I also wonder if the South is going to go the same route as South Africa, complete with the total removal of rights and citizenship of blacks and relocation to reservations/Bantustans and an analogue to the ANC. Let’s just hope that African Americans in the north and south eventually receive some semblance of a happy ending.We shall see how the civil rights movement develops TTL...
Yeah, the south is going to be notorious for the sheer awfulness of theirtownshipsslumsghettos, worse even than the redlining and neighborhood covenants in the north. As for the level of control southern businesses have over their "employees", it doesn't bode well for the black labor movement. White workers have more skilled jobs, don't owe money to the company, and more leeway to organize without having their families beaten or killed in retaliation.
As for Texas and highways, I can't pretend to be an expert
The American System: A Henry Clay TL
- Thread starter TheHedgehog
- Start date
Absolutely, I should have specified that. Things were bad enough for black organized labor IOTL with the rarity of interracial working class solidarity, but this is on a whole different level. It feels almost euphemistic to call it a labor movement when what they're fighting is slavery in all but name. The implications of a shorter Civil War with no Emancipation Proclamation are bad enough on its face, but this truly underscores just how bad things could be even after abolition. One thing that stands out is that there wouldn't be a "nadir of race relations" as there was never a chance for the boot to be let off for even a few years during Reconstruction. Thus, I agree that the civil rights movement will be profoundly different, and I'm glad that this timeline has made such an effort to explore this topic.We shall see how the civil rights movement develops TTL...
Yeah, the south is going to be notorious for the sheer awfulness of theirtownshipsslumsghettos, worse even than the redlining and neighborhood covenants in the north. As for the level of control southern businesses have over their "employees", it doesn't bode well for the black labor movement. White workers have more skilled jobs, don't owe money to the company, and more leeway to organize without having their families beaten or killed in retaliation.
As for Texas and highways, I can't pretend to be an expert
The idea of reservations seems like a dubious idea on its face, but apparently there were those who proposed a similar policy, like Governor Napoleon Broward of Florida. However, I think it's more likely that the Back to Africa Movement would be stronger, although to call it a "movement" may also be euphemistic since groups like the American Colonization Society got more support from white Southerners than black freemen. When the idea is supported by a white supremacist demagogue like Theodore Bilbo, you know it's about ethnic cleansing and not black liberation. Things get truly draconian ITTL when you consider how those in power might choose to try and deport black people by force. Despite all these condemnations, with such awful conditions for African-Americans persisting for so long, I think there'd be more folks who'd choose to move to the malarial coast of West Africa just to escape a country that oppresses them in every way possible.
The south won't go as far as making autonomous Bantustans, but there will be strong parallels otherwise. I can promise that there will be a happy ending of sorts (as much as you can have one in history). I tried to convey a little of that with the flash-forward to the Supreme Court case.
Also I've just decided the civil rights movement TTL will have similarities with the ANC, so thanks for mentioning it
Yeah, as bad as the end of reconstruction was OTL, one thing I really wanted to convey in this TL is that things could have been much worse. A lot of this housing stuff is/will be informed by the book The Color of Law which I can't recommend enough, it goes into a ton of detail about all of the legal chicanery and governmental pressure that went into housing segregation.
In any case,
I'd never heard of Napoleon Broward, what an... interesting guy. I think the Back to Africa movement would only be marginally stronger than OTL, given that most blacks just wanted their birth country to treat them like equal citizens, but said civil rights movement will definitely be more militant. I do think that migration north will be a much bigger thing, not necessarily in terms of numbers but as a "promised land" within the US. One thing I'll cover as the TL continues is what life is like for northern blacks (two hints: Whig urban machines using black voters to counter Democratic urban machines and less redlining)
There will definitely be a militant streak in even the moderate civil rights organization, sort of like how the ANC had a terrorism division. And expressly militant groups like Malcolm X’s philosophy will be more prominent TTL also.
The flash forwards add a nice color/context to the more contemporaneous content. Great stuff. Feel like this is a really realistic take on what a “slow abolition” may have looked like
Thanks! The flash forwards are some of my favorite parts to write, glad you like them.
54. End of a Party System
54. End of a Party System
“President Elkins enjoyed enormous popularity within his party. Under his leadership the economy had come back stronger than before, with more jobs and larger growth. With the Populists splintering off, there were no challengers to Elkins for renomination, and the convention was largely a coronation and celebration of the achievements of the past four years. His nomination speech was given by William McKinley, one of Elkins’ main rivals for the nomination in 1892. McKinley praised the economic recovery and declared that “it is because of one man, President Elkins, that we the United States are well-positioned to claim our national place in the sun. The economic conditions have never been more favorable. American industry is the envy of the world, and our magnificent fleet is a mighty Aegis for the American people. To safeguard the advances of the last four years and to secure the prosperity of the next four, I hereby nominate Coleman Bryant Elkins for President of the United States of America!”
McKinley’s speech excited the delegates, and they eagerly gave Elkins the nomination unanimously on the first ballot. Elkins made a brief appearance after his nomination was announced, shaking hands with a few delegates, and waving to the crowd from the convention floor before departing to thunderous cheers. Vice President Morgan Bulkely was also unanimously renominated, though this predictably inspired considerably less excitement than the President’s. The platform was largely similar to the 1892 platform, echoing its calls for aid to the Cuban rebels, construction of a Nicaraguan canal, and the continued strengthening of the fleet. One additional resolution proposed a National Labor Arbitration Board [1] to resolve labor disputes without the need for strikes, but it would take a different president to implement this…”
-From SOBER AND INDUSTRIOUS: A HISTORY OF THE WHIGS by Greg Carey, published 1986
“The Democrats were divided on how to approach the 1896 election. On one hand, Elkins was the overwhelming favorite to win, so some argued that the party should seek to minimize its losses and nominate a second-rate candidate who could stem the bleeding. Others argued that the Populist split afforded Democrats an opening that could hand the party a win. The former camp was primarily composed of reformists, as Cleveland and Whitney preferred that the party nominate a machinist who would lose, leaving the reformists as the more viable faction. They were joined by Arthur Gorman in not contesting the convention. The other camp was led by former Governor David B. Hill of New York and Texas Governor William S. Weldon.
Weldon was the principal advocate of targeting farmers and the Populists and had persuaded Hill to seek the nomination. As Weldon declared in an interview shortly after the convention, “Are Democrats not the party of Jackson? We are Jacksonian to the core… and the Jacksonian ideal is that the people should rule. It is skepticism of the National Bank, of eastern finance, and corrupt railroads. And the Populists are of the same tradition.” Hill was convinced by Weldon’s rhetoric and was the only truly nationally prominent candidate to contest the convention, which he had ensured was held in New York City.
The only opposition to Hill came from Richard P. Bland of Auraria [2], a congressman with Populist sympathies and noted for his opposition to every single naval expansion bill. However, Bland’s Catholic wife and their decision to raise all of their children in the Catholic church hurt his standing, as Democratic party leaders viewed this as a major weakness. Despite the distaste that many in the party had for Hill, he was the only viable candidate and took the nomination on the first ballot, though Bland enjoyed more support than expected. While Bland had hoped to receive the vice-presidential nomination, the delegates instead selected the aged Joseph C. S. Blackburn of Kentucky, who had ties to both the Populist sympathizers and the reformists.”
-From IN THE SHADOW OF JACKSON by Michelle Watts, published 2012
“Governor Francis M. Drake’s decision not to seek a third term in 1896 left the Iowa Whigs unsure of how to hold the governor’s mansion. Drake had only barely scraped by to re-election in 1894, and with the rise of the Populists in western Iowa, the Whig grip on state politics seemed to be slipping. Several candidates ran to succeed Drake, including Senator William B. Allison and congressman William P. Hepburn. In an ordinary state convention, either of these men would have easily taken the nomination. However, both Allison and Hepburn were conservatives and strong supporters of the National Bank, which was increasingly unpopular in the state.
The third major candidate was congressman William McGovern, who had attempted to challenge Drake for renomination in 1894. McGovern was a member of the progressive wing of the party and was sympathetic to Populist concerns over the Bank’s lending policies. His attempt to unseat Governor Drake failed largely because Allison, his one-time mentor, viewed McGovern’s rhetoric over the Bank as “fiscally irresponsible.” McGovern had spent the intervening two years assembling his own network of allies to counter Allison and Hepburn [3], including securing the backing of his old ally from Rockingham, William Larrabee. Larrabee, while he had been out of office for over a decade by 1896, was a wealthy landowner and attorney, and retained significant influence in state Whig politics.
Even with the backing of Larrabee and Tom Cummins, McGovern still faced an uphill battle at the convention. He framed himself as the most electable candidate, pointing out that he had been endorsed by the Populist Party in his 1894 house race. According to McGovern, “without at least some appeal to potential People’s Party voters, predominantly farmers, we will lose to the Democrats.” McGovern argued that unless the Whigs adopted key Populist planks like railroad regulation, forming a state-owned mill and grain elevator company to reduce corporate exploitation [4], and calling for revising the National Bank’s charter to allow rural banks to lend more money. Allison and Hepburn, meanwhile, claimed that McGovern would alienate the Whigs’ traditional allies in the business community and consign the Whigs to defeat in Iowa.
Fearing that he would be defeated at the convention, McGovern went on a tour of Iowa’s political and business establishment. He assured Senator Allison that he would support Allison’s re-election to the Senate and pledged to businessmen and railroad interests that he sought “only fairness, not vengeance” in his tax and regulation policies. Allison withdrew from his gubernatorial campaign on June 3rd, and while he made no endorsement his exit only strengthened McGovern. McGovern’s momentum grew with high-profile endorsements from local politicians and businessmen, and his campaign swept a series of caucuses held in late June. By the eve of the convention, McGovern was the prohibitive frontrunner and secured the nomination on the first ballot, despite Hepburn’s efforts to rally conservatives to his side.
Having secured the Whig nomination, McGovern turned his attention to the Populists. James B. Weaver had announced he would seek the Populist nomination for Governor but promised to withdraw if McGovern should be the Whig candidate. Fulfilling his promise, Weaver ended his campaign just days after the Whig convention and endorsed McGovern. With no other candidates in the running, the Populists endorsed McGovern unanimously, though they did nominate Weaver for lieutenant Governor.
With the Populists and Whigs united, the Democrats’ hopes of winning a narrow plurality evaporated. McGovern, despite his heavy advantage, campaigned heavily, criss-crossing Iowa by train to speak to large crowds and shake as many hands as he could. In November, McGovern won a landslide victory and his first term as Governor of Iowa, with over 60% of the vote. Down ballot, McGovern’s coattails resulted in the Whigs regaining a narrow majority of the state house, but the Populists gained seats as well, giving the new Governor a strong mandate to govern…”
-From PARADIGM SHIFT: THE AMERICAN PROGRESSIVE ERA by Olivia DiMarco, published 2015
“The Populist Party convened in Minnehapolis, Minnesota, to select a Presidential nominee and draft a platform. Said platform simply republished the party’s founding manifesto, calling for expanded anti-trust legislation, direct election of Senators, reforming the National Bank to allow more rural lending, expanding railroad regulations, and extending legal protections to labor unions. For President, the party nominated its founding member, the congressman for Hidatsa’s at-large district, Niels Johnson. For Vice President, the party selected Justin Pettigrew, the Mayor of Sioux Falls, Lakota.”
-From THE PEOPLE’S CONSTANT: POPULISM THROUGHOUT HISTORY by Francis Smith, published 1987
“The general election campaign was a rather nondescript affair. Elkins campaigned little, and in the few speeches he did make, he focused on the economy and the successes of his administration rather than attacking his opponents. Whig surrogates did attack David Hill for the corruption of his political machine and Niels Johnson for the “radicalism” of the Populist platform. By and large, however, the Whigs stuck to a positive campaign emphasizing their strengths rather than the deficits of their opponents. A campaign plan circulated to all the state Whig parties read in part “The economy is strong. The navy is strong. Jobs are plentiful and prosperity widespread. Focus on these and the election is ours.”
Hill struggled to run an active campaign, as his ambitious train journey through the Midwest proved exhausting. After collapsing at a speech in Columbus, Ohio, Hill was forced to stop campaigning for a week to rest, while concerns over his health mounted. Though he was back on the campaign trail quickly, his campaign was dogged by questions of whether Hill was physically fit enough to serve as President. While President Elkins never raised these questions himself and Whig surrogates hinted at it, the Populists were under no such self-imposed restrictions. Niels Johnson bluntly declared at a speech in Omaha that “it is an affront to the American people to keep them in the dark about Governor Hill’s health. While I certainly hope he is fit and able to serve, I can’t say anything with certainty and therein lies the problem.”
While Hill engaged in blatant pandering towards potential Populist voters by regularly attacking the National Bank, this backfired. Farmers were unconvinced by Hill’s Jacksonian rhetoric, while the criticism of the National Bank alienated the northern businessmen who had previously been major donors. Worse, the bickering between the Populists and Democrats only served to highlight Elkins as a calm and stable leader, above petty partisan squabbling.
President Elkins cruised to a second term in office, but while his raw number of votes increased, his share of the vote decreased from 52.5% to 51.9% of the vote. This mostly came from decisive losses in the west, which had previously been won by Whig candidates in landslides but became competitive due to the sudden emergence of the Populist Party. The Whigs partially made up for this with narrow wins in southern states like Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but this wasn’t enough to prevent their vote share from dropping slightly. Despite winning a landslide victory in the presidential election, the Whigs had an underwhelming result in the House elections, picking up just eight seats due to Populist gains in western Whig districts. They broke even in the Senate.
Meanwhile, David B. Hill led the Democrats to a beating at the polls. The Democratic vote share sank from a respectable 46.4% in 1892 to just 39.3% four years later. Down ballot, the party fared only slightly better, losing a single Senate seat but a disappointing loss of 16 House seats. Embarrassed, Hill would retire from politics after his term as Governor expired and return to private practice. The mantle of his neo-Jacksonian brand of politics would, with some modifications to increase its authenticity and appeal, be picked up and carried much farther by William S. Weldon…
The Populists, meanwhile, enjoyed great success. They gained eight seats in the House, nearly doubling the size of their caucus, and one Senate seat. More impressively, Niels Johnson swept nearly the entire west, even narrowly winning Whig bastions like Kansas and Nebraska. “Mr. Johnson’s campaign,” the Chicago Tribune noted humorously shortly after the election, “has demonstrated the potency of rural outrage. Perhaps the only other thing besides a woman scorned outpacing the fury not even hell hath is an indebted farmer.”
While President Elkins was re-elected and it seemed as though politics as usual would carry on, beneath his dress shoes, the American political system was undergoing a truly seismic shift…”
-From WHITE MAN’S NATION: AMERICA 1881-1973 by Kenneth Thurman, published 2003
[1] Proposed by the Republicans at the 1896 convention IOTL.
[2] OTL, Bland worked as a miner and teacher in Utah Territory, TTL part of the state of Auraria (the Mormons repudiating polygamy and staying in the Midwest means that statehood comes quicker for Auraria).
[3] During Robert La Follette Sr.’s successful 1900 bid for Governor of Wisconsin, he used this strategy.
[4] A similar proposal to the OTL North Dakota Non-Partisan League.
“President Elkins enjoyed enormous popularity within his party. Under his leadership the economy had come back stronger than before, with more jobs and larger growth. With the Populists splintering off, there were no challengers to Elkins for renomination, and the convention was largely a coronation and celebration of the achievements of the past four years. His nomination speech was given by William McKinley, one of Elkins’ main rivals for the nomination in 1892. McKinley praised the economic recovery and declared that “it is because of one man, President Elkins, that we the United States are well-positioned to claim our national place in the sun. The economic conditions have never been more favorable. American industry is the envy of the world, and our magnificent fleet is a mighty Aegis for the American people. To safeguard the advances of the last four years and to secure the prosperity of the next four, I hereby nominate Coleman Bryant Elkins for President of the United States of America!”
McKinley’s speech excited the delegates, and they eagerly gave Elkins the nomination unanimously on the first ballot. Elkins made a brief appearance after his nomination was announced, shaking hands with a few delegates, and waving to the crowd from the convention floor before departing to thunderous cheers. Vice President Morgan Bulkely was also unanimously renominated, though this predictably inspired considerably less excitement than the President’s. The platform was largely similar to the 1892 platform, echoing its calls for aid to the Cuban rebels, construction of a Nicaraguan canal, and the continued strengthening of the fleet. One additional resolution proposed a National Labor Arbitration Board [1] to resolve labor disputes without the need for strikes, but it would take a different president to implement this…”
-From SOBER AND INDUSTRIOUS: A HISTORY OF THE WHIGS by Greg Carey, published 1986
“The Democrats were divided on how to approach the 1896 election. On one hand, Elkins was the overwhelming favorite to win, so some argued that the party should seek to minimize its losses and nominate a second-rate candidate who could stem the bleeding. Others argued that the Populist split afforded Democrats an opening that could hand the party a win. The former camp was primarily composed of reformists, as Cleveland and Whitney preferred that the party nominate a machinist who would lose, leaving the reformists as the more viable faction. They were joined by Arthur Gorman in not contesting the convention. The other camp was led by former Governor David B. Hill of New York and Texas Governor William S. Weldon.
Weldon was the principal advocate of targeting farmers and the Populists and had persuaded Hill to seek the nomination. As Weldon declared in an interview shortly after the convention, “Are Democrats not the party of Jackson? We are Jacksonian to the core… and the Jacksonian ideal is that the people should rule. It is skepticism of the National Bank, of eastern finance, and corrupt railroads. And the Populists are of the same tradition.” Hill was convinced by Weldon’s rhetoric and was the only truly nationally prominent candidate to contest the convention, which he had ensured was held in New York City.
The only opposition to Hill came from Richard P. Bland of Auraria [2], a congressman with Populist sympathies and noted for his opposition to every single naval expansion bill. However, Bland’s Catholic wife and their decision to raise all of their children in the Catholic church hurt his standing, as Democratic party leaders viewed this as a major weakness. Despite the distaste that many in the party had for Hill, he was the only viable candidate and took the nomination on the first ballot, though Bland enjoyed more support than expected. While Bland had hoped to receive the vice-presidential nomination, the delegates instead selected the aged Joseph C. S. Blackburn of Kentucky, who had ties to both the Populist sympathizers and the reformists.”
-From IN THE SHADOW OF JACKSON by Michelle Watts, published 2012
“Governor Francis M. Drake’s decision not to seek a third term in 1896 left the Iowa Whigs unsure of how to hold the governor’s mansion. Drake had only barely scraped by to re-election in 1894, and with the rise of the Populists in western Iowa, the Whig grip on state politics seemed to be slipping. Several candidates ran to succeed Drake, including Senator William B. Allison and congressman William P. Hepburn. In an ordinary state convention, either of these men would have easily taken the nomination. However, both Allison and Hepburn were conservatives and strong supporters of the National Bank, which was increasingly unpopular in the state.
The third major candidate was congressman William McGovern, who had attempted to challenge Drake for renomination in 1894. McGovern was a member of the progressive wing of the party and was sympathetic to Populist concerns over the Bank’s lending policies. His attempt to unseat Governor Drake failed largely because Allison, his one-time mentor, viewed McGovern’s rhetoric over the Bank as “fiscally irresponsible.” McGovern had spent the intervening two years assembling his own network of allies to counter Allison and Hepburn [3], including securing the backing of his old ally from Rockingham, William Larrabee. Larrabee, while he had been out of office for over a decade by 1896, was a wealthy landowner and attorney, and retained significant influence in state Whig politics.
Even with the backing of Larrabee and Tom Cummins, McGovern still faced an uphill battle at the convention. He framed himself as the most electable candidate, pointing out that he had been endorsed by the Populist Party in his 1894 house race. According to McGovern, “without at least some appeal to potential People’s Party voters, predominantly farmers, we will lose to the Democrats.” McGovern argued that unless the Whigs adopted key Populist planks like railroad regulation, forming a state-owned mill and grain elevator company to reduce corporate exploitation [4], and calling for revising the National Bank’s charter to allow rural banks to lend more money. Allison and Hepburn, meanwhile, claimed that McGovern would alienate the Whigs’ traditional allies in the business community and consign the Whigs to defeat in Iowa.
Fearing that he would be defeated at the convention, McGovern went on a tour of Iowa’s political and business establishment. He assured Senator Allison that he would support Allison’s re-election to the Senate and pledged to businessmen and railroad interests that he sought “only fairness, not vengeance” in his tax and regulation policies. Allison withdrew from his gubernatorial campaign on June 3rd, and while he made no endorsement his exit only strengthened McGovern. McGovern’s momentum grew with high-profile endorsements from local politicians and businessmen, and his campaign swept a series of caucuses held in late June. By the eve of the convention, McGovern was the prohibitive frontrunner and secured the nomination on the first ballot, despite Hepburn’s efforts to rally conservatives to his side.
Having secured the Whig nomination, McGovern turned his attention to the Populists. James B. Weaver had announced he would seek the Populist nomination for Governor but promised to withdraw if McGovern should be the Whig candidate. Fulfilling his promise, Weaver ended his campaign just days after the Whig convention and endorsed McGovern. With no other candidates in the running, the Populists endorsed McGovern unanimously, though they did nominate Weaver for lieutenant Governor.
With the Populists and Whigs united, the Democrats’ hopes of winning a narrow plurality evaporated. McGovern, despite his heavy advantage, campaigned heavily, criss-crossing Iowa by train to speak to large crowds and shake as many hands as he could. In November, McGovern won a landslide victory and his first term as Governor of Iowa, with over 60% of the vote. Down ballot, McGovern’s coattails resulted in the Whigs regaining a narrow majority of the state house, but the Populists gained seats as well, giving the new Governor a strong mandate to govern…”
-From PARADIGM SHIFT: THE AMERICAN PROGRESSIVE ERA by Olivia DiMarco, published 2015
“The Populist Party convened in Minnehapolis, Minnesota, to select a Presidential nominee and draft a platform. Said platform simply republished the party’s founding manifesto, calling for expanded anti-trust legislation, direct election of Senators, reforming the National Bank to allow more rural lending, expanding railroad regulations, and extending legal protections to labor unions. For President, the party nominated its founding member, the congressman for Hidatsa’s at-large district, Niels Johnson. For Vice President, the party selected Justin Pettigrew, the Mayor of Sioux Falls, Lakota.”
-From THE PEOPLE’S CONSTANT: POPULISM THROUGHOUT HISTORY by Francis Smith, published 1987
“The general election campaign was a rather nondescript affair. Elkins campaigned little, and in the few speeches he did make, he focused on the economy and the successes of his administration rather than attacking his opponents. Whig surrogates did attack David Hill for the corruption of his political machine and Niels Johnson for the “radicalism” of the Populist platform. By and large, however, the Whigs stuck to a positive campaign emphasizing their strengths rather than the deficits of their opponents. A campaign plan circulated to all the state Whig parties read in part “The economy is strong. The navy is strong. Jobs are plentiful and prosperity widespread. Focus on these and the election is ours.”
Hill struggled to run an active campaign, as his ambitious train journey through the Midwest proved exhausting. After collapsing at a speech in Columbus, Ohio, Hill was forced to stop campaigning for a week to rest, while concerns over his health mounted. Though he was back on the campaign trail quickly, his campaign was dogged by questions of whether Hill was physically fit enough to serve as President. While President Elkins never raised these questions himself and Whig surrogates hinted at it, the Populists were under no such self-imposed restrictions. Niels Johnson bluntly declared at a speech in Omaha that “it is an affront to the American people to keep them in the dark about Governor Hill’s health. While I certainly hope he is fit and able to serve, I can’t say anything with certainty and therein lies the problem.”
While Hill engaged in blatant pandering towards potential Populist voters by regularly attacking the National Bank, this backfired. Farmers were unconvinced by Hill’s Jacksonian rhetoric, while the criticism of the National Bank alienated the northern businessmen who had previously been major donors. Worse, the bickering between the Populists and Democrats only served to highlight Elkins as a calm and stable leader, above petty partisan squabbling.
| Coleman Elkins | David Hill | Niels Johnson | |
| Electoral Vote | 297 | 112 | 39 |
| Popular Vote | 6,642,357 | 5,028,869 | 1,033,751 |
| Percentage | 51.9 | 42.4 | 8.1 |
Meanwhile, David B. Hill led the Democrats to a beating at the polls. The Democratic vote share sank from a respectable 46.4% in 1892 to just 39.3% four years later. Down ballot, the party fared only slightly better, losing a single Senate seat but a disappointing loss of 16 House seats. Embarrassed, Hill would retire from politics after his term as Governor expired and return to private practice. The mantle of his neo-Jacksonian brand of politics would, with some modifications to increase its authenticity and appeal, be picked up and carried much farther by William S. Weldon…
The Populists, meanwhile, enjoyed great success. They gained eight seats in the House, nearly doubling the size of their caucus, and one Senate seat. More impressively, Niels Johnson swept nearly the entire west, even narrowly winning Whig bastions like Kansas and Nebraska. “Mr. Johnson’s campaign,” the Chicago Tribune noted humorously shortly after the election, “has demonstrated the potency of rural outrage. Perhaps the only other thing besides a woman scorned outpacing the fury not even hell hath is an indebted farmer.”
While President Elkins was re-elected and it seemed as though politics as usual would carry on, beneath his dress shoes, the American political system was undergoing a truly seismic shift…”
-From WHITE MAN’S NATION: AMERICA 1881-1973 by Kenneth Thurman, published 2003
[1] Proposed by the Republicans at the 1896 convention IOTL.
[2] OTL, Bland worked as a miner and teacher in Utah Territory, TTL part of the state of Auraria (the Mormons repudiating polygamy and staying in the Midwest means that statehood comes quicker for Auraria).
[3] During Robert La Follette Sr.’s successful 1900 bid for Governor of Wisconsin, he used this strategy.
[4] A similar proposal to the OTL North Dakota Non-Partisan League.
Great update! The timelines at that interesting point where there's still OTL people being important but ITTL people are starting to become more prevalent. I'm guesing McGovern and Weldon will both be President at some point.
Also, has there been like a map made that has all the alternate states labled with their names because I'm drawing a blank on Hidatsa.
Also, has there been like a map made that has all the alternate states labled with their names because I'm drawing a blank on Hidatsa.
Thanks! Your predictions are correct...
Hidatsa is OTL North Dakota, but I'll have a map of the US states & territories posted for 1900
55. Dimmed Lamps
55. Dimmed Lamps
“Despite the flourishing of democracy in the metropole (albeit a temporary one), Spain continued to view Cuba as equally an integral part of their remaining empire and a rebellious province in need of pacification. It was the Ten Years War of 1868-1878 that first plunged the island into instability, but the 1894 uprising of Jose Marti resulted in the appointment of Valeriano Weyler, an administrator with experience in suppressing insurgencies, as Governor-General of Cuba. Weyler’s strategy was ruthlessly successful, starving the insurgents of arms and aid from the Cuban people. However, these harsh measures earned the ire of many Americans, including President Coleman B. Elkins…
…American interest in Cuba had only grown since the Habana crisis of 1876, as American merchants monopolized the Cuban sugar markets, and in fact Cuba exported over 10 times more to the United States than it did to Spain. Jose Marti [1] had established offices in Florida and New Orleans and lobbied extensively in the United States for aid in his revolution. Many Democrats and churches urged intervention, but business interests wanted to avoid the disruptions to trade that a war would bring and urged a peaceful negotiated settlement. For the most part, the American public sided with the revolutionaries, as evidenced by the tens of thousands of dollars raised in American cities by Marti’s organization.
While Elkins sympathized with the revolutionaries and the mistreatment of the Cuban people by Weyler, he wanted his second term to be a continuance of the peace and prosperity in his first, and he was loath to instigate a war, no matter how low the cost of victory. Thus, he didn’t pay close attention to the situation until Spanish Prime Minister Praxedes Mateo Sagasta ordered the most modern ships of the Spanish navy, totaling two modern battleships and three armored cruisers, as well as two new protected cruisers and six destroyers, into the Caribbean. The arrival of these reinforcements in Havana alarmed Elkins, who secretly directed Herbert Parkinson, his Secretary of the Navy, to place the Atlantic and Gulf fleets on high alert. Even as Spanish-American relations cooled, peace held.
Peace held, that is, until the arrest of Elliott Roosevelt, son of the late former director of the National Bank Theodore Roosevelt Sr., and James R. Roosevelt, a cousin and business partner of Elliot’s. The two were arrested in Guantanamo on charges of aiding rebels camped in the nearby mountains. The Roosevelts protested that they were in Cuba on business and to collect some animal and insect specimens for Elliott’s older brother Ted, the director of zoology at the National Museum of Natural History [2]. The Spanish authorities refused to release the men. Ted Roosevelt, who had an exuberant, big personality that was rather incongruous with his line of work, wrote a series of furious editorials in both the Whiggish New-York Tribune and the Democratic-leaning Brooklyn Sun-Herald, demanding action against Spain unless his brother and cousin were released and “given a profuse apology as befits the grave injustice.”
Elkins found the Spanish government unwilling to negotiate – Weyler was insistent that Elliott and James Roosevelt had been aiding the revolutionaries and refused to release them, proclaiming that they would stand trial in Cuba. After several weeks with no resolution, Elkins dispatched the armored cruiser Rochester and the protected cruiser Bowling Green to Guantanamo harbor. Little did anyone know, but the situation would soon escalate dramatically [3]…”
-From TO THE BRINK: AMERICA AND SPAIN by Llewellyn Carroll, published 2003
“President Alem had enjoyed a wildly successful term in office, overseeing the beginning of Argentina’s emergence as a regional power. The economy was surging, fueled by a massive immigration wave primarily from Sicily and a strong middle class. The old National Autonomist Party had largely collapsed, succeeded by several regional parties and the Conservative Party, which soon merged with the National Civic Union to form the Progressive-Conservatives Party.
The revolutionary movement that had propelled Alem to power had fractured once victory was achieved, with Alem and the Radicals forming the more radical, laborist faction and the Progressive-Conservatives became the party of industrialists and the middle class. All of the progressive reforms undertaken by Alem and the Radicals were immensely popular with workers and immigrants, but less so with the wealthier elements of society, who gravitated towards the PCs.
After six years of Alem, Argentina faced a choice: six more years of ambitious reform, or a more conservative, pro-business approach. Alem’s efforts to give the state a partial stake in the coal mining companies in 1896 had failed and soured the PCs on continuing to support the Radicals in the legislature. For the 1897 Presidential elections, the PCs initially struggled to select a candidate. The aged Bartolome Mitre expressed some interest in running, but he was very old and ultimately declined to seek the presidency. Lisandro de la Torre, one of the founders of the PCs, was a strong contender, but the party ultimately selected Buenos Aires Senator Carlos Pellegrini. Pellegrini was a former member of the NAP who had led their merger with the National Civic Union. He was a prominent moderate with strong ties to the mercantile community, and even had a friendly relationship with President Alem [4].
The Radicals, meanwhile, selected Alem’s nephew Hipolito Yrigoygen as their candidate. Yrigoyen was an avowed radical and strongly favorable to labor and the burgeoning student reform movement. He was also a strong personality, and his selection was met with protest from the more moderate wing of the Radicals. One such moderate, Fernando Lehmann, formed the Moderate Radical Civic Union and won election to the governorship of Santa Fe. Lehmann and his splinter MRCU refused to endorse Yrigoyen, and there was a rumor that the MRCU would instead endorse Pellegrini, but this never happened during the campaign.
After a contentious campaign in which Yrigoyen and Pellegrini regularly attacked each other as a dangerous radical and a scion of the old, corrupt regime respectively, election day came. Yrigoyen was widely expected to be the victor, especially given the successes of his uncle’s presidency. When the ballots were tallied, however, Pellegrini finished with a narrow plurality, just under 4,000 votes ahead of Yrigoyen. The dropping poverty rate and growing middle class helped fuel Pellegrini’s surprising victory. When the electoral college met, no candidate had a majority. Pellegrini had 136 electors, Yrigoyen 123, and the MRCU had 29. 10 electors went to various regional parties and faithless electors. Yrigoyen lobbied the faithless electors and the MRCU to give him their electors, arguing that the narrowness of the popular vote meant that no candidate had a proper mandate.
This angered Lehmann and the MRCU so much that not only did he shift his electors to Pellegrini, but he issued an open letter denouncing Yrigoyen as a demagogue and a “Caesar.” The MRCU’s electors were enough to give Pellegrini the majority, and President Alem ensured that he was confirmed as the rightful winner of Argentina’s second fully democratic elections. In the legislative elections, the Progressive-Conservatives secured 57 seats, just shy of an outright majority. In conjunction with the Liberal Party of Corrientes and the National Conservative Party (the rump NAP), the PCs secured a working majority. Pellegrini promised to bring a new kind of centrist conservatism to Argentina.
His first major action consisted of resuming the foreign debt payments that had been suspended by Alem under a consolidation plan that merged all Argentinian loans into a single one [5]. This plan was initially unpopular but after a wave of protests subsided, and the Senate and Chamber of Deputies approved Pellegrini’s debt consolidation proposal. With this accomplished, Pellegrini also expanded the sale of publicly owned farmland as part of the Argentinian homestead program. The economy remained strong and the peso stable, and Pellegrini oversaw the implementation of a 5% tax on the profits and dividends of private financial institutions even as he cut taxes by 3% on canned meat factories and other industrial sectors.
After almost two years of relative stability, Pellegrini was confronted with a crisis in Uruguay. The long-standing rivalry between the country’s two major parties, the conservative Blancos in the countryside and the liberal Colorados in the cities, once again boiled over into civil war in late 1898. Aparicio Saravia, a general and the leader of the Blancos, rose up in rebellion against the Colorado government after orchestrating the assassination of President Juan Idiarte Borda. The ensuing governmental crisis allowed Saravia to consolidate his position until Juan Lindolfo Cuestas seized power in a bloodless coup. Saravia advanced on Montevideo and while he did not manage to capture the city, his forces took key cities like Rivera and Salto. Embattled, Cuestas appealed to Pellegrini for aid in April 1899.
Pellegrini accepted, viewing a Blanco-ruled Uruguay as ripe for Brazilian domination. However, Brazilian Emperor Pedro III and his cabinet viewed Argentinian aid to the Colorados as an unacceptable intervention, declaring it was “tantamount to an invasion of Uruguay.” Pedro III demanded that President Pellegrini break off his support of Cuestas. Angered these demands, Pellegrini refused and spread nationalist fervor in the Argentinian public by denouncing Brazilian “Imperial arrogance and bellicosity.” Pedro III’s foreign minister responded by threatening war unless the demand was met, giving Argentina three days to give in. Rather than respond to the Brazilian ultimatum, Pellegrini prepared a declaration of siege and proclaimed a general mobilization of the army and navy. Three days came and went. The only response Brazil received was Argentinian troops marching north and the Argentinian fleet steaming out of Buenos Aires, and so on July 17th, 1899, Pedro III declared that a state of war existed between the Empire of Brazil and the Republic of Argentina. The Second Platine War had begun.”
-From ARGENTINA: A MODERN HISTORY by Jessica Harvey, published 2011
[1] TTL, Marti doesn’t die in 1895.
[2] Not the same Theodore Roosevelt, but very similar to the OTL one.
[3] This won’t be what you’d expect would happen in a Cuban harbor to start a war.
[4] This was OTL, until the Revolution of the Park soured their friendship.
[5] Pellegrini attempted to negotiate this IOTL during his post-presidency time in the Senate, but it was nixed by Roca.
“Despite the flourishing of democracy in the metropole (albeit a temporary one), Spain continued to view Cuba as equally an integral part of their remaining empire and a rebellious province in need of pacification. It was the Ten Years War of 1868-1878 that first plunged the island into instability, but the 1894 uprising of Jose Marti resulted in the appointment of Valeriano Weyler, an administrator with experience in suppressing insurgencies, as Governor-General of Cuba. Weyler’s strategy was ruthlessly successful, starving the insurgents of arms and aid from the Cuban people. However, these harsh measures earned the ire of many Americans, including President Coleman B. Elkins…
…American interest in Cuba had only grown since the Habana crisis of 1876, as American merchants monopolized the Cuban sugar markets, and in fact Cuba exported over 10 times more to the United States than it did to Spain. Jose Marti [1] had established offices in Florida and New Orleans and lobbied extensively in the United States for aid in his revolution. Many Democrats and churches urged intervention, but business interests wanted to avoid the disruptions to trade that a war would bring and urged a peaceful negotiated settlement. For the most part, the American public sided with the revolutionaries, as evidenced by the tens of thousands of dollars raised in American cities by Marti’s organization.
While Elkins sympathized with the revolutionaries and the mistreatment of the Cuban people by Weyler, he wanted his second term to be a continuance of the peace and prosperity in his first, and he was loath to instigate a war, no matter how low the cost of victory. Thus, he didn’t pay close attention to the situation until Spanish Prime Minister Praxedes Mateo Sagasta ordered the most modern ships of the Spanish navy, totaling two modern battleships and three armored cruisers, as well as two new protected cruisers and six destroyers, into the Caribbean. The arrival of these reinforcements in Havana alarmed Elkins, who secretly directed Herbert Parkinson, his Secretary of the Navy, to place the Atlantic and Gulf fleets on high alert. Even as Spanish-American relations cooled, peace held.
Peace held, that is, until the arrest of Elliott Roosevelt, son of the late former director of the National Bank Theodore Roosevelt Sr., and James R. Roosevelt, a cousin and business partner of Elliot’s. The two were arrested in Guantanamo on charges of aiding rebels camped in the nearby mountains. The Roosevelts protested that they were in Cuba on business and to collect some animal and insect specimens for Elliott’s older brother Ted, the director of zoology at the National Museum of Natural History [2]. The Spanish authorities refused to release the men. Ted Roosevelt, who had an exuberant, big personality that was rather incongruous with his line of work, wrote a series of furious editorials in both the Whiggish New-York Tribune and the Democratic-leaning Brooklyn Sun-Herald, demanding action against Spain unless his brother and cousin were released and “given a profuse apology as befits the grave injustice.”
Elkins found the Spanish government unwilling to negotiate – Weyler was insistent that Elliott and James Roosevelt had been aiding the revolutionaries and refused to release them, proclaiming that they would stand trial in Cuba. After several weeks with no resolution, Elkins dispatched the armored cruiser Rochester and the protected cruiser Bowling Green to Guantanamo harbor. Little did anyone know, but the situation would soon escalate dramatically [3]…”
-From TO THE BRINK: AMERICA AND SPAIN by Llewellyn Carroll, published 2003
“President Alem had enjoyed a wildly successful term in office, overseeing the beginning of Argentina’s emergence as a regional power. The economy was surging, fueled by a massive immigration wave primarily from Sicily and a strong middle class. The old National Autonomist Party had largely collapsed, succeeded by several regional parties and the Conservative Party, which soon merged with the National Civic Union to form the Progressive-Conservatives Party.
The revolutionary movement that had propelled Alem to power had fractured once victory was achieved, with Alem and the Radicals forming the more radical, laborist faction and the Progressive-Conservatives became the party of industrialists and the middle class. All of the progressive reforms undertaken by Alem and the Radicals were immensely popular with workers and immigrants, but less so with the wealthier elements of society, who gravitated towards the PCs.
After six years of Alem, Argentina faced a choice: six more years of ambitious reform, or a more conservative, pro-business approach. Alem’s efforts to give the state a partial stake in the coal mining companies in 1896 had failed and soured the PCs on continuing to support the Radicals in the legislature. For the 1897 Presidential elections, the PCs initially struggled to select a candidate. The aged Bartolome Mitre expressed some interest in running, but he was very old and ultimately declined to seek the presidency. Lisandro de la Torre, one of the founders of the PCs, was a strong contender, but the party ultimately selected Buenos Aires Senator Carlos Pellegrini. Pellegrini was a former member of the NAP who had led their merger with the National Civic Union. He was a prominent moderate with strong ties to the mercantile community, and even had a friendly relationship with President Alem [4].
The Radicals, meanwhile, selected Alem’s nephew Hipolito Yrigoygen as their candidate. Yrigoyen was an avowed radical and strongly favorable to labor and the burgeoning student reform movement. He was also a strong personality, and his selection was met with protest from the more moderate wing of the Radicals. One such moderate, Fernando Lehmann, formed the Moderate Radical Civic Union and won election to the governorship of Santa Fe. Lehmann and his splinter MRCU refused to endorse Yrigoyen, and there was a rumor that the MRCU would instead endorse Pellegrini, but this never happened during the campaign.
After a contentious campaign in which Yrigoyen and Pellegrini regularly attacked each other as a dangerous radical and a scion of the old, corrupt regime respectively, election day came. Yrigoyen was widely expected to be the victor, especially given the successes of his uncle’s presidency. When the ballots were tallied, however, Pellegrini finished with a narrow plurality, just under 4,000 votes ahead of Yrigoyen. The dropping poverty rate and growing middle class helped fuel Pellegrini’s surprising victory. When the electoral college met, no candidate had a majority. Pellegrini had 136 electors, Yrigoyen 123, and the MRCU had 29. 10 electors went to various regional parties and faithless electors. Yrigoyen lobbied the faithless electors and the MRCU to give him their electors, arguing that the narrowness of the popular vote meant that no candidate had a proper mandate.
This angered Lehmann and the MRCU so much that not only did he shift his electors to Pellegrini, but he issued an open letter denouncing Yrigoyen as a demagogue and a “Caesar.” The MRCU’s electors were enough to give Pellegrini the majority, and President Alem ensured that he was confirmed as the rightful winner of Argentina’s second fully democratic elections. In the legislative elections, the Progressive-Conservatives secured 57 seats, just shy of an outright majority. In conjunction with the Liberal Party of Corrientes and the National Conservative Party (the rump NAP), the PCs secured a working majority. Pellegrini promised to bring a new kind of centrist conservatism to Argentina.
His first major action consisted of resuming the foreign debt payments that had been suspended by Alem under a consolidation plan that merged all Argentinian loans into a single one [5]. This plan was initially unpopular but after a wave of protests subsided, and the Senate and Chamber of Deputies approved Pellegrini’s debt consolidation proposal. With this accomplished, Pellegrini also expanded the sale of publicly owned farmland as part of the Argentinian homestead program. The economy remained strong and the peso stable, and Pellegrini oversaw the implementation of a 5% tax on the profits and dividends of private financial institutions even as he cut taxes by 3% on canned meat factories and other industrial sectors.
After almost two years of relative stability, Pellegrini was confronted with a crisis in Uruguay. The long-standing rivalry between the country’s two major parties, the conservative Blancos in the countryside and the liberal Colorados in the cities, once again boiled over into civil war in late 1898. Aparicio Saravia, a general and the leader of the Blancos, rose up in rebellion against the Colorado government after orchestrating the assassination of President Juan Idiarte Borda. The ensuing governmental crisis allowed Saravia to consolidate his position until Juan Lindolfo Cuestas seized power in a bloodless coup. Saravia advanced on Montevideo and while he did not manage to capture the city, his forces took key cities like Rivera and Salto. Embattled, Cuestas appealed to Pellegrini for aid in April 1899.
Pellegrini accepted, viewing a Blanco-ruled Uruguay as ripe for Brazilian domination. However, Brazilian Emperor Pedro III and his cabinet viewed Argentinian aid to the Colorados as an unacceptable intervention, declaring it was “tantamount to an invasion of Uruguay.” Pedro III demanded that President Pellegrini break off his support of Cuestas. Angered these demands, Pellegrini refused and spread nationalist fervor in the Argentinian public by denouncing Brazilian “Imperial arrogance and bellicosity.” Pedro III’s foreign minister responded by threatening war unless the demand was met, giving Argentina three days to give in. Rather than respond to the Brazilian ultimatum, Pellegrini prepared a declaration of siege and proclaimed a general mobilization of the army and navy. Three days came and went. The only response Brazil received was Argentinian troops marching north and the Argentinian fleet steaming out of Buenos Aires, and so on July 17th, 1899, Pedro III declared that a state of war existed between the Empire of Brazil and the Republic of Argentina. The Second Platine War had begun.”
-From ARGENTINA: A MODERN HISTORY by Jessica Harvey, published 2011
[1] TTL, Marti doesn’t die in 1895.
[2] Not the same Theodore Roosevelt, but very similar to the OTL one.
[3] This won’t be what you’d expect would happen in a Cuban harbor to start a war.
[4] This was OTL, until the Revolution of the Park soured their friendship.
[5] Pellegrini attempted to negotiate this IOTL during his post-presidency time in the Senate, but it was nixed by Roca.
Awwww, he won't be rough riding down to Cuba to free his brother? Sad.
They're going to throw coffee into the harbor?
Well, this is certainly my favorite casus belli for a Spanish-American War that I've ever seen (although based on the title of the book below I'm not quite certain if there will be a war at all!)
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I feel that only 6 years after a successful revolution that lead to a successful presidency, it is vanishingly unlikely that the RCU's fortunes would turn so sharply so soon. IOTL, they won 3 presidential elections in a row, one of them with over 60% of the vote, precisely because the growing middle class was the RCU's main base of support and largest source of activists and leaders for the party. A single provincial splinter wouldn't be enough to throw the presidential election, nor would the MRCU's decision to run under its own label provincially prevent the RCU from securing its votes for the electoral college (the 1880-1930 Argentine electoral system was a mess). It's also very early into the party's history for Yrigoyen to have the kind of reputation that would lead to such degrees of infighting, as IOTL it was the product of the internal jockeying between 1896 and 1912 for control of the party in the wake of Alem's suicide (which is butterflied away, so the party as a whole is more unified).
Nah, TTL TR is kinda stuck at his desk job. He will be instrumental in whipping up public outrage, though.
Not coffee, but it will involve some sort of waterside confrontation...
Thanks! I was originally going to just have some generic businessman get arrested and executed, but I decided that involving the Roosevelts and the USN would be much more interesting.
The RCU already split shortly after the revolution between Alem's followers and Bartolome Mitre's followers. The latter merged with other conservative parties to form the Progressive-Conservatives, so it's not like Yrigoyen single-handedly split the party. The revolutionary coalition that toppled the NAP here wasnt the unified one of 1893 or 1905, it was the broader one of 1890. Alem holds a coalition together, but he pushes a couple of unpopular policies towards the end that finally collapses it as the moderates (the National Civic Union) ends the coalition and forms a liberal-conservative opposition.
Second, the middle class is split here between the RCU and the PCs helps give the latter a boost, though the middle class as a whole still leans towards the RCU. Even so, Pellegrini only defeats Yrigoyen by Bush v Gore margins, essentially. There is a similar sort of internal jockeying in the RCU to succeed Alem TTL, though he's still alive. Yrigoyen pisses people off a good deal here as well, though he doesn't get the same reputation he got OTL. The MRCU is a very minor splinter faction active only in Santa Fe, with a couple of faithless electors in other provinces.
The MRCU on its own didn't prevent the RCU from getting a majority, a much stronger opposition and several faithless electors helped too. The MRCU's alliance with the PCs just gave them a majority.
The 1897 election is extremely narrow and Pellegrini's upset win is due to a number of factors: a (mostly) unified opposition, Alem attempting a couple of unpopular policies at the end of his term, intraparty bickering over who gets to be Alem's successor, and Yrigoyen irritating just enough people into opposing him.
Thanks, though it's not so much a recent development as it is Pellegrini continuing long-standing OTL policies.
Yeah, English wikipedia only has the tip of the iceberg -- what I do is go to Spanish wikipedia and use a firefox add-on that translates whole webpages to read Spanish wiki in English.
I need to start doing that to build out some of my LatAm flavor. That’s a great idea!
Its been super helpful for me, the english page for the Revolution of the Park is a couple sentences, the spanish one is novel-length, lol
The issue is that the moment Mitre's faction drops the Civic Union from its name, it loses the Civic Union's clout from the revolution; in the same way, the Anti-Yrigoyenists of the 20s and 30s still clung to the Radical Civic Union label, because it was the party, more than the people in it, that was identified with its successes (the toppling of the oligarchic PAN ITTL, the successful democratization of OTL). If Mitre ends up merging with the vestiges of the old regime, that just opens up new space for a competitor in the reformist space - IOTL, it was Lisandro de la Torre and his PDP - rather than drag the old and still very much discredited conservative party into competitiveness.
The Middle Class would not vote for the very same conservative establishment that it rose up in revolution against not even a decade prior. The moment Mitre turns on the revolutionary label, he loses two votes for every one conservative vote he gains. It took a coup and subsequently a decade of fraud for the conservative establishment to square that particular peg. The absence of things like the Residency Law and other anti-immigrant legislation like it (passed in the 1900s IOTL) also means that the RCU base is growing even faster as well.
In other words, something like OTL's Progressive Democratic Party could, in an earlier revolution setting, become competitive and lead the country toward a 2.5 party system early on; the thing is, the Conservatives - in whichever party they may end up - won't be competitive this soon after their removal. The exception, however, would be if someone like Julio Roca himself is the nominee, but that would mean a merger with Mitre's party is anathema, and thus the anti-RCU vote is split once more.
EDIT: All this said, it's still one of my favorite TL's, and whether it's Pellegrini or someone else, the response from Argentina to the crisis in Uruguay would be the same, so it doesn't actually change anything from the narrative! An RCU government might even be more vocally pro-Colorado, given the ideological proximity between its own brand of radical liberalism and Battlism.
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