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Because I still wanted to end the timeline officially before the end of the year, the post-election update I had planned will be done later as the start of the epilogue. So this 1912 election will be the last one of the main part of the timeline.

And by my count it's still before midnight. (thanks Mountain timezone!) So without further ado, here is the FINAL update of Union and Liberty!

Part One Hundred Forty-Three: The 1912 Presidential Election

Congress and Kongress:
The armistice and the Peace of Vienna dominated a large part of the general campaign in the 1912 election. Congress had ratified the treaties made at the Vienna Peace Conference easily enough. However, ratifying the American entry into the Weltknogress was another matter. President Roosevelt had returned home from Europe to campaign for Beveridge and to push hard for the ratification of the Weltkongress during the final year of his term. After Roosevelt had announced he would not run for reelection, Theodore Roosevelt started to see making the United States a founding member of the Weltkongress the ultimate act of his historical legacy. To this end, Roosevelt instructed many of the attendees of the Vienna Peace Conference campaigning around the country to build popular and congressional support for the international body.

Broadly speaking, the Progressive Party and a significant amount of the Democratic Party was in support of the Weltknogress. Many Progressives supported the entry into the Weltkongress for idealistic reasons of reducing war through dialogue between nations and encouraging peaceful solutions to disputes. Even those who did not subscribe to what would become the liberalist school of international relations believed the United States could secure the imperial ambitions of President Roosevelt and America's position as a great power through its actions and potential mediation of other countries' disputes in the Weltkongress. The support among the Democrats took primarily the same view of that latter group of Progressives. With the concentration of support in the South, Democratic Representatives and Senators often declared support for the Weltkongress as a means to secure American interests in the Caribbean and protect the lucrative trade routes from violation of the Monroe Doctine by European powers. The main opposition came from the Republican Party who with the nomination of Lawrence Yates Sherman had staked one of their few solid positions at the time against the Weltkongress. Sherman berated the idea of the Weltkongress as encouraging imperialism around the world. A more tenuous claim from Sherman went so far as to say that with the number of Catholic nations that would be joining the Weltkongress, the Pope (he did not specify Roman or Pueblan) would gain an inordinate amount of influence over American foreign and possibly domestic policy.

During the 1912 election campaign, the issue of the Weltkongress helped the Republicans score a major campaign victory that greatly improved their image as a national party. During the Congressional debate on the Weltkongress in the summer of 1912, Democratic Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts was one of the loudest detractors of the Weltkongress in the Democratic Party. Eventual nominee Edwin Warfield had remained relatively quiet on the issue, but he did give the Weltkongress tacit support and said he would do his utmost to protect American interests in the sessions if he were elected and the United States became a member. Lodge was incensed by this, but he had a greater worry. Congressman John FitzGerald, who represented much of Boston's Irish Catholic community[1], was challenging Lodge in the Democratic primary for Lodge's Senate seat. Edwin Warfield, who had built support among the much larger Irish Catholic constituency in Baltimore to help propel him to the governorship, threw his support behind the Catholic FitzGerald. It would seem the Democrats had finally tired of Lodge's antics, as many prominent men in the Massachusetts State Democratic Party also threw their weight behind FitzGerald's campaign, despite his being a Roman Catholic. Lodge lost the primary to John FitzGerald, but he was not out of the race yet. In a surprise move, he announced he was running as a Republican, and the field was quickly cleared for him. It was a reprisal of that stubbornness of character that led Lodge to run on the separate National Democratic Party label so many years ago, and this time it became a coup for the Republicans, as Lodge was still relatively popular in the state. Sherman arranged to appear with Lodge in Massachusetts after he announced his party switch as a show of drawing members of even other parties to the Republicans.

Henry Cabot Lodge joined the Republican coalescing opposition to the Weltkongress in the Senate, but it and the smaller opposition from the isolationist wings of the other parties was not enough to keep the United States out of the Weltkongress. Roosevelt had successfully built a broad coalition of support for American participation in the Weltkongress over the months. The wide publication of the news that the United States had won its dispute with Acadia-Tirnanog in the Weltkongress in September of 1912 boosted the support for the Weltkongress among the imperialists. The judgement that the United States would gain the Grand Manan Archipelago demonstrated that throug the system, the United States could flex its muscles and still gain territory through diplomacy without fighting, and that the European powers in the Weltkongress would not solely side against American interests. With the overwhelming support of Progressives and the mild support from Democrats, the American formal entry into the Weltkongress was ratified by the House and Senate on September 29, 1912, just in time for the home stretch of the 1912 election campaign.


THe 1912 General Election Campaign:
The push to ratify American entry into the Weltkongress took a lot of political capital from the Progressives, and arguably hurt them during the election campaign. Albert Beveridge and Henry C. Wallace may have heavily garnered support for the Weltkongress, but it came as a distraction from other issues that arose during the months following the Great War. It was the dominant issue of that campaign to be sure; however there were other events in the aftermath of the Great War that swung the campaign in the end.

For one, the American economy in the years after the Great War quickly became a major issue. Roosevelt's decision to keep the United States out of the Great War at first had been a popular one in much o the country. Northern industrialists enjoyed a boost in trade during those first war years. American neutrality allowed the country to export to both the Alliance Carolingien and the New Entente members. The worldwide scope of the war and the disruption of oceanic trade also helped the poorer states in the south, whose agricultural products briefly became more valuable overseas. Cotton, so decimated by the boll weevil sweeping across the Southern states, and rice saw a brief jump in exports from 1905 to 1909. Wheat and corn, valuable staple crops flowing out of the Mississippi watershed to sustain the European powers, also saw a heavy increase in exports in those years, aided by good rains and harvests in the United States during those years.

However, when the United States officially joined the Great War and declared war on Great Britain, American exports started to suffer. The states on the Canadian border turned from profitable agricultural or logging centers and sources of products being exported to the Laurentian states to areas of uncertain conflict and uneasy peace or, in some cases like New York's northern frontier, outright warzones. The permanent diversion of trade from the Great Lakes hurt the states and cities on those coasts during and after the war, even accounting for the general economic downturn in the United States after the end of the Great War. Because of this, the Democrats retained a lock on much of the old Confederacy and the Republicans rebounded in much of the Laurentian border states. Of the border states in the Old Northwest, only Itasca remained a hopeful state for the Progressives in 1912. Itasca's location at the headwaters of the Mississippi, its bumper wheat crop and the discovery of iron at the Cayuna Range in 1903, and the connection of the Duluth, Elk River, and Eau Claire Railroad all helped Itasca muddle through the war and following recession in good economic shape. It also helped the Progressives in the state that Itasca was enlarged by one of the major territorial gains the United States made in the Peace of Vienna, gaining more valuable iron country.

However, once the Great War ended, the post-war economic slump hurt the Progressives. Albert Beveridge, in a policy conceived by his running mate Henry C. Wallace, put forth a plan to protect farmers from shock fluctuations in grain prices through government insurance for farmers, but even then the post-war recession hurt the Progressives. With the resumption of normal grain protudction and exports in France, Russia, and elsewhere, and the return of soldiers from the front, grain prices along with much of the American economy saw a downturn during much of the latter half of 1912. While the Silver Depression had been milder, primarily signified by how long it lasted, the 1912-1913 recession was much more drastic. Troops returning from the war and the switch back from a wartime to a civilian economy led to heightened unemployment during the final months of Theodore Roosevelt's administration.

Amid the economic turmoil after the Great War, both Republicans and Democrats attacked the situation as being the fault of Roosevelt's administration. Senator Sherman for the Republicans adopted anti-Catholic rhetoric during the general campaign, turning the Republican Party in a more nativist direction. While former President Bryan also used some of this nativisim in his campaigns, Sherman was the start of this nativist turn for the Republicans. While this would boost Sherman in rural areas such as Pembina and rural Missouri, it hurt them in cities in the Old Northwest such as Saint Louis and Chicago, where Catholic immigrants were becoming increasingly influential. Meanwhile, governor Warfield of Maryland, building off his support from Irish Catholics in Baltimore, tried to court these urban immigrants. The New York City and surrounding operation was too entrenched for the Republicans, but the rapidly growing Confluence urban region were vulnerable to Democratic inroads, and Edwin Warfield was close to the optimal candidate to attract those voters.

With this support largely swinging to the Democrats in 1912, it was not too surprising that the Democratic ticket of Edwin Warfield and George Oliver won the presidency. The election had a number of very tight races. The Democrats won a number of tight races, and the 1912 election could have easily had no party receive a majority of electoral votes and gone to the House of Representatives. One thing that especially hurt Warfield and the Democrats was the first emergence of a separate state party system in Cuba. Mario Menocal may have been denied the Democratic nomination, but with the increasingly anti-Catholic sentiment among not just the Republicans but also the Democrats, the native Partido Conservador opted to nominate Menocal for president. Menocal accepted the nomination with New Mexico Representative Ezequiel Cabeza de Baca[2] as his running mate. The Partido Conservador mainly focused their campaign on Cuba, but also ran on the ballot in Jackson, Tejas, and New Mexico, attempting an early appeal to Iberos in the United States. The Conservador effort did not yield much outside of Cuba, but within Cuba it became a four way race. With a decent showing by the Socialists as well, Menocal barely came out on top with 27% of the vote and denied Warfield the state's electoral votes. Despite failing to win Cuba, Edwin Warfield and the Democrats eked out a majority with 236 electoral votes - the exact minimum they needed to avoid the race going to the House. There had been rumors that some North Carolina electors would defect and vote for Furnifold Simmons, but with the danger of the election going to the House and Sherman or Beveridge being chosen, they fell in line and cast their votes for Governor Warfield.


A Woman's Place Is In Politics:
One notable element of the 1912 election was the participation of women in the election for the first time. Not only was it the first election in which women were allowed to vote, but the 1912 election also had an extraordinary participation of women in active politics and campaigning. The election of President Warfield was greatly aided by the efforts of one Edith Bolling Galt of Virginia. Mrs. Galt, a scion of a prominent southwest Virginia family, married Norman Galt, a Washington, D.C. jeweler, and moved to the District in 1896[3]. While a graduate of a music school, Edith Galt took an keen interest in conservative politics and, financed by her husband and the Bolling family, became an advocate in Washington, Virginia, Winfield, and Maryland for the Democratic Party. When she and her husband moved to the Maryland suburbs of Washington in the early 20th century, Edith Galt began to associate with political circles in Rockville, Maryland. By 1912, Bolling Galt was a prominent fundraiser for the Democratic Party in Maryland. Galt, hoping to capitalize off of Edwin Warfield's run for the presidency and financed largely by her husband and her Virginian family connections, culminated a political ambition of hers and ran for Congress in 1912. In the more conservative area around Rockville in Maryland's 11th district, Edith Bolling Galt found a surprising success and with Warfield's success in the presidency boosting Democratic turnout in Maryland, Edith Galt was elected the first woman ever to the United States Congress in 1912, succeeding retiring Repuublican George Alexander Pearre.

The Republicans were not without political women of their own, particularly in the state of Ohio. Florence Harding was the wife of Republican newspaper editor Warren Harding, editor of the Marion Star and briefly state representative. The Harding family out of north central Ohio became well known in Columbus and both Warren and Florence became influential within Republican circles in the state. While Warren Harding soon returned to his newspaper business after a brief stint in the state legislature, Florence Harding continued to advocate for Republican politics and was one of the most prominent women in the state to speak for the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to enshrine the woman's right to vote in the Constitution. For her efforts, Florence Harding was rewarded. She was selected as a delegate from Ohio to the Republican National Convention. During the general campaign and even after the 1912 election, Florence Harding worked to set up so-called Florentine Clubs to encourage women to vote and run for elected office. These clubs bearing her namesake were most successful in her home state of Ohio but also became widespread around the country to varying success, though in their early years the Florentine Clubs had a clear Republican partisan bent. Florence Harding is now most remembered for her and her husband's inspiration for the musical Florence and Gamaliel. The musical is inspired by Warren and Florence Harding attempt to reconcile Florence's political aspirations and the conflict that arose between her and Warren ("Gamaliel" in the play after Warren's middle name), including a revealing affair from "Gamaliel" while Florence was campaigning that Warren Harding was rumored to have had.

Florence Harding and Edith Bolling Galt were two extraordinary women who helped two of the three major parties in the 1912 election, but there were women fighting for minor parties as well. The most notable of these was an actual presidential candidate. Since nominating Josephine Shaw Lowell in 1904, the Socialist Party attempted to present itself with an image of leading the fight for women's progress in the United States as part of its platform. Lowell died in 1907 of cancer, but her efforts as the first female nominee for executive office were not in vain. In 1912, the Socliast Party, jumping on the success of the party in Missouri in electing Leon Greenbaum to the House two years prior, nominated fellow Missouri Socialist Kate Richards O'Hare for President. O'Hare was a strong opponent to the American entry into the Great War, but being a Socialist activist, did not espouse as much anti-Catholic sentiment as the Republicans in the state. The nomination of O'Hare for President gave the Socialists an exceptionally strong showing of 5.3% in Missouri. In fact, Edwin Warfield almost certainly owes his election to the presidency to Kate O'Hare. The strong showing in Missouri with O'Hare's anti-war stance drew much of its vote from Saint Louis Republicans, and likely drew enough support to swing Missouri to the Democratic column, considering Warfield only beat Sherman in Missouri by 3%. With strong showings in Missouri and also over four percent in New York, Illinois, and Marquette, Kate O'Hare became the most successful women to run for president for a long time.

[1] John "Honey Fitz" FitzGerald, in OTL was mayor of Boston and contributed the Fitzgerald to a certain John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
[2] Ezequiel Cabeza de Baca was a member of an old New Mexican family descended from the Spanish colonial days, and in OTL was key in inserting bilingual law into New Mexico's state constitution as well as being the state's first Hispanic governor.
[3] In TTL Noman Galt doesn't die in 1908, so Edith Bolling Galt doesn't become Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.