TL-191: Filling the Gaps
- Thread starter Craigo
- Start date
Afraid not. Over at the Turtledove wiki, we him listed as the possibly 21st based on the "series of Democrats" references in HFR. That's only on the POTUS page, not at his entry proper.
I had him at 21st, assuming that the one-term rule was still in effect with no Lincoln re-election. But that's an option.
In between Blaine and TR are seven terms, and either six or seven Presidents. On top of that, Reed and Mahan are likely two termers. That math is very tricky, which is why I was considering one term for Hendricks, and a Presidential death in between Lincoln and Blaine. Blaine would be 22nd and that makes for only five Presidents for seven terms.
The other option is four Presidents between Lincoln and Blaine, so he's 21st. I have a plausible route to get six Presidents squeezed in.
If Blaine is 20th - seven Presidents, seven terms. The math is ridiculous then, and either Reed or Mahan have to serve less than two full terms, in addition to a few others.
I'm currently leaning towards 21st, the middle route. Unfortunately, that means I'd have to jettison the 1872 President I had my heart set on.
I've just read that older post of yours on the Wrights. Interesting little touches, particularly how only one of them was a full-time devotee of the project and how the first flight got delayed by a whole year. That makes the planes of TL-191 all the more exotic weapons of war, considering they only had 10 years to evolve before WWI erupted, instead of OTL's 11.
BTW, by coincidence, Zach's Napoleonic TL also had the first flight take place in 1904 (when TTL's WWI was already closing). The inventor and pilot was still American, but he worked solo and was called Alfred Wagoner. The Americans of the TL refer to aircraft as "airwagons", in honour of his surname.
If I may suggest the following:
Four between Lincoln and Blaine--this would actually scan with OTL 19th century tendencies to elect 1-term presidents. In many ways, Lincoln getting nominated again in OTL was kind of a fluke. So Blaine is 21st
Then, have Blaine's succesor (Prez 22) die in office. His VP (Prez 23) finishes out the term and opts not to run again (this again scans with OTL practices).
Then Mahan (24)--based on the clues HT gave us, we have a very narrow window for Mahan to serve, and he was plausibly a two termer.
Then Reed (25), who dies in office (using the Coolidge rule of having people die of heart attacks at the same time as in OTL), and is suceeded by pres 26, who finishes out, steps down. Then 27 is a two-termer, then Roosevelt.
That explanation, I find, is probably the cleanest way to account for everything HT told us.
I've just read that older post of yours on the Wrights. Interesting little touches, particularly how only one of them was a full-time devotee of the project and how the first flight got delayed by a whole year. That makes the planes of TL-191 all the more exotic weapons of war, considering they only had 10 years to evolve before WWI erupted, instead of OTL's 11.
BTW, by coincidence, Zach's Napoleonic TL also had the first flight take place in 1904 (when TTL's WWI was already closing). The inventor and pilot was still American, but he worked solo and was called Alfred Wagoner. The Americans of the TL refer to aircraft as "airwagons", in honour of his surname.
Believe it or not, most of the research for that one was one finding a spot for the first flight that I liked.
I know very little about airplanes, so I wasn't really comfortable with the finished product.
Wait...something I didn't think of there. I may end up using your suggestion after all.
Don't worry, it's pretty good, I really like the ATL version of the Wright Brothers and the US aircraft industry. A nice touch was Orville founding a Wright automobile company. Kind of reminds me of the same European inter-war trend (notable examples of aero-auto companies back then were the Swedish SAAB and the Czech Aero). I also loved the reference to rising French jingoism giving preference to Santos-Dumont
That's exactly what OTL Brazilian nationalists have been doing for over a century - just watch a Santos-Dumont or Wright vid on YT and you'll find the Wrights badmouthed in nearly every comment . The rest of the stuff in the post isn't off either. It's similar to OTL, but adequately different, as one would expect from TL-191. Wolfpaw
Banned
Well, remember that HT handwaved TR into living a few extra years. Nobody's saying you can't
Well, remember that HT handwaved TR into living a few extra years. Nobody's saying you can't
I have one guy who fits the bill -sort of. The problem is that he was a real VP, and I like to avoid putting the same people in the same office when I can (though, as you say, HT did that himself).
Well, remember that HT handwaved TR into living a few extra years. Nobody's saying you can't
Hardly handwaving, or at least, a good solid historical basis for that handwave (no trips to South America to pick up typhoid, no dead son to grieve over, no bullet in his chest).
People with heart issues, cancer, etc (Coolidge, Richard Harding Davis, Kaiser Bill) died "on schedule".
United States presidential election, 1872
Thomas Hendricks' term was over before it had hardly begun. The onerous Fugitive Slave Law provoke a firestorm that Hendricks believed to be far out of proportion. After all, he could rightly claim that the modest revenue gains and the assumption of claims by the Confederate government had resulted in the first balanced budget since before the War of Secession. He had also rightly predicted that the white electorate would care little for the welfare of the escaped slaves (and a few unlucky freedmen) who would be taken South. What he, as a Peace Democrat (now more and more called Soft Liners) had failed to comprehend was the prickly sensitivity the North had for Rebel incursions. A string of ugly incidents reminiscent of the 1850s greeted the new decade, as Negroes and abolitionists fought back against slave-catchers and Federal marshals. By the end of the year, two deaths (including a white innkeeper in York, Pennsylvania) and scores of injuries and arrests had ensued, and the country was in an ugly mood. The Democrats very nearly lost their Congressional majority in both houses.
Secretary of State James Bayard Jr., whose son Thomas had negotiated the treaty, resigned under pressure that December, and his replacement, Reverdy Johnson, quietly ended the registration of new slave-catchers. Federal Marshals, meanwhile, received new orders prohibiting the enforcement of the treaty's provisions if so doing would likely incite violence.
The damage was already done, however, and Hendricks had been mortally wounded. His administration concentrated on government economy and tariff reform, and the simmering Indian wars out west, and quietly slipped into twilight.
The Democratic party, though still a majority, had continued the factionalization which haunted it throughout its history. In addition to the old war and peace, east and west wings, a new pro-tariff element had sprung up in the industrial states to challenge the traditional free traders which had always dominated. Its leader was George Woodward, the popular two-term governor of Pennsylvania who had left office in 1871 and immediately begun a sub rosa campaign for the presidency. The eastern wing quickly rallied around his candidacy, and challenges by Daniel Voorhees, Clement Vallandigham, Samuel Cox, and Sanford Church were brushed aside with a second-ballot victory at the convention in Chicago. The Democrats had, improbably, united behind a strong candidate. Woodward's pro-tarrif positions rankled, but party insiders rested secure in the knowledge that free traders still ran the congressional party. Cox was chosen as his running mate.
The GOP, meanwhile, was a wreck. Its leadership ranks had been decimated by the 1860s, and even a strong result in 1870 had produced mostly young faces. William Seward and Salmon Chase were fading fast, while names like Schuyler Colfax and James Garfield failed to excite, and Henry Wilson and Charles Francis Adams were too old (besides, even in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Treaty a New Englander was considered too dangerous for the top of the ticket). There was a brilliant young firebrand named James Blaine, newly elected to the House from Maine, but no one paid him any serious attention yet.
With so few worthy politicians on the scene, Republican insiders – men like William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Dana, John Hay, Donald Cameron, Roscoe Conkling, Charles Dana and the aforementioned Garfield – naturally settled upon an outsider – Thomas Scott, the much admired Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the largest business in the world. Aside from a stint as Assistant Secretary of War (where had been praised for his energy and efficiency), Scott had absolutely no political experience. But he did have the support of some of the wealthiest men in America, and a potential base in Woodward's Pennsylvania.
His candidacy sailed through almost as smoothly as Woodward's had. There was a momentary hiccup when former General Benjamin Butler, an inexplicably powerful politician from Massachusetts, threatened to run a third-party ticket. But this was smoothed over easily with the offer of the Vice Presidency.
From the outset, it was clear that the Hendricks Administration had changed the electoral calculus. Republican charges of softness towards the Confederacy were now hitting their mark, while Democratic speakers reported that waving the bloody shirt didn't evoke the same passion as it had four years before.
Perhaps the most important event in the campaign came in early September, in a letter from Scott to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, in which he promised that the transcontinental railroad would be completed in four years if he were elected. A bold claim, and one of dubious strength, but it resonated in the Western states, especially along the Pacific coast. Another seminal moment came when a letter from Benjamin Butler, dated October 17, 1868, emerged, in which he denigrated the Brown-Frelinghuysen ticket, mockingly referred to as "Hessian." The uproar in German communities, especially in Missouri, was so fierce that the top Republicans feared the state to be hopeless.
The end result of this maneuvering and bungling was the closest election in American history up to that point.
George Washington Woodward/Samuel Cox: 50% 133 electoral votes
Thomas Alexander Scott/Benjamin Butler: 48% 126 electoral votes
Republicans had achieved their heart's desire of winning Pennsylvania (albeit by less than ten thousand votes) and managed to sweep the West Coast as well, but lost very other lower northern state, including New Jersey by the slimmest of margins, and West Virginia and Missouri, which Brown had won four year earlier. (The obscure 1870 agreement by which the public debt issue was amicably resolved between Virginia and West Virginia is thought to have greatly boosted Democrats in the Mountain State.)
For the third straight year a Democrat had won the White House, but it was the Republicans who were looking ahead eagerly to the nation's centennial. Every four years they had eaten away at the Dems' strength, and it now appeared that nothing could halt their glorious resurgence in 1876.
[Sorry the lack of an electoral map, hard to make those at work.]
Thomas Hendricks' term was over before it had hardly begun. The onerous Fugitive Slave Law provoke a firestorm that Hendricks believed to be far out of proportion. After all, he could rightly claim that the modest revenue gains and the assumption of claims by the Confederate government had resulted in the first balanced budget since before the War of Secession. He had also rightly predicted that the white electorate would care little for the welfare of the escaped slaves (and a few unlucky freedmen) who would be taken South. What he, as a Peace Democrat (now more and more called Soft Liners) had failed to comprehend was the prickly sensitivity the North had for Rebel incursions. A string of ugly incidents reminiscent of the 1850s greeted the new decade, as Negroes and abolitionists fought back against slave-catchers and Federal marshals. By the end of the year, two deaths (including a white innkeeper in York, Pennsylvania) and scores of injuries and arrests had ensued, and the country was in an ugly mood. The Democrats very nearly lost their Congressional majority in both houses.
Secretary of State James Bayard Jr., whose son Thomas had negotiated the treaty, resigned under pressure that December, and his replacement, Reverdy Johnson, quietly ended the registration of new slave-catchers. Federal Marshals, meanwhile, received new orders prohibiting the enforcement of the treaty's provisions if so doing would likely incite violence.
The damage was already done, however, and Hendricks had been mortally wounded. His administration concentrated on government economy and tariff reform, and the simmering Indian wars out west, and quietly slipped into twilight.
The Democratic party, though still a majority, had continued the factionalization which haunted it throughout its history. In addition to the old war and peace, east and west wings, a new pro-tariff element had sprung up in the industrial states to challenge the traditional free traders which had always dominated. Its leader was George Woodward, the popular two-term governor of Pennsylvania who had left office in 1871 and immediately begun a sub rosa campaign for the presidency. The eastern wing quickly rallied around his candidacy, and challenges by Daniel Voorhees, Clement Vallandigham, Samuel Cox, and Sanford Church were brushed aside with a second-ballot victory at the convention in Chicago. The Democrats had, improbably, united behind a strong candidate. Woodward's pro-tarrif positions rankled, but party insiders rested secure in the knowledge that free traders still ran the congressional party. Cox was chosen as his running mate.
The GOP, meanwhile, was a wreck. Its leadership ranks had been decimated by the 1860s, and even a strong result in 1870 had produced mostly young faces. William Seward and Salmon Chase were fading fast, while names like Schuyler Colfax and James Garfield failed to excite, and Henry Wilson and Charles Francis Adams were too old (besides, even in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Treaty a New Englander was considered too dangerous for the top of the ticket). There was a brilliant young firebrand named James Blaine, newly elected to the House from Maine, but no one paid him any serious attention yet.
With so few worthy politicians on the scene, Republican insiders – men like William Cullen Bryant, Richard Henry Dana, John Hay, Donald Cameron, Roscoe Conkling, Charles Dana and the aforementioned Garfield – naturally settled upon an outsider – Thomas Scott, the much admired Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the largest business in the world. Aside from a stint as Assistant Secretary of War (where had been praised for his energy and efficiency), Scott had absolutely no political experience. But he did have the support of some of the wealthiest men in America, and a potential base in Woodward's Pennsylvania.
His candidacy sailed through almost as smoothly as Woodward's had. There was a momentary hiccup when former General Benjamin Butler, an inexplicably powerful politician from Massachusetts, threatened to run a third-party ticket. But this was smoothed over easily with the offer of the Vice Presidency.
From the outset, it was clear that the Hendricks Administration had changed the electoral calculus. Republican charges of softness towards the Confederacy were now hitting their mark, while Democratic speakers reported that waving the bloody shirt didn't evoke the same passion as it had four years before.
Perhaps the most important event in the campaign came in early September, in a letter from Scott to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, in which he promised that the transcontinental railroad would be completed in four years if he were elected. A bold claim, and one of dubious strength, but it resonated in the Western states, especially along the Pacific coast. Another seminal moment came when a letter from Benjamin Butler, dated October 17, 1868, emerged, in which he denigrated the Brown-Frelinghuysen ticket, mockingly referred to as "Hessian." The uproar in German communities, especially in Missouri, was so fierce that the top Republicans feared the state to be hopeless.
The end result of this maneuvering and bungling was the closest election in American history up to that point.
George Washington Woodward/Samuel Cox: 50% 133 electoral votes
Thomas Alexander Scott/Benjamin Butler: 48% 126 electoral votes
Republicans had achieved their heart's desire of winning Pennsylvania (albeit by less than ten thousand votes) and managed to sweep the West Coast as well, but lost very other lower northern state, including New Jersey by the slimmest of margins, and West Virginia and Missouri, which Brown had won four year earlier. (The obscure 1870 agreement by which the public debt issue was amicably resolved between Virginia and West Virginia is thought to have greatly boosted Democrats in the Mountain State.)
For the third straight year a Democrat had won the White House, but it was the Republicans who were looking ahead eagerly to the nation's centennial. Every four years they had eaten away at the Dems' strength, and it now appeared that nothing could halt their glorious resurgence in 1876.
[Sorry the lack of an electoral map, hard to make those at work.]
Last edited:
Wolfpaw
Banned
Excellent update as always, Craigo! You've got me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what goes so badly wrong for the Republicans between '72 and '76
I'll put this up till you get home, then
Craigo!
Yesterday and today, I read the entire thread! MAGNIFICENT!!!
Just one note, as you say that many times you can't remember what you were going to do with a particular character or idea. There IS such a thing as writing notes for yourself, y'know! Don't try to keep it all in your head!
Let me add my encouragement to everyone else's! This is a GREAT thread!
Yesterday and today, I read the entire thread! MAGNIFICENT!!!
Just one note, as you say that many times you can't remember what you were going to do with a particular character or idea. There IS such a thing as writing notes for yourself, y'know! Don't try to keep it all in your head!
Let me add my encouragement to everyone else's! This is a GREAT thread!
Thank you.
I had some notes on an old computer, but that one's pretty much lost to me forever now.
IT'S BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!