Hello everyone! Some of you may remember that a while back, I posted a thread about Joshua Chamberlain becoming president. After extensive research on Chamberlain and the politics of the early 1880s, this timeline is the result of some of the ideas from that thread. Technically our POD here is that Chamberlain isn't as severely wounded during the Civil War (he still gets hurt, but not enough to cause him chronic pain and other health issues for the rest of his life as OTL), but the actually significant divergence is during the 1880 Maine gubernatorial election, as seen below.


For anyone who's been reading If Ye Do Not Feel The Chain, I haven't forgotten about it either--I've just had a serious case of writer's block. I'm still making progress, it's just very slow. This TL, done in a very different style, is done partly in the hope that I can switch back and forth between one and the other when inspiration isn't coming easily.


In January 1880, the gubernatorial election for the state of Maine resulted in a dispute over the winner. In most circumstances, the event would have passed as a footnote in history, and indeed it almost did here as well--except for the boost it gave to the political career of a retired Civil War general by the name of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.


Chamberlain had served as the (extremely popular) Governor of Maine for several terms in the late 1860s, and was the current commander of the state militia, so it is perhaps not a surprise that his assistance was requested in arbitrating the situation. The situation almost escalated into violence several times as accusations of corruption and bribery flew back and forth. Chamberlain staunchly maintained a nonpartisan stance throughout the crisis, despite several threats on his life, as the state Supreme Court deliberated on the decision. (1)


But as the situation escalated, Chamberlain began to worry that his efforts to keep the peace would not be enough. He took the floor in the state legislature on several occasions to make impassioned speeches extolling the virtues of the democratic process, urging all involved to stay calm and maintain order throughout the crisis. Though some were displeased by his refusal to support either side, his oratory skills impressed many legislators. Republicans in particular began to wonder if Chamberlain, a member of their party, might make a suitable candidate for federal office. (2)


When the situation ended with Daniel Davis, the Republican candidate, winning the court case (3), Chamberlain had made many enemies--but also won powerful allies in the state legislature. Several of them offered to support him if he chose to run for Senator. After a great deal of deliberation, he agreed to their suggestion.


The opportunity for that position came the following year, in 1881, when Chamberlain threw his hat into the ring to contest Eugene Hale’s appointment to the position. The vote was close, but thanks to his fame as a war hero and his actions during the gubernatorial crisis, Chamberlain’s supporters were able to swing the legislature to narrowly vote in his favor.


His first two years in the Senate were relatively uneventful, as he familiarized himself with federal politics and the inner workings of Congress. However, there were still a few events of note.


Foremost among these is his encounter with Frederick Douglass, who was then serving as the Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia (4). The two men met by chance when Chamberlain was filing some real estate documents, and took an immediate liking to one another. They would become friends and correspondents in later years.


He cast a controversial vote against the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, seeing it as little better than the Jim Crow laws of the South. The act still passed in spite of his vote, but many immigrant groups took note of the action. (5)


In 1883, he drew national attention for his proposal (influenced by his correspondence with Frederick Douglass) of an anti-lynching bill, for which he argued passionately on the Senate floor. Like most civil rights legislation before it, it was killed by a Southern Democratic filibuster, but the bill’s very existence combined with his fame as a Civil War general drew him back into the spotlight. He received hundreds of letters of condemnation, including several death threats, and of support, most notably a commendation from noted anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells.


As 1883 drew to a close, the failing health of President Chester A. Arthur caused Republican political leaders to seek a new nominee. Chamberlain was a popular choice among the more racially progressive sections of the party, having previous governing experience, pro-civil-rights views, and the added bonus of being a Union war hero. When he threw his hat into the ring for the presidential nomination, the party quickly rallied around him as their candidate. One of the loudest voices in Chamberlain’s favor was the young reformer Teddy Roosevelt, who spoke in his favor at the 1884 Republican convention. (6) Vermont Senator George F. Edmunds was selected as Chamberlain’s Vice President. (7)


The nomination of an openly pro-civil-rights Republican and former Union general enraged Southern Democrats and galvanized support for them at the DNC, which they took advantage of to push strongly for their preferred candidate, Thomas Bayard (8). Meanwhile, seeing the strength of the Southern Democrats as opposed to his own Bourbon Democrat faction and not wanting to run against a unified Republican party, Grover Cleveland opted not to run for President, remaining in his position as Governor of New York (9). The Democrats opted to nominate Thomas A. Hendricks as their Vice President--a compromise candidate who had opposed both Reconstruction (pleasing Dixiecrats) and the creation of fiat currency “greenbacks” during the Civil War (pleasing pro-gold-standard Bourbon Democrats). The stage for the 1884 election was set.


Chamberlain proved to be a quite unusual candidate for a Gilded Age Republican. His moderate stance on prohibition--pro-temperance, but against strict enforcement of liquor laws--appealed to traditionally Democratic voters such as Irish Catholics and German immigrants, while distancing him from Northern pietist congregations such as Methodists and Presbyterians. His reputation for honesty appealed to the anti-patronage “Half-Breed” faction in the Republican party, who were on the rise after the passage of the Pendleton Act of 1883, which reformed the civil service to make the federal government more meritocratic. And though all of the Republican presidential candidates of the Gilded Age had served in Union Army, Chamberlain had the additional prestige of being a war hero thanks to his famous charge at Gettysburg.

His Vice Presidential nominee, George Edmunds, was a gifted debater, and had gained infamy in the South for his cutting remarks aimed at Southern Democrats. Edmunds was also an adherent of traditional machine politics, having taken retainers from railroad companies, which helped to assuage the doubts of pro-machine “Stalwart” Republicans (though it did not endear him to the Half-Breeds).


Support for Bayard, by contrast, was largely limited to the “Solid South”. Though Dixiecrats turned out in unprecedented numbers to oppose Chamberlain and Edmunds, the Electoral College worked against them, limiting their prospects. Bayard launched vicious attacks against his opponent, focusing on the anti-lynching bill he sponsored and his status as a former college professor (attempting to exploit the same anti-intellectualism that helped Andrew Jackson win the Presidency), but the election was effectively his to lose. His background as a “Copperhead” Peace Democrat stood in stark contrast to Chamberlain’s status as the hero of Gettysburg, and appeals to white supremacism were less effective outside the South. Thomas Hendricks’s failing health and controversial record as Indiana Governor were also called into question.


Ultimately, Chamberlain coasted to victory by a margin of roughly 50% to 47%, with the remainder going to various minor parties:

US electoral map.png


President Joshua Chamberlain was inaugurated on March 4, 1885, before a jubilant crowd in Washington, DC. Once the ceremony was done, he retired to his room in the White House, hoping to rest and prepare himself for the challenges he would face over the next four years...


  1. This is from OTL; he focused on keeping peace and order above all else, including supporting his party’s candidate.

  2. IOTL, during the crisis, he mostly worked in isolation when he wasn’t commanding the militia. Here, since he isn’t wounded as badly, he takes a more active role in the situation.

  3. As IOTL.

  4. I’m not actually sure what Chamberlain’s views on civil rights were, but I know that he pushed for Maine to ratify at least the 14th Amendment, so he is at the absolute least not a white supremacist. And Douglass’s influence will push him further toward supporting them.

  5. Chamberlain isn’t making an active effort to appeal to immigrants with any of his stances; it just so happens that he has a few more beliefs that are in line with their interests than the average Republican. The effect this is having on voting patterns is more-or-less negligible for now.

  6. With Chamberlain running instead of Blaine, the Mugwumps don’t bolt the party; TR stuck by Blaine the whole time, but his allies voted for Cleveland instead. But they have no reason to do that ITTL, because Chamberlain isn’t perceived to be anywhere near as corrupt as Blaine was (quite the opposite, in fact).

  7. Edmunds was hated in the South, but the Republicans know that nominating Chamberlain is going to piss off the Dixiecrats anyway, so they decide that it doesn’t matter if they’re a little angrier.

  8. Bayard is pretty much the only major Dixiecrat I could find who didn’t join the Confederacy at some point, and even he was a Copperhead. I probably could have found someone else, but I didn’t feel like going through the lists of all the Senators and Congressmen from the entire Solid South when there was an acceptable candidate already running.

  9. A lot of the support for Cleveland in the New York legislature comes from Republican reformers like Teddy Roosevelt. Since they’re supporting a Republican ITTL, if he campaigned against their chosen candidate, he’d risk losing all momentum for his agenda.
 
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Hello everyone! Some of you may remember that a while back, I posted a thread about Joshua Chamberlain becoming president. After extensive research on Chamberlain and the politics of the early 1880s, this timeline is the result of some of the ideas from that thread. Technically our POD here is that Chamberlain isn't as severely wounded during the Civil War (he still gets hurt, but not enough to cause him chronic pain and other health issues for the rest of his life as OTL), but the actually significant divergence is during the 1880 Maine gubernatorial election, as seen below.


For anyone who's been reading If Ye Do Not Feel The Chain, I haven't forgotten about it either--I've just had a serious case of writer's block. I'm still making progress, it's just very slow. This TL, done in a very different style, is done partly in the hope that I can switch back and forth between one and the other when inspiration isn't coming easily.


In January 1880, the gubernatorial election for the state of Maine resulted in a dispute over the winner. In most circumstances, the event would have passed as a footnote in history, and indeed it almost did here as well--except for the boost it gave to the political career of a retired Civil War general by the name of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.


Chamberlain had served as the (extremely popular) Governor of Maine for several terms in the late 1860s, and was the current commander of the state militia, so it is perhaps not a surprise that his assistance was requested in arbitrating the situation. The situation almost escalated into violence several times as accusations of corruption and bribery flew back and forth. Chamberlain staunchly maintained a nonpartisan stance throughout the crisis, despite several threats on his life, as the state Supreme Court deliberated on the decision. (1)


But as the situation escalated, Chamberlain began to worry that his efforts to keep the peace would not be enough. He took the floor in the state legislature on several occasions to make impassioned speeches extolling the virtues of the democratic process, urging all involved to stay calm and maintain order throughout the crisis. Though some were displeased by his refusal to support either side, his oratory skills impressed many legislators. Republicans in particular began to wonder if Chamberlain, a member of their party, might make a suitable candidate for federal office. (2)


When the situation ended with Daniel Davis, the Republican candidate, winning the court case (3), Chamberlain had made many enemies--but also won powerful allies in the state legislature. Several of them offered to support him if he chose to run for Senator. After a great deal of deliberation, he agreed to their suggestion.


The opportunity for that position came the following year, in 1881, when Chamberlain threw his hat into the ring to contest Eugene Hale’s appointment to the position. The vote was close, but thanks to his fame as a war hero and his actions during the gubernatorial crisis, Chamberlain’s supporters were able to swing the legislature to narrowly vote in his favor.


His first two years in the Senate were relatively uneventful, as he familiarized himself with federal politics and the inner workings of Congress. However, there were still a few events of note.


Foremost among these is his encounter with Frederick Douglass, who was then serving as the Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia (4). The two men met by chance when Chamberlain was filing some real estate documents, and took an immediate liking to one another. They would become friends and correspondents in later years.


He cast a controversial vote against the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, seeing it as little better than the Jim Crow laws of the South. The act still passed in spite of his vote, but many immigrant groups took note of the action. (5)


In 1883, he drew national attention for his proposal (influenced by his correspondence with Frederick Douglass) of an anti-lynching bill, for which he argued passionately on the Senate floor. Like most civil rights legislation before it, it was killed by a Southern Democratic filibuster, but the bill’s very existence combined with his fame as a Civil War general drew him back into the spotlight. He received hundreds of letters of condemnation, including several death threats, and of support, most notably a commendation from noted anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells.


As 1883 drew to a close, the failing health of President Chester A. Arthur caused Republican political leaders to seek a new nominee. Chamberlain was a popular choice among the more racially progressive sections of the party, having previous governing experience, pro-civil-rights views, and the added bonus of being a Union war hero. When he threw his hat into the ring for the presidential nomination, the party quickly rallied around him as their candidate. One of the loudest voices in Chamberlain’s favor was the young reformer Teddy Roosevelt, who spoke in his favor at the 1884 Republican convention. (6) Vermont Senator George F. Edmunds was selected as Chamberlain’s Vice President. (7)


The nomination of an openly pro-civil-rights Republican and former Union general enraged Southern Democrats and galvanized support for them at the DNC, which they took advantage of to push strongly for their preferred candidate, Thomas Bayard (8). Meanwhile, seeing the strength of the Southern Democrats as opposed to his own Bourbon Democrat faction and not wanting to run against a unified Republican party, Grover Cleveland opted not to run for President, remaining in his position as Governor of New York (9). The Democrats opted to nominate Thomas A. Hendricks as their Vice President--a compromise candidate who had opposed both Reconstruction (pleasing Dixiecrats) and the creation of fiat currency “greenbacks” during the Civil War (pleasing pro-gold-standard Bourbon Democrats). The stage for the 1884 election was set.


Chamberlain proved to be a quite unusual candidate for a Gilded Age Republican. His moderate stance on prohibition--pro-temperance, but against strict enforcement of liquor laws--appealed to traditionally Democratic voters such as Irish Catholics and German immigrants, while distancing him from Northern pietist congregations such as Methodists and Presbyterians. His reputation for honesty appealed to the anti-patronage “Half-Breed” faction in the Republican party, who were on the rise after the passage of the Pendleton Act of 1883, which reformed the civil service to make the federal government more meritocratic. And though all of the Republican presidential candidates of the Gilded Age had served in Union Army, Chamberlain had the additional prestige of being a war hero thanks to his famous charge at Gettysburg.

His Vice Presidential nominee, George Edmunds, was a gifted debater, and had gained infamy in the South for his cutting remarks aimed at Southern Democrats. Edmunds was also an adherent of traditional machine politics, having taken retainers from railroad companies, which helped to assuage the doubts of pro-machine “Stalwart” Republicans (though it did not endear him to the Half-Breeds).


Support for Bayard, by contrast, was largely limited to the “Solid South”. Though Dixiecrats turned out in unprecedented numbers to oppose Chamberlain and Edmunds, the Electoral College worked against them, limiting their prospects. Bayard launched vicious attacks against his opponent, focusing on the anti-lynching bill he sponsored and his status as a former college professor (attempting to exploit the same anti-intellectualism that helped Andrew Jackson win the Presidency), but the election was effectively his to lose. His background as a “Copperhead” Peace Democrat stood in stark contrast to Chamberlain’s status as the hero of Gettysburg, and appeals to white supremacism were less effective outside the South. Thomas Hendricks’s failing health and controversial record as Indiana Governor were also called into question.


Ultimately, Chamberlain coasted to victory by a margin of roughly 50% to 47%, with the remainder going to various minor parties:

View attachment 348843


President Joshua Chamberlain was inaugurated on March 4, 1885, before a jubilant crowd in Washington, DC. Once the ceremony was done, he retired to his room in the White House, hoping to rest and prepare himself for the challenges he would face over the next four years...


  1. This is from OTL; he focused on keeping peace and order above all else, including supporting his party’s candidate.

  2. IOTL, during the crisis, he mostly worked in isolation when he wasn’t commanding the militia. Here, since he isn’t wounded as badly, he takes a more active role in the situation.

  3. As IOTL.

  4. I’m not actually sure what Chamberlain’s views on civil rights were, but I know that he pushed for Maine to ratify at least the 14th Amendment, so he is at the absolute least not a white supremacist. And Douglass’s influence will push him further toward supporting them.

  5. Chamberlain isn’t making an active effort to appeal to immigrants with any of his stances; it just so happens that he has a few more beliefs that are in line with their interests than the average Republican. The effect this is having on voting patterns is more-or-less negligible for now.

  6. With Chamberlain running instead of Blaine, the Mugwumps don’t bolt the party; TR stuck by Blaine the whole time, but his allies voted for Cleveland instead. But they have no reason to do that ITTL, because Chamberlain isn’t perceived to be anywhere near as corrupt as Blaine was (quite the opposite, in fact).

  7. Edmunds was hated in the South, but the Republicans know that nominating Chamberlain is going to piss off the Dixiecrats anyway, so they decide that it doesn’t matter if they’re a little angrier.

  8. Bayard is pretty much the only major Dixiecrat I could find who didn’t join the Confederacy at some point, and even he was a Copperhead. I probably could have found someone else, but I didn’t feel like going through the lists of all the Senators and Congressmen from the entire Solid South when there was an acceptable candidate already running.

  9. A lot of the support for Cleveland in the New York legislature comes from Republican reformers like Teddy Roosevelt. Since they’re supporting a Republican ITTL, if he campaigned against their chosen candidate, he’d risk losing all momentum for his agenda.

Speaking of "the monumental liar from the
state of Maine"- James G Blaine in other
words- how do you think Chamberlain
would have handled him? (He might have
found fighting the Confederates @ Gettysburg to be the easier job!) And would
he have appointed Theodore Roosevelt(who
by 1885 IOTL had already gained some
national attention)to a post in his adminis-
traction?
 
Hey, this is back, after only fifteen months of hiatus! How 'bout that.

Chamberlain’s transition into the Presidency was eased by having succeeded a member of his own party. Thus, he made far fewer appointments upon taking office than most Presidents, allowing most of President Arthur’s cabinet to remain in place. However, a few changes were necessary. Most prominent among these was the sudden death of Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen in early 1885, requiring Chamberlain to nominate a replacement. Many congressional Republicans supported Chamberlain’s fellow Maine Republican James G. Blaine to replace Frelinghuysen. The President, however, was concerned by Blaine’s actions in the Maine gubernatorial crisis of 1880 (1), believing that he would be too aggressive and quick to resort to war. He began searching for other candidates, and found a suitable one in Indiana Senator Benjamin Harrison. Harrison shared Blaine’s expansionist tendencies but not his recklessness, had a similar status as a rising star in the Republican Party, and was from a different state, preventing accusations of Maine favoritism on Chamberlain’s part.


Chamberlain’s presidency and the Republican wave that came with it also had a curious effect, beginning in 1884, on the state of Virginia.

Virginian politics had been controlled for more than a decade by the biracial Readjuster Party (2). The Readjusters stood opposed to the power of the planter elite in the state, and wanted to repudiate parts of Virginia’s pre-Civil War state debt, repeal poll taxes, and fund public education. A race riot in Danville in 1883 had nearly cost them the state legislature, but Chamberlain’s candidacy proved to be a great boon for them. He distracted their Dixiecrat opponents, who focused more on defeating the hated Chamberlain/Edmunds ticket than retaking the state legislature. Furthermore, his popularity and the similarity of his political stances to the Readjusters’ inspired many moderates to rally around them, causing them to narrowly eke out a victory. This allowed the Readjusters to maintain control over patronage in the state, helping them maintain their political power. Throughout 1884-86, they tightened their hold on the state’s politics, widening their majority during the 1886 elections.

In 1886, Chamberlain’s presidency faced its first true test: the Haymarket Square Riot. A peaceful strike and protest march in Haymarket Square, Chicago, had escalated into a violent riot when a bomb was thrown at police, resulting in several deaths and hundreds of injuries and arrests. Eight supposed ringleaders were arrested, tried, quickly found guilty, and sentenced to death, with both judge and jury clearly displaying bias and often open hostility toward the defendants. When Chamberlain heard of the trial, he was deeply conflicted. He believed firmly in the rule of law, and had no sympathy for “rioters and rabble-rousers”, but he also felt that the trial had been a clear miscarriage of justice, a belief that intensified when the workers’ petitions for appeal were denied.

President Chamberlain is apocryphally said to have stayed awake for an entire night as he wrestled with the decision before him. The next day, he announced that he would commute the sentences of the eight defendants from death to twenty years in prison. (3)

The move was extremely unpopular with party elites on both sides, and with many nativists who drew a connection between the strikers and immigrants, while strongly bolstering Chamberlain’s position within the labor movement--but even with their support, his previously untouchable popularity saw a fairly large hit in the aggregate. Democrats, especially Dixiecrats, were ecstatic to finally have an angle of attack against the President for the 1888 election (4). But the term was not yet over.

That year of Chamberlain’s presidency also saw a change in the makeup of the Supreme Court. Though Justice William Burnham Woods managed to recover from the illness that had plagued him in 1886 (5), Chief Justice Morrison Waite was not as fortunate, dying of pneumonia early that same year (6) and opening a vacancy in the Court. Waite’s spot was filled by George Henry Williams, who had served as the Chief Justice of Oregon and later helped prosecute the Klu Klux Klan as Attorney General under President Grant. Though Williams had suffered from corruption scandals in the past, Chamberlain’s image as an upright and transparent leader who would “keep him [Williams] honest” and a strong push in his favor by progressive Senate Republicans helped his confirmation barely scrape by.

Williams’s tenure on the Court began with a relatively unassuming case, Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. Requiring only a minor decision on railroad taxation, it was only notable for a note from the court reporter requesting clarification from Williams on whether the Court had decided that Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations; Williams answered that no decision had been made on the issue. (7)

As the year 1887 began, a new bill was sent to President Chamberlain’s desk: the Dawes Act, a bill proposing a large-scale reallotment of land controlled by Native Americans, intended to break up their lands and grant them to white settlers in order to force them to assimilate into American culture. Chamberlain’s cabinet was divided on the issue, with Secretary Harrison supporting the act and Secretary Henry Teller, in charge of the Department of the Interior, standing opposed. Chamberlain ultimately decided to side with Teller, as the native reservations fell under his purview, and vetoed the act. (8)

Amidst the distraction caused by the Haymarket riot and the Dawes Act veto, Virginia’s Readjusters made their move. Despite fierce opposition, the coalition ramrodded a repeal of the poll tax through the state’s government. They garnered public support for it among poor whites by framing it as a tool used by the plantation-owning elite to stay in power, helping reduce the race riots that might have plagued them otherwise (though they were not able to stave them off entirely; despite the Readjusters’ control of the government, the racist system of the Old South still had a great deal of power in the state). Voter registration spiked in the state, especially among the black population--to the extreme consternation of many neighboring Southern states--but many obstacles to black suffrage, such as literacy tests, persisted.

1888 brought with it the beginning of a new election season. Chamberlain did not seem quite so unassailable in the run-up to the 1888 election as he had in 1884, but he nonetheless won his party’s nomination easily. On the Democrats’ side of the field, the Dixiecrats again pushed for one of their own, but the party as a whole had become much more wary of caving to their interests after the failure of Bayard. Instead, over Southern objections, they nominated Pennsylvania Congressman Samuel J. Randall, a Union veteran and former Speaker of the House. Randall’s protectionism made him even less palatable to Southerners, who favored low tariffs and free trade. A few Dixiecrat delegates floated the idea of running their own ticket, but ultimately decided that a split vote against Chamberlain would be catastrophic. (9) But despite their decision to remain with the Randall ticket, their support for it was lukewarm at best. Former Ohio Senator Allen G. Thurman was suggested as a compromise candidate for Vice President, but Thurman was a close personal friend of Vice President Edmunds and refused to run against him. The convention instead chose one of Thurman’s fellow Ohioans in his place--former Governor George Hoadly.

The election that followed was not as acrimonious as that of 1884, but there was still a great deal of mudslinging--Democrats especially made hay out of Chamberlain’s pardons of the “anarchist agitators”, despite the fact that they were not really pardons at all, only commutations. However, with the Northern Democrats being the primary force behind Randall’s candidacy, explicitly racist appeals were less common (though far from nonexistent).

US electoral map.png


Despite the fact that President Chamberlain’s veneer of invincibility had largely worn off, he still managed a fairly comfortable victory over the Randall/Hoadly ticket. The election of 1888 was not a particularly memorable one, as presidential elections go—its most compelling features were a barely noticeable swing of laborers and immigrants toward the Republicans as a result of Chamberlain’s policies and the election of one of a bare handful of black Southern Congressmen during the Jim Crow era, a Virginia Republican named John M. Langston who rallied the Readjuster Party to his cause. (10)

President Chamberlain’s first term thus ended with far less fanfare than it began with. Though his political capital was slightly eroded by the Haymarket commutations and the appointment of Williams, he remained ready to steer the country through any difficulty that might come its way.

  1. Blaine mustered some armed volunteers to try to install the Republicans’ preferred candidate by force.

  2. They lost control of the state IOTL in 1884 after Cleveland’s election allowed the Democrats to regain control of patronage.

  3. This is a bit of a stretch, but the Haymarket trial was such an obvious kangaroo court that it’s not out of the question that he might not want to let its decision stand, even if he does think that the strikers were at fault.

  4. One that will actually appeal to Northern voters this time.

  5. Woods was replaced by a succession of Dixiecrat white supremacist justices IOTL.

  6. Two years earlier than OTL.

  7. This is very important: IOTL, Waite was Chief Justice on the case, and he told the reporter to make the call himself on whether he considered corporate personhood to be part of the court’s existing doctrine and add that to the notes on the case. The reporter decided that it was, which opened the door to all sorts of pro-corporation rulings in future cases. Here, Williams says that it wasn’t decided yet (which is true), preventing that from ever happening.

  8. Thereby causing native lands to be much more cohesive and resistant to white encroachment in the future.

  9. This is well before the Thurmond/Wallace era of independent Southern Democrat presidential runs; it’s not impossible for them to bolt, but it’ll take a lot more than a bit of protectionism to make it happen.

  10. Langston’s election actually happened IOTL, but he didn’t get support from the Readjusters. Here, since they’re strengthened by Chamberlain’s presidency, they can afford to stand behind him.
 
Hey, this is back, after only fifteen months of hiatus! How 'bout that.

Chamberlain’s transition into the Presidency was eased by having succeeded a member of his own party. Thus, he made far fewer appointments upon taking office than most Presidents, allowing most of President Arthur’s cabinet to remain in place. However, a few changes were necessary. Most prominent among these was the sudden death of Secretary of State Frederick Frelinghuysen in early 1885, requiring Chamberlain to nominate a replacement. Many congressional Republicans supported Chamberlain’s fellow Maine Republican James G. Blaine to replace Frelinghuysen. The President, however, was concerned by Blaine’s actions in the Maine gubernatorial crisis of 1880 (1), believing that he would be too aggressive and quick to resort to war. He began searching for other candidates, and found a suitable one in Indiana Senator Benjamin Harrison. Harrison shared Blaine’s expansionist tendencies but not his recklessness, had a similar status as a rising star in the Republican Party, and was from a different state, preventing accusations of Maine favoritism on Chamberlain’s part.


Chamberlain’s presidency and the Republican wave that came with it also had a curious effect, beginning in 1884, on the state of Virginia.

Virginian politics had been controlled for more than a decade by the biracial Readjuster Party (2). The Readjusters stood opposed to the power of the planter elite in the state, and wanted to repudiate parts of Virginia’s pre-Civil War state debt, repeal poll taxes, and fund public education. A race riot in Danville in 1883 had nearly cost them the state legislature, but Chamberlain’s candidacy proved to be a great boon for them. He distracted their Dixiecrat opponents, who focused more on defeating the hated Chamberlain/Edmunds ticket than retaking the state legislature. Furthermore, his popularity and the similarity of his political stances to the Readjusters’ inspired many moderates to rally around them, causing them to narrowly eke out a victory. This allowed the Readjusters to maintain control over patronage in the state, helping them maintain their political power. Throughout 1884-86, they tightened their hold on the state’s politics, widening their majority during the 1886 elections.

In 1886, Chamberlain’s presidency faced its first true test: the Haymarket Square Riot. A peaceful strike and protest march in Haymarket Square, Chicago, had escalated into a violent riot when a bomb was thrown at police, resulting in several deaths and hundreds of injuries and arrests. Eight supposed ringleaders were arrested, tried, quickly found guilty, and sentenced to death, with both judge and jury clearly displaying bias and often open hostility toward the defendants. When Chamberlain heard of the trial, he was deeply conflicted. He believed firmly in the rule of law, and had no sympathy for “rioters and rabble-rousers”, but he also felt that the trial had been a clear miscarriage of justice, a belief that intensified when the workers’ petitions for appeal were denied.

President Chamberlain is apocryphally said to have stayed awake for an entire night as he wrestled with the decision before him. The next day, he announced that he would commute the sentences of the eight defendants from death to twenty years in prison. (3)

The move was extremely unpopular with party elites on both sides, and with many nativists who drew a connection between the strikers and immigrants, while strongly bolstering Chamberlain’s position within the labor movement--but even with their support, his previously untouchable popularity saw a fairly large hit in the aggregate. Democrats, especially Dixiecrats, were ecstatic to finally have an angle of attack against the President for the 1888 election (4). But the term was not yet over.

That year of Chamberlain’s presidency also saw a change in the makeup of the Supreme Court. Though Justice William Burnham Woods managed to recover from the illness that had plagued him in 1886 (5), Chief Justice Morrison Waite was not as fortunate, dying of pneumonia early that same year (6) and opening a vacancy in the Court. Waite’s spot was filled by George Henry Williams, who had served as the Chief Justice of Oregon and later helped prosecute the Klu Klux Klan as Attorney General under President Grant. Though Williams had suffered from corruption scandals in the past, Chamberlain’s image as an upright and transparent leader who would “keep him [Williams] honest” and a strong push in his favor by progressive Senate Republicans helped his confirmation barely scrape by.

Williams’s tenure on the Court began with a relatively unassuming case, Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. Requiring only a minor decision on railroad taxation, it was only notable for a note from the court reporter requesting clarification from Williams on whether the Court had decided that Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations; Williams answered that no decision had been made on the issue. (7)

As the year 1887 began, a new bill was sent to President Chamberlain’s desk: the Dawes Act, a bill proposing a large-scale reallotment of land controlled by Native Americans, intended to break up their lands and grant them to white settlers in order to force them to assimilate into American culture. Chamberlain’s cabinet was divided on the issue, with Secretary Harrison supporting the act and Secretary Henry Teller, in charge of the Department of the Interior, standing opposed. Chamberlain ultimately decided to side with Teller, as the native reservations fell under his purview, and vetoed the act. (8)

Amidst the distraction caused by the Haymarket riot and the Dawes Act veto, Virginia’s Readjusters made their move. Despite fierce opposition, the coalition ramrodded a repeal of the poll tax through the state’s government. They garnered public support for it among poor whites by framing it as a tool used by the plantation-owning elite to stay in power, helping reduce the race riots that might have plagued them otherwise (though they were not able to stave them off entirely; despite the Readjusters’ control of the government, the racist system of the Old South still had a great deal of power in the state). Voter registration spiked in the state, especially among the black population--to the extreme consternation of many neighboring Southern states--but many obstacles to black suffrage, such as literacy tests, persisted.

1888 brought with it the beginning of a new election season. Chamberlain did not seem quite so unassailable in the run-up to the 1888 election as he had in 1884, but he nonetheless won his party’s nomination easily. On the Democrats’ side of the field, the Dixiecrats again pushed for one of their own, but the party as a whole had become much more wary of caving to their interests after the failure of Bayard. Instead, over Southern objections, they nominated Pennsylvania Congressman Samuel J. Randall, a Union veteran and former Speaker of the House. Randall’s protectionism made him even less palatable to Southerners, who favored low tariffs and free trade. A few Dixiecrat delegates floated the idea of running their own ticket, but ultimately decided that a split vote against Chamberlain would be catastrophic. (9) But despite their decision to remain with the Randall ticket, their support for it was lukewarm at best. Former Ohio Senator Allen G. Thurman was suggested as a compromise candidate for Vice President, but Thurman was a close personal friend of Vice President Edmunds and refused to run against him. The convention instead chose one of Thurman’s fellow Ohioans in his place--former Governor George Hoadly.

The election that followed was not as acrimonious as that of 1884, but there was still a great deal of mudslinging--Democrats especially made hay out of Chamberlain’s pardons of the “anarchist agitators”, despite the fact that they were not really pardons at all, only commutations. However, with the Northern Democrats being the primary force behind Randall’s candidacy, explicitly racist appeals were less common (though far from nonexistent).

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Despite the fact that President Chamberlain’s veneer of invincibility had largely worn off, he still managed a fairly comfortable victory over the Randall/Hoadly ticket. The election of 1888 was not a particularly memorable one, as presidential elections go—its most compelling features were a barely noticeable swing of laborers and immigrants toward the Republicans as a result of Chamberlain’s policies and the election of one of a bare handful of black Southern Congressmen during the Jim Crow era, a Virginia Republican named John M. Langston who rallied the Readjuster Party to his cause. (10)

President Chamberlain’s first term thus ended with far less fanfare than it began with. Though his political capital was slightly eroded by the Haymarket commutations and the appointment of Williams, he remained ready to steer the country through any difficulty that might come its way.

  1. Blaine mustered some armed volunteers to try to install the Republicans’ preferred candidate by force.

  2. They lost control of the state IOTL in 1884 after Cleveland’s election allowed the Democrats to regain control of patronage.

  3. This is a bit of a stretch, but the Haymarket trial was such an obvious kangaroo court that it’s not out of the question that he might not want to let its decision stand, even if he does think that the strikers were at fault.

  4. One that will actually appeal to Northern voters this time.

  5. Woods was replaced by a succession of Dixiecrat white supremacist justices IOTL.

  6. Two years earlier than OTL.

  7. This is very important: IOTL, Waite was Chief Justice on the case, and he told the reporter to make the call himself on whether he considered corporate personhood to be part of the court’s existing doctrine and add that to the notes on the case. The reporter decided that it was, which opened the door to all sorts of pro-corporation rulings in future cases. Here, Williams says that it wasn’t decided yet (which is true), preventing that from ever happening.

  8. Thereby causing native lands to be much more cohesive and resistant to white encroachment in the future.

  9. This is well before the Thurmond/Wallace era of independent Southern Democrat presidential runs; it’s not impossible for them to bolt, but it’ll take a lot more than a bit of protectionism to make it happen.

  10. Langston’s election actually happened IOTL, but he didn’t get support from the Readjusters. Here, since they’re strengthened by Chamberlain’s presidency, they can afford to stand behind him.
It lives!
The timeline lives!

Joshua Chamberlain is a pretty interesting guy, glad to see him getting some attention.
 
Outstanding beginning, but...

President Chamberlain is apocryphally said to have stayed awake for an entire night as he wrestled with the decision before him. The next day, he announced that he would commute the sentences of the eight defendants from death to twenty years in prison. (3)
  1. ...
  2. ...
  3. This is a bit of a stretch, but the Haymarket trial was such an obvious kangaroo court that it’s not out of the question that he might not want to let its decision stand, even if he does think that the strikers were at fault.

More than a stretch, it's an impossibility. The Haymarket defendants were convicted on state charges. The Federal government had no jurisdiction over the case, and President Chamberlain would have no authority to pardon the defendants or commute their sentences. (This would be a major constitutional issue. If the President could so pardon or commute, the Federal government could destroy any state government by nullifying its law enforcement powers.)

This is a serious clinker.

Also, while the trial was conducted under conditions of gross prejudice against the defendants, and there was no proof that they had knowingly collaborated in the bombing, but it was not a mere "kangaroo court". The trial ran for over seven weeks. There was solid evidence that some of the defendants had made bombs. THe probable bomb thrower, who had been arrested and released twice, and fled the country, was a known associate of the defendants.

Also, one of the defendants was sentenced to 15 years, not death, and two had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment by Illinois Gov. Oglesby.
 
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