to thread the political needle, to satisfy the inherent racism and white male superiority that infected Southern white society (and much of Northern society as well), while giving freed slaves the opportunity to reap the fruits of their newfound freedom. Any effort to do the latter would have infuriated white southerners and spurred the same violence and racial terror that ultimately occurred as Reconstruction crumbled. Any effort to placate Southern whites, and to integrate traitors and their racist attitudes seamlessly back into positions of power, would have infuriated the “Radical Republicans” in Congress who were determined that the end of slavery should usher in an era of equality and opportunity for those who had been freed through four years of bloodshed.

Far from being viewed as our greatest president, martyred for the cause of saving the union, Lincoln — had he lived — quite likely would have ended his presidency much like Lyndon Johnson or George W. Bush — or Joe Biden. Under a cloud of failure.

Biden tried to achieve the unity he spoke of in his inaugural. He promoted bipartisanship, working with Republicans in Congress to forge compromise on things like infrastructure, gun safety and border security. But for the MAGA base that fueled the lawlessness and assaults on democracy of Trump’s first term, it made absolutely no difference. They had made up their mind to do all they could to destroy him the moment he laid his hand on the Bible to take the oath of office. And they succeeded, with some help from ill-informed voters who were easily manipulated by the right-wing propaganda machine into believing Jan. 6 was little more than a Capitol tour that got a bit out of hand and that Biden had single-handedly caused the price of eggs to skyrocket.

They took advantage of the misguided notion that MAGA was nothing more than a fever that would ultimately pass when Trump left the stage. But history has taught time and again that the fever of hate, fueled by ignorance and lies, doesn’t pass that easily.

They took advantage of the misguided notion that Trump’s rise to power was an aberration, a fluke, that the ugly events of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 were the work of fringe extremists that could be easily swept aside by the clarion call of decency and unity.

The fact that millions of Americans bought into the hate and lies of Trump’s movement, and were willing to keep him in power even if it meant overturning the results of a free election for the first time in American history, should have served as a different type of clarion call for Biden at his inauguration. That the MAGA movement that resulted in Jan. 6 was an attack on America and its values, every bit as abhorrent as past attacks from terrorists or armies from distant shores. And those who aid and abet attempts to destroy our democracy will be dealt with swiftly and harshly — starting with the ringleader himself.

In other words, Biden should have dealt with the events of Jan. 6 as an act of war — which it was. And instead of offering an olive branch to those who justified, excused and abetted that attack, he should have made crystal clear that his administration would be focused on preserving democracy, holding traitors accountable, and preserving the rule of law and fundamental truths — even if that came at the expense of the largely hopeless task of finding common ground with Trump supporters.

Would it have ultimately made a difference? We will never know, but it couldn’t have been worse than what he did instead — to delude himself into thinking that those who hated him so much that they would attack the U.S. Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power could be trusted to act in good faith in the cause of national unity.

For all of the historical love affair that surrounds Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, he also deluded himself that day in 1865. The war on the union that raged for four long years was the ultimate act of national malice, and his call for “malice toward none” would have inevitably been a one-way invitation to renewed Southern terror. To make Reconstruction work, Lincoln ultimately would have had to take the same approach to the South that the United States took toward Japan in the aftermath of World War II — to completely dismantle its political culture and rebuild it from the ground up as something entirely new. And he would have had to do it immediately and with overwhelming force.

Would it have been pleasant or easy? No. But it would have been the only way to prevent the 100 years of racial oppression and terror that followed. As it turned out, the Radical Republicans and President Ulysses S. Grant did try to do what Lincoln seemed wholly disinclined to do in his Inaugural Address — at least for a few years — but as the political winds shifted, and Northern interest in protecting Black rights subsided amid economic concerns, Reconstruction fell apart.

Biden and his fellow Democrats never even got as far as that. Sure, they held Congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection, but for the most part, they were as eager as anyone to move on from that horrific event and for some reason believed that the glacial pace of the American legal system would take care of matters. Besides, the American people would never return to power someone who had tried to stage a coup against his own government, amid myriad other crimes. That’s not who we are, right?

The problem with that approach is they left a matter in the hands of voters — many of whom were more interested in the price of eggs and gas — that they should have dealt with themselves. We elect our representatives to uphold the Constitution and to work in conjunction with the legal system to hold those accountable who violate it. We elect them to defend core American values. Americans who are preoccupied trying to put food on the table for their families, amid other daily challenges, aren’t interested in playing judge and jury, especially when they’re bombarded with conflicting claims (many times lies) through a political system often more interested in manipulating them than serving them. When the rule of law doesn’t work the way it should, it’s unreasonable to expect enough voters to figure out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth in the fight for democracy.

Biden’s presidency will never stack up to Lincoln’s for a whole host of reasons, but the two men did share one thing common. They both sought to heal and unite a divided nation by appealing to the better angels of our nature. In the process, they both overestimated those angels and underestimated the demons who stood in their way — with devastating results.

We can only pray that the third president who faces this dilemma — whoever and whenever that may be — will finally understand the fallacy of trying to find unity with people who only want to divide and conquer.