My favorite bit is during the LaFollette investigation when they believed, initially, that Falls was innocent. And then they coem to work one day to find their own offices ransacked and its like "HEY! Wait a minute ..."
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
My favorite bit is during the LaFollette investigation when they believed, initially, that Falls was innocent. And then they coem to work one day to find their own offices ransacked and its like "HEY! Wait a minute ..."
Does anyone have the link to the last post of Sentors of the United States?
Also, what was the list of those Congressmen who were captured in DC? They'd be good choices for the nomination becuase, well, they actually suffered from thei nvasio nand are likely held up as heroes in their own way.
We shall solve this mystery!!!!
Also, what was the list of those Congressmen who were captured in DC? They'd be good choices for the nomination becuase, well, they actually suffered from thei nvasio nand are likely held up as heroes in their own way.
We shall solve this mystery!!!!
Oooooh! What about John W. Meeks of Masschussetts? He looks like he'd be in the Lodge camp and I could see him totally flubbing the demobilization and social chnges frm the war, all the while being well-intentioned but way behind the times.
John W. Weeks - Wikipedia
Don't think we've had an updated list since the 1914 midterms, so I'll link you there.
My pick for the Liberal nom is Tom Butler. He's already something of a hero to the Liberal hard right.
Oooh, Weeks is a Massachussets Senator - so that DOES fit. I could also see Joseph Sherman Frelinghuysen, based solely on the fact that being ANYONE from New York gives somsone a good chance of being elected President in this timeline *grrrrrrrr* (I suspect we may be President George McClellan Jr in 1920!)
He just seems too ... competent and decent: and this is a party which has shown befoe that it as a penchant for corruption (odd, considering that's the common attack they throw agaisnt Dems - but, hey, that's a good case of project right there). I believe Hughes would champion him - but Hughes hasn't shown himself particularly grand at managing his own party in such matters.
I have a weird sense we see the Conservatives making their big play this election to reasser their power in the party and getting theri way, only for it to be horribly, horribly, wrong.
1916 Liberal National Convention
"...June 1916 may in some ways, despite the bloodshed, have been perhaps the most concentrated dose of positive news in the war yet, with the fall of Richmond and advances around Atlanta that led to that city's final surrender the day the Liberal National Convention of 1916 began in Chicago, its host for the third straight time. The news was met with equal parts jubilation and relief across America, with the collapse of Atlanta taken as an especially providential sign as Independence Day celebrations and picnics began. It was now increasingly clear, in a way it had not been a whole year earlier, that the Confederate ability to wage war was rapidly starting to evaporate in real time and that the war was likely soon to be over; Bliss estimated that the Confederacy would be fully defeated by early October, while Stimson suggested that 1917 would realistically start with a ceasefire, and in the end the reality landed in the middle of these two extrapolations. That meant that the 1916 conventions, supposed just months earlier to be about how the war was to be prosecuted and the Hughes administration's handling thereof, was suddenly about the peace to come, as nearly anybody in America thought that the Confederacy would still be fighting come March 4th.
The Liberal Party had, since the end of the previous year, hung in a strange sort of limbo and stasis as various party figures began to deduce that Hughes was highly ambivalent about serving another four year term, even though only Antoinette was ever privy to these deliberations. The reality, of course, was that Hughes was exhausted. He had never intended to be a war President and thought of his tenure as being providential - to the deeply devout Baptist, he had been tasked by God to see the United States through the war, and no more. The idea that "four and no more" was his destiny was further deepened by the advances of Pershing and the late Lenihan through the spring of 1916, and Hughes saw in the collapse of the Confederacy a divine punishment for their wickedness not only in the institution of slavery but in their warmaking (the publication of his private wartime diaries, in which he expressed such uncharacteristically fire-and-brimstone musings, caused a great deal of uproar in the Confederacy). As such, he was ready to move on from the Presidency, eager to return to the practice of law, write a memoir, and perhaps serve some role in international arbitration, an art in which he was increasingly interested.
In ordinary times, a popular first-term President choosing to retire at the peak of his popularity would be welcomed by the legions of ambitious co-partisans who would eagerly attempt to ride his coattails and run on his legacy while grasping for the brass ring themselves rather than waiting four more long years for their own opportunity at the Presidency. July of 1916 were not normal times, however, as while Hughes was enormously popular with the general public, as attested by songs written about him, his picture adorning citizens' walls, and the thousands of letters of goodwill his overwhelmed staff were inundated with weekly, the Liberal Party in general did not share all of that shine and glow. To be sure, the party as a whole did enjoy its association with the outgoing President, and could credibly run on being the party that had won the war during an era in which politics was more partisan than personalist for the average voter, but Hughes' status as a man greatly exceeded the reputations of anybody else waiting in the wings, and so his pending retirement took 1916 from a race that would likely be over before it begun to a genuine campaign that would need to be waged. This presented another issue for Liberals, that being that the war and Hughes' prestige with the public - and the need for partisan unanimity in public behind him - had papered over the increasingly severe divides within the party. After the conservative old guard had been thought to have been totally discredited after the string of political debacles between 1902 and 1908, the progressive and moderate party bosses and candidates who had surged into power both electorally and in the party machinery in 1910 and 1912 had since lost their own mandate with the thorough state-level drubbings of 1914, in which Liberals had been defeated up and down the ballot in legislative, gubernational and local elections even as they held their own in results for Congress. This had wiped out many of the Young Liberals of the early 1910s, the very cadre that had been so crucial to Hughes' securing of the nomination in 1912, leaving proteges of the Old Guard in charge of many state parties once again; indeed, the prospect of having to deal with these officials had been a major factor in Hughes deciding not to pursue the nomination again as much as his being spent from wartime administration.
This left a daunting conundrum for the party: it needed to present a candidate to not bungle the most decidedly winnable election for the party since the 1890s who could credibly claim to continue the popular Hughes legacy but also win over conservative delegates who saw the opportunity to win back the House and Senate for the first time in the 20th century and actually effect policy from a Liberal direction. Seeing as how the Liberals had held one house of Congress for all of two years since the turn of the century, Hughes was supremely skeptical that even with coattails the party would gain a trifecta, and he was even more skeptical that the right wing of the Liberals would have as positive a working relationship with Congressional Democrats as he had, particularly the pricklier Kern. As such, he took the view that it was important for him, as he left the office, to see to it that he left it in as good of hands as possible..."
- American Charlemagne: The Trials and Triumphs of Charles Evans Hughes
"...figures such as LaFollette or California's Hiram Johnson were of course out of the question, though the conservatives were well aware too that men such as Cabot Lodge, endless as his ambition may have been, or Philander Knox were absolutely unacceptable to the general electorate. The convention thus became a question of whether the Hughes moderates or the more right-wing party bosses would win out, and Root was not particularly eager to see how such a battle unfolded, but agreed to accompany the President to Chicago nonetheless. The convention chair, House Minority Leader James Mann, announced on the first day shortly after being voted chair - a boon to the Hughes faction - that news from Pershing had just arrived that Atlanta had fallen, leading to raucous cheers throughout the convention hall that was so loud the rafters shook. It occurred to Root for a moment then that perhaps the prudent thing to do would be simply cabling Pershing to see if he wanted the nomination, what with his newfound status as a national hero; it was unclear who else exactly could unite the fractious party, and it was likely better to get ahead of the equally divided Democrats before they pondered offering their crown to the native Nebraskan.
The 1916 Liberal Convention essentially boiled down to the core tension of the Hughes Presidency - the public adored the President who had with grace, humility and tenacity guided the country through three terrible years of war and bloodshed, but the party operatives and a small but loud and potent minority of the party faithful thought he was a sellout to Congressional Democrats and had not fought hard enough to undo the Hearstian settlement. Mann wanted to be Speaker again and was thus, despite his personal and political closeness to Hughes, an unlikely choice as a compromise candidate, but as convention chair he had tremendous ability to attempt to sway delegates and upon the announcement on the first day of the convention from Hughes that he would not seek reelection - which was met first with cries of despair and moments later by a thunderous standing ovation as Mann interrupted the President to suggest that the delegates instead thank the President for his sacrifices in office - the game was on by Hughes and Mann to find an acceptable choice to them. This maneuver was not helped by the suspicion, fomented as rumor by Penrose, that Hughes would throw his hat back in the ring were he not permitted to anoint his successor, and the convention became split not by ideology so much as by delegates covetous of their own power to pick the President and those who were inclined to allow Hughes to "point to the man closest to his heart."
Hughes had three names in mind for his preferred successor: Illinois Senator Richard Yates, his closest ally in the upper chamber, and then Stimson and Root, who though of different ideological persuasions were both New Yorkers and regarded as his most loyal and capable Cabinet secretaries. The problem for Hughes, of course, was that there were issues with all three of these choices. The Illinois delegation was dominated by downstate conservatives and had already swallowed their pride in making Mann the convention chair, and factional disputes from the Prairie State kneecapped Yates, and without his home state, he was a dead man walking. Stimson was regarded by many delegates as having all of Hughes' problems without any of his upside; he was not regarded as a talented orator, he was a great deal more progressive than the President, and his talents as an administrator were matched or exceeded by Root. There was no benefit to Stimson that someone else did not already have, and beyond that it was unclear that Stimson was even particularly interested in the job.
That left Root as Hughes' preferred choice, and it is easy in hindsight to see why. Ideologically, Root mollified conservatives while not terrifying moderates and progressives the way House Minority Whip Thomas Butler may well have. Geographically, he represented critical New York, without which the election could not be won (and Liberal suspicions that Democrats sought to nominate a New Yorker for the fourth straight election were proven correct, in the end), and this gave him a considerable leg up over Pennsylvanians Butler or Knox, or Connecticut's Henry Roberts; only William Alden Smith of Michigan presented a more favorable state to appeal to the great middle of American politics once Ohio's Frank Monnett made clear he would not run. But most importantly, beyond these two factors, was Root's temperament and experience. He was seen as the ultimate pragmatist, a level-headed and capable administrator who had served in high offices for close to four decades. Indeed, he was the only man in American history who had served in all of the "Core Four" Cabinet positions; on paper, there was nobody with the kind of executive experience that he brought to the table, before or since. [1]
Root was unpersuaded. He would be seventy-two years old by the time of inauguration, three full years older than William Henry Harrison - the oldest President in American history who had died after forty days in office - had been. His four years as Secretary of State under Hughes, particularly his chairing of the Cabinet on behalf of the President in wartime, had been intended to be his career capstone and the completion of his legacy. His enthusiastic support of an income tax [2] was out of step with much of the Liberal Party even as most realists admitted that the Revenue Act of 1910, especially after Hughes' repeated tax hikes to fund the war, would never be repealed or found unconstitutional.
But it was also clear that few other figures could command the convention floor. Ohio's Garfield was a has-been; Michigan's Smith and Connecticut's Roberts were nobodies. Butler's appeal was frighteningly large but Root remarked to Cabot Lodge at their hotel over cigars that he would be as fatal a candidate to Liberal chances as Pennypacker had been and "make the unloseable race a landslide defeat." Knox inspired few and was viewed even more so than Butler as Penrose's pet. It came down then to appeals from both Cabot Lodge and Hughes, made separately, to get Root to change his mind. Cabot Lodge was unimpressed by Roberts (who he disliked as it was for his progressive inclinations) and informed Root that he could deliver New England's delegations, what with his status as ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the titan of the region's Brahmin politics. Root had been around national politics generally, and Cabot Lodge specifically, to know that this offer did not come without a price, and asked him what he would want in return; Cabot Lodge stated that he wanted the job he had believed would be his in 1901 and 1913, that of Secretary of State. Root had to admit that there were few other figures in the Liberal Party as qualified for that job, and Cabot Lodge's reputation as the party's most strident opponent of slavery made him an appealing choice to manage the diplomatic portfolio when it came to suitably punishing the Confederacy for their instigation of the war.
Hughes was next, inviting Root to his room. In his memoirs, Root recalled the President looking almost relieved at the idea of stepping away from the burdens of office, though their conversation was deadly serious. In the course of the last three years, the two men had come to earn a strong and genuine respect for one another; Hughes had always leaned heavily on Root's experience with high office, and Root admired the President's plain-spoken and unassuming style. They were effusive when in agreement and courteous when in disagreement, and the press in Philadelphia had come to describe Root as Hughes' mentor-in-office. It was for that reason that Hughes appealed to Root to reconsider the matter of the Presidency, suggesting in his characteristically soft fashion that there were few figures who could so unite the party as the most obvious "continuity candidate" of the successful Hughes administration. The President seemed clearly to have an eye on his legacy as the commander-in-chief who had steered the republic through war, and Root was loathe to interrupt his wandering but sober musings. Hughes noted that none of the plethora of replacement candidates made much sense to him, and that the second tier of possibilities were little better - Vice President Hadley was too progressive, Treasury Secretary Cortelyou wanted to return to the private sector, and Massachusetts Senator Weeks was too much of a Cabot Lodge man. Hughes implored, again, that Root recognize that few others could unite the party; Root demurred, choosing not to inform the President of the senior Senator from Massachusetts' visit earlier that day.
Hughes' visit coincided with a day of arguing over the party platform on the convention floor and news from St. Louis that Democrats were rapidly consolidating around former New York Senator George McClellan Jr. as their preferred candidate, though there were many ballots to go until he commanded his needed three-fifths majority. McClellan was, rightfully, seen as amongst the most formidable opponents the opposition could muster, as the son of a former War of Secession-era general and Secretary of State who had served two terms in the Senate and had both sufficient distance to Hearst to be his own man while not alienating any key players in the Democratic Party. It was thus urgent that the Liberal delegates pick a man who could indeed face McClellan, and thus many of the delegates began to talk themselves into Root as the obvious choice.
And why wasn't he? He was Hughe's right hand, after all. He encapsulated nearly four decades of Liberal thinking - of technocratic expertise, of proud public service and rigorous self-improvement in office, dating back to his time as a junior official in the Blaine administration who had been mentored throughout the 1880s and 1890s by John Hay and in a twelve-year span served in four Cabinet offices. As July 6th advanced, Root increasingly let himself be persuaded of this line of thinking, too. It seemed providential, that the moment when a profoundly experienced and steady hand needed to emerge that he would be available. He made it known that afternoon that he would avail himself not to the party but rather to the Republic, that he would serve one term "as needed," and then retire. A hundred ambitious Liberals licked their chops, realizing that this was their best opportunity to build on the Hughes legacy without having to indulge the self-righteous, tee-totaling Sunday school teacher at the same time and preserve their own desires for the 1920s. Root would win them the war and the peace to come, and usher in an era of Liberal domination - or at least so the thinking in Chicago went.
Cabot Lodge signaled to delegates in his camp that neither Roberts nor Weeks were options and that it was Root who was the man to choose. Hughes whipped a massive cadre of delegates in his corner to support his trusted lieutenant while also securing the nomination of his friend Garfield from crucial Ohio to the Vice Presidency. The party rapidly consolidated around the Root-Garfield ticket, which earned nomination on the second ballot - the quickest win of an open nomination in Liberal Party history, and a shock considering the wrench Hughes had thrown into the machinery just two days earlier. There was only potential ahead, what with the war coming to its close and the most decorated Presidential candidate in American history topping the ticket..."
- The Root of the Problem: The Tumultuous Term of America's 29th President [3]
"...the address to introduce Root, making his unofficial farewell speech to the delegates the transition into Root's acceptance address. Hughes spoke of the importance of the maintenance of democratic institutions, opined on the peaceful transition of power, encouraged a speedy end to the war, but closed his remarks with words that would be come to be seen as both prescient and ominous - a rejoinder in which he firmly reminded those gathered, "It is not enough to win the war - we must also thereafter secure the peace." [4]
As the convention concluded, the President and the First Lady made their way with the Manns to the White City, site of the 1893 Columbian Exposition before heading out on a whistle-stop tour of the Midwest over the next two weeks. Hughes marveled at the retained and restored buildings, regretting once again that he had not attended the original World's Fair on this site, and ruminated briefly on how it was at this spot that the first motions towards the Bloc Sud had begun on the sidelines of the concurrent Panamerican Congress. It seemed that things had come full circle in North America, both with the demise of that alliance and that he could see the end of his Presidency and the war almost exactly three years after the failure of the Niagara Conference, when the future had seemed so opaque and terrifying. A sense of relief came over Hughes, with his trust in Root to handle what was to come and his conscience content that he had done his utmost even if he had often not met the moment (by his own assessment as much as those of contemporaries). He and Antoinette strolled down the shores of Lake Michigan holding hands, and he remarked to her that it was not necessarily the beginning of a new chapter or the end of a previous one that day - but it was an ending,..." [5][6]
- American Charlemagne: The Trials and Triumphs of Charles Evans Hughes
[1] If this sounds familiar to a certain disastrous OTL President, it is 100% intended to
[2] This is true, and a major reason why iOTL Elihu Root was denied the GOP nom in 1908
[3] Suffice to say this book has a very different editorial slant than American Charlemagne
[4] Suffice also to say that Hughes' reputation is burnished quite a bit by him having the smarts to get out while the getting is good. It's not his fault shit goes sideways during Root's term, so it's not exactly prescient of him to bounce, but it winds up being very prudent in hindsight
[5] Yes, I did just wrap up The Wheel of Time finally. No, I'm not sorry for cribbing its closing line
[6] This is an unofficial wrap on Hughes' arc. He wound up being a less interesting character than I'd thought he'd be when we first introduced him 20 years earlier, because "decent man does his job relatively competently while learning from his mistakes" is not super intriguing historically or narratively, but he fit what I set out to accomplish and like Hearst, Chamberlian, Boulanger and so many others it'll be weird to see him "drop out" so to speak. Wikibox and AH.com ruminations to come once his term wraps.
The Liberal Party had, since the end of the previous year, hung in a strange sort of limbo and stasis as various party figures began to deduce that Hughes was highly ambivalent about serving another four year term, even though only Antoinette was ever privy to these deliberations. The reality, of course, was that Hughes was exhausted. He had never intended to be a war President and thought of his tenure as being providential - to the deeply devout Baptist, he had been tasked by God to see the United States through the war, and no more. The idea that "four and no more" was his destiny was further deepened by the advances of Pershing and the late Lenihan through the spring of 1916, and Hughes saw in the collapse of the Confederacy a divine punishment for their wickedness not only in the institution of slavery but in their warmaking (the publication of his private wartime diaries, in which he expressed such uncharacteristically fire-and-brimstone musings, caused a great deal of uproar in the Confederacy). As such, he was ready to move on from the Presidency, eager to return to the practice of law, write a memoir, and perhaps serve some role in international arbitration, an art in which he was increasingly interested.
In ordinary times, a popular first-term President choosing to retire at the peak of his popularity would be welcomed by the legions of ambitious co-partisans who would eagerly attempt to ride his coattails and run on his legacy while grasping for the brass ring themselves rather than waiting four more long years for their own opportunity at the Presidency. July of 1916 were not normal times, however, as while Hughes was enormously popular with the general public, as attested by songs written about him, his picture adorning citizens' walls, and the thousands of letters of goodwill his overwhelmed staff were inundated with weekly, the Liberal Party in general did not share all of that shine and glow. To be sure, the party as a whole did enjoy its association with the outgoing President, and could credibly run on being the party that had won the war during an era in which politics was more partisan than personalist for the average voter, but Hughes' status as a man greatly exceeded the reputations of anybody else waiting in the wings, and so his pending retirement took 1916 from a race that would likely be over before it begun to a genuine campaign that would need to be waged. This presented another issue for Liberals, that being that the war and Hughes' prestige with the public - and the need for partisan unanimity in public behind him - had papered over the increasingly severe divides within the party. After the conservative old guard had been thought to have been totally discredited after the string of political debacles between 1902 and 1908, the progressive and moderate party bosses and candidates who had surged into power both electorally and in the party machinery in 1910 and 1912 had since lost their own mandate with the thorough state-level drubbings of 1914, in which Liberals had been defeated up and down the ballot in legislative, gubernational and local elections even as they held their own in results for Congress. This had wiped out many of the Young Liberals of the early 1910s, the very cadre that had been so crucial to Hughes' securing of the nomination in 1912, leaving proteges of the Old Guard in charge of many state parties once again; indeed, the prospect of having to deal with these officials had been a major factor in Hughes deciding not to pursue the nomination again as much as his being spent from wartime administration.
This left a daunting conundrum for the party: it needed to present a candidate to not bungle the most decidedly winnable election for the party since the 1890s who could credibly claim to continue the popular Hughes legacy but also win over conservative delegates who saw the opportunity to win back the House and Senate for the first time in the 20th century and actually effect policy from a Liberal direction. Seeing as how the Liberals had held one house of Congress for all of two years since the turn of the century, Hughes was supremely skeptical that even with coattails the party would gain a trifecta, and he was even more skeptical that the right wing of the Liberals would have as positive a working relationship with Congressional Democrats as he had, particularly the pricklier Kern. As such, he took the view that it was important for him, as he left the office, to see to it that he left it in as good of hands as possible..."
- American Charlemagne: The Trials and Triumphs of Charles Evans Hughes
"...figures such as LaFollette or California's Hiram Johnson were of course out of the question, though the conservatives were well aware too that men such as Cabot Lodge, endless as his ambition may have been, or Philander Knox were absolutely unacceptable to the general electorate. The convention thus became a question of whether the Hughes moderates or the more right-wing party bosses would win out, and Root was not particularly eager to see how such a battle unfolded, but agreed to accompany the President to Chicago nonetheless. The convention chair, House Minority Leader James Mann, announced on the first day shortly after being voted chair - a boon to the Hughes faction - that news from Pershing had just arrived that Atlanta had fallen, leading to raucous cheers throughout the convention hall that was so loud the rafters shook. It occurred to Root for a moment then that perhaps the prudent thing to do would be simply cabling Pershing to see if he wanted the nomination, what with his newfound status as a national hero; it was unclear who else exactly could unite the fractious party, and it was likely better to get ahead of the equally divided Democrats before they pondered offering their crown to the native Nebraskan.
The 1916 Liberal Convention essentially boiled down to the core tension of the Hughes Presidency - the public adored the President who had with grace, humility and tenacity guided the country through three terrible years of war and bloodshed, but the party operatives and a small but loud and potent minority of the party faithful thought he was a sellout to Congressional Democrats and had not fought hard enough to undo the Hearstian settlement. Mann wanted to be Speaker again and was thus, despite his personal and political closeness to Hughes, an unlikely choice as a compromise candidate, but as convention chair he had tremendous ability to attempt to sway delegates and upon the announcement on the first day of the convention from Hughes that he would not seek reelection - which was met first with cries of despair and moments later by a thunderous standing ovation as Mann interrupted the President to suggest that the delegates instead thank the President for his sacrifices in office - the game was on by Hughes and Mann to find an acceptable choice to them. This maneuver was not helped by the suspicion, fomented as rumor by Penrose, that Hughes would throw his hat back in the ring were he not permitted to anoint his successor, and the convention became split not by ideology so much as by delegates covetous of their own power to pick the President and those who were inclined to allow Hughes to "point to the man closest to his heart."
Hughes had three names in mind for his preferred successor: Illinois Senator Richard Yates, his closest ally in the upper chamber, and then Stimson and Root, who though of different ideological persuasions were both New Yorkers and regarded as his most loyal and capable Cabinet secretaries. The problem for Hughes, of course, was that there were issues with all three of these choices. The Illinois delegation was dominated by downstate conservatives and had already swallowed their pride in making Mann the convention chair, and factional disputes from the Prairie State kneecapped Yates, and without his home state, he was a dead man walking. Stimson was regarded by many delegates as having all of Hughes' problems without any of his upside; he was not regarded as a talented orator, he was a great deal more progressive than the President, and his talents as an administrator were matched or exceeded by Root. There was no benefit to Stimson that someone else did not already have, and beyond that it was unclear that Stimson was even particularly interested in the job.
That left Root as Hughes' preferred choice, and it is easy in hindsight to see why. Ideologically, Root mollified conservatives while not terrifying moderates and progressives the way House Minority Whip Thomas Butler may well have. Geographically, he represented critical New York, without which the election could not be won (and Liberal suspicions that Democrats sought to nominate a New Yorker for the fourth straight election were proven correct, in the end), and this gave him a considerable leg up over Pennsylvanians Butler or Knox, or Connecticut's Henry Roberts; only William Alden Smith of Michigan presented a more favorable state to appeal to the great middle of American politics once Ohio's Frank Monnett made clear he would not run. But most importantly, beyond these two factors, was Root's temperament and experience. He was seen as the ultimate pragmatist, a level-headed and capable administrator who had served in high offices for close to four decades. Indeed, he was the only man in American history who had served in all of the "Core Four" Cabinet positions; on paper, there was nobody with the kind of executive experience that he brought to the table, before or since. [1]
Root was unpersuaded. He would be seventy-two years old by the time of inauguration, three full years older than William Henry Harrison - the oldest President in American history who had died after forty days in office - had been. His four years as Secretary of State under Hughes, particularly his chairing of the Cabinet on behalf of the President in wartime, had been intended to be his career capstone and the completion of his legacy. His enthusiastic support of an income tax [2] was out of step with much of the Liberal Party even as most realists admitted that the Revenue Act of 1910, especially after Hughes' repeated tax hikes to fund the war, would never be repealed or found unconstitutional.
But it was also clear that few other figures could command the convention floor. Ohio's Garfield was a has-been; Michigan's Smith and Connecticut's Roberts were nobodies. Butler's appeal was frighteningly large but Root remarked to Cabot Lodge at their hotel over cigars that he would be as fatal a candidate to Liberal chances as Pennypacker had been and "make the unloseable race a landslide defeat." Knox inspired few and was viewed even more so than Butler as Penrose's pet. It came down then to appeals from both Cabot Lodge and Hughes, made separately, to get Root to change his mind. Cabot Lodge was unimpressed by Roberts (who he disliked as it was for his progressive inclinations) and informed Root that he could deliver New England's delegations, what with his status as ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the titan of the region's Brahmin politics. Root had been around national politics generally, and Cabot Lodge specifically, to know that this offer did not come without a price, and asked him what he would want in return; Cabot Lodge stated that he wanted the job he had believed would be his in 1901 and 1913, that of Secretary of State. Root had to admit that there were few other figures in the Liberal Party as qualified for that job, and Cabot Lodge's reputation as the party's most strident opponent of slavery made him an appealing choice to manage the diplomatic portfolio when it came to suitably punishing the Confederacy for their instigation of the war.
Hughes was next, inviting Root to his room. In his memoirs, Root recalled the President looking almost relieved at the idea of stepping away from the burdens of office, though their conversation was deadly serious. In the course of the last three years, the two men had come to earn a strong and genuine respect for one another; Hughes had always leaned heavily on Root's experience with high office, and Root admired the President's plain-spoken and unassuming style. They were effusive when in agreement and courteous when in disagreement, and the press in Philadelphia had come to describe Root as Hughes' mentor-in-office. It was for that reason that Hughes appealed to Root to reconsider the matter of the Presidency, suggesting in his characteristically soft fashion that there were few figures who could so unite the party as the most obvious "continuity candidate" of the successful Hughes administration. The President seemed clearly to have an eye on his legacy as the commander-in-chief who had steered the republic through war, and Root was loathe to interrupt his wandering but sober musings. Hughes noted that none of the plethora of replacement candidates made much sense to him, and that the second tier of possibilities were little better - Vice President Hadley was too progressive, Treasury Secretary Cortelyou wanted to return to the private sector, and Massachusetts Senator Weeks was too much of a Cabot Lodge man. Hughes implored, again, that Root recognize that few others could unite the party; Root demurred, choosing not to inform the President of the senior Senator from Massachusetts' visit earlier that day.
Hughes' visit coincided with a day of arguing over the party platform on the convention floor and news from St. Louis that Democrats were rapidly consolidating around former New York Senator George McClellan Jr. as their preferred candidate, though there were many ballots to go until he commanded his needed three-fifths majority. McClellan was, rightfully, seen as amongst the most formidable opponents the opposition could muster, as the son of a former War of Secession-era general and Secretary of State who had served two terms in the Senate and had both sufficient distance to Hearst to be his own man while not alienating any key players in the Democratic Party. It was thus urgent that the Liberal delegates pick a man who could indeed face McClellan, and thus many of the delegates began to talk themselves into Root as the obvious choice.
And why wasn't he? He was Hughe's right hand, after all. He encapsulated nearly four decades of Liberal thinking - of technocratic expertise, of proud public service and rigorous self-improvement in office, dating back to his time as a junior official in the Blaine administration who had been mentored throughout the 1880s and 1890s by John Hay and in a twelve-year span served in four Cabinet offices. As July 6th advanced, Root increasingly let himself be persuaded of this line of thinking, too. It seemed providential, that the moment when a profoundly experienced and steady hand needed to emerge that he would be available. He made it known that afternoon that he would avail himself not to the party but rather to the Republic, that he would serve one term "as needed," and then retire. A hundred ambitious Liberals licked their chops, realizing that this was their best opportunity to build on the Hughes legacy without having to indulge the self-righteous, tee-totaling Sunday school teacher at the same time and preserve their own desires for the 1920s. Root would win them the war and the peace to come, and usher in an era of Liberal domination - or at least so the thinking in Chicago went.
Cabot Lodge signaled to delegates in his camp that neither Roberts nor Weeks were options and that it was Root who was the man to choose. Hughes whipped a massive cadre of delegates in his corner to support his trusted lieutenant while also securing the nomination of his friend Garfield from crucial Ohio to the Vice Presidency. The party rapidly consolidated around the Root-Garfield ticket, which earned nomination on the second ballot - the quickest win of an open nomination in Liberal Party history, and a shock considering the wrench Hughes had thrown into the machinery just two days earlier. There was only potential ahead, what with the war coming to its close and the most decorated Presidential candidate in American history topping the ticket..."
- The Root of the Problem: The Tumultuous Term of America's 29th President [3]
"...the address to introduce Root, making his unofficial farewell speech to the delegates the transition into Root's acceptance address. Hughes spoke of the importance of the maintenance of democratic institutions, opined on the peaceful transition of power, encouraged a speedy end to the war, but closed his remarks with words that would be come to be seen as both prescient and ominous - a rejoinder in which he firmly reminded those gathered, "It is not enough to win the war - we must also thereafter secure the peace." [4]
As the convention concluded, the President and the First Lady made their way with the Manns to the White City, site of the 1893 Columbian Exposition before heading out on a whistle-stop tour of the Midwest over the next two weeks. Hughes marveled at the retained and restored buildings, regretting once again that he had not attended the original World's Fair on this site, and ruminated briefly on how it was at this spot that the first motions towards the Bloc Sud had begun on the sidelines of the concurrent Panamerican Congress. It seemed that things had come full circle in North America, both with the demise of that alliance and that he could see the end of his Presidency and the war almost exactly three years after the failure of the Niagara Conference, when the future had seemed so opaque and terrifying. A sense of relief came over Hughes, with his trust in Root to handle what was to come and his conscience content that he had done his utmost even if he had often not met the moment (by his own assessment as much as those of contemporaries). He and Antoinette strolled down the shores of Lake Michigan holding hands, and he remarked to her that it was not necessarily the beginning of a new chapter or the end of a previous one that day - but it was an ending,..." [5][6]
- American Charlemagne: The Trials and Triumphs of Charles Evans Hughes
[1] If this sounds familiar to a certain disastrous OTL President, it is 100% intended to
[2] This is true, and a major reason why iOTL Elihu Root was denied the GOP nom in 1908
[3] Suffice to say this book has a very different editorial slant than American Charlemagne
[4] Suffice also to say that Hughes' reputation is burnished quite a bit by him having the smarts to get out while the getting is good. It's not his fault shit goes sideways during Root's term, so it's not exactly prescient of him to bounce, but it winds up being very prudent in hindsight
[5] Yes, I did just wrap up The Wheel of Time finally. No, I'm not sorry for cribbing its closing line
[6] This is an unofficial wrap on Hughes' arc. He wound up being a less interesting character than I'd thought he'd be when we first introduced him 20 years earlier, because "decent man does his job relatively competently while learning from his mistakes" is not super intriguing historically or narratively, but he fit what I set out to accomplish and like Hearst, Chamberlian, Boulanger and so many others it'll be weird to see him "drop out" so to speak. Wikibox and AH.com ruminations to come once his term wraps.
Similar, sure
Considering what's to come for the South, most AH's that encompass the War of Secession will probably lean heavily into assumptions that Radical Reconstruction was not only inevitable, but perhaps too soft
Bingo
Pretty accurate, I'd say!Grabbed this railroad map and traced across, pretty approximate, but should get the idea across.
The Confederacy, is uh, not doing too hot.
Good catch
and it's meant to be hugely discomforting, though it could be worse - imagine if it was Atlanta-William Luther Pierce Airport!This is the idea, yes. Making the West TTL's version of the Solid South required some scrambling of the coalitions, hopefully it's made sense in context
Oooooh! What about John W. Meeks of Masschussetts? He looks like he'd be in the Lodge camp and I could see him totally flubbing the demobilization and social chnges frm the war, all the while being well-intentioned but way behind the times.
John W. Weeks - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
It was definitely entertaining watching this debate play out while I had an update that featured several of the names brought up on deck, haha
Well, I'm proud of myself for figuring out that Weeks would at least be a player
Still, I feel bad for Root - the man is planning on retiring, having just reached the pinnacle of his career. And, instead, he gets drafted to oversee a poisoned chalice of a term and likely goes down in history -fairly or unfairly - as one of the lower rungs of Presidents, marring what had previously been a golden reputation.
Still, I feel bad for Root - the man is planning on retiring, having just reached the pinnacle of his career. And, instead, he gets drafted to oversee a poisoned chalice of a term and likely goes down in history -fairly or unfairly - as one of the lower rungs of Presidents, marring what had previously been a golden reputation.
God what a great title for a book. I'm hoping you chose Root based mostly on this book title.
That was well done!Well, I'm proud of myself for figuring out that Weeks would at least be a player
Still, I feel bad for Root - the man is planning on retiring, having just reached the pinnacle of his career. And, instead, he gets drafted to oversee a poisoned chalice of a term and likely goes down in history -fairly or unfairly - as one of the lower rungs of Presidents, marring what had previously been a golden reputation.
Well, sure, but thematically he made too much sense as the figure to close out the “Dynasty” as he’s been part of every Liberal admin since Blaine and as a talented Cabinet officer he’s the embodiment of the elitist technocratic vibe the party looks for in its Presidents
Hah thank you! Like… 25% of the reason 🤪
mortonofski
Donor
Fair, but I would think he's pretty busy prosecuting the end of the GAW. Maybe 1920?
Yeah, the man has a Peach State to set on fire. Our boy Black Jack is busy!
Is'nt he supposed to be the Democrat President elect in 1920 elections?