PC/WI: President Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain?

I was looking for possible alternate Republican presidents during the Gilded Age, and I came upon an interesting fact. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top, went on to become Governor of Maine after the Civil War. He eventually left the political sphere and lived life as a private citizen until he died in 1914, but what if he had continued his political career instead (perhaps his war wounds are less severe, and take less of a toll on his health)?

Could he have been elected as a Senator or Representative, and then later go on to the Presidency? And what would a Chamberlain presidency look like?
 
Perhaps it's because I'm working on a TL whose PoD is an alternative Day 2 of Gettysburg, I have a soft spot for Chamberlain. The events that propelled him to national recognition are that wonderful sort of event where a half-hour either way could have radically changed how it unfolded and it is well-enough documented to know that it's not mere puffery or aggrandizement from the primary sources. So it's certainly not unreasonable to have him rise higher than he did OTL in the post-war world, provided you can find sufficient cause to motivate him. The shape of a Chamberlain presidency is probably going to depend heavily upon the butterflies of your PoD, as he'd be of the prime age for a presidential candidacy in 1880 or 1884, and it's possible for a lot of butterflies to have occurred between July 1863 and November 1880/1884.

And lets be honest, "lots of butterflies" might as well be a big, flashing neon sign reading "Here Be A Confederate Victory Timeline".
 
Does anyone know what Chamberlain's views on race were?" Was he a "just keep the Union together" type, a committed abolitionist, or even an outright civil rights advocate? His Wikipedia page doesn't say anything about it.
 
Does anyone know what Chamberlain's views on race were?" Was he a "just keep the Union together" type, a committed abolitionist, or even an outright civil rights advocate? His Wikipedia page doesn't say anything about it.

Unless he took office in the 1860s, in place of Johnson or Grant, would it make a lot of difference what his views were? There was little or nothing left that any POTUS could do.
 
Unless he took office in the 1860s, in place of Johnson or Grant, would it make a lot of difference what his views were? There was little or nothing left that any POTUS could do.
There is one thing: he could appoint pro-civil rights Supreme Court justices. And that means Plessy could go differently.
 
There is one thing: he could appoint pro-civil rights Supreme Court justices. And that means Plessy could go differently.

Though Plessy was a 7-1 decision, so he would need to make quite a few appointments to turn it round. This would be particularly hard if he was a one-term POTUS, which they all were between Grant and Cleveland.
 
Though Plessy was a 7-1 decision, so he would need to make quite a few appointments to turn it round. This would be particularly hard if he was a one-term POTUS, which they all were between Grant and Cleveland.
There were four different justices appointed during Cleveland's first term and Harrison's term. If Chamberlain can put anti-segregation justices into power, there's a chance that it ends up 5-4 against if the abstaining justice (was it Brewer?) can be convinced to vote with them. Though of course, this requires that he wins two terms.
 
While not directly responsive to the original what-if, there's a second interesting might-have-been involving Joshua Chamberlain. Following the end of the Civil War, the U.S. Army offered him a permanent rank of lieutenant-colonel if he would sign on to continue serving. Chamberlain, needless to say, declined and returned to Maine to run for governor and subsequently become dean of Bowdoin College.

I doubt his remaining in the army would've changed much, though there're potentially interesting things that might be explored with the idea of him as the father of an American military intellectualism to rival those which emerged in Europe during the Gilded Age. (In the sense of that which was created by, say, Schlieffen during his tenure as the head of the Military History Section of the General Staff.) Equally interesting things might be envisioned if he ever could convince the Army of the need for a more holistic curriculum at West Point, as IOTL West Point remained primarily an engineering school for most of the rest of the Nineteenth Century.
 
Unless he took office in the 1860s, in place of Johnson or Grant, would it make a lot of difference what his views were? There was little or nothing left that any POTUS could do.

Could you have him run as Grant's running mate and then have him run as Grant's successor when Grant leaves office in 1877?
 
Could you have him run as Grant's running mate and then have him run as Grant's successor when Grant leaves office in 1877?
That's definitely an interesting way of going about things. Or, if you wanted to get really crazy, have Grant be the second president in 10 years to be assassinated by diehard white supremacists...
 
That's definitely an interesting way of going about things. Or, if you wanted to get really crazy, have Grant be the second president in 10 years to be assassinated by diehard white supremacists...

Hmmmm....that's possible. The Grant/Chamberlain ticket wins the election, then at some point early in his first term, Grant is assasinated by the KKK, as he was the architect of the Union's winning strategy, so there would be those in the South who would see him as the architect of southern oppression. The result is that everyone realizes that the South isn't going voluntarily give up its racist culture and Congress gives President Chamberlain a mandate to pull southern slave culture up by the roots. That might be an interesting TL.
 
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Hmmmm....that's possible. The Grant/Chamberlain ticket wins the election, then at some point early in his first term, Grant is assasinated by the KKK. Everyone realizes that the South isn't going voluntarily give up its racist culture and Congress gives President Chamberlain a mandate to pull southern slave culture up by the roots. That might be an interesting TL.
It might. I've been thinking of writing a late 1800s TL revolving around race relations in the US for some time. Originally it was going to be about the Populist-Republican cross-racial alliances. Then I started doing some research on Plessy and realized that a more proactive Republican president at the right time could have swung it in the other direction, and found out that Chamberlain was one possibility. I wonder if there's some way I could work all these elements in along with a more comprehensive Reconstruction.
 
Could you have him run as Grant's running mate and then have him run as Grant's successor when Grant leaves office in 1877?


VPs were very rarely nominated for POTUS in those days. In any event, though, there's nothing in particular he could have done that Grant or Hayes couldn't, so it won't hugely matter.

I'd have thought the most interesting year for Chamberlain would be 1884. The effects of replacing one Republican by another are likely to be pretty marginal (if any at all) but Cleveland took NY (and so the Presidency) by a razor-thin margin which could easily have been reversed. If Chamberlain is nominated instead of Blane, then that "Rum, romanism and rebellion" speech may well be butterflied away, and even if it isn't, his reputation as a hero of Gettysburg may enable Chamberlain to win in spite of it.

After that it depends on how he does in the White House. If he is re-elected in 1888, then 1892 will probably be a Democratic year as OTL. OTOH, if a Democrat wins in '88, then the economic troubles that doomed Harrison occurs under a Democratic administration instead, so the Republicans very likely come back. Could both McKinley's and Bryan's nominations be butterflied away?
 
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