One in a Billion: A Victorian "Famous People In Alternate Realities"

[Æsir]

Given the current one in post-1900 seems to have died, let's start this over in a somewhat different way. The game is simple; write short biographies of OTL famous individuals; politicians, generals, artists, writers, actors, or what have you, in an alternate universe. Two ground rules; no PODs before January 1st 1850, and all entries must be in a single timeline.

Edit: While not explicitly stated, as is the precedent for these threads, sparing application of the butterfly effect is in place; the point is to show real people in an alternate timeline, although by a more "Accurate" standard they would be butterflied away.

Anyway, let's get this rolling.

Louis T. Wigfall (1816-1873) - United States Senator from Texas 1859 to 1869 and President of the United States 1869 to 1873.

Born in Edgefield, South Carolina, to a wealthy Charleston merchant father and a Huguenot mother. Both his parents died while he was still a child, and one of his older brothers was killed in a duel, leaving him to be tutored by a guardian. He studied at a military academy in Columbia and at the University of Virginia and South Carolina College, becoming known for drinking, dueling, and gambling, but also showing a keen interest in debate and law. While he gave up dueling after his marriage, his violent demeanor gave him a toxic image in South Carolina, and in 1848 he moved to Texas for a fresh start.

Arriving in Texas, he threw himself back into politics, becoming a member of the state House and state Senate before being appointed to the United States Senate. He became a leading southern Democrat known for his fiery rhetoric and skilled oratory, and would win the 1868 Presidential Election running with Horatio Seymour. Over the first two months of 1869, twelve states—Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin—declared independence as the Federated States of America, appointing Republican John C. Fremont as their provisional President, leading a government based in Cleveland, Ohio. By the end of the year, four more—Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—had joined the original twelve and a pro-secession government had been formed in the Dakota Territory. The FSA also recognized a pro-secession government in Nebraska, which did not control the state.

Wigfall, once a leading "Fire Eater" who considered southern secession, was now in the uncomfortable position of beng forced by public opinion to preserve the union at all costs. However, despite the best efforts of Wigfall's administration, the FSA, which contained the lion's share of America's industrial capability, proved too strong for the rump USA to beat, and British, German, and Russian recognition of the FSA's independence in 1872 sealed the fate of the union. Wigfall sued for peace and was defeated in a landslide by Francis Preston Blair Jr. of the still young Unionist Party. Wigfall, disgraced and in poor health, drank himself to death in February 1873, and was briefly succeeded by Vice President Seymour before Blair's inauguration.

 

[CaliBoy1990]

I got one.

Carroll T. Camden(1870-1948) - Governor of Coahuila 1904-8, Representative of Coahuila's 2nd District 1919-23, President of the United States 1925-33.

Born in the small town of Marshville, Coahuila, then recently annexed from Mexico and only a U.S. territory, to a South Carolina planter and a Louisiana socialite, Carroll learned the finer points of politicking from a young age when he became 7th grade class speaker while attending Taylor Groves Middle School in McLennan(OTL's Waco), Texas. When he attended high school he was notorious for long-winded debates with various teachers and this didn't always endear him to some, even earning him a two-week detention after he schooled a teacher on the history of the Indian Wars. Such small setbacks didn't discourage him, however, and when he moved back to Coahuila in 1891, now a state, he immediately became recognized as a political activist, and started to advocate for women's rights and labor protection.

His rise to the top was meteoric; in November 1903, having run a tight race against incumbent governor Henry Collins, won the election by a 2 percent margin and soon began implementing his personal agenda. In 1905, he signed a bill that allowed women to not only vote but to manage their own financial affairs, as well as one that gave additional protection to steel workers after a costly accident in Monclova the previous year which killed 24 workers and a foreman. He also agitated against the domination of Southeastern concerns over the coal industry in the state's northeast as well, and in 1907, approved legislation that broke up Southern monopolies in the area, allowing for more local companies to be able to make a better profit, thus improving the economy there. Perhaps his biggest victory yet was in February 1908 after members of a South Texas branch of the white supremacist terror group, the White Knights of Columbia, tried to take over a number of small towns in the northern part of the state. Camden ordered an immediate crackdown on the Knights and sent them scurrying across the Rio Grande back to Texas. His actions were well received by many and although he considered running for a second term, an assassination attempt only two weeks later convinced him otherwise. After leaving office, he laid low for a while, concentrating on farming and raising the two youngest of his 4 children. However, though, his wife Marie and his closest friend, Thomas "Texas Tom" Rollins, eventually convinced Camden to run for political office again in 1918, this time for Congressman, an office which he handily won over 70% of the vote. He was content with his term for a while, however though, serious troubles with the Knights out east was starting to cause serious concern in Coahuila, and so Camden decided he was finally going to make a run for President.

He was somewhat well-known outside Coahuila for his exploits but was facing a rather tough opponent: one Anthony Mixton, Republican from Missouri who campaigned on a strong pro-literacy, pro-law and order program. The incumbent Democratic President, aging former Texas governor Ronald W. Langhorne, had proven to be an ineffectual leader and was losing popularity by the month.
The primaries saw a very close race between Mixton and Camden for a very long time, as both men had significant backing from voters and contributors. That all changed in April 1924, however, when the Knights bombed the college town of Preston, Okla., known for it's large numbers of educated workers and liberal voters. Mixton backed out at the end of the month and Camden won 80% of the support, a good number of them former Mixton supporters. On the other side of the aisle, the Democrats could not find a suitable candidate in time so at the end of the Democratic Convention in June they decided to allow Langhorne to try to make a second run for the Presidency. It was to be a tragic mistake on their end.
Because of his inability to deal with the Knights, and a scandal involving a much younger mistress and Texas coal companies, Langhorne won only 33% of the popular vote, giving Camden a solid 64% majority, and the electoral vote of all but 4 states(Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, which went to Langhorne).

Camden's first act was a severe crackdown on the White Knights, in May, 1925. Thousands of members suspected of terrorism were arrested and detained for questioning, and their boarding houses either confiscated by the Federal government or destroyed. This was met with approval by many in the Midwest, and in the West Coast, but many Southerners objected, and a few Southern governors even threatened to allow the shooting of any Federal officials who tried to arrest any more members of the Knights. Things got much worse over the next few months and an assassination attempt on Vice President Mosley in November, prompted the declaration of martial law in 6 Southern states: Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas(though in the case of Louisiana the New Orleans metro was exempt, since local police there had actually cooperated with Federal officials for the most part.), which was not to be lifted until June of the next year.

Another major achievement of his administration was the passing of the Women's Protection Act of 1926, which prohibited spousal abuse and other crimes targeted specifically against women, and set guidelines for a single universal Federal law, as well as the reinforcement of laws already in place. This was followed by the Labor Union Protection Act of 1927 which prohibited companies from disallowing unions if their workers wanted to establish them.
His second term saw an more important event come to pass: The beginning of the end of the FSA. The Crash of 1929 had done serious damage to the economies of both nations and newly-elected FSA Unionist President Morris Whithall issued the declaration of martial law in the state of Wisconsin after a particularly devastating riot in Milwaukee that occurred as a result of the destruction of the labor unions in that state by order of Governor Conner(sound familiar, anyone?).
Similar problems occurred in the United States, particularly in Virginia and Georgia, but President Camden issued a cease-and-desist order in October 1930, demanding the reinstitution of any unions that had been disbanded. Although this greatly angered the old money interests, many more liberal voters were won over by Camden's initiatives. Unfortunately, however, the Republican party had to begin to deal with numerous scandals of its own; one of the worst was the one related to Colorado governor Louis Willson after he allegedly had sex with a black prostitute in Denver while the divorce with his wife was still being finalized.
Because of this, and other factors, Camden refused to run for a third term in 1932, and California Democrat Robert Callahan won the election with 58% of the vote.

Despite his party's disgrace, Camden was still a widely respected figure and he continued to be active in political causes, particularly with the reunification of the F.S.A. with the U.S.A. He was also quite frequently a radio presence during World War 2, and was a volunteer judge for the Hague, Brussels, and Geneva trials of various German, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian fascist war criminals in 1945. Carroll was also present in Washington when the Reunification Treaty was signed in July, 1946, as an observer.

He retired to his ranch near his old hometown in Coahuila and died there on September 17, 1949, aged 78. He was survived by 4 of his children, daughters Theresa and Bessie Lou, and sons Jonathan and Jefferson(his oldest son Albert had died of heatstroke during the summer of 1936), as well as his wife Marie and 9 grandchildren.

 

[Æsir]

Just some minor gripes; I'm not sure either the Democrats or Republicans would remain major parties in the post-secession US (The Democrats lost the war and let the north go independent and the Republicans had little presence in many of the remaining states), I'm also unsure the rump US would have such a well developed primary election system at this point, and the dates for his terms in office as Representative and President should be 1919-1923 and 1925-1933, respectively.

I think the Unionist Party could survive post-secession as a general pro-centralization and pro-industrialization party, opposed to further secession, possibly harboring revanchist sentiments towards the north, and likely moderate on the slavery issue, which will be quite thorny in the rump US.

Who was Carroll Camden IOTL? I can't seem to find anything on a notable figure with that name.

 

[CaliBoy1990]

Just some minor gripes; I'm not sure either the Democrats or Republicans would remain major parties in the post-secession US (The Democrats lost the war and let the north go independent and the Republicans had little presence in many of the remaining states), I'm also unsure the rump US would have such a well developed primary election system at this point, and the dates for his terms in office as Representative and President should be 1919-1923 and 1925-1933, respectively.

I think the Unionist Party could survive post-secession as a general pro-centralization and pro-industrialization party, opposed to further secession, possibly harboring revanchist sentiments towards the north, and likely moderate on the slavery issue, which will be quite thorny in the rump US.

Who was Carroll Camden IOTL? I can't seem to find anything on a notable figure with that name.

Okay, I fixed that part about the dates.
Are you sure the Democrats would actually die off? Granted, I'm sure they'd take a big hit after losing the northern states but I doubt they'd lose all of their support and the Republicans might have been able to take advantage of this as well.

Camden, btw, is a made-up figure. Hopefully that isn't much of an issue.

And while we're it, let's solve the slavery issue. I'd like to see it end by 1880 or so but we'll need to brainstorm and figure out just who could do such a thing. I think a lot of Westerners would be eager to blame the Good Ol' Boys for the loss of those certain northern states.

And, come to think of it, I'd wager there'd be a lot of people opposed to slavery, but against the breakup of the Union who'd leave for areas further to the south and west, especially the latter. California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Colorado, and others might fill up real quick in spots, especially if settlement is encouraged in these areas.

And one last idea for you: The Buffalo Territory, created in 1871 as a compromise between the U.S.A. and F.S.A. concerning the status of the Dakota Territory.

 

[Æsir]

The Democrats, realistically, probably take a hit but still end up one of the major parties (At this time they were essentially the ruling party in the South). The Republicans have almost no support in the South and like the Federalists after the War of 1812 might be seen as traitors by (Small-u) unionists. My thought was the Unionist Party, although to some degree having lost it's raison d'etre with the union breaking, inherits whiggish and "Liberal" sentiments in the rump USA.

I'd rather not do made up figures, personally, and the precedent of previous threads of this format is to use real ones. I'm also iffy on reunification between the USA and FSA, but that's just my opinion.

Some other things to note; state and territory borders are likely to be different, due to butterflies as well as differing circumstances with a different and later Civil War; it's likely California splits at the 36th parallel with the south becoming the State of Colorado, as was passed by the state government in 1860 IOTL but put on the back burner in favor of more pressing issues, and Nevada won't be a state any time soon unless, as you suggested, settlement patterns are substantially different.

Quick map I made musing on what the US might look like on eve of ITTL's Civil War;

 

[Indigo]

F.T.Ward 1835-1881
Known as the ever victorious general, Ward started out from humble beginnings in Massachusetts. After a brief stint in the navy, Ward fought in the Utah war, serving in Scott's army. Ward's excellent service led to an appointment of brigadier general by President Fremont. When Beauregard's army invaded into Pennsylvania, Ward decisively defeated it at the battle of the Susquehanna, and in a yearlong campaign drove the Union back to the Maryland border. Ward's siege of Washington was what ultimately brought European intervention. Ward was the hero of the F.S.A. and had little choice but to run for president in 1876 when Fremont's term expired. Ward's handling of the Dakota Border Crisis was excellent, if over jingoistic, but with domestic affairs he was an unqualified disaster. Ward died five years into his term, in the middle of the depression of 1879. He has been reviled by some historians for his domestic failures, but overall he has been seen as a good president, and excellent general.

 

[Æsir]

Another minor quibble; the year of birth should be 1831 rather than 1835, assuming it refers to Frederick Townsend Ward.

 

[Makemakean]

Professor Orson Pratt, Sr. - Early Latter-Day Saint, Utah resident, cosmologist and founder of Joseph Smith University. An accomplished mathematician with an interest in astronomy, Pratt records in his diary that on December 1859, after reading chapters 4 and 5 of the Book of Abraham he devoted himself to deep and solemn prayer, when he, in his own words received "a spiritual revelation from the Almighty" that he was to devote himself to the study of astronomy. In 1863, Brigham Young appointed him to lead a mission to Germany, for which he through much effort acquired a decent command of the German language. While on the mission (1863-1866), Pratt came into contact with the works of Gauss and Riemannian geometry. On his return home, Pratt spent two months in England purchasing works which he intended to bring back for the foundation of Joseph Smith College. Having attended a series of lectures by James Clark Maxwell, Pratt acquired an early copy of the Scottish physicist's A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. Arriving back in Utah mere days before Christmas of 1866, Pratt spent the next five years studying the works of Maxwell and the concept of the aether. In the summer of 1871, on a day with little to no wind, Pratt with his colleague George Romney set up the famous Pratt-Romney apparatus outside Salt Lake City, and through a series of experiments conclusively demonstrated the non-existence of the aether. It would take almost a decade before the findings of Pratt and Romney were taken seriously and validated by the scientific community, due to anti-Mormon prejudice among academics and scholars at the time. In 1883, twelve years after the experiment, and at the age of 72, Orson Pratt published his works on the Theory of Constancy, today known as the Particular Theory of Constancy, which held that the speed of light was invariant for all inertial observers. By the time of publishing, Pratt already envisioned a more general theory to describe the case of non-inertial observers, and had since years back as a avid reader of astronomical works been interested in the strange absence of the planet Vulcan, despite the fact that the anomalies associated with Mercury's orbit implied its existence. Pratt, however, found it increasingly hard to keep up with his studies as he advanced within the Church, at age 76 being chosen to fill a vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, as well as administrative issues concerning the ever-growing Joseph Smith College. In 1894, however, Pratt was proud to publish On the General Theory of Luminous Constancy, after having mastered tensor analysis. To this day, General Constancy is the most accurate theoretical framework in existence to describe the movements of the heavenly bodies and gravitation. Orson Pratt died in Stockholm, Scandinavia, 14 December 1904 at the ripe old age of 93, mere days after having accepted the Nobel Prize in Physics from the hands of King Frederick VIII and II and Queen Louise I.

 

[Æsir]

James B. Weaver (1833-1907) - Federated States politician, known as a prominent early organizer of the Communitarian Party, who served as a Representative from Iowa 1879 to 1895 and President of the Federated States 1895 to 1901.

Born in Ohio to a farming family and raised in southern Iowa, he was deeply affected by reading the famed abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and became active in the abolitionist movement. When Iowa seceded in 1869, he enlisted to fight, but only served briefly and without seeing combat due to his age. Instead, he became a bureaucrat in the fledgling FSA Department of War. After the peace deal with the United States, he remained their for a time, but became increasingly disenchanted with the Republican Party's pro-business platform, and in 1876 he ran as an independent for Congress, losing by a landslide to a Republican on the coattails of war hero Frederick Townsend Ward's election to the Presidency.

In 1877, Weaver helped establish the Communitarian Party, a loose coalition of small-holding farmers, poor urban laborers, and temperance activists, providing an economically populist-progressive platform based on traditional Christian values as an alternative the whiggery of the Republicans. The next year, he won election to Congress, and in 1882 was the party's nominee for President. Held as the nation was still recovering from the Depression of 1879, it was the first seriously contested election the young country had seen; interim President Fremont had run essentially unopposed in the wartime 1870 election and Ward, an immensely popular General, had crushed token Democratic Party and Unionist Party opposition in 1876. Weaver managed to wrest the anti-Republican vote from the Democrats, still toxic due to the scars of the War of Secession, but incumbent President Rutherford B. Hayes, who had succeeded to the Presidency upon Ward's death, still won reelection.

Weaver, as one of the most prominent members of the party, was again the nominee in 1888, and while the Communitarians had by now supplanted the Democrats and the decline of the war as a major political issue had decimated the Unionists, the economy had recovered and Weaver was handily beaten by Chauncey Depew. It was Weaver's third Presidential campaign in 1894 that proved successful. The economy was flagging and Depew, previously best known as President of the New York Central Railroad, was seen as thoroughly in the pockets of big business and had lead unpopular attempts to amend the constitution to allow the President to serve two six-year terms rather than one. Running against Garret Hobart, Weaver and his running mate Silas C. Swallow of Pennsylvania handily won the election, wresting the Presidency away from the Republicans after more than two decades.

While much of his program was blocked by Republicans in Congress and he was subject to a vicious public relations campaign bankrolled by business interests, Weaver's administration did pass much needed reforms, including restructuring the civil service (At the time a hotbed of corruption and cronyism), and promoting successful amendments to allow direct election of Senators in 1897 and instituting nationwide prohibition of alcohol in 1900. Modern scholars regard him as one of the most important Presidents. He died in Des Moines, Iowa at the age of 74.

Presidents of the Federated States of America (To 1901)

John C. Frémont (R-NY), 1869-1877
Frederick Townsend Ward (R-MA), 1877-1881
Rutherford B. Hayes (R-OH), 1881-1889
Chauncey Depew (R-NY), 1889-1895
James B. Weaver (C-IA), 1895-1901
Charles W. Fairbanks (R-IN), 1901-1907

OOC: I'd be interested in other people's thoughts, but I'm leaning towards not letting the Carroll Camden entry stand; creating fictional figures isn't really in the spirit of the concept and, as I said previously, I'm not sure it's depiction of party politics and FSA-USA reunification are very likely.

 

[Æsir]

Gonna try to bump this...

James Chausevich (1870-1943) - Bosniak-FS American lawyer, imam, and activist. Born Džemaludin Čaušević near the town of Bosanska Krupa, then part of the Ottoman Empire, the son of a local imam, Ali Hodža Čaušević. From an early age he received a Muslim education, and as his family were devout and religiously active Muslims, in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1880, which largely drove the Ottomans out of the Balkans, they suffered discrimination as largely Muslim but diverse Bosnia was included in the new Russian-backed Eastern Orthodox Serbian state. As hundreds of thousands of Slavic Muslims did in the greatest period of migration between 1880 and 1915, the family moved to the Federated States of America in 1882, Anglicizing their name to Chausevich. Ali began using the nickname "Al", while young Džemaludin took the name "James". As many Bosniaks did, they went west towards Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakota Territory, settling in Minneapolis, where the elder Chausevich founded the first Muslim school in North America in 1885.

The younger Chausevich became a well learned man, studying at the University of Minnesota and apprenticing at a local law firm, and was admitted to the bar in 1896. He moved to Sioux Falls, then a boomtown with a large Bosnian community, in the recently admitted state of Dakota, where he became a lawyer. It was at this time he became politically involved; when World War I broke out in 1898, he advocated for the FSA to enter the war on the side of the Liberal Powers (Britain, France, Italy, and Turkey) against the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, and their Balkan allies Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia), but popular sentiment was split and so the FSA would remain neutral until 1901, when Congress, at the urging of President Fairbanks, declared war on the Central Powers after Austria-Hungary collapsed and it became clear the Liberal Powers were likely to win. After the end of the war in 1903, Chauesevich was instrumental in advocating successfully for the Congress of Nations to carve a Bosniak state out of Serbia. Along with thousands of other Bosniak Americans, he repatriated to the new state, but despite his ambition to improve the situation there, he, as many of the repatriated Bosniaks did, returned to America after experiencing the post-war hardship in Europe.

Returning home to Dakota in 1906, he ran for Congress as a Republican, but during a Presidential election year in solid Communitarian Party country and the Republicans losing popularity in the aftermath of the war, he was easily defeated. After his losing bid, he became a professor at the Muslim School of Des Moines and in 1917 was elected Grand Mufti of the Federated States of America, serving one seven-year term before retiring in 1924, returning to Des Moines to teach for several more years before retiring to Sioux Falls. He remained active in the Muslim community until the late 1930s when his health began to decline, and died in 1943.

 

[CaliBoy1990]

OOC: I'd be interested in other people's thoughts, but I'm leaning towards not letting the Carroll Camden entry stand; creating fictional figures isn't really in the spirit of the concept and, as I said previously, I'm not sure it's depiction of party politics and FSA-USA reunification are very likely.

Well, okay, then, but I'm not sure if I'd have any other contributions at this point, TBH.