AHC&WI:President Samuel Clemens

I've been inspired by some previous posts on this subject and I'd like to begin another on it so find some fresh ideas I might add to my own TL. So basicaly how can we make Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) enter into a succesful political career and eventualy gain the presidency, or at least a high ranking office. Then what butterflies would this likely create?
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Well the first question is, when would *Twain need to go into politics, and how much would he then resemble the man OTL knew?

Let's see if we can find that out working backwards -- Clemens was born 1835, and the average Presidential age is around 55, so we're looking at becoming President around 1888 or 1892; the earliest he could constitutionally be elected either President or Vice-President is 1872, and can't realistically be elected after 1900 (at age 65). While he'd essentially have to first be elected as Governor or appointed Senator of some state first, there's little no real minimum time of service required for either office, so it can be as little as two years prior; the trick is, since he never became a lawyer OTL, to either find a way to make him realistic candidate for one of these offices without, or else change his early life so he becomes a lawyer instead of a journalist/writer.

And that brings us to the next question -- which state should he start his political career in? What makes this tricky is Clemens was moving around so much in his early life -- Missouri, the Nevada Territory, California, New York, Conneticut -- and he'd have to be settled in one location long enough to be considered "local" (at least legally enough) to run for office. That said, if you want the Twain of OTL's liberal views, you really can't do anything to stop his 1870 marriage to Olivia Langdon in New York (her abolitionist family had a great deal of influence on him). Currently, residency requirements for running for the NY State Legislature are five years.

Therefore, one thing I'd start with for this TL is to stop *Twain from moving his family to Connecticut in 1871. From there, you just need to find, with no PoDs before this 1870-71 period, a way to get him involved in New York politics, so that he's a plausible candidate for Senator or Governor by 1890 (or so). Good luck with that!
 
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Well the first question is, when would *Twain need to go into politics, and how much would he then resemble the man OTL knew?

Let's see if we can find that out working backwards -- Clemens was born 1835, and the average Presidential age is around 55, so we're looking at becoming President around 1888 or 1892; the earliest he could constitutionally be elected either President or Vice-President is 1872, and can't realistically be elected after 1900 (at age 65). While he'd essentially have to first be elected as Governor or appointed Senator of some state first, there's little no real minimum time of service required for either office, so it can be as little as two years prior; the trick is, since he never became a lawyer OTL, to either find a way to make him realistic candidate for one of these offices without, or else change his early life so he becomes a lawyer instead of a journalist/writer.

And that brings us to the next question -- which state should he start his political career in? What makes this tricky is Clemens was moving around so much in his early life -- Missouri, the Nevada Territory, California, New York, Conneticut -- and he'd have to be settled in one location long enough to be considered "local" (at least legally enough) to run for office. That said, if you want the Twain of OTL's liberal views, you really can't do anything to stop his 1870 marriage to Olivia Langdon in New York (her abolitionist family had a great deal of influence on him). Currently, residency requirements for running for the NY State Legislature are five years.

Therefore, one thing I'd start with for this TL is to stop *Twain from moving his family to Connecticut in 1871. From there, you just need to find, with no PoDs before this 1870-71 period, a way to get him involved in New York politics, so that he's a plausible candidate for Senator or Governor by 1890 (or so). Good luck with that!
I love you man!:) Sadly I was thinking of including this situation in a TL with a POD circa 1859 so I'll have to find ways to see if I can have Twain's experiences in my TL remain similar to his in OTL.
 
Sadly I was thinking of including this situation in a TL with a POD circa 1859 so I'll have to find ways to see if I can have Twain's experiences in my TL remain similar to his in OTL.

Are you planning on altering the course of the Civil War? Because that absolutely would give you a *Twain unrecognizable to OTL...
 
Yes I do I plan on writing a TL with an independent CSA.

wasn't he a boatman for the Confederacy on the Mississippi River? Would we have Samuel Clemens as President of the CSA? Because I really doubt the USA would elect someone who was on the Confederate side.

And if Clemens was in the Confederate political arena, he'd be shunned as a radical for his liberal views.
 
wasn't he a boatman for the Confederacy on the Mississippi River? Would we have Samuel Clemens as President of the CSA? Because I really doubt the USA would elect someone who was on the Confederate side.

And if Clemens was in the Confederate political arena, he'd be shunned as a radical for his liberal views.
I never even thought about making him a CSA president! But that would cause alot of problems for me since writing the personality of a person in an ATL in realy hard and I think many of the qualities that Twian was famous for would be changed if he accepted the CSA as his new home. He was still young during the ACW though and could perhaps be easily influenced into different directions but I'm not sure. I'm gonna have to look at some bios on him to get some ideas.
 
I never even thought about making him a CSA president!

It's not impossible (depending on where Missouri ends up, possibly less so than becoming the US President), but again, he'd really have to be a version of Clemens alien to OTL; so aside from the novelty, I don't think you're likely to get much out of this "President Clemens" idea...
 
It's not impossible (depending on where Missouri ends up, possibly less so than becoming the US President), but again, he'd really have to be a version of Clemens alien to OTL; so aside from the novelty, I don't think you're likely to get much out of this "President Clemens" idea...
True, the thing is that I plan on having an alternate Spanish-American war in TTL and one thing that I wanted to use the President Clemans situation for is change the treatment of the Philippines after the US victory. I also still wanted him to do writing on the side or his early political career which would help him gain popularity.
 
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