America's Champ: The Ramifications of an Alternate 1912 Election

Hello, I’ve been a frequent lurker on this site, and I have always been astonished at the level of thought and commitment you all put into your TL’s. While reading many timelines, I felt embarrassed being the guy always reading through without making significant contributions to AH.com. That's why I decided to make my own TL: America’s Champ.

The POD in America’s Champ is when Colonel Edward House fails to persuade William Jennings Bryan to support Woodrow Wilson during the 1912 Democratic national convention. This results in House Speaker Champ Clark winning the nomination and subsequently the election.

This timeline will be written in the history textbook format and each update will show one section of a textbook chapter as well as Wikipedia infoboxes in order to facilitate understanding for visual learners.

The first section of the textbook is practically the same as OTL; I will post it in this thread so it doesn’t look like I started the TL in the middle of a chapter. The world will diverge in Section 2. Section 1 will be posted tomorrow (4/1/2019).

I plan on posting an update once a week unless something comes up in RL. If so, the update will come the following week. Sorry, but things come up in RL for me pretty frequently due to schoolwork.

If anyone is an expert in World War I military history and is interested in contributing to a TL, you are encouraged to PM me.

I hope you will enjoy reading America’s Champ and any criticisms, nitpicks, questions, and suggestions are always welcome.

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United States History
First Edition

Matt Grunwald
Stanford University

Published by Speer-Perez Education

8706 South Garfield Ave.
Burnaby, CD
speer-perez.edu.us

© 2019, Speer-Perez Education Inc. All Rights Reserved.
View attachment 450707 Made in the United States of America​

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***Chapters 1-9 Not Included***​

I personally think that if the Democrats had
gone with Clark, than a sudden progressive
tidal wave would have carried Teddy to vic-
tory(he was far better known than Clark &
of course had TONS more charisma!)But
please go ahead- & soon- rsha & show why
I’m wrong!
 
Looks pretty interesting! It's nice to be able to latch onto a thread in its first moments. I might be able to help out, if you need it.
 
Will we see a single six-year term presidency enshrined in the Constitution or would it be still be stillborn ITTL?
 

A. Danov

Banned
Well, Britain is well and truly done. My thoughts on the end of the war:

All British holdings in the Americas ceded to the US. They start as federal territories, and as they are slowly "Americanized", they are admitted to the Union as states.

Germany annexes Luxembourg and Belgium, Italy stays neutral, A-H drags on for a few decades, maybe longer if it federalizes; same for the Ottomans. Something like B-L still happens in the East, the Bolsheviks still come to power.

Lenin (not being a barking mad idiot but actually rather clever) decides not to attempt to spread communism into a strong Germany. Instead, he decides to "evangelize" communism first into Asia, chiefly China. Bolshevik/Chinese war within a decade or two.

France, defeated yet again, falls into radicalism of one sort or another.

As for the European colonial empires: Germany keeps its own entirely, and receives some of Britain and France's. Germany and the US foment unrest in others. India goes independent earlier, maybe goes communist if Lenin thinks it can be done.

Japan and the US skirmish in the Pacific. Cooler heads in Japan prevail. Sensing that world power is shifting away from France and the UK, they seek an armistice and alliance with the US.
 
OK, that's a bit of an early entry of America into the war, and IMO something of a stretch, but I can accept it if there's a very anti-British POTUS (I'm not sure of Champ Clark's specific motivations OTL, but it's not implausible IMO for him to have been motivated by anti-British sentiment as well as expansionism).

Britain is fucked. USA takes anything British in the Americas and sets 'em up as territories, the whiter ones pending statehood.

Germany gets to re-make the map as far as America permits. That means puppet Belgium (probably bits of France traded to them while Germany slices bits off of the east), annexed Luxembourg, as much of Russia as they can carve off carved off, grabs every single colony they can take.

AH buys time, still won't save it IMO.

If Italy hasn't joined the war yet, they chicken out and hunker down once the first million Americans swamp France. If they have joined the war, cue Italian humiliation and likely descent into revolution and/or civil war after the war.

France gets indescribably mad. Two straight humiliating losses in the same basic fight against the same foe? After already suffering humiliation at the beginning of the last century? Frothing, raving, blood-thirsty mad. And the socialists are going to take the blame.

Expect some degree of far-right regime taking over France, and that means antisemitism because of the historical confluence between far-right and antisemitic sentiments in French politics. Probably not a French version of the Holocaust without the sheer critical mass of insanity that the Nazis represented OTL, but there will be pogroms, and the Romani will take it up the ass, too.

Germany will move soft left, because the German Right is choking on everything it ever wanted.

Japan will take one look at America, shit its pants, and white peace out. This Japan is still sane and not yet addicted to a war and race cult, so they're going to revisit Hokushin-Ron and avoid Nanshin-Ron unless they think they can carve a chunk off of what used to be French and British colonies in the Pacific and SE Asia.

Russia is going to be a mess. Expect a multi-way civil war, Makhno WILL cause problems, so will Lenin if he gets sent there. The fun part from a writer's perspective is that you can do basically anything with Russia post-WW1.

Britain is going to be in trouble depending on how long the war went and how many British boys died. Longer it goes, more powerful and popular British Reds will get. But at the same time, there will be a lot of angry revanchists, especially in the upper class.

America becomes the World Police faster, but expect there to be a backlash when the Great Depression hits. Another opportunity for writing fun, lol.

Watching with interest!
 
Expect some degree of far-right regime taking over France, and that means antisemitism because of the historical confluence between far-right and antisemitic sentiments in French politics. Probably not a French version of the Holocaust without the sheer critical mass of insanity that the Nazis represented OTL, but there will be pogroms, and the Romani will take it up the ass, too.
Don't forget efforts to "civilize" the colonies (read: ram French culture down the throats of the locals) being ratcheted up in France's remaining colonies as well.
 
German propaganda centered on Russian and Franco-British imperialism with doses of antisemitism.
Unlikely at this point that German propaganda intended for foreign audiences would be heavily antisemitic; internal right-wing propaganda, as typical for a European power, would be, but propaganda intended for German-Americans and American congresscritters would be more likely to focus on the "valor of Germany's sons fighting for their homeland", the "nobility of the daughters of the fatherland who sacrifice for their nation", and the "savagery of the Entente brutes as they beat and starved the noble patriots who were captured in the battle of the Marne". The purpose is to inspire sympathy for the cause and pressure people to support the propagandizing nation in their own nation, not to whip up internal support by alleging that "the other people are out to get us".
British propaganda did not appeal to immigrant Americans who were of German or Irish descent.
No shit, lol.
At first, Clark was reluctant but a day after the negotiations, the British ambassador promised safe passage for American ships as long as they arrived only at Allied ports.
This seems pretty flimsy, unless either Clark was already Anglophobic or the British ambassador heavily implied that American ships would be unsafe if they tried to get to German ports.
 
Don't forget efforts to "civilize" the colonies (read: ram French culture down the throats of the locals) being ratcheted up in France's remaining colonies as well.
If France has colonies after the Germans leading the "peace talks" in Paris get done with them.
 
Yeah, I know its a bit too far of a stretch. OTL America's involvement can be considered a bit of a stretch too in some ways.
Not really--when Kaiser Bill signed off on USW in the Atlantic, we were going to kick his ass somehow.

That boneheaded move screwed Germany over like you would not believe. They probably would have won if they hadn't started taking potshots at any ship they could find.
The British ambassador did imply that heavily. Clark at this time wasn’t Anglophobic per se but he did have some anti-British sentiment. He found the threats from the Brits and the support from the Germans as a clear opportunity to fulfill his dream of annexing Canada. He’s pretty much doing whatever he wants to do as he's confident that the six-year term proposal will come into force.
I'm not hugely familiar with the 6-year-term proposal, but I doubt that such a massive and visibly unnecessary modification to the Constitution would go through in a time of relative peace and prosperity domestically. I can see there being significant support in the Gilded Age Congress, though--at this time the Presidency was historically weak (TR was an exception) and Congress was clawing for more power at every opportunity. Kind of the reverse of the current situation post-War Powers and PATRIOT Acts.

Fair enough otherwise, it's reasonable that in some universe Britain would make the sorts of fuckups Germany did OTL.
Oh, I'm quite honored to see that the guy behind the legendary Trump SI is watching this TL. Thanks!
"Legendary"? Oh boy. Thanks for the compliment, lol.

Keep up the good work.
 
I'm not hugely familiar with the 6-year-term proposal, but I doubt that such a massive and visibly unnecessary modification to the Constitution would go through in a time of relative peace and prosperity domestically.


Well it did get through the Senate, though with only one vote to spare (47-23).

There was only one Democratic vote against (Senator Shively of Indiana) while the Republicans were almost evenly split (22 Nay, 19 Yea). Since the Senate in Feb 1913 was still Republican, whereas the HoR was very heavily Democratic, passage in the latter would seem assured had it come to a vote there.

After that its a question of ratification. However, only two Amendments (out of eleven) in the 20C failed of ratification after having been passed by Congress, and both of these (the 1920s Child Labor Amendment and the 1970s Equal Rights Amendment) failed largely because of opposition in the South, which would seem unlikely in this case as only one Southern Senator (a Tennessee Republican appointed to a vacancy) voted nay. So most likely it succeeds.
 
Well it did get through the Senate, though with only one vote to spare (47-23).

There was only one Democratic vote against (Senator Shively of Indiana) while the Republicans were almost evenly split (22 Nay, 19 Yea). Since the Senate in Feb 1913 was still Republican, whereas the HoR was very heavily Democratic, passage in the latter would seem assured had it come to a vote there.

After that its a question of ratification. However, only two Amendments (out of eleven) in the 20C failed of ratification after having been passed by Congress, and both of these (the 1920s Child Labor Amendment and the 1970s Equal Rights Amendment) failed largely because of opposition in the South, which would seem unlikely in this case as only one Southern Senator (a Tennessee Republican appointed to a vacancy) voted nay. So most likely it succeeds.
Problem is, POTUS would naturally push against it as a usurpation of his powers. And I doubt that Clark would be much different. Keep in mind, Wilson wasn't a huge fan of the imperial Presidency when it was a Republican in power.

I still find it kind of doubtful and doubt that any President would willingly accept such an amendment--though we saw Congress hand away power at least twice in the later 20th century OTL, so it's possible at least.
 
Problem is, POTUS would naturally push against it as a usurpation of his powers. And I doubt that Clark would be much different. Keep in mind, Wilson wasn't a huge fan of the imperial Presidency when it was a Republican in power.

I still find it kind of doubtful and doubt that any President would willingly accept such an amendment--though we saw Congress hand away power at least twice in the later 20th century OTL, so it's possible at least.


Iirc Clark supported limitation of Presidents to one term, (and also moving the inauguration day forward as was eventually done by the20th Amendment).

There were newspaper reports at the time that he might introduce a clause delaying the Amendment's operation until 1920, in order to leave himself another chance at the Presidency in 1916, but that's all. Wilson OTOH had never supported it.
 
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