Former Confederate U.S. President
- Thread starter Black
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Of the USA? Not going to happen. For one thing the Republican party had a pretty strong grip on the White House in those years and when the Democrats did sneak in it, it was with Northern led tickets. The Bloody Shirt was a thing, after all.
Cool question though.
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To emphasize the above post - if we're counting something like "well, after the president and vice president are shot" kind of possibilities for speculation's sake, it might be narrowly possible - but at that point it's very "Well, if you run out of alternatives you might get down to a senator who was a Confederate general. There were a few of those OTL.." rather than a serious "Yes."
Not sure any of them, even without the Bloody Shirt, seem like they were a potential Vice President, which would be the only even semi-feasible option I can think of other than that.
Not sure any of them, even without the Bloody Shirt, seem like they were a potential Vice President, which would be the only even semi-feasible option I can think of other than that.
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And even in that case you would need him to move to the North. A repentant Confederate isn't going to get elected in the South post-Reconstruction.
Hypothetically, such a figure could be viable as a candidate for statewide office somewhere in the South in a world where Reconstruction was much more successful.
Someone who pledged loyalty to the Confederacy being POTUS after the war? This isn’t like Rick Pitino taking the Louisville job - hundreds of thousands of people died in the Civil War, and anyone who contributed to it on the other side is going to be seen as responsible. As such, the only way someone advances that high up is if they were some low-level soldier and the political brass doesn’t know about his Confederate history.
Pro-Democratic newspapers in the North did attempt to ‘draft Lee’ for the 1868 election.
Here would be a sample from the New York Herald July 1st 1868.
Lee declined and even threatened to resign Washington College due to the verbal attacks that were being carried out by members of board of Governors on Grant. Two months after Grant’s inauguration he was invited to the White House for talks and on that topic it’s gets interesting as there are four or five versions of what was said.
The best you were going to get post war unless another war happened such as with France or Spain was a notable ex-Confederate Vice President who gets a promotion if/when the head of the WH bites it.
The issue with anyone going too deep on one side as with some Confederates who cozied up to the Republican Party as they were actually hated worse then the northern Republicans among Democrats. You needed someone able to play the game of being political, but apolitical.
Having war clouds loom in 1867-1868 with Britian or France could have gotten a national unity ticket of some kind.
Here would be a sample from the New York Herald July 1st 1868.
Lee declined and even threatened to resign Washington College due to the verbal attacks that were being carried out by members of board of Governors on Grant. Two months after Grant’s inauguration he was invited to the White House for talks and on that topic it’s gets interesting as there are four or five versions of what was said.
The best you were going to get post war unless another war happened such as with France or Spain was a notable ex-Confederate Vice President who gets a promotion if/when the head of the WH bites it.
The issue with anyone going too deep on one side as with some Confederates who cozied up to the Republican Party as they were actually hated worse then the northern Republicans among Democrats. You needed someone able to play the game of being political, but apolitical.
Having war clouds loom in 1867-1868 with Britian or France could have gotten a national unity ticket of some kind.
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I don't know, but if the Readjusters stay in power there he'd probably be more prominent politically speaking. Plus he might be a good bet for the GOP to win states like Virginia (given it's his home state) and North Carolina.
POD: Sometime in 1887, a bomb planted by an anarchist goes off at a Cabinet meeting and kills President Cleveland and every member of the Cabinet except Secretary of the Interior Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar_II (There is of course no Vice-President, Thomas Hendricks having died in 1885.) Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1886 (which took the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and Speaker of the House out of the line of succession, and put the Cabinet members, in specified order, in it) Lamar "shall act as President until...a President shall be elected." http://en.wikisource.org/w…/Presidential_Succession_Act_1886 So the US has its first (and last?) ex-Confederate Chief Executive... (And yes, even if Lamar is seriously injured, a lot of Yankees are going to find his survival suspicious.)
Well, you can't really have an extremely prominent Confederate general as US President, so you would have to go with a low to middle-ranking Confederate officer (such as a first lieutenant or a colonel, or lower), and even then, it wouldn't be until 1900 or so that the idea of a Southerner being President wouldn't be widely accepted, due to the negative perception of the South immediately after the Civil War.
Maybe Zebulon Vance, the Confederate governor of North Carolina? He refused to cooperate with the central government (on states rights grounds) during the war and NC was a reluctant CSA member. So he wouldn't be viewed as a traitor by the North, but also wouldn't be viewed as a scalawag by the South.
Difficult needle to thread which is why it didn't happen in OTL.
Difficult needle to thread which is why it didn't happen in OTL.
Some version of the Blair Plan to activate the Monroe Doctrine and have northern and southern troops reform into one force and invade Mexico certainly could have happened.
Lee’s response to all the press badgering him about leading troops into Mexico again was ask someone younger.
Beauregard might be able to pull it off under the right circumstances. He supported the Louisiana Reform Party (pro civil rights and anti corruption). That might be enough to redeem him in the eyes of Northerners. But he's also a local/regional hero among Lost Causers.
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