WI: Grant Back In the White House in 1881

Former President Grant came close to winning a third Republican presidential nomination in 1880, but his campaign's heavy handed tactics backfired at the deadlocked convention where the GOP settled on James Garfield as a compromise candidate. Had Grant's campaign not overreached, it's possible that the General could have won a third nomination and faced General Hancock in the general election. Grant was possibly the most popular statesman in America during this time (it wasn't until after his death that conservative historians turned him into a corrupt, drunken despot), so he would have stood a good chance of beating the Democrats that year. What if Grant had won an unprecedented third term?
 
Well to start, he wasn’t going to survive his third term, so there would be some fairly important implications for who got chosen as his running mate.
 
Well to start, he wasn’t going to survive his third term, so there would be some fairly important implications for who got chosen as his running mate.

He would survive the 3/4/1881-3/4/1885 term if his throat cancer doesn't kill him before 7/23/1885. The presidency wasn't as stressful then since the executive branch deferred to Congress, but there would be added stress on Grant and that could accelerate the cancer's development. The GOP would most likely pick a reformer from the Northeast in order to balance the ticket.
 
@Amadeus Thinking in it, if Grant is the first (or subsequently only) US President to be elected to a third term, that in itself would have major implications for how TTL remembers Grant’s OTL presidency in the history books. And if said presidential terms are retroactively widely considered to be successful, that in turn would, by itself, have implications for how the legacies of Reconstruction (civil rights for the freemen, etc) are handled more generally in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.
 
@Amadeus Thinking in it, if Grant is the first (or subsequently only) US President to be elected to a third term, that in itself would have major implications for how TTL remembers Grant’s OTL presidency in the history books. And if said presidential terms are retroactively widely considered to be successful, that in turn would, by itself, have implications for how the legacies of Reconstruction (civil rights for the freemen, etc) are handled more generally in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

After Grant, the next President who could run for a third term is Cleveland in 1896. Considering he was one of the most unpopular men in the country at the time, he'd probably lose the Democratic nomination and accept the OTL offer to run as a third party candidate.

Considering how close the 1912 convention was, butterflies could mean that TR beats Taft and he is elected to a third term as a Republican. The 1920s are a Democratic decade, while the 1930s belong to a Progressive Republican.
 
20. Ulysses S. Grant (1881-1885)*
21. Grover Cleveland (1885-1889)
22. Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
23. Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)
24. William McKinley (1897-1901)
25. Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
26. William Howard Taft (1909-1913)
27. Theodore Roosevelt (1913-1918)**
28. Herbert S. Hadley (1918-1921)

29. Herbert Hoover (1921-1929)

*Declined to seek a fourth term due to ill health.
**Died of a heart attack.
 
@Amadeus Actually, I’d say a lot of that is really subject to butterflies - we already talked about how Grant’s 1880 running mate could end up the incumbent, which itself could change who the GOP nominated in 1884; speaking of which, considering Cleveland only won his state of New York by 1150 votes OTL, and that he’s not even Governor yet as of the PoD, that election is also up n the air; and this doesn’t even touch on whether Theodore Roosevelt comes to the presidency in the same way as OTL, which itself has implications for if he even seeks a third term.
 
@Amadeus Actually, I’d say a lot of that is really subject to butterflies - we already talked about how Grant’s 1880 running mate could end up the incumbent, which itself could change who the GOP nominated in 1884; speaking of which, considering Cleveland only won his state of New York by 1150 votes OTL, and that he’s not even Governor yet as of the PoD, that election is also up n the air; and this doesn’t even touch on whether Theodore Roosevelt comes to the presidency in the same way as OTL, which itself has implications for if he even seeks a third term.

VP's didn't run for President back then. Blaine would probably still be the 1884 nominee due to his popularity in the party. I was thinking that Grant would appoint Blaine Secretary of State, and then Blaine runs to succeed Grant but he loses narrowly in 1884. That said, if a Republican wins in 1884 and then the Dems win in 1888 and 1892 then the GOP still wins in 1896, the Spanish American War most likely still happens and TR becomes a war hero, then Governor, then VP, then President for the same reasons as OTL. I didn't go past 1928 because at that point there are too many butterflies, and I couldn't come up with a Democrat who could succeed Hoover.
 
VPs didn’t run for President back then
@Amadeus They did when they became the incumbent, at least at the convention level; for that reason, Arthur was Blaine’s main challenger at the 1884 Convention, and he didn’t exactly have the best reform record pre-presidency.
 
I think assuming Grant would win in the general election might be a mistake. It is often forgotten due to the GOP most often then not coming on top, at least on the presidential level, but the mid to late 1870's as well as the 1880's actually the Dems and the Reps being almost neck to neck in popular support. This particular election had Garfield win by a descent margin in the electoral margin but still come close to defeat as a shift of a little more then 10 000 votes in New-York toward Hancock would have given the presidency to the latter.

Now, as the OP said Grant was personally popular at this point but he definitely would have to face the heavy stigma present around a third term and Hancock had some serious credentials as a war hero himself, therefore diminshing the importance of Grant greatest advantage. All and all, I tend to think that Hancock would have won by a margin similar to the one he was defeated by in OTL.
 
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