alternatehistory.com

Henry L. Stimson--Wall Street lawyer, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York 1906-9, Secretary of War under Taft 1911-13, Colonel, US Army 1917-18, Special Envoy to Nicaragua and Governor-General of the Philippines under Coolidge, Secretary of State under Hoover, and Secretary of War again under FDR and Truman, 1940-45. (His memoir, *On Active Service in Peace and War* written with the young McGeorge Bundy, is available online at https://archive.org/stream/onactiveservices006603mbp#page/n11/mode/2up So is Elting E. Morison's biography *Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson* https://archive.org/stream/turmoilandtradit001413mbp#page/n5/mode/2up) He knew every president from TR through Truman, but does not seem to have possessed a burning ambition to become president himself. Still, there does seem one occasion on which it was possible.

In 1910 Stimson was the Republican candidate for Governor of New York. It was a Democratic year, and despite energetic campaigning for Stimson by TR, he was defeated by the Democratic candidate, John A. Dix. But Dix's victory was not overwhelming (689,700-622,229). http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=106590 Let's say that a scandal had weakened Dix and allowed Stimson to win. Looking back at 1910 many years later, Stimson wrote that "victory would almost certainly have opened to him a strong possibility of great advancement, even toward the White House." https://archive.org/stream/onactiveservices006603mbp#page/n55/mode/2up/ Two possibilities:

(1) Taft and TR in 1912 realize that their rivalry is suicidal for the Republican Party, and both agree to withdraw in favor of Governor Stimson. Unlikely--in OTL Taft did indicate that he might be willing to accept a mutual withdrawal in favor of a compromise candidate like Hughes or Root, but TR firmly rejected any such idea, and would probably have done the same if Stimson were the proposed nominee.

(2) More likely would be Stimson as Republican presidential candidate in 1916. (Let's say Hughes wants to stay on the Supreme Court.) And since in OTL Hughes almost won despite an inept campaign, it is possible Stimson would have beaten Wilson. Obviously, much would depend on his record as Governor of New York, and whether he could appeal to Western Progressives (especially in California) who provided Wilson with his thin victory margin in OTL.

Had he been elected in 1916 (and he would of course have brought the country into the war in 1917), he would have supported a League of Nations, but it would have been different from Wilson's League. Like Root, he disliked Article X because it seemed an unrealistic open-ended commitment to preserve the existing borders of all League members forever. But he was actually opposed in principle to the whole idea of an elaborate Covenant for the League; as he said, he preferred "to develop the cause of
international law, in much the way the common-law has developed as contrasted with codified or statutory law." https://archive.org/stream/turmoilandtradit001413mbp#page/n273/mode/2up/ Against both the Wilsonians and the Irreconcilables, he argued for a world court and a "loose association" without Article X. Could he persuade the other Allies to accept this, I think there would not have been much trouble getting it through the Senate. But I also think he would have been a one-term president; disillusionment with the war, with *any* peace treaty that could plausibly be arrived at, with inflation followed by depression in 1920, etc., would probably result in a Democratic landslide.

Even if Stimson does not win the presidency in 1912 or 1916, there is one final possibility: Willkie wins in 1940 (we'll say that FDR doesn't run) and appoints Stimson Secretary of State (to provide continuity with FDR's internationalist foreign policy--and after all, Stimson's Republican credentials, despite his service in FDR's adminstration, went back much further than Willkie's!). At that time the Secretary of State was next in line in the order of presidential succession after the President and Vice-President. And in OTL both Wendell Willkie and his running mate Charles McNary died before Election Day of 1944...
Top