Winik, Jay. "Beyond the Wildest Dreams of John Wilkes Booth"
Divergence: 1865 CE
What if: George Atzerodt carried out his part of the Booth conspiracy and assassinated Andrew Johnson.
Summary: Essay which concludes with several pages of speculation that anti-Southern violence, including an attempt to lynch Robert E. Lee, would have instigated guerilla warfare and the Civil War instead of ending would have gone on, and on.
Published: In What Ifs? of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Might Have Been (ed. Robert Cowley), q.v.