The American System: A Henry Clay TL
- Thread starter TheHedgehog
- Start date
I strongly considered including it, but he never would've gotten the nomination if he had. I'm going to say he beat up his wife's lover but didn't shoot him.
Its actually rather interesting, Philip Barton Key II, along with being related to Francis Scott Key, was the brother in law of George H. Pendleton, the previous democratic presidential candidate before Sickles. I also recently discovered that Philip Barton Key II was also the nephew of Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice on the Supreme Court.
Which also makes it black comedy in @TheRockofChickamauga 's Stonewall Jackson's Way timeline about the American Civil War as Sickles is the president who immediately follows Pendleton after defeating him at the 1868 convention.
I found out by reading the Wikepedia pages for both Pendleton and Key, cause neither give the whole story on their own.
46. Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion
46. Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion
“As slaveowners across the south gradually acknowledged reality and manumitted their slaves, southern politics underwent a noticeable shift. Rather than depend on slavery to maintain the agrarian, white supremacist system that had governed the south since before the Revolution, now the states had to find a way to codify their unspoken system into actual law. Mississippi took the first steps, passing a series of laws and constitutional amendments known collectively as the Black Codes. These were also more euphemistically referred to by South Carolina Governor Martin Gary [1] as the “New Racial Understanding” during his state’s passage of a package of similar laws.
The policy of convict leasing first pioneered in Mississippi was supplemented by Gary with the extensive use of so-called “Gypsy Laws [2]” that severely restricted the ability of blacks to move between counties, with such travel without the necessary (and very hard to acquire) state-issued paperwork often punished by arrest for vagrancy and subsequent sentencing to convict labor. Within four years of the nationwide ratification of the thirteenth amendment, convict leasing was common practice in southern states, and thousands of freedmen found themselves charged with phony crimes and sentenced to chain gangs. The emerging Democratic political machines, especially the powerful South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi ones, used their grip on power in their state legislatures to control the convict leasing system. Convict leasing became a key patronage tool used by these machines. Political cronies received discounts on lease rates and political bosses skimmed off of the considerable revenue generated by convict leasing to fund campaign war chests and pay bribes [3].
Convicts were leased out not only to their former masters, but to industrialists. The growing steel mills and coal mines of Alabama, for example, became lucrative off the unpaid toil of armies of black convicts. Much of Mississippi’s highway system was built by leased convict labor, and most of Tennessee’s hydroelectric dams were built at least partially by convicts. The cruel system, which frequently saw convicts beaten and whipped by overseers in scenes reminiscent of slavery, grew to be incredibly pervasive in the southern economy. The “New Slavery” formed the bedrock of the post-abolition south, fueling not only the brutal and flamboyantly corrupt southern political machines that fueled the rise of the infamous W. Carlyle Sale in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as much of the public works built in the south between 1883 and 1973, when the Civil Rights Act severely restricted the practice of convict labor [4].”
-From SLAVER'S LEGACY: AMERICA'S RACIAL FAILINGS by Rachel Philips, published 2018
“Almost immediately after convening in December of 1885, the 49th Congress took up discussion of the proposed “Blaine Amendment” that had been a key Whig policy since 1880 and advocated by Blaine since his freshman Senate term. Concerned with the growing number of religious private schools, predominantly Catholic ones, seeking state financial assistance, Blaine and other proponents of the amendment sought to prohibit such schools from receiving taxpayer money. On its face, such an amendment appears neutral and simply clarifies the first amendment. However, at the time it was proposed in the 1880s, most public schools used protestant prayer and protestant bibles, while the only Catholic education was via a private Catholic school, usually operated by the Roman Catholic Church. Concern was also driven by Tammany Hall, New York City’s notorious Democratic machine, obtaining $1.5 million in state funds for Catholic schools in 1869 [5].
On January 19th, 1886, the Fourteenth Amendment was introduced into the House of Representatives, reading “No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”
In the House, the amendment was met with strong opposition from most Democrats, with the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee denouncing it and arguing that it contradicted the first amendment in an “egregious way” as one Congressman put it. Nevertheless, the Whig-dominated committee approved the amendment with the added provision that prohibited all public money, not merely taxpayer money. The broader House approved the amendment by a vote of 187-85, with 63 congressmen, almost all of them Democrats, abstaining in protest.
The Whigs enjoyed a favourable landscape in the Senate, as many southern Democrats were amenable to supporting the amendment, seeing it as a way for their entrenched political machines to tightly control education. Many midwestern Whigs, seeing an opportunity to win the support of anti-Catholic German Americans, also supported the amendment. In fact, the only Whig to oppose the amendment was Virginia’s William Mahone, whose entire political machine relied on the support of non-protestant immigrant groups, especially the Eastern Orthodox Serb and Bulgarian communities in Richmond and Lynchburg. Despite the opposition of the Democrats (and Mahone), the Whigs received enough support from southern Democrats that the fourteenth amendment was passed by a vote of 64-12, with six abstentions (all southern Democrats concerned about the optics of voting for against an amendment that would reduce state expenditures.) It then fell to the states to ratify it, with 31 of the 41 states required to approve.
The Whig-dominated midwestern state legislatures easily ratified the amendment, while New Jersey, Maryland, and Louisiana unsurprisingly rejected it. Missouri’s rejection of the amendment came as something of a surprise to the Whigs, but Mormons allied with Catholics to oppose what they saw as an attempt to suppress sectarian education. Rhode Island was another surprising rejection, but the state Whig party only held a narrow majority in the state house and there were enough defections that the ratification bid fell just short. There was another battle in New York, where Whigs held a similarly narrow majority of the state assembly. Several Whigs from areas with significant Catholic populations were wary of the political risk inherent in voting for ratification, while the state and national Whig parties were leaning heavily on them. After intense negotiations, the fence-sitters agreed to become yes-votes, New York voted to ratify the fourteenth amendment on June 21st, 1886.
Southern legislatures were eager to reduce state spending on religious schools (which would allow them to underfund the public education system and give even more power to the plantocratic elite and their emergent political machines), and Alabama was the first southern state to ratify the fourteenth amendment, which it did on November 10th. The rest of the south save for Louisiana (with its politically influential catholic Creole community leading the opposition) ratified the amendment over September and October with Georgia, the tipping-point state, ratifying on October 14th. Georgia was the 31st state to ratify, and in so doing officially made the fourteenth amendment a part of the United States constitution. With Georgia’s vote, ratification came just in time for the 1886 midterms…”
-From A CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Hubert Johnson, published 1972
“…not the Peru Crisis. Perhaps the only true folly of Blaine’s presidency was the immense push to ratify the amendment that frequently bears his name. After winning his two terms partially due to unusually strong support from Catholic voters, Blaine decided to pivot and appease the Nativist wing of his party, which had gotten steadily louder in its opposition to Catholicism and its support for English-only education.
The strong economy should have ensured that the Whigs would, despite the inevitable losses of a midterm election, retain control of both chambers of Congress. It was not to be, however, as a result of an entirely different voter backlash – that of Catholics and German Americans. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment alienated Catholic voters by threatening their access to a Catholic education while ignoring the overtly Protestant nature of public schools. This alone would not have sentenced the Whigs to a humiliating defeat in 1886, but a number of states, namely Illinois and Wisconsin, passed laws requiring that all lessons in both public and private schools be taught in English only, enraging German-speaking communities [6]. While Catholics largely voted for Democratic candidates already, their turnout increased greatly while German Americans deserted the Whigs in outraged droves.
Ohio narrowly rejected a similar law, and indeed bilingualism would catch on in that state first [7]. Community backlash from such ethnic and religious groups drove not only Democratic landslides in New York’s gubernatorial and congressional elections, seeing David B. Hill elected as Governor and eleven Whig congressmen lose their seats, but also staggering losses in the swing state of Illinois and traditional Whig states like Ohio and Wisconsin as a result of backlash from German American voters. In these states, protestant and Catholic Germans alike rallied against the Whigs in defense of their language and faith.
Out of eight Whig representatives from Wisconsin, just two returned to Washington with the 50th Congress. Out of fifteen Whig-held districts in Illinois, just six (less than half) returned Whig representatives in 1890. Ohio, which had failed to pass an English-only law, saw less of a bloodbath, but Whigs still lost seven of their 16 districts in the state, sending a Democratic-majority delegation to the 50th Congress. Similar disappointments were seen in Indiana (3 out of 6) and Iowa (6 0ut of 11), leading President Blaine to privately remark that “it was an ignominious shellacking.” Of the major industrial states, only Virginia returned a majority-Whig delegation, 8 seats to 7 Democratic ones. While the Whigs held the Senate 43-39, the Democratic House majority, the first one since 1864, meant that little else was accomplished during President Blaine’s otherwise-momentous presidency. Nevertheless, Blaine contented himself with overseeing the speedy ratification of two constitutional amendments and the first of several major naval expansions [8] in U.S. history…”
-From SOBER AND INDUSTRIOUS: A HISTORY OF THE WHIGS by Greg Carey, published 1986
[1] OTL, Gary was one of the most hardline segregationists in postbellum South Carolina.
[2] Because the laws restrict “itinerant people,” that is, people without the paperwork that requires literacy tests and a journey to the state capitol to apply in person.
[3] As if neo-slavery wasn’t bad enough already…
[4] Spoilers…
[5] All OTL.
[6] OTL, this drove the Democratic landslide in the 1890 House elections.
[7] More spoilers…
[8] More on this later.
“As slaveowners across the south gradually acknowledged reality and manumitted their slaves, southern politics underwent a noticeable shift. Rather than depend on slavery to maintain the agrarian, white supremacist system that had governed the south since before the Revolution, now the states had to find a way to codify their unspoken system into actual law. Mississippi took the first steps, passing a series of laws and constitutional amendments known collectively as the Black Codes. These were also more euphemistically referred to by South Carolina Governor Martin Gary [1] as the “New Racial Understanding” during his state’s passage of a package of similar laws.
The policy of convict leasing first pioneered in Mississippi was supplemented by Gary with the extensive use of so-called “Gypsy Laws [2]” that severely restricted the ability of blacks to move between counties, with such travel without the necessary (and very hard to acquire) state-issued paperwork often punished by arrest for vagrancy and subsequent sentencing to convict labor. Within four years of the nationwide ratification of the thirteenth amendment, convict leasing was common practice in southern states, and thousands of freedmen found themselves charged with phony crimes and sentenced to chain gangs. The emerging Democratic political machines, especially the powerful South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi ones, used their grip on power in their state legislatures to control the convict leasing system. Convict leasing became a key patronage tool used by these machines. Political cronies received discounts on lease rates and political bosses skimmed off of the considerable revenue generated by convict leasing to fund campaign war chests and pay bribes [3].
Convicts were leased out not only to their former masters, but to industrialists. The growing steel mills and coal mines of Alabama, for example, became lucrative off the unpaid toil of armies of black convicts. Much of Mississippi’s highway system was built by leased convict labor, and most of Tennessee’s hydroelectric dams were built at least partially by convicts. The cruel system, which frequently saw convicts beaten and whipped by overseers in scenes reminiscent of slavery, grew to be incredibly pervasive in the southern economy. The “New Slavery” formed the bedrock of the post-abolition south, fueling not only the brutal and flamboyantly corrupt southern political machines that fueled the rise of the infamous W. Carlyle Sale in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as much of the public works built in the south between 1883 and 1973, when the Civil Rights Act severely restricted the practice of convict labor [4].”
-From SLAVER'S LEGACY: AMERICA'S RACIAL FAILINGS by Rachel Philips, published 2018
“Almost immediately after convening in December of 1885, the 49th Congress took up discussion of the proposed “Blaine Amendment” that had been a key Whig policy since 1880 and advocated by Blaine since his freshman Senate term. Concerned with the growing number of religious private schools, predominantly Catholic ones, seeking state financial assistance, Blaine and other proponents of the amendment sought to prohibit such schools from receiving taxpayer money. On its face, such an amendment appears neutral and simply clarifies the first amendment. However, at the time it was proposed in the 1880s, most public schools used protestant prayer and protestant bibles, while the only Catholic education was via a private Catholic school, usually operated by the Roman Catholic Church. Concern was also driven by Tammany Hall, New York City’s notorious Democratic machine, obtaining $1.5 million in state funds for Catholic schools in 1869 [5].
On January 19th, 1886, the Fourteenth Amendment was introduced into the House of Representatives, reading “No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”
In the House, the amendment was met with strong opposition from most Democrats, with the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee denouncing it and arguing that it contradicted the first amendment in an “egregious way” as one Congressman put it. Nevertheless, the Whig-dominated committee approved the amendment with the added provision that prohibited all public money, not merely taxpayer money. The broader House approved the amendment by a vote of 187-85, with 63 congressmen, almost all of them Democrats, abstaining in protest.
The Whigs enjoyed a favourable landscape in the Senate, as many southern Democrats were amenable to supporting the amendment, seeing it as a way for their entrenched political machines to tightly control education. Many midwestern Whigs, seeing an opportunity to win the support of anti-Catholic German Americans, also supported the amendment. In fact, the only Whig to oppose the amendment was Virginia’s William Mahone, whose entire political machine relied on the support of non-protestant immigrant groups, especially the Eastern Orthodox Serb and Bulgarian communities in Richmond and Lynchburg. Despite the opposition of the Democrats (and Mahone), the Whigs received enough support from southern Democrats that the fourteenth amendment was passed by a vote of 64-12, with six abstentions (all southern Democrats concerned about the optics of voting for against an amendment that would reduce state expenditures.) It then fell to the states to ratify it, with 31 of the 41 states required to approve.
The Whig-dominated midwestern state legislatures easily ratified the amendment, while New Jersey, Maryland, and Louisiana unsurprisingly rejected it. Missouri’s rejection of the amendment came as something of a surprise to the Whigs, but Mormons allied with Catholics to oppose what they saw as an attempt to suppress sectarian education. Rhode Island was another surprising rejection, but the state Whig party only held a narrow majority in the state house and there were enough defections that the ratification bid fell just short. There was another battle in New York, where Whigs held a similarly narrow majority of the state assembly. Several Whigs from areas with significant Catholic populations were wary of the political risk inherent in voting for ratification, while the state and national Whig parties were leaning heavily on them. After intense negotiations, the fence-sitters agreed to become yes-votes, New York voted to ratify the fourteenth amendment on June 21st, 1886.
Southern legislatures were eager to reduce state spending on religious schools (which would allow them to underfund the public education system and give even more power to the plantocratic elite and their emergent political machines), and Alabama was the first southern state to ratify the fourteenth amendment, which it did on November 10th. The rest of the south save for Louisiana (with its politically influential catholic Creole community leading the opposition) ratified the amendment over September and October with Georgia, the tipping-point state, ratifying on October 14th. Georgia was the 31st state to ratify, and in so doing officially made the fourteenth amendment a part of the United States constitution. With Georgia’s vote, ratification came just in time for the 1886 midterms…”
-From A CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Hubert Johnson, published 1972
“…not the Peru Crisis. Perhaps the only true folly of Blaine’s presidency was the immense push to ratify the amendment that frequently bears his name. After winning his two terms partially due to unusually strong support from Catholic voters, Blaine decided to pivot and appease the Nativist wing of his party, which had gotten steadily louder in its opposition to Catholicism and its support for English-only education.
The strong economy should have ensured that the Whigs would, despite the inevitable losses of a midterm election, retain control of both chambers of Congress. It was not to be, however, as a result of an entirely different voter backlash – that of Catholics and German Americans. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment alienated Catholic voters by threatening their access to a Catholic education while ignoring the overtly Protestant nature of public schools. This alone would not have sentenced the Whigs to a humiliating defeat in 1886, but a number of states, namely Illinois and Wisconsin, passed laws requiring that all lessons in both public and private schools be taught in English only, enraging German-speaking communities [6]. While Catholics largely voted for Democratic candidates already, their turnout increased greatly while German Americans deserted the Whigs in outraged droves.
Ohio narrowly rejected a similar law, and indeed bilingualism would catch on in that state first [7]. Community backlash from such ethnic and religious groups drove not only Democratic landslides in New York’s gubernatorial and congressional elections, seeing David B. Hill elected as Governor and eleven Whig congressmen lose their seats, but also staggering losses in the swing state of Illinois and traditional Whig states like Ohio and Wisconsin as a result of backlash from German American voters. In these states, protestant and Catholic Germans alike rallied against the Whigs in defense of their language and faith.
Out of eight Whig representatives from Wisconsin, just two returned to Washington with the 50th Congress. Out of fifteen Whig-held districts in Illinois, just six (less than half) returned Whig representatives in 1890. Ohio, which had failed to pass an English-only law, saw less of a bloodbath, but Whigs still lost seven of their 16 districts in the state, sending a Democratic-majority delegation to the 50th Congress. Similar disappointments were seen in Indiana (3 out of 6) and Iowa (6 0ut of 11), leading President Blaine to privately remark that “it was an ignominious shellacking.” Of the major industrial states, only Virginia returned a majority-Whig delegation, 8 seats to 7 Democratic ones. While the Whigs held the Senate 43-39, the Democratic House majority, the first one since 1864, meant that little else was accomplished during President Blaine’s otherwise-momentous presidency. Nevertheless, Blaine contented himself with overseeing the speedy ratification of two constitutional amendments and the first of several major naval expansions [8] in U.S. history…”
-From SOBER AND INDUSTRIOUS: A HISTORY OF THE WHIGS by Greg Carey, published 1986
[1] OTL, Gary was one of the most hardline segregationists in postbellum South Carolina.
[2] Because the laws restrict “itinerant people,” that is, people without the paperwork that requires literacy tests and a journey to the state capitol to apply in person.
[3] As if neo-slavery wasn’t bad enough already…
[4] Spoilers…
[5] All OTL.
[6] OTL, this drove the Democratic landslide in the 1890 House elections.
[7] More spoilers…
[8] More on this later.
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A lot of unpleasantness in this chapter, but in the longterm the 14th Amendment could be for the best.
Bilingualism, hmmm. Actually, this seems unlikely to me, backlash or not, because of industrialization and the associated growth of urbanization, the pole position that English has, and the decline of immigration from Germany (due to that country's industrialization), although I suppose the latter might not be as successful here. The first point means that people speaking minority languages will tend to move from rural areas where they can easily form linguistic communities into urban areas where they are cheek by jowl with people speaking other languages, meaning that they need a lingua franca, which thanks to the second point will be English. Moreover, this lingua franca will be much more practical in everyday usage than their native languages, so that their children will tend not to speak their native language well, and their children probably not at all. The third point means that (for a while, at least) there won't be any particular language community that already has a significant power and established communities, thus accelerating the previous steps.
Of course, there were significant German-speaking communities in the United States over time, but even without the anti-German backlash of the First World War I can't really see them surviving in the long-term; it's not like other linguistic communities survived, either, except in the case of Spanish and that was only because of the huge interconnections between the Southwest and Latin America.
Of course, there were significant German-speaking communities in the United States over time, but even without the anti-German backlash of the First World War I can't really see them surviving in the long-term; it's not like other linguistic communities survived, either, except in the case of Spanish and that was only because of the huge interconnections between the Southwest and Latin America.
I might be missing something, but wouldn't the 63 abstaining congressmen have been able to block the amendment from having reached the 2/3 majority in the House had they not voted to abstain? Added to together with the other 85 representatives voting against they would have been able to hold the number of those in favor to a little under 56%, thereby blocking the amendment.
(Still a great chapter though).
(Still a great chapter though).
Yeah, that's almost 40% of the House abstaining right there. That can easily sway the outcome.
Yeah, the convict leasing stuff is pretty bleak.
The 14th amendment will largely be seen as a good thing, especially when it gets used to remove protestant prayer from public schools...
I'm aware of all that. My basic plan is that German-Americans who still speak German see these English-only laws as a threat to their heritage, so they first start passing laws at the municipal level instituting bilingual street signs and, by the early 1900s, have instituted bilingual education in Wisconsin and Ohio statewide and in several cities/towns in Illinois, along with the earlier street signs. The phenomenon is very localized, however. A lot of this I'll chalk up to vague butterflies, but this is something I really want to explore in this TL, even if it's a little implausible.
I know, right? It just oozes segregationist good ol' boy.
Thanks for pointing that out, I'll fix it asap.
OTL, the amendment passed the House 180-7 with 98 abstentions -- from what I understand, abstentions lower the threshold needed to pass something.
That is correct, but if the representatives in opposition have it within their power to block the amendment simply by voting against it rather than abstaining, then why did the 63 members vote to abstain when if they had voted against it the amendment would have been blocked?
They didn’t want to go on record opposing a measure that was popular among non-catholics and would reduce state expenditures (which was why many democrats abstained from the OTL senate vote)
However, I don't think Massachusetts would flip at state and federal level, not yet. The TTL Whig ideology should have been the natural governing ideology there, and this means liberal Yankees (a part of the New Deal Democratic coalition) would not flip like during OTL 1920s-1930s.
It hasn’t flipped yet, the Boston machine that passage refers to emerges around the late 1910s. Massachusetts becomes a swing state around the 30s/40s, helped in part by the Boston machine. I’ll cover that when the TL gets into the 1910s.