The Davis Decision

[HappyWarrior]

This is a new TL I am working on beginning with the controversial 1876 election.  The POD will be that in my TL David Davis will not resign his Supreme Court seat to take one in the Senate.  He will then vote for Samuel J. Tilden, thus elevating him to the presidency of the United States.  Thereafter the future of America will take a totally different path.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Looking forward to it

[President Mitt]

This sounds interesting.

[HappyWarrior]

By the way I do plan on finishing this one unlike the previous attempts lol.

[HappyWarrior]

1876:The Davis Decision

In all of America's years, very few elections were anywhere near as controversial or as close as that of the 1876 election.  Governor Samuel J. Tilden and Governor Rutherford B. Hayes were locked in an electoral matchup for the ages.  After all the votes were counted there was still controversy over the fate of the electoral votes of three states.  These states were Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.  In response the Congress created an electoral commission, the majority party in each house named three members and the minority party two. As the Republicans controlled the Senate and the Democrats the House of Representatives, this yielded five Democratic and five Republican members of the Commission. Of the Supreme Court justices, two Republicans and two Democrats were chosen, with the fifth to be selected by these four. 

The final Supreme Court Justice would prove crucial, and longtime independent David Davis was chosen as the final member.  Davis had been elected and would soon be sworn into the U.S. Senate however before taking that seat he felt it was his duty to join the Commission.


Supreme Court Justice David Davis

Davis would consistently be the deciding vote on the Commission and in three seperate 8-7 decisions the Democrats would win Louisiana and South Carolina, while the Republicans would hold Florida. 

This electoral result would make Samuel J. Tilden the President of the United States, much to the chagrin of the Republican Party.


19th President Samuel Jones Tilden

[Sewer]

What a fat ass.

[HappyWarrior]

I'll be updating through the 1878 midterms today.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

What a fat ass.

Yes, but ITTL he took right side

[Historico]

God, Cheif Justice had to have been bigger than Taft lol, but Happy Warrior I am definatley liking where this is heading. Can't wait to see how the Tilden Presidency goes down...Keep it comming

[HappyWarrior]

The final result is ironic because some historians these days argue that if a fair election had been held without any violence and intimidation, Hayes would have won the election with 189 electoral votes to Tilden's 180, for he would have won all of the states that he did carry in addition to Mississippi and without Florida. Since South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the only Southern states with an African-American majority population (even though some Southern states had a percentage of African-Americans just short of 50%), they would have arguably gone for Hayes, since nearly all African-Americans during this time voted Republican. Thus those states would have gone for Hayes and Florida (with a majority white population) would have gone to Tilden in a fair election.

[HappyWarrior]

1877-78: Tilden's Beginnings

Just two days after the final decision of the electoral commission President Tilden and Vice President Hendricks are sworn in for their first term in office.  In his inaugural address Tilden makes the biggest point his support for the rights of every American and his desire to have the South "free" once again.  The most famous line of his speech and his presidency was, "If we impart our views on all Americans as the Republicans have for the last eight years, are we no better than tyrants?  The Southern States must be given their rights under our great Constitution!" 

Right away Tilden is given the responsibility to replace David Davis in the United States Supreme Court, the man who cast that final vote for his election.  The President heavily leans on the advice of Davis and finally settles on George Henry Williams, the former Attorny General of the Grant administration who had at one point been a nominee for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court but had been denied due to his having never been a member of the court.  He was a moderate Republican and former Democrat, which at least made him acceptable to both parties.  He would easily be confirmed.


Justice George Henry Williams


President Tilden also began making cabinet appointments at this time, his most important being the appointment of General Winfield Scott Hancock as his new Secretary of State.  He would also be quickly and easily confirmed.  Tilden's remaining appointees also passed through the Congress quite easily.

Early in 18777 President Tilden begins to ask the Congress for a plan at ending Reconstuction in the South, however the Republicans, who control the Senate fight him tooth and nail on the issue, with the Democrats offering the Posse Comitatus Act as their plan which would have essentially prevented military forces acting as police forces in the states, thus ending Reconstruction.  The Act would be quikly struck down by the Republican Senate.

The Congress would also pass with largly bipartisan support, the Bland-Allison Act, which an 1878 act of Congress requiring the U.S. Treasury to buy a certain amount of silver and put it into circulation as silver dollars.  President Tilden quickly signed this into law as well.  The Congress also passes at the urgin of President Tilden, The Chinese Exclusion Act, which made Chinese Immigration no longer possible.

However despite the major policies he enacted up to this point, in 1878 the Presideent's term would begin to go downhill.  His response to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, in which employees of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad walked off the job and were joined across the country by thousands of workers in their own and sympathetic industries was considered to be too sympathetic to the striker. When the labor disputes exploded into riots in several cities, Tilden made the decision not to send in any federal troops, mainly on the view tha the states had the responsibility under the constitution to deal with such problems.  Finally after six months, the last embers of the strike were put down in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with the deaths of 45 men and boys in the Factory Massacre.  All in all hundreds of people and millions of dollars were lost in the riots, destroying a large amount of the President's credibility.



Finally In 1878, the Republican New York Tribune published a series of telegraphic dispatches in cipher, accompanied by translations, as evidence that, during the crisis following the 1876 election, Tilden's campaign manager—his nephew, William T. Pelton, using Tilden's house as a base—had been negotiating for the purchase of the electoral votes of South Carolina and Florida. Tilden denied emphatically all knowledge of these dispatches, while not denying his nephew had sent them. Many of the dispatches were sent directly to and from his Gramercy Park mansion. The 'Cipher Dispatches thus seriously weakened his reputation and the Midterm elections were only a few weeks away....

[HappyWarrior]

Updated!

[Historico]

Wasn't expecting for Davis to have such a rocky term...I wonder if he can pull things around for last two years of his term, if not we may not see another Democrat elected for a while lol.

[President Mitt]

Please Continue.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Question:  Is this timeline's Bland-Allison Act the same as ours? It had to pass over Hayes veto in OTL, so with Blaine supportive it might be more inflationary (i.e. require the purchase of more silver)

[HappyWarrior]

Question:  Is this timeline's Bland-Allison Act the same as ours? It had to pass over Hayes veto in OTL, so with Blaine supportive it might be more inflationary (i.e. require the purchase of more silver)

It is the same as IRL but Tilden s more strenuous about it's enforcement while Hayes did very little in terms of utilizing the bill.

[HappyWarrior]

I should have an update up to the 1880 Presidential election up tomorrow.  Any guesses on what will happen?

[Historico]

I should have an update up to the 1880 Presidential election up tomorrow.  Any guesses on what will happen?

Hmm...I personally would like to see Grant be successful in his want to break the Washington Tradition and win the GOP nomination for a third terml. I didn't realize how close OTL 1880 Election was in term of popular vote, so in a battle between Tilden and Grant it could go either way.

[HappyWarrior]

1879-1880: The End of the Tilden Era

President Tilden's term had quickly become mired in scandel.  Only the lucky admission by his nephew that the President truly had'nt been involved in the Cipher scandal saved him from impeachment.  Odd considering this was the President who had been nominated based on the fact that he was considered to be quite uncorruptable.  However he soon saw his term's first fit of luck in an economic rebound.  Though his reaction to the 1877 Railroad strike was poor he had successfully implemented the Bland Act and the economy quickly came roaring back.

Tilden also refused to engage in most foreign affairs.  He kept out of the wars in South America and in the end the Argentines succeeded in securing all the concessions they wanted from the Paraguayens.

The final event in Tilden's term is a major attempt at legislation in civil service reform, lead by Republican Half-Breeds James Garfield and James G. Blaine.  The Republican Stalwarts with aid from a large number of Democrats manage to stop the bill, despite the overt support of President Tilden. 

The 1880 Democratic National Convention:

Quickly President Tilden is renominated for the Presidency by his party.  Despite the many weaknesses of his term the President was perceived as the only man who could possibly pull out a victory in the election.  He and Vice President Hendricks prepare for the inevitably hard campaign.

The 1880 Republican National Convention:

Early in the 1880 Republican Convention the Stalwarts took a huge amount of power after their massive victory over the Half-Breeds in the recent fight over civil service reform.  Knowing this the big name for the Half-Breeds, James G. Blaine does not put his name into nomination and instead supports the leadeing Stalwart candidate, Former President Grant, in exchange for certain promises.  One of these is the choice of Former Vice President, Half-Breed, and Maine Senator Hannibal Hamlin as Vice President.  Grant accepts this and is quickly nominated.

Grant and Hamlin pursue a front-porch campaign wherein they rarely leave their homes in Illinois and Maine respectively.  Tilden and Hendricks on the other hand campaign throughout the nation.  This however does not prove to be enough.

In the end the problems which had beset President Tilden prove to be too much to best the two men who out of all the possible choices seemed the most likely to know what the much revered President Lincoln would have wanted for the nation.  Tilden fails to even carry 3 out of the four southern border states, winning only Kentucky.


18th and 20th President Ulysses S. Grant

[Cassius Dio]

Didn't expect to see a third term for Grant. Are you planning on continuing this TL.....even after Tilden lost lost the election?

[Historico]

Cool, I called it....I just liked the idea of the Uncorruptable being defeated the Corrupted or Encouragable one lol.  Grant's Third yet unsequential term, should be pretty interesting especially if he isn't assasinated by Guiteau...Might he finally be able to secure Santo Domingo for the US Freedmen? Major Civil Service Reform, and the first steps toward internationalism for the US would be crazy. But ironically, the stress of another term would probably force Grant to succumb to his throat cancer a year or two earlier than IOTL. Thrusting Hannibal Hamlin in to office in his 70's will be very interesting indeed. Keep it comming

[HappyWarrior]

I'll be updating this in the next day or two.  Any comments from anyone?

[Lahbas]

Hopefully, Grant will now have more political experiance, or at least a capable and efficent goverment.

[HappyWarrior]

The Third Term of Ulysses S. Grant:



President Grant entered office amidst a huge wave of popularity.  He was the first president to be elected to a third term and also the first to be elected to a nonconsecutive term.  Early on he was approached to make civil service reform, however being a leader of the Stalwarts, the president decides that such an action would cause a huge amount of disdain from his own faction and also he simply does not enjoy the idea.  Instead he pushes for something quite different.  Something he had long desired for himself and America.



Considering it an imperative he quickly began making renewed plans for the annexation of Santo Domingo.  He requested permission from the then President of the nation for the annexation as had been allowed in 1871, though the United States Congress had denied him that time.  This time the Dominican's would not allow it.  The President asked instead for a declaration of war.  With his huge popularity and the enourmous Republican majority the President got his declaration.  He appointed General Winfield Scott Hancock, the former Secretary of State, as the leader of the expeditionary force.  Grant's own son Fredrick was also an officer in the war.


Fredrick Dent Grant

However the President would not even be able to see the war's beginning.  On June 12th, 1881, the President would be shot in the early morning hours after taking a walk on the grounds of the White House.  He would be buried in Arlington National Cemetary three days later after lying in state.  No one was ever able to discover the truth behind only the nation's second Presidential assasination, however much suspision would be cast on Dominican nationalists, making the calls for war that much worse.  Within hours, 72 year old Hannibal Hamlin would be inaugurated as the nation's oldest president up to that point.



21st President Hannibal Hamlin

[Sewer]

Poor Grant.