Sans Lincoln

Yes, the vision is even more divergent than you accurately state.  The USA has become a globe spanning empire, the largest arms dealer on the planet, and an oppressor of many less powerful peoples.  However, to your specific question: a world without Lincoln?  Do the times in which we live create great people?  Is greatness thrust upon them?  Or do great people somehow rise to the occasion and showcase their meddle?  Without Lincoln, might another person risen to lead the USA in a similar manner?  Lincoln was responding to tensions that were set in motion before the ink was dry on the Declaration of Independence.  Without Lincoln, someone else might have done very similar things.

Then again, maybe not.  Suppose the United States did indeed became untied.  Slaveholding states became separate from the other states. Might either or both then sided with the Germany, Austria-Hungry, and Turkey during WWI? It was actually a close call anyway.  The USA had many people who felt much closer to Germany than to the British.  The British launched a massive media campaign to convince the US to join them against Germany. Whatever else, a divided USA during WWI might have meant that either (1) the Central Powers win WWI and (2) no humiliating treaty solely blaming Germany - which were key elements that gave rise to a mileau in which a Hitler type person could rise to power.

Interesting, because much of European Russia was signed over to Germany in the Treaty of Brest Listovisk (sp) in which Russia surrendered to Germany - ending the WWI on the Russian front.  Germany, with its strong trade unionist movements, would become dominant in Russia, and the extreme communist elements might have failed to gain power, and more moderate German inspired workers unions would prevail  (No Soviet grabbing of power nor a Russian civil war.) 

Just my idle thoughts to your question.  Any one else with a "what if?"

'mettle' .... JAFOCHECK

'meddle' would only bugger things up ...;)

...unless it's the Floyd's 6th album...;)

There will always a problem with this kind of 'what if question', what if Lincoln was never President of the U.S., would there have been a Civil War?  How do we know that another person wouldn't have stepped up to challenge the Politics of the day?  Well we don't, and I'm not all that sure we will unless the theory of alternate or parallel universes are proven to be a fact.

You may as well spend time thinking about how things would be different if you were not part of the 'equation', something tells me you would stop after a shot time. 

Of course these are just my own thoughts and opinions and as most folks thoughts and opinions, they can be wrong.  

Floyd's 5th album?         very good one! 

I think the emancipation proclamation would probably have been delayed, perhaps until the end of the American Civil War. Whether or not it became a reality after that would depend on who "won". Certainly if the slave states had won, there would not have been as strong civil rights for slaves for many years to come. But in the end, the slave states taking the victory seems unlikely given how disastrous the war was for them.

I think it's profoundly unfair to envision Lincoln as some kind of leader that "kept the nation together". The slave states could have seceded any time they chose to. They were trying to change the republic from within. Perhaps northern states would have seceded if the south had won, who knows. More likely, the nation would have more or less the same borders, but a different set of governing laws.

read some of harry turtledove's alternative timeline novels? not that i've read much of his stuff on civil war bits (he writes tons...) or his stuff in general in years..