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There are, of course, episodes from history where presidents or presidential candidates have taken heat for their religion. I don't think that Obama has, except once in a while he is accused of being a Muslim. But when we look back to the 1928 election, Al Smith was reviled unlike what we see today.
Definitely Obama is not the only presidential candidate to take religious heat, though at least the previous candidates were usually be hated irrationally for what they were rather than for an imagined offense.The amount of anti-Catholicism in American History is another thing that amazes me and probably is not really appreciated by most alive today. If JFK hadn't become president I am inclined to think a disturbingly large amount of this country would still be convinced that any Catholic president would be some mindless drone making all his decisions on behalf of the Pope.
“American Brutus” (which seemed to me a excellent and definitive book on all things JWB) is staunchly in the “Booth died in 1865” camp. The author noted that Booth was fairly well known from his stage career and also had his initials tattooed on him (his arm? – regardless, that's terribly narcissistic IMO) so he was fairly easy to identify.
I don't think the South would have been willing to keep to itself as you postulate. They were simply too wedded to slavery as a political, economic, and social system to be willing to give it up. At best you might come up with a scenario where the Southern political leadership is willing to accept no slavery in the territories rather than viewing the right to expand slavery as linked with the right to continue to have slavery in the South.If the South is somehow willing to accept slavery remaining within its 1850 boundaries only then do you probably avoid the Civil War. How and when slavery dies out without the Civil War seems hard to say; I'd speculate the 1880s or 1890s.
The more I learn about it the more I realize 1800s American politics were much uglier than the vast majority of people nowadays realize, right down the polarized media slanting most stories to their preferred political party.Lincoln was decried as a tyrant and a nigger lover. Obama is decried as a communist and a nigger. At least Lincoln never had to deal with questions about his religion or citizenship; he also didn't face the literally endless 24/7 news coverage system we have now. I think Congress overall probably got along better with Lincoln than Obama (especially post-midterm elections) but that's not saying much. The economy right now is probably harder to fix than the Civil War was to win. But I don't think Obama takes his setbacks as hard as Lincoln did; the casualties in the Civil War really ate him up inside. Obama's family is at least healthy, unlike Lincoln's which also strained him personally.Overall, I'd say Lincoln had it worse, but I don't think Obama being in consideration for a hard presidency is laughable. Lincoln, Obama, and FDR have been president during really difficult times in this country. Sadly, Obama hasn't done as good a job as Lincoln or FDR, though I think he'll go down in history less harshly than it seems in the present day.
I'd say there's a good chance Johnston could have delayed the fall of Atlanta until the election if he'd remained in command.However, while Atlanta's fall pretty much ensured Lincoln's reelection, I don't think the opposite is true. Lincoln himself was certainly pessimistic about his chances, but the Democrats were weak beyond being the anti-war party. It's probably a much closer election, but I think Lincoln could have still won.Johnston remaining in command through Atlanta's fall almost certainly prevents the disastrous Nashville campaign as well as the March To The Sea (at least as we know it). But even if Johnston had lasted until the fall of Atlanta I'd think it unlikely he survives that. Hood might've returned to Lee's army by that point so someone else probably gets command there. Regardless, Sherman probably doesn't move on Savannah until the spring.If Lincoln does lose, he still had until Narch before McClellan would have taken office. Even with Sherman's campaign having proceeded slower, Lee's army was still rotting away at Petersburg. Perhaps during the winter Grant shifts part of Sherman's army to Virginia, accelerating events there (Richmond fell not quite a month after Inauguration Day). McClellan might've taken office with Lee already surrendered.If Lee is still holding out in Richmond when McClellan is inaugurated (and Sherman is probably still in Atlanta), what kind of independent Confederacy would there be? The Border States stick with the Union. Tennessee was essentially entirely Union-occupied and much of Louisiana and Virginia as well. Would McClellan have abandoned that or would it have been a shrunken independent Confederacy? I've frequently heard the opinion the narrow economy of the South and weak central government of the CSA (and the continued stain of legalized slavery), they would have struggled to function long term as an independent country.
