| June 5 |  |
Editor says, what if Sherman had accepted the nomination? muses Eric Lipps. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the July 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1876, on this day General William Tecumseh Sherman accepted the presidential nomination of the Union Party.
Sherman accepts the nominationSherman was a reluctant candidate, but had finally been persuaded to run by his friend and fellow commander in the War of the States, General George H. Thomas, who warned that the U.S. had become dangerously politically unstable in the decade following Southern secession and needed "a strong hand in these times of trial". Sherman was one of the few prominent Union commanders to escape disgrace in defeat, despite having been involved in the debacle of April 6-7, 1862 at Shiloh, Tennessee. Badly wounded in the Confederate assault on the 6th, he was unable to function effectively the next day, when what might have been an orderly Union retreat turned into a full-scale rout. Historians would later identify Shiloh as a crucial turning-point in the war, but it would be Sherman's junior, Hiram Ulysses Grant - more commonly known as Ulysses S. Grant - who would take the bulk of the blame for the disaster.
Grant's reputation would never recover, and after the war he would prove unsuccessful in private life, slowly sinking into alcoholism. By contrast, Sherman would find powerful patrons among wealthy businessmen who, surviving the postwar financial panic and the disgrace of the Republican Party, would organize the Union Party in 1873. But until the 1876 presidential race, Sherman had resisted entering politics; not only did he find the field appalling for its corruption, but in addition he feared the commingling of military and civilian authority a presidential general might produce in a humiliated United States desperate for a strong authority figure. "Rome begged Caesar to become its emperor, and he obliged her, and that was the end of the republic," he observed. "I have no wish to play a similar role in these United States".
And yet in the end he did, swayed by Thomas's warning that if he did not there was no one else who could prevent the civil unrest plaguing the beaten nation from exploding into full-scale insurrection. "Better to take what measures need be taken now," Thomas had written in a letter to Sherman, "than wait, and hope someone else does what I am confident you will do as president while there is still time". Addressing Sherman's fears of "the end of the republic," Thomas wrote, "These United States have already been disunited in part, by the late war; if things proceed as they are going, our Union may be shattered altogether".
On Nov. 7, 1876, Sherman would become the first candidate from the Union Party to be elected U.S. president, easily defeating Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, who carried only his home state. Tilden would be the last Democratic nominee; already near ruin due to charge of treason hung on it because of the large number of Southern Democrats and Northern so-called "Copperheads" who had supported the Confederate cause and what many saw as its excessive willingness to accept the verdict of the war and deal with the newly-independent CSA on friendly terms, the Democratic Party would splinter after the Tilden debacle; in the 1880s, most of its former membership would join the new People's Party, a rural-based party favoring high tariffs, nationalization of the railroads and bimetallism, the use of silver as well as gold as currency. The Populists would remain largely opposed to the burgeoning urbanization and industrialization of the United States well into the twentieth century, and would win no presidential elections until the upset victory of Massachusetts governor Eugene R. Foss in 1912. Perhaps not coincidentally, Foss would win as the leader of the party's emerging pro-urban wing, which argued for making common cause between agricultural and industrial interests.
In office, Sherman would struggle with the legacy of Southern secession. Only five years before his run, California had tried to break away in its ill-fated second Bear Flag Rebellion (the first, in 1846, had been against Mexico), and separatist sentiment continued to run high in that state and elsewhere, particularly as the economy struggled to right itself. Some of the measures the Sherman administration would take would be viewed as extreme, and anger against, for example, the use of the military to "maintain order" in particularly rebellious areas and the employment of private detective agencies as de facto secret police ferreting out dissent would play a role in Sherman"s defeat for renomination in 1880. During his term,. however, the foundations were laid for the later recovery which by the 1890s would produce the prosperous period known as the Gilded Age.
Entry posted by
Eric Lipps
© Eric Lipps,2007-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Generals Source: Wikipedia Labels: Sherman, United States, Presidency, America, Civil War. Editor says, in our history, on this date Sherman delivered his famous rejection of presidential candidacy: "If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve," rejecting the Republican nomination.
~ I'd like to hear more about this second Bear Flag rebellion...
~ It figures in my (God willing, someday to be completed) novel The Gettysburg Conspiracy, as an 1871 rebellion in California aimd at making that state an independent natioon, taking advantage of U.S. disarray after Southern secession. I don't have details yet, though.
Please click hyperlink for Yahoo! Groups Discussion comments.
~ In a defeated north Billy Sherman would just be the younger brother of a Senator who had gone crazy and been relieved of command in 1861. He had also worshiped as a Catholic which was political death. Sherman's shot at the White House comes from the victorious war.
~ I'm assuming that in defeat the North would have canonized its generals as the South did in our history. The Catholicis issue might have been more serious, but could perhaps be overcome; with the dead weight of Southern Protestantism removed from U.S. politics, Irish and other immigrant Americans would have had a larger proportion of the vote.
~ @Eric -I can see a reverse of the Lost Cause but Sherman as you present him was a nobody at First Bull Run, had a breakdown and got his head handed to him at Shiloh. More likely someone like Rosecrans or McClellan. The former for a couple of minor victories in West Virginia. The latter because the eastern armies loved him.
~ But wouldn't Sherman then have been free to fight the Indian wars, under his famous motto, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian"? Of course it was one of his deliberately outrageous sayings, like "If I owned Hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell"...but it is the one that survived. Anyway, with him in the White House, might the Indians not have mounted a more successful resistance? Or might he, on the other hand, have sent another successful general to deal with them, such as General Grant?
~ @Jackie - play the hand out. North loses. Republicans are discredited by the lost war. Sherman was the brother of a Republican Senator. His brother got him his star and he was a failure. Why would the regular army keep him after the war, much less give him a serious command fighting anyone. The new President after the war would be a Democrat and the Republican generals would not have been kept on.
~ OH, dear! Scott, I am afraid I pushed that "submit" button too fast. I do proofread my entries, honest I do, but this was one that got away. I meant to say, "WOULD Sherman then have been free to fight the Indian wars"...since, as president, he would have other fish to fry. Sorry about that. Anyway, my point was that the Indians might have done much better if he had not been fighting them, perhaps even winning a negotiated truce.
~ A very different world. An expansionistic CSA might cripple itself with wars in banana republics and an antiquated agriculture economy. The next next US-CS war could be all the shorter.
~ South was industrialized. Just less so than the north. South had a lot of small steam engines and factories. Their problem on industrial cities was that except for Richmond they lost them all in the first year. Baltimore, Louisville, St. Louis, New Orleans.
~ I believe Sherman as President would soon have become Sherman as Overlord. He was not well-disposed towards politics in terms of his personality. The best comparison I can think of comes from the new "Battlestar Galactica" (forgive me) and Tigh Saul. When Adama was shot and on death's door, Saul was placed in command. He was a decent enough military officer, but his personal skills lacked a certain....well, he didn't have any personal skills. He was soon banning the press and running a dictatorship, not because of a thirst for power, but because he couldn't do anything else.
~ Sherman was a very good general who might have been a disastrously bad President.
~ Re Scott Palter: I envision Sherman winning a personal redemption by playing a key role in defeating California's 1871 Bear Flag Rebellion after havng been essentially banished to the West in the postwar years. A substantial military victory against a new attempt at secession would have made him a hero despite Shiloh.
~ Als, bear in mnd that in this scenario BOTH prewar parties are disgraced. In the full scenario I icture, theSouth wins months before the 1864 election, Lincoln is forced to resign and Hannibal Hamlin becomes a caretaker president until he is defeated by McClellan in November (well, technically, until the following March 4).
~ 1. How did a Republican like Sherman acquire a major command in a Democratic administration in 1871? 2. How would the Democrats be disgraced by Lincoln losing the war?
Please click hyperlink for Google Groups Discussion comments.
~ In order: I envision Sherman as having bee "exiled" to what was considered an unimportant command out West soon after the end of the war (as Grant was at its beginning) only to find himself Billy-on-the-spot, as it were, when the secessionist uprising broke out in California (which, remember, was not then the big-deal state it is today).
As for the Democrats being disgraced, it's not Lincoln losing the war which is the probem for them, but the defeatism and even outright pro-Confederate sentiment of significant numbers of Democrats--including Gen. George McClellan, who constantly failed to take advantage of mlitary opportunities because he insisted on seeing his forces as outnumbered when they were not. As I see it, McClellan wins in 1864 only because the Republicans were even more disgraced than the Democrata--but four years of his administration, marked by an economic crash and continuing political instability, would do away with what was left of the Ds' credibility.
~ If I understand your ATL the war ends in 1864. I presume this is a variant of the northern public rebelling against the endless casualty lists [came close to happening in 1864] and / or Northern financial credit is exhausted [North was getting REAL close to the ragged edge by the spring of 1865 - war was costing somewhere north of $1M/day]. How does this discredit the peace Democrats who said a war of reunion would bankrupt the nation, drown us in blood and wasn't worth the candle? Seems like vindication to me. Buchanan was a classic example. He was in theory opposed to secession but saw any possible counteractions as destructive of republican liberties and ultimately futile. Getting past that point army would be radically downsized with the peace. Why would Sherman [to the public eyes a failure and a partisan Republican general] be left in the California command in this shrunken army? Why would he chose to remain in the army at all as unlike Grant Sherman had been a success as a civilian?
~ (1) The peace Democrats are discredited because they are blamed, fairly or not, for losing a third of the country. Somehow I doubt that would play as a plus, particularly as other parts of the U.S. begin making secessionst noises. And the war Democrats are collateral damage, forced to repudiate theior former party to escape guilt by association. The "bloody shirt" has even mre political force in this scenario.
(2) Again, given the severe postwar economic dislocation and political instability I posit, there wouldn't have been such a radical demobilization and a high-ranking military officer might prefer to stay in the Army rather than take his chances as a civilian, even if he had been successful before the war. And the California command might well have been seen as a form of exile for such an officer--until evets allowed him to distinguish himself there. With the military platying a major role in holding what was left of the Union together after Southern secession, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, passed with the aid of Southerners newly readmitted to the Union and still raging over the use of troops in Reconstruction, might have no counterpart.
~ Your ATL, your choices. I disagree but...
~ What isn't mentioned is the scandalous behavior of his Vice President, George Armstrong Custer, who was in the habit of shooting off his mouth about foreign affairs (and a few of his friends who profited mightily from the Bureau of Indian Affairs). No doubt this was caused by Custer's frustration with the reality of being Vice President and having to live a civilian life, which he never found congenial (however, his wife was delighted to live in civilization again, instead of in Army Post Hell). This worked in President Sherman's favor, however; no doubt the possibility of Custer becoming President might have been all that restrained unhappy Southerners from completing any assassination attemps.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
