CYOHA: It’s April 15, 1865. How wasn’t the play, Mr. Lincoln?

What a nightmare! That weird dream about being alone on a ship got even worse; your cruise of solitude has now been replaced with a deck full of a heaving mass of faceless people screaming at you and yanking your limbs as all of them want something – everything? – from you. That started just last night after staying in and playing with Tad because your beloved had another migraine. Her carriage accident really seems to have escalated those to another level, and she was furious that she couldn’t make it out. You soothed her by agreeing that you’ll do so next weekend, and heck, given you don’t have to work 18 hour days for the first time in 4 years, maybe you’ll surprise her with a night out during the week!

Of course, all hell is breaking loose today since Mars came to you worked up about yet another assassination plot that he claims to have uncovered; it’s even more concerning as perhaps the carriage accident really wasn’t an accident after all. Then again, he’s always fuming about something or another, and him doing so isn’t going to help you get work done, so that’s all there is to it.

After Easter services tomorrow – no way she is going to let you skip those, head pounding or not – you’ve got a little under 8 months to begin working on your second term agenda without interference from Congress, which won’t go into session until December. You may have won the war and won an overwhelming victory at the polls despite what you feared back in the summer of 1864, but now you have to win the peace.

Until now, you’ve been incredibly vague about your plans for Reconstruction, but can’t dodge it anymore since it’s here. The three regions of the South you’ve experimented with wartime Reconstruction have had mixed results, and whatever you do is going to face criticism from someone, but it’s all yours for 1865.

So what’s your plan, Mr. President?

A. Get the Union back together ASAP. In what you proposed back in 1863, only 10% of the male population has to swear loyalty oaths, and the whole point will be to get state governments up and running so that their current state of insurrection comes to an end. Everything else is subject to negotiation, although you might want to have emancipation in their constitutions in case this gets done more quickly than the 13th gets ratified. It’s a plan that was intended to shorten the war that hasn’t worked quite as well as you’d hoped in Arkansas and Louisiana, but maybe it can serve as the outline for what comes in peace.

B. Make the seditionists scream. All the commentary on your pocket veto of the Wade Davis bill completely misread your intentions: your problem with it wasn’t actually its content as much as it was Congress stepping on your prerogatives. 50% of the population would have to swear loyalty oaths, which is going to tell rebels that there’s no future for them in the country the same way Taney told Blacks there was none with Dred Scott. Johnny Reb himself permanently gave up the franchise when he took up arms. State suicide and redrawing the map down there as Sumner suggests might be a bit much since it’d screw up the whole legal framework you fought the war under, but maybe Stevens is on to something with massive property redistribution.

C. Something else. There’s been some rumbles about military districts and extended martial law. Maybe you can establish unity by allowing former Confederates to fight alongside Union troops and liberate Mexico from the French; Seward genuinely seems to think that might eventually lead to Mexico joining the United States. Maybe compensated emancipation is the way to go to sweeten the pot for getting them to cooperate. Everything’s on the table!