alternatehistory.com

So I kind of love the setting of Bioshock Infinite so I was thinking what's the most plausible way we could get a self-proclaimed Prophet in charge of government during that era. Hence this list. Sorry if it's way too long and unrealistic to boot. I tried my best but I'm still unhappy with it so I'd love some feedback.

The American Prophet

1877-1881: Samuel J. Tilden / Thomas Hendricks (Democratic)
1876: Ulysses S. Grant / Elihu Washburne (Republican), Peter Cooper / Samuel Cary (Greenback)

It came to pass that in 1876, just over a decade after the Civil War during which they had been branded "the party of traitors" and just four years after an election in which they did not even field a candidate, the Democratic Party would reclaim the White House largely due to one man: Ulysses S. Grant.

Now, Grant could have been forgiven for thinking at the time that him running for a third term was a splendid idea. After all, he had won in 1872 despite his party being divided and his administration scandalized. It seemed the country trusted Grant, and he trusted the her.

But the Long Depression was taking its toll on the people's perception as the mental image of the great general taking Lee's at Appomattox was replaced with an aloof politician vetoing a popular relief bill. So when Grant seized the nomination for a third time by slapping down the demoralized Liberal Republican opposition, he found himself campaigning in front of an electorate that had seen its patience eroded. With little on economic successes to speak of, Grant instead would focus his campaign on his foreign policy. He reminded the nation that he had tried to annex Santa Domingo, but that his political opponents had prevented him. It was God's will for the nation to expand yet Democrats had opposed it. He appealed to nationalism. He appealed to Christian faith. He never said Manifest Destiny or "go west, young man", but the thought was on everyone's mind. A passion that was buried upon the Civil War found itself burrowing its head out again.

Tilden's classical liberal and anti-imperialist Democrats would seize the day though as the economy was just too bad to ignore and beyond what hi-jinks by Republican Governors could overcome, but Grant did better than some expected considering the circumstances. Meanwhile, farmers unsatisfied with both parties rallied behind the newly formed Greenback Party. Farmers were tired of being ignored and demanded to be taken seriously. More on that later.

Tilden's term was what one could expect from a Gilded Age President: average. He walked the country out of the Depression while cutting taxes and half-heartedly attempting some civil service reform. He reminded all that he was a former railroad lawyer when he responded to the railroad strikes in Pittsburgh with armed troops which served only to radicalize those dispossessed workers both in cities and in the country. While he sent troops to Pittsburgh, he pulled them out of the South, allowing his party to reign supreme once again below the Mason-Dixon which would come in handy in 1880.

1881-1885: Samuel J. Tilden / John Palmer (Democratic)
1880: John Sherman / Horace Maynard (Republican), James Weaver / Barzillai Chambers (Greenback)

Tilden, as unhealthy as he was, would run again in some sense from pressure by Democratic bosses unsure if any of their people could actually win. Tilden reached out to Republicans by putting former Republican Governor and general John Palmer on the ticket, the mugwumpiest of the mugwumps.

The Republicans were more divided. While some wanted to run Grant again, his sickness that he could from his world tour was serious enough that the proposal was abandoned. Conkling's Stalwarts and Blaine's Half-Breeds clashed as expected which led to a rather long and drawn out convention, compromising with the world's least exciting ticket of always dull Senator John Sherman and the half dead Horace Maynard. Perhaps running the brother of the man who burnt down Atlanta was not the best man to run in the first election where white supremacist Redeemer governments had seized most of the states but oh well. Sherman was canny in one sense in that he reused the popular Grant platform of focusing on foreign policy, specifically imperialism as per God's wishes. Sherman, as one of the supporters of an amendment making America officially a Christian nation, brought out the idea of this amendment to the public to build on the past campaigns and found it to be remarkably popular if relatively meaningless. It seemed these social issues would evoke just as much excitement as economic ones which put the pieces for one crafty Republican Senator to create a winning coalition.

In the background, the face of agrarian populism that the Greenbacks represented was changing. With a newfound religiosity in America both in politics and in concurrence with the Third Great Awakening, the doctrine of Social Gospel was rising. Christ promised to return on this earth once again, but this would only be after the Millennium where Christian beliefs and ethics prosper. To do it, man would have to fix the earth, and if something as horrific as the Long Depression and all the suffering it inflicted could happen, clearly the world was not ready. Everyone would need to be taken care of and that meant making sure farmers, the forgotten class, was cared for. You see, agrarian populism was not some selfish vote by an economically distressed class. It was the will of God! It would just take time to develop.

1885-1888: James G. Blaine / Chester Arthur (Republican)
1884: Thomas F. Bayard / Allen G. Thurman (Democratic), Benjamin F. Butler / Absolom M. West (Greenback/Anti-Monopoly), John St. John / William Daniel (Prohibition)
1888-1889: James G. Blaine / VACANT (Republican)

James Blaine was considered the most corrupt man in Washington, but the fact that he managed to stay in office showed a certain political cunning as well. Seizing the nomination after compromising with Conkling through Chester Arthur as Vice President, Blaine would run on a campaign lambasting the Tilden administration for its refusal to expand America as God willed it. Manifest Destiny was called destiny for a reason, but foolish Tilden didn't know it! He captured the fire of Grant with the detailed proposals of Sherman and crushed the colorless Bayard. After eight long years, Republicans were back in the White House.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Butler took control of the now faltering Greenbacks. The Long Depression was way in the past, and the issue wasn't resonating anymore. But Butler didn't care about that. He didn't abandon his successful political career to take over some dying party. No, Butler wanted more than that. He wanted a grand alliance of these smaller single-issue parties to smash the corrupt two party system. Through fusion voting, anything was possible! Well, except that was a lot harder than it seemed. In the end, Butler would only manage to get the Greenback and Anti-Monopoly Party nominations, but even with that, he received more votes than the Prohibition Party. It got people's attention. Maybe there could be a viable third party. Perhaps a party that included farmer's rights and prohibition

Perhaps in another world, the paths of imperialism and agrarian populism would continue down its separate paths. But instead in 1885, one of the leaders of the Social Gospel movement would write his magnum opus that would seize the country by its heart. Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis by Josiah Strong would codify in flowing polemic that it was God's will to colonize and spread His Word to those unknowing masses, that we as the Anglo-Saxon race was God's chosen people to Christianize and civilize the world, that God gave us this land that we call America because it is our Promised Land and is holy as that of Jerusalem. But yet even the Holy Land can be corrupted as it was by Pharisees and heretics as Jerusalem turns to Gomorrah. So it is to prevent this that we must fight against the great perils facing this nation: Catholicism, Mormonism, Socialism, Intemperance, Wealth, Urbanization, and Immigration.

There is no doubt a copy landed on the President's desk. Whether it be that the book convinced Blaine or just aware how much of the country was convinced that Blaine began to follow the teachings in the book. When the Berlin Conference came about (slightly delayed due to Tilden having denied Belgian King Leopold's wish for the United States to recognize his ownership of the Congo) for all the nations to carve out what parts of Africa would go to who, Blaine would demand that America have its place in the sun. It was this insistence and the fact that Bismarck didn't want France nor Britain to have it that the Conference agreed, much to Leopold's chagrin, that Congo would be given to the United States as long as the US didn't bother the Europeans about Africa again. The news was met with great cheers back in the States as missionaries began to prepare to make a trip across the Atlantic as Strong's book encouraged. Strong himself began to build a strong network to support missionaries visiting Africa which would only increase his fame and prestige. Manifest Destiny and faith became intertwined in ways never expected before.

1889-1893: James G. Blaine / Russell Alger (Republican)
1888: Samuel Randall / Isaac P. Gray (Democratic), Leonidas L. Polk / Ignatius Donnelly (Farmer's Alliance/Union Reform), Clinton Fisk / John Brooks (Prohibition)

Blaine would win his reelection by continuing to hammer home his strengths. He was already known across the country as an anti-Catholic man for his actions in pushing the failed Blaine Amendment. Seeing as it seemed to only help him, he successfully pushed the amendment again. Blaine would also pass Sherman's Christian Amendment to establish the United States as a Christian nation. On matters of nationalism, Blaine would build up the navy and enact immigration restrictions to prevent Catholics and Celestials from entering the US in the mass waves that they did in the past. After a failed push to take Santa Domingo once again, Blaine instead annexed the Kingdom of Hawaii into the Union. The classical liberal Bourbon Democrats protested these popular actions which would lead to Blaine easily defeated Minority Leader Randall in 1888.

When the remains of the Greenbacks merged together in 1889 into the People's Party aka the Populists explicitly on Social Gospel principles, Blaine found himself rather concerned. Blaine was considering doing what Washington Wouldn't and Grant Couldn't, winning the fabled third term. As someone who had contributed to the religious fervor in the country, he could easily see how that it could be used against him by a skilled and popular preacher like Josiah Strong. So Blaine decided he would knock Strong out of the picture. In 1889, he announced that he would be appointing Josiah Strong as Territorial Governor of the American Congo, a task which the pastor took with much fervor. Under Strong, Leopoldville would be renamed New Jamestown to mark this historic moment in American imperialism while ordering the natives into church and to behave more "civilized" as he began to work to make the colony profitable.

When Polish merchant mariner Józef Konrad arrived in New Jamestown, he would ride how the city looked like a normal American city with colonial style buildings. The natives would go to the magnificently built church on Sundays and be dressed according to western cultures. But Konrad remarked that there was a deadness in their eyes that he remembered many years later. Yet his writings would get little attention. Americans were happy to hear that Strong was bringing profits and faith to the colony while Blaine was pleased when the People's Party nominated an elderly Washington Gladden, a has-been in Social Gospel circles. His scheme had worked and secured him reelection to a third term.

1893-1897: James G. Blaine / William McKinley (Republican)
1892: David B. Hill / William Vilas (Democratic), Washington Gladden / Ignatius Donnelly (People's), John Bidwell / James Cranfill (Prohibition)

It all started with a coup in Argentina that managed to annihilate agricultural prices. Then it turned into a panic on the banks. Then banks started running out of money. After a prosperous decade, it seemed the horrors of the 1870s were coming back as another Depression hit the United States.

It was under this setting that Josiah Strong felt great concern for his people. He was uncertain what he could do during these trying times to alleviate the suffering of Americans while he was trying to civilize the Congo. During a particularly nasty outbreak of malaria, Strong was incapacitated in his bed, struck with illness. It was then that an angel appeared before Strong, identifying herself as Angel Columbia, the protector of America. Columbia delivered a message from God that while there was a great amount of work to be done outside of America, the Holy Land needed him now. He was to resign from his governorship and get on the next ship to America. Upon arriving, he was to restore Christ's church, to spread the Word, and to alleviate the suffering of His people. Strong obeyed the angel and even in illness, set upon his God-given task.

America had been full of "prophets" throughout its history. They tended to either be laughed at or extend their followers to a sizable but still small small group in the grand scheme of things. So it was likely that if Strong had made this announcement at another period of time or if he had not been a celebrated and famed preacher and writer already read by millions across the country or perhaps even if the nation had not been fed for the past decade how expansion was their God-given destiny and that America was a special and exceptional land from God Almighty himself. But the timing was perfect, and the Prophet returned to the Promised Land to a nation that hardship had made humble enough to bow before the throne of God, to accept his messenger, and enter the halls of his blessed and holy Church of Columbia.

Some would accuse Strong of planning the whole thing. Was it purely by chance that he was to return to America right when the country was most receptive for a message of hope? Was it purely by chance that his governorship of the Congo allowed him to amass a fortune so that he had the capital to build his church from the ground up? Was this all by chance that the ideas that this angel supposedly told him to found the church on was practically the things he had been writing all these years anyway? It was not chance, Strong would say. For the Lord works in mysterious way, his invisible hand of providence guiding his Prophet until he was ready for the message. The "convenience" of it all proved only that he truly was the Prophet, and it was through His Church that the suffering of his sheep would be alleviated with the social services the government under the Republicans and the newly empowered Democrats would not provide. Salvation would come not from the White House, but from the Temple.

So it was so that Strong would continue to sow the seeds for his rise as another election passed.

1897-1898: William Russell / John Palmer (Democratic)
1896: James Forsyth / Matthew Quay (Republican), Charles E. Bentley / Thomas Watson (People's / Prohibition), Eugene Debs / Charles Matchett (Socialist Labor)

1896 was a time of change. The Republicans, having had their bench hollowed out by a nasty midterm and Blaine's own sidelining of anyone talented for his ambition's sake, nominated a war hero and celebrity, the Man Who Tamed The West, out of desperation more than anything. The Populists, smarting from their less than impressive showing with Gladden due to his pro-Catholic views, decided no longer could they split the religious vote with the Prohibition Party and forged a unity ticket with pastor Charles Bentley. But it was the Democrats that produced a real man of change. The youngest nominee for President in American history, the Massachusetts Governor William Russell ran on Bourbonite principles of sound money. Paired with former Vice President John Palmer to show this wasn't a totally inexperienced ticket, Russell's earnest and optimistic speeches would win the day as a nation thoroughly disenchanted with Blaine and the Republicans chose new leadership somewhat skeptically.

Russell would prove to be a perfectly fine economic leader who would ignore calls for bimetallism and would just ride out the economic storm. The problems arose when foreign policy came into the picture, when Bourbon anti-imperialism clashed with the nation's Manifest Destiny urges. With Spain weak and Cuba wide open for the taking, the yellow press blew a gasket at Russell for not seizing the territory and declaring war. Even when the warship Maine exploded in Havana harbor, Russell insisted that it was an accident and no action will be taken. Strong could take it no longer. In a speech carried by all the newspapers, Strong declared that Russell would be punished for denying God's will in taking Cuba, that he would not serve out the rest of his term. That this man claiming to be a prophet would suggest that the 41-year old Governor would somehow fail to finish his term was met with laughter throughout the country. It was met with eerie silence when President Russell would die of heart failure three days later.

The Prophet had spoken.

1898-1901: John Palmer / VACANT (Democratic)

The nation's youngest President would be succeeded by the nation's oldest President, but it was almost like there was no difference. Palmer held strong that there was no need for war against Spain much to the nation's fury. The Democrats suffered in the midterms, some to the Republicans but mostly to the Populists. The nation didn't trust the Democrats on foreign policy, and it didn't trust the Republicans on fiscal policy which left only one party left.

Meanwhile, Strong continued to gain strength as his Church's social services became more and more in need with the Bourbons and business Republicans continuing to offer little relief to those struggling and as people continued to be uncertain of what to make of Strong's fulfilled prophecy. Whether if his Church of Columbia movement which mixed American nationalism, imperialism, and Christianity together could gain nationwide attraction wasn't certain until the Boxer Rebellion. When raging Celestials slaughtered thousands of foreigners including Americans in Peking, Palmer would respond with righteous indignation backed by some handful of ships and marines. That the President of the United States would respond to this barbarity which such little backing infuriated the nation, especially when Germany had sent out a whole army to burn down the Chinese countryside like "Huns" as the Kaiser said. It was the final straw. As mobs would lynch Chinese immigrants in the streets of San Francisco, a feeling began to pervade across the country that the self-proclaimed prophet may in fact be right. Both the Republicans and Democrats had led the nation away from God's chosen path. If one was to accept that, there was really only one choice, and that was to elect the Prophet himself.

1901-XXXX: Josiah Strong / Joseph B. Foraker ("Holy" Republican / "Millennialist" People's / Prohibition / United Christian)
1900: Augustus Van Wyck / Carter Harrison Jr. (Democratic / Anti-Imperialist), James Weaver / Wharton Baker ("Strictly Agrarian" People's), Eugene Debs / Job Harriman (Labor), Morgan Bulkeley / Henry Clay Evans ("Agnostic" Republican)

The Populists nominated Strong by acclaim. Not all believed he was truly a prophet, but they at least agreed with him and he had shown wisdom in his actions so far. The few who didn't stormed out and would form their own secular ticket, led by James Weaver, the 1880 Greenback nominee and thoroughly a has-been at this point. The Prohibitionists saw that Strong was their best chance and endorsed him as well. The United Christian Party was formed by evangelicals across the country to show who they supported which promptly endorsed Strong. The anti-Catholic American Protection Association would also announce in their paper that Strong was their man.

With Palmer declining to run for his own term, the Democrats doubled down on the urban vote. They knew Strong would alienate Catholics and immigrants so they picked the New York Governor Augustus Van Wyck and the Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison Jr. as their ticket. Scandals would immediately erupt in the Democratic ticket. Van Wyck would find himself embroiled in a corruption scandal that took down his brother, the Mayor of New York, and which naturally implicated him. Harrison, despite being at the bottom of the ticket, was not freed from scandal as well with his Catholic wife becoming a target of the APA that would lead to Harrison famously cursing out an audience that he was to give a speech before. The Democrats seemed to have everything go wrong for them.

The Republicans were still mostly benchless as a result of the late Blaine's amibitions. They could run some no-name Governor or Senator they had lying around and inevitably lose. But a different idea formed within some bosses. There was an alliance between Strong and Blaine during the 1880s. Why could that not be done again? And if he was a prophet of God as it seemed much of the nation believed, why get on his bad side? Let him be win purely on a Populist ticket, and then Strong would see that smashing corporations and spreading their remains over farmlands was a winning platform. No, they would need him on their side if corporate America was to survive. This was the logic of the ever wily Henry Clay Frick who convinced much of his fellow businessmen and Republican officials that the path forward lied with the Prophet. Some disagreed of course, but Frick made sure they received no support, leaving the splinter Republican ticket to be led by a wealthy gadfly Governor of little note or ballot access. Meanwhile, some of the Populists protested, but if the Prophet had decided an alliance was what was needed, who were they to disagree?

And so it came to pass that the Promised Land would be led once again by a man of God, that blessed Columbia may fulfill her sacred duty to cleanse the world of sin and bring about the Millennium. The yellow hordes of China would have to pay for their crimes against God's chosen people. The heretics in Utah must be cast out into the ocean. The papists must be thrown out of our cities, out of our continent, out of Europe. No, there would be much work to be done before the world was cleansed and ready for Christ's return. There was little time. They had to work fast.

The Lord may forgive all, but Josiah Strong is just a Prophet so he didn't have to. Amen.