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Post by webster on Jul 14, 2013 17:35:10 GMT
note: the listing of U.S. Presidents below diverges from RL as stated in the AH story Answering The Call of Lafayette...(1)George Washington( Independent), 1789-1797 (2)John Adams( Federalist), 1797-1801 (3)Thomas Jefferson( Dem.-Rep.), 1801-1809 (4)James Madison( Dem.-Rep.), 1809-1817 (5)James Monroe( Dem.-Rep.), 1817-1825 (6)John Quincy Adams( Dem.-Rep.), 1825-1829 (7)Andrew Jackson( Democratic), 1829-1837 (8)Martin Van Buren( Democratic), 1837-1841 (9)William Henry Harrison( Whig), 1841 (10)John Tyler( Whig), 1841-1845 (11)James K. Polk( Democratic), 1845-1849 (12)Zachary Taylor( Whig), 1849-1850 (13)Millard Fillmore( Whig), 1850-1853 (14)Franklin Pierce( Democratic), 1853-1857 (15)James Buchanan( Democratic), 1857-1861 *(16)Abraham Lincoln( Republican), 1861-1869 *(17)Ulysses S. Grant( Republican), 1869-1877 *(18)William S. Rosecrans( Democratic), 1877-1885 *--presidents during POD in above linked story (19)James G. Blaine( Republican), 1885-1889 (20)Benjamin Harrison( Republican), 1889-1893 (21)Grover Cleveland( Democratic), 1893-1897 (22)William McKinley( Republican), 1897-1901 (23)Theodore Roosevelt( Republican), 1901-1909 (24)William H. Taft, ( Republican), 1909-1913 (25)Theodore Roosevelt, ( Progressive), 1913-1917 (26)Woodrow Wilson, ( Democratic), 1917-1921 (27)Warren G. Harding, ( Republican), 1921-1923 (28)Calvin Coolidge, ( Republican), 1923-1925 (29)Charles G. Dawes, ( Republican), 1925-1929 (30)Frank O. Lowden, ( Republican), 1929-1933 (31)Franklin D. Roosevelt, ( Democratic), 1933-1945 (32)Harry Truman, ( Democratic), 1945-1949 (33)Thomas E. Dewey, ( Republican), 1949-1957 (34)Adlai Stevenson, ( Democratic), 1957-1961 (35)John F. Kennedy, ( Democratic), 1961-1969 (36)Hubert H. Humphrey, ( Democratic), 1969-1973 (37)Richard M. Nixon, ( Republican), 1973-1981 (38)Ronald W. Reagan, ( Republican), 1981-1989 (39)George H.W. Bush, ( Republican), 1989-1997 (40)William J. Clinton, ( Democratic), 1997-2005 (41)Lincoln Chafee, Republican), 2005-2009 (42)Barack H. Obama, ( Democratic), 2009-
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Post by Steve on Sept 23, 2013 2:21:59 GMT
POD: April, 1896. Inspired by an idea by Theodore Gladstone. The Republican convention is pushed back to June 22-24 at the last minute at some point in mid-late April/early May.
Major butterflies: The May 1896 severe weather season ends up not being as bad as it was IOTL, but one butterflied tornado outbreak later comes back to bite St. Louis in the behind.....On June 24, 1896, an F-5 tornado destroyed much the city, and neighboring East St. Louis, Ill., just before the end of the Republican Convention. Amongst the dead are John Thurston, Matthew Quay, James Cameron, and Levi P. Morton. William McKinley, Thomas Reed, and Garret Hobart, are amongst the survivors(McKinley had caught a terrible cold and stayed in a hotel after the 22nd.).
Due to McKinley's absence after the 22nd, he is unable to gain as much support, and Garret Hobart is instead selected for the Presidency, with 283 votes for him, 160 for McKinley, and 178 for Thomas Reed; Reed then wins an astonishing 711 ballots for the Vice Presidency.
The Hobart/Reed ticket faced a tougher challenge than McKinley/Hobart IOTL, but McKinley, though now out of the race, did serve as an advisor to Hobart, and partly thanks to this, Hobart still did pretty well.
This first part covers Presidents from the POD onwards to the end of this TL's *World War I.
1896-1899: Garret Hobart** (Republican-NJ)[1] 1899-1903: Thomas Brackett Reed** (Republican-ME)[2] 1903-1904: H. Clay Evans (Republican-TN)[3] 1904-1908: William J. Bryan (Progressive-NE)[4] 1908-1916: Theodore Roosevelt (Republican-NY)[5]
[1]Garret Hobart was Vice-President IOTL, and faced a tougher challenge than McKinley did, as stated above. However, though, the USS Maine incident did not occur as OTL; the ship was in its home port on Feb. 15, 1898, and so nothing happened to it. The Spanish-American War, therefore, did not happen as OTL, though Cuba remained an increasingly troubled nation(Puerto Rico did become a U.S. protectorate). Hobart died in September, 1899, and was replaced by his Vice-President, Thomas Brackett Reed.
[2]Thomas Reed came into office in the heels of a dead President and a growing humanitarian crisis in Cuba. The situation finally came to a head in July 1900 when an explosion rocked the harbor in Havana; the notorious Spanish general, and former governor, V. Weyler, who had just been asked to go back to Cuba due to re-occuring problems, was amongst those killed. After that, things soon went downhill from there, and by the end of the year, renewed rebellions were sprouting up all over the area, and it was feared by many that violence could soon start spreading outwards to other parts of the area. Though the outright jingoistic fervor of the last few years had started to die down, there were still many who advocated intervention in Cuba, some for humanitarian reasons, some who wanted to the island to become the latest triumph of Manifest Destiny, and there even were a fair number of people who said, "Why not both?".
In the end, the interventionists won out, and Reed's Democratic opponent, William J. Bryan, though well respected by many for his Progressive stances, including his support for women's rights, ultimately narrowly lost to Reed because of his unwillingness to intervene in Cuba. Meanwhile, an increasingly frustrated Spanish government began to consider pulling out of Cuba altogether, having gained practically nothing by trying to hold down the renewed rebels, who were now getting increasing amounts of support from American sources, including weaponry. And in April 1902, they finally did so, having sustained a surprising amount of loss; but many diehard Spanish loyalists insisted on staying and fighting the rebels, in the hopes of rebuilding the frayed connection with their mother country.
It was the notorious July 9, 1902 Varadero Massacre, in which the members of "Weyler's Brigade", a cadre of particularly hardcore Spanish loyalists, attacked this primarily pro-republican town of 4,000 people, killing nearly a tenth of the entire population, including a few women, that finally got the ball rolling for a bonafide intervention. At around 5 pm that afternoon, the USS Maine and several other ships located a Loyalist stronghold not far from Havana and destroyed it, starting the 6-month long Cuban War. And this time, Spain wouldn't be there to help, and the loyalists were in serious trouble almost from the get-go. On March 15th, 1903, the loyalist government surrendered in Artemisa, surrounded by both U.S. troops and republican rebels, with the last Spanish Army holdouts surrendering in Holguin on May 8th. Some fighting continued until February of 1904, but the rebels had won. Unfortunately, however, Thomas Reed had passed away on the early evening of March 31st due to a sudden heart attack, so he never got to see the full fruition of his successful efforts; his Vice-President H. Clay Evans, however, would see thru the end of the conflict. [3]H. Clay Evans, the former mayor of Chattanooga, Tenn., and two-time gubernatorial candidate, was selected to be Reed's Vice President, and succeeded him to the Presidency. Evans was able to successfully finish what Reed had started in Cuba, and by April, 1904, the Cuban situation was stabilized. However, though, Evans decided to set up an independent government in Cuba instead of annexing the island; though this was criticized by many of the Manifesters, this ended up benefitting the U.S. in the long run. Meanwhile, however, Evans was himself facing a tough re-election season, against an increasingly popular William Jennings Bryan. Nevertheless, with Francis Cockrell at his side, he pushed onward anyway. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, and praise for Evans's decent handling of the Cuban crisis, the Evans/Cockrell ticket couldn't quite cut the cheese, and Bryan managed to squeeze by with 257 electoral votes and 47% of the popular vote, versus 30% for Evans/Cockrell(S.C. Senator Ben Tillman had decided to run on his own Independent platform with the infamous newspaper magnate William Hearst as his Vice President, and managed to win about 4.6% of the total vote, even taking Mississippi and Alabama by a touch.).
[4]Bryan came into office promising peace, economic stability, and domestic tranquility, as well as the continued support for women's rights. And for a while, things really did work out as had been hoped: First off, and most importantly, Bryan's popularity in much of the Midwest, and a good portion of the upper South, helped secure women's suffrage in several areas earlier than in OTL, many during his presidency: North & South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana and California in 1905, Wisconsin, Washington, Oregon, and Kentucky in 1906, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Illinois and Oklahoma in 1907, and New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Florida and Missouri in 1908.
Also, the U.S. began to experiment with bimetallism in 1905 under Bryan's direction, and the first truly significantly powerful anti-trust law, the Roosevelt Act of that same year, named after then freshman New York Senator Theodore Roosevelt, elected in 1902, proved to be a vital companion to 1890's Sherman Act, and was gladly signed by President Bryan, himself rather distrustful of the economic elite.
Unfortunately, however, the good times didn't last: In late 1907, a crash even worse than the one in 1893 gave many a bank and big business a black eye. And though Bryan had tried to mitigate the damage the best he could, he received much of the blame for the crash, and he found himself staring down an increasingly ticked off business class.
The 1908 elections, sadly for him, were almost a wipeout. Bryan had lost much of his support in the South to Bourbon Democrat Alton Parker, and the bank crisis hadn't helped him defend against the Republicans, even if he had won South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming thanks to the farmers' vote. Theodore Roosevelt, the adventurous New York senator, bid him farewell and strode into the Oval Office hoping to get the country back on its feet. Meanwhile, while Cuba had settled down, yet another Latin American crisis had been brewing, this time in Mexico, and when the towns of Columbus, N.M. and Bisbee, Ariz. were attacked by renegade soldiers claiming loyalty to Porfirio Diaz on Dec. 28th in a mad search for Pancho Villa.....a horrified American public began to call for retaliation against the Porfiriatos, and T.R.'s first test was coming up over the horizon.....
[4]Theodore Roosevelt is fondly regarded as one of the best U.S. Presidents of all time. Coming to office on the heels of yet another economic recession, as well as increasing tensions in Mexico, Roosevelt quickly sprang to action.
Firstly, on the economic field, he got rid of bimetallism and toned down some of the less necessary antitrust regulations of the law that he himself cosigned. But he also approved the Aldrich-Vreeland Act which created the National Monetary Commission to investigate the causes of the crash, and to propose better regulations on finance. His administration also presided over the creation of the Federal Reserve in April 1912, a move that was widely praised across the board by many in both of the major parties in Congress.
However, though, the more daunting of the two major challenges was the situation in Mexico, already in turmoil. And the assassination of Senor Diaz on Feb. 17, 1909, only exacerbated the problem. Soon, the entire country was engulfed in conflict, and this even began to put border towns in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and even California in constant danger of being victimized. One final incident on March 14th, in which the town of El Paso, Texas, was attacked by Porfiriatos trying to take out yet another bunch of Villistas who had managed to seek refuge on the other side of the border, may have been the straw that broke the camel's back: on the morning of April 2nd, 1909, the U.S. Congress approved Roosevelt's request to intervene in the Mexican Revolution on behalf of the anti-Diaz rebel groups. Originally more of a supply-and-recon mission, the U.S. soon started to become more and more directly involved, and by September 1909, tens of thousands of volunteers and drafted enlistees were already on the ground in the north, directly fighting the Huertistas and the other pro-Diaz forces, and in the south, assisting the Zapatistas and other rebel groups.
To boost the people's morale, Roosevelt occasionally personally traveled to the areas in which U.S. troops were headquartered and even observed a few battles. He had a couple of close calls, though, and ultimately stopped doing so in April of 1911, mainly to alleviate public concerns for his safety. However, this did earn him quite a bit of respect from several political circles.
The Mexican Revolutionary War was a tough battle, but the rebels ultimately won out, partly thanks to American help. Felix Diaz, who'd been installed after his uncle's assassination, was himself thrown out of Mexico City towards the end of November 1911, and was killed on December 1st by a sniper in the mountains near Pachuca. Roosevelt was present when the Mexicans were drawing up their new constitution, and found himself impressed by the unity and orderliness of it all. A few U.S. troops remained in Veracruz and a few other places to help clear out the few remaining diehard Porfiriatos and help keep the peace, but were all withdrawn by the end of the year, with the thanks of Mexico's first democratically elected leader since Juarez, Francisco I. Madero.
Meanwhile, back home, Roosevelt began to prepare for the upcoming elections....and growing tensions in Europe as well. However, though, unlike with the past two Latin American conflicts, there was some rather fervent opposition to intervention in Europe, given that there was no clear threat to the United States at the moment. And when hostilities blew over into conflict between Germany, the Ottomans and Austria versus France, Britain and Italy, in October 1912, the country remained largely anti-interventionist, and Roosevelt promised that he would do his best to stay out of the war as long as possible.
The 1912 election season was a bit easier than the one in '08; many people were impressed by his handling of the Mexican crisis as well as his striking the balance between farmers and big business. However, though, the Progressives, even after Bryan's unfortunate failures, still did pretty well, and managed to win in all three of the West Coast states and even managed to skirt by in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. They also came surprisingly close to winning in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana, Louisiana, and Maine.
Though his Democratic opponent, Woodrow Wilson from Virginia, managed to win over the Upper South(he only won 48.8% of the vote in his home state, but ONLY thanks to the third party ticket of Coleman Blease), Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana and Texas, he was still outclassed by both Roosevelt's Republicans and the Progressives; his attempts to balance progressivism with social conservatism hadn't gone over well in most of the North & West(his stances against alcohol prohibition didn't help, either). Wilson had also even lost some support from more hardline Conservatives in the South, who had rallied behind South Carolina governor Coleman Blease; Blease's ticket, which also included John Tyler Morgan(not related to J.P. Morgan!), himself a former Alabama senator, won all but 2 of the Deep South states: Louisiana went to Wilson, and in an ironic twist of fate, Florida, by one of THE smallest possible margins(literally just about 800 voters), actually went to Roosevelt that year; the Blease ticket had divided the state Democratic Party enough to cause serious damage to Wilson's prospects down there. Add the influence of Julia Tuttle and several other prominent figures, who pointed out that Reed, Evans, and Roosevelt had kept their state safe during times of crisis, and there you have it. 36% of Floridians voted for Roosevelt, giving him that state's electoral votes; a feat that wouldn't be repeated for any other Republican Presidential candidate until 1964.
One major thing that helped Roosevelt win, particularly in the Northeast, was his tacit support for the proposed 19th Amendment, which gave ALL women the right to vote regardless of their location in the country; it was passed in August 1912.
Unfortunately, however, Roosevelt's second term was almost immediately marred by a tragic incident: On March 10th, 1913, the British ocean liner 'Lusitania' reported a mysterious signal about 400 miles due west of Galway, Ireland. The captain tried to send a few messages, but he got nothing back. And then, just before 9:30, Irish time(10 pm in London), the boat was rocked by a massive explosion on it's side, and the bottom quickly began to flood. Though most of the passengers had been saved, about 350 of them still perished, including several prominent Americans such as Henry Frick, J.P. Morgan, and Paul Warburg. The news of the sinking, when it reached American shores just a few days later, prompted an outcry, and on March 20th, 1913, the United States declared war on the Central Powers on behalf of Britain. And on the evening of May 8th, Roosevelt reluctantly signed an executive order which instituted a draft for all eligible men between the ages of 18 and 30.
However, though, even after the Lusitania incident, many Americans were still sharply divided over the conflict in Europe and protests broke out all over many cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Los Angeles.
To make things even more complicated, the now dying Chinese Empire decided to join the fray by invading India in July, 1913, after a number of squabbles over Tibet as well as revenge for being used as Britain's East Asian punching bag; China reluctantly later sided with Germany and declared war on the U.S. and the other remaining Western Allies on September 5th. Japan, seeing an opprotunity for gains, declared war on China two days later.
The war effort went smoother than expected, but many Americans still wanted to pull out of the conflict as soon as it was possible to do so, without putting the other Allies at risk. The Austro-German military found itself in a very bad position starting in late 1914, however, and by November of 1915, Allied troops had begun to overrun the outskirts of Germany proper and had overrun much of Hungary and Croatia-Bosnia, most of the latter now occupied by the Yugoslavian Republic. Soviet Red Army volunteers had overrun what remained of White Russia, and in April 1916, Tsar Nicholas found himself and his family being captured by a brigade led personally by Vladimir Lenin. The Tsar himself would be executed in August(the Tsarina committed suicide by drinking hemlock), but his children were allowed to live, provided they never set foot in Soviet territory, and were sent out of the country.
And with the capture of Nicholas II, Kaiser Wilhelm reluctantly decided to surrender on April 20th, much of his country and that of his now late cousin the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef(blown to pieces by Gavril Ducevic's bomb just outside of Klagenfurt on November 22nd), under occupation by Allied troops, and was especially fearful of the Soviet Russians.
The U.S. meanwhile, had pulled out of China in November 1915 and the European front by the end of February 1916, but still provided aid to the Allies
The brutality of the Russian Civil War reached the U.S. in bits and pieces, but it wasn't until June 1916 when the full story began to reach American papers. But when it did, the reaction tended to be polarized between two camps, those who thought the Romanoffs had it coming to them, and those who became horrified by the Communist takeover of one of the world's largest nations. Roosevelt urged caution and to wait for the situation to calm down before any final judgements could be made....and so, by the way, did Thomas Marshall, the Democratic nominee for this year's elections.
The war had ultimately been won, even if perhaps barely in some ways, but the American public had never quite been able to get behind the war 100% and quite a few were depressed by the losses the U.S. had suffered; over 460,000 men had died for a cause that many questioned the validity of. And even though Roosevelt remained respected for his economic and social work, the war had left a rather messy stain on an otherwise stellar career.
Marshall ran on a platform of anti-war sentiment and continued social advancement, and this ultimately got him to win nearly every state outside Utah and the Northeast.
Robert La Follette, the Progressive Candidate, managed to snag the upper Midwest and even West Virginia(!), and came remarkably close to taking Kansas as well, and also won a plurality in most of the Western states and Illinois.
And Coleman Blease, for his second and final Presidential race, again ran as a Southern Independent, with former Alabama Senator J.T. Morgan returning as his running mate. Even so, however, this run was less successful than the last: many more moderate Southern Democrats were tired of third-party agitators tearing up their party; though he won a plurality of the vote in Alabama and his home state of South Carolina, he still failed to earn any electoral votes, and decided to retire from politics altogether by 1920.
Marshall's stunning landslide win can not only be attributed to anti-war stance, but also his wit and his rather remarkable record as governor of Indiana: 57% of the people in his home state voted for him. In any case, two decades of absence from the White House had ended, and the Democrats were back, with a vengeance.
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Post by webster on Dec 21, 2013 1:51:47 GMT
I've done a few other alternate leaders posts over on Alternate Worlds; here's a few of them... Canadian Prime Ministers, 1867-Present
1st} John A. MacDonald (Conservative), 1867-1872 (1) 2nd} William C. Little (Conservative), 1872-1874 (2) 3rd} Alexander Mackenzie (Liberal), 1874-1878 (3) 4th} John A. MacDonald (Conservative), 1878-1891 (4,5,6) 5th} Sir John Abbott (Conservative), 1891-1896 (7) 6th} Sir Wilfred Laurier (Liberal), 1896-1911 (8,9,10,11) 7th} Robert L. Borden (Conservative), 1911-1921 (12,13) 8th} Thomas F. Crerar (Progressive), 1921-1925 (14) 9th} William L.M. King (Liberal), 1925-1930 (15,16) 10th} Richard B. Bennett (Conservative), 1930-1935 (17) 11th} William L.M. King (Liberal), 1935-1945 (18,19) 12th} M. James Coldwell (Commonwealth), 1945-1949 (20) 13th} Louis St. Laurent (Liberal), 1949-1957 (21,22) 14th} M. James Coldwell (Commonwealth), 1957-1958 (23) 15th} John Diefenbaker (Conservative), 1958-1962 (24) 16th} Ernest Manning (Social Credit), 1962-1963 (25) 17th} Lester B. Pearson (Liberal), 1963-1968 (26,27) 18th} Pierre E. Trudeau (Liberal), 1968-1972 (28) 19th} David Lewis (New Democratic), 1972-1974 (29) 20th} Pierre E. Trudeau (Liberal), 1974-1979 (30) 21st} Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), 1979-1980 (31) 22nd} John N.W. Turner (Liberal), 1980-1984 (32) 23rd} M. Brian Mulroney (Conservative), 1984-1992 (33,34) 24th} A.D. "Kim" Campbell (Conservative), 1992-1993 (34) 25th} Jean Chretien (Liberal), 1993-2004 (35,36,37) 26th} Paul Martin, Jr. (Liberal), 2004-2006 (38) 27th} Stephen Harper (Conservative), 2006- (39,40,41)
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