Update time! I have plans to add another small section and footnotes onto it later in the day.
Part Sixty-Eight: Capitalism Rising
The Fourteenth Amendment:
When President Lee was reelected to a second term in 1876, several Congressmen voiced their concern about Lee's age. The issue of Lee's age was compounded by the fact that the issue of presidential succession and whether the Vice President took on the role of President or Acting President had still not been settled. With President Lee being inaugurated in 1877 months after his 70th birthday, the issue was brought up in Congress and Lee made it a priority.
The issue was brought before Congress and it was decided that a Constitutional Amendment would be required to ensure the viability of the law. Senator Charles H. Voorhis of New Jersey was one of the primary advocates for the amendment that ended up passing. The Fourteenth Amendment, which states that the Vice President succeeds the President in both official title and duties in case the President is incapacitated, was proposed in May of 1877 after both houses of Congress passed the amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by the states over the next months and entered the Constitution in August of 1877.
The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment came at a very fortuitous moment. In November of 1877, President Lee suffered a stroke. Twenty-five days after Lee had the stroke, he died in the Walt Whitman National Hospital in Washington, DC, and Ambrose Burnside took the office of President of the United States on November 23, 1877.
Consolidating America:
Much of Ambrose Burnside's presidency was a great period of economic progress for the United States. The recovery from the periodic recessions of the previous decade would be driven by a number of wealthy financiers and consolidation of several smaller companies into single national conglomerates. In addition, the popularization of the European inventions of the telephone and typewriter in the United States would revolutionize the ways companies would practice business.
The major corporations that formed during the 1870s and 1880s were dominated by just a few financiers, who became known as the "Big Four". These men were Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Pierpont Morgan, Leland Stanford, and Anthony Joseph Drexel[1]. Vanderbilt made his fortune in the steamship industry on the Mississippi River prior to the National War, but afterward moved into the railroads. Vanderbilt was most notably the chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1867 until his death in 1879. Vanderbilt presided over the ceremonies of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1874 at Astoria and shook hands with President Lee at the event.
John Pierpont Morgan, meanwhile, conquered the banking and financial industry. Morgan's investment bank financed the creation of many of the country's largest corporations during the late 19th century, including Drexel's steel empire. Drexel began the Allegheny Steel Company in 1883 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh had developed into a major steel production city during the National War, and it only grew afterward. However, Drexel also helped to develop other cities along Lake Erie such as Cleveland and Sandusky in Ohio and Miami and Detroit in Michigan as the Allegheny Steel Company built mills in those cities. Drexel had also bought up several mines in northeastern Marquette after iron ore was discovered in the region in order to control the supply for the steel as well as the production.
Leland Stanford, like Cornelius Vanderbilt, was greatly involved in the railroad industry after the National War. Stanford managed a number of different railroads in the United States after the National War, but grew to national prominence after his successful rebuilding of the South Carolina Railroad from the ruins the former Confederacy had fallen into after the war. By the time Stanford moved on to chair the Missouri and South Platte Railroad in 1878, the South Carolina Railroad had even extended its coverage to the now bustling cities of Gadsden[2] on Tampa Bay and Birmingham in central Alabama.
The Barons of the South:
In the 1870s and 1880s, most areas of the former Confederacy remained rooted to their agricultural ways and continued to lag behind the North economically. However, some areas managed to attract industrial and manufacturing businesses, primarily along the Mississippi River and the coal mining region in central Alabama. The buildup of these regions were often led by Northern industrialists such as Leland Stanford seeking profitable ventures in the dilapidated South.
However, there were some Southerners who rose to the ranks of the Northeastern magnates and helped redevelop parts of the former Confederate States during the latter half of the 19th century. Coal mining near Birmingham and Montgomery in Alabama spurred the growth of that state, but overall it still lagged behind the North. Samuel Clemens, a Missourian who took over operation of the Vanderbilt Steamship Company after Vanderbilt moved to the railroad industry, did much to revitalize the cities along the lower course of the Mississippi River. However, much of Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansaw, and Chickasaw that was further away from the river stayed agricultural and economically undeveloped.
In Cuba, the Villamar family[3] soared in political and economic influence and made Cuba the jewel of the Caribbean. In particular, Rodrigo de Villamar employed thousands of Cubans in cigar factories and modified the cigar production process to a series of precise movements that any worker could do. Through this method, the cigar factories under Rodrigo de Villamar employed many of the unskilled laborers in Cuba and greatly increased the efficiency of the entire production method[4].
[1] All four were big industrialists in OTL, but you'll note the lack of some other well-known names.
[2] OTL Tampa, Florida.
[3] A major aristocratic family in Cuba in the 18th and 19th century, and the ancestors of one of my friends.
[4] While the meat packing industry is cited as the precursor to assembly line production, cigar factories also had similar aspects.
