Confederate States presidential election, 1903
By 1903, the Presidency of James, “Jim” or “Big Jim” Hogg had proved to be, for all intents and purposes, a success for the Confederate States of America. Hogg’s was not a hugely successful administration. Jim Hogg was no Jeff Davis, Pete Longstreet or Fitz Lee, but he and his administration managed to avoid further humiliations to the nation’s prestige. Hogg’s administration also saw the public rejection of the erstwhile President Gist's legacy, as well as a number of noteworthy achievements. President Hogg looked over a period of great economic growth in the Confederacy (this having been a recovery over the Crash of 1893), an improving of relations with the United States (though a full-fledged rapprochement could not possibly happen under the Remembrance-minded President Mahan) and an improving of the Confederacy’s image on the world stage. In regards to the last achievement, in September, 1900, President Hogg assured the ambassadors from Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands that, under his watch, no attempt would be made by the CSA to purchase or take control of their possessions in the Caribbean. Thus, the Confederate States was no longer seen as an aggressor by other world powers, this having made Great Britain and France all the more happier to cooperate with the Confederate States. President Hogg also managed to finally put an end to the Indian raids that had long plagued the Confederate-American frontier. This was done partly out of good nature, but also because Hogg very much resented the amount of damage that was done to his home state of Texas in the course of these Indian raids. Yet, that was not all. In September, 1901, the Confederate Veterans Pension Bill, based on a similar bill that Hogg had gotten passed in Texas, was signed into law. The bill stated that the Confederate government would henceforth give out pensions to all living Confederate veterans. Needless to say, this nationwide bill proved to be very popular. Lastly, on April 18, 1902, Sequoyah was admitted into the CSA as the nation’s sixteenth (and as time would tell final) state.
All in all, the Whig Party had stabilized itself after over five years of solid achievement under President Hogg. When 1903 came, the people of the Confederacy quickly realized that yet another election year was upon them. Throughout January and February of 1903, a number of political figures throughout the country announced that they would be seeking the nomination for the Whig Party candidate for President of the Confederate States. The nominees who had declared themselves for the presidential race included Vice President Charles James Faulkner Jr., former Vice President and Senator Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn of Kentucky, Senator James Beauchamp “Champ” Clark of Kentucky, Senator Donelson Caffery of Louisiana, Governor of Georgia Henry W. Grady [1] and former Governor of Mississippi John Sharp Williams.
By April 1, 1903, only a few of the aforementioned hopefuls were still in the race to become the Whig Party’s presidential nominee. These men were Vice President Faulkner, Senator Clark, Governor Grady, former Governor Williams. Needles to say, by this point the Whig Party, and the rest of the Confederacy at large, had continued to move away from nominating and/or electing former generals and military men for and/or to the presidency. To the Whig Party grandees, they needed to nominate a man who could appeal to both the planter class and the common man of the Confederate States and a man who would not antagonize their northern neighbor of the United States. John Sharp Williams, as a scion of the plantation aristocracy and the leader of the Mississippi Bourbons, could not possibly hope to appeal to the common man. As the son of a prominent Virginian politician, Charles James Faulkner Jr. would have been seen as much too elitist to appeal to the common man. On the other hand, both Senator Clark and Governor Grady came from somewhat humble backgrounds.
Senator James Beauchamp “Champ” Clark, a native of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, was, as touched upon before, a man of somewhat humble beginnings. His parents were not at all poor by any means, yet at the same time they were not of the planer elite like the Lees or the Hamptons. Only a child when Kentucky was conquered by the Confederacy and with friends and family members on both sides of the Confederate-American frontier, the young “Champ” was educated at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia from 1868 to 1872. He then attended Cincinnati Law School from 1872 to 1875. In the autumn of 1875, Clark moved to back to the CSA. He moved to Lexington, Kentucky and began to work as a lawyer. He lived briefly and worked as a lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1879 to 1881, having been forced to move back to Lexington, Kentucky as a result of the outbreak of the Second Mexican War. In spite of the Second Mexican War, Clark retained his friends across the Confederate-American frontier. He established his own law firm in Lexington in 1881 and continued to practice law for the next five years. After many years of being interested in politics, Clark ran for and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives in 1886. Clark had remained a senator from Kentucky ever since.
On the other hand, Henry Woodfin Grady, born and raised by both of his parents [2] in Athens, Georgia, was also a man of somewhat humble beginnings. In spite of this, he was still educated in the classical tradition of a southern gentleman. He attended the University of Georgia and graduated from said university in 1868. In his twenties, Grady studied law at the University of Virginia. After that, Grady moved to Atlanta where we set up his own law firm and began to practice law. However, Grady's main interests were always in the Greek language, the Anglo-Saxon or Old English language, the military, politics, history, and literature. In 1878, Grady gave up practicing law and began to work as a journalist for the
Atlanta Herald. However, his journalistic career was temporarily put on hold by the outbreak of the Second Mexican War, after which Grady was called up for service. Throughout the next year, Grady served and saw service in the Eastern theater under the armies of General (and future President) Stonewall Jackson. After the war ended, Grady returned to his career in journalism at the
Atlanta Herald. Over the course of the 1880s, in addition to writing many articles for the aforementioned paper, Grady also wrote many books, most of which were about the history, both political and military, of the CSA and USA. Then in 1890, Grady ran for and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives. In 1902, Grady ran for Governor of Georgia. After months of personally campaigning throughout the state, Grady won the election, narrowly defeating his Radical-Liberal opponent Thomas E. Watson.
To the grandees of the Whig Party, Senator Champ Clark was the epitome of a “border-state man”, a man with friends and family on both sides of the Confederate-American dividing line. To the more conservative members of the Whig Party, to have a President, let alone a presidential nominee, who fit this bill was simply an anathema. On the other hand, to the more progressive members of the Whig Party, this was not at all an issue. In fact, to some of the more progressive members of the Whig Party, the fact that Senator Clark fit this bill was even seen as a positive thing, as Clark was seen as a man who, if he became the Confederate commander-in-chief, would not even attempt to go to war with the United States of America, and more importantly, would not be openly antagonistic to the United States of America, unlike the late States Rights Gist. With the United States of America still under the administration of the Remembrance-minded President Mahan, antagonism towards said nation was seen by those in the Whig Party as an especially bad, even dangerous, thing.
After months of deliberation, on July 6, 1903, Senator Champ Clark was finally chosen to be the Whig Party candidate for President of the Confederate States. However, it should be noted that this only came to be after a lengthy struggle by the progressive faction of the Whig Party against the conservative or “famous family” faction of the Whig Party, the members of latter faction having taken a lot of discomfort with the idea that a man of such modest origins, not to mention a “border-state man”, could ever stand at the head of the Confederate States. The Confederate planter class, many of whom were a part of the conservative faction of the Whig Party and having recovered somewhat only a few years after the downfall of President Gist, was definitely making a comeback. In spite of this, without the support of one of the most famous of the "first families", the Hamptons of South Carolina, the conservative faction of the Whig Party could not hope to seriously go up against the progressive faction of the Whig Party for that much longer. The men of the Hampton family, Wade Hampton IV, Thomas Preston Hampton, George McDuffie Hampton and Alfred Hampton, guilty by association for their previous patronage of States Rights Gist, had no chance at all to receive the Whig Party's nomination or to inflection in any way the direction of the party. Thus, the conservative Whigs had no choice but to accept Champ Clark as their nominee. After all of this, Senator Clark choose Governor Henry W. Grady of Georgia, the only man still in the race for nominee, as his running mate. This was done in an effort to balance the ticket between a mid-westerner and an easterner, as well as to balance the ticket between Governor Grady, a man with some history of military service, and under Stonewall Jackson no less, and the more pacifistic Senator Clark.
In regards to the opposition, during the run-up to the 1903 election, the Whig Party had some new and serious competition. On October 18, 1900, the Radicals and the Liberals had finally buried the ideological hatchet and, after a lengthy convention held in Little Rock, Arkansas, merged together to form the Radical-Liberal Party. In truth, this was a merger that had been in the making for several years. However, the movement to merge the two parties only reached its climax in the previous year. On October 14, 1899, Thomas Dixon Jr., a young journalist of
The Raleigh News and Observer, wrote a strongly worded article claiming that the Whig Party victory in the election of 1897 was stolen from the opposition as a result of the registration laws in Florida passed by Governor Mitchell in 1896. While the validity of this claim was most likely unsound, as it is highly debatable as to whether the Rads or Libs could have carried the election even if one of them did win the Sunshine State, the very thought of such a swindle, something which hearkened back to the "corrupt bargain" of the election of 1824, inspired such a strong and shared indignation in the members of the Radical and Liberal parties that the long controversial merger of the two parties into one seemed like a much more palatable option than it did in previous years.
By March of 1903, a number of individuals announced that they would be seeking the nomination for the Radical-Liberal candidate for President of the Confederate States. These individuals were Senator Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, Governor John Vardaman of Mississippi, Governor Louis Brandeis of Kentucky, former Governor Daniel Lindsay Russel of North Carolina, former Governor John P. Buchanan of Tennessee, former Governor and Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina, Senator Marion Butler of North Carolina and Representative Milford W. Howard from Alabama. After months of deliberation and ideological negotiations between the many different members of the party, on July 12, 1903, the Rad-Libs nominated Senator Thomas E. Watson to be the Rad-Lib candidate for President of the Confederate States. Senator Watson choose Louis Brandeis of Kentucky as his running mate. This was done in an effort to balance the ticket between the former-Liberal Party member and easterner Watson and the former-Radical Party member, mid-westerner and "border-state man" Brandeis.
On the campaign trail, Senator Clark and Governor Grady ran on a platform of continuing the pro-business policies of President Hogg, supporting the increasing industrialization of the Confederate States, the improving of national infrastructure, maintaining the alliance with Great Britain and France and a serious improving of relations with the United States of America. On the other hand, Senator Watson and Governor Brandeis ran on a platform of worker's rights, agrarianism, bimetallism, isolationism, keeping in check the power of Confederate planter class and an even more serious improving of relations with the United States of America.
On election day, November 3, 1903, the people of the Confederacy finally went to vote in the nationwide state conventions. Once again, like in the election of 1897, a Whig victory was not at all a given. The Radicals and the Liberals had recently merged into a new opposition party, and based on the performance of the Rads and Libs in 1897, many in the Whig Party seriously feared that now, with two parties combined into one, they could actually take the Grey House. In the end, these fears were unfounded. By the end of the day, it was announced that the Whig Party ticket of Senator Champ Clark and Governor Henry W. Grady won the election, and with a handsome victory in the electoral college to top it off. They won every state in the Confederacy accept for the former Radical strongholds of Sonora, Chihuahua and Cuba, as well as the states of Mississippi and Arkansas, all of which were won by the Radical-Liberal Party. Many of the voters of Sonora, Chihuahua and Cuba continued to be disenchanted and annoyed with the "Anglo" dominated Whig Party. In the more western states of Mississippi and Arkansas agrarian populism was becoming more and more popular by the day, especially in the rural regions of these states. In addition, many of the voters in these states were becoming more and more annoyed with the supposed eastern Confederate domination of the Whig Party. Interestingly enough, Sequoyah, the state for the "Five Civilized Tribes", voted in its first election for the Whig Party. All in all, most people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" proved to be very loyal to the "Gallant Old Party." Since the Whigs were the established and ruling political power in the Confederacy, most of the voters in Seqouyah thought it would be much better to vote for them as opposed to a Rad-Lib opposition that regarded the United States, a nation which many in Sequoyah still hated as a result of the Trail of Tears, with a little too much warmth. In regards to the popular vote, the Rad-Libs came in a reasonably close second to the Whigs.
In the minds of many individuals, the merger of the Radical and Liberal parties proved for all intents and purposes to be a success, even though the new Radical-Liberal Party had failed to win the election. Still, at this point the Radical-Liberal Party had yet to became the sum of its parts. Quite bluntly, the ideological compromises required to make the merger of 1900 work and the cooling of outrage directed towards the Whig Party cost them some degree of support they could have had otherwise. That being said, after the election of 1903 the Radical-Liberal Party was now established as the second major Confederate political party, second only to the Whig Party, and with some room left for growth.
Champ Clark (W-KY)/Henry W. Grady (W-GA): 159 EV
Thomas E. Watson (RL-GA)/Louis Brandeis (RL-KY): 45 EV
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[1] IOTL Grady died at the age of 39 on December 23, 1889, eleven days after giving a speech in bad whether at Faneuil Hall in Boston. Needles to say, IITL Grady has no real reason to go to Boston in December of 1889.
[2] IOTL Grady's father was killed in battle in 1864.