Leaders of the Provisional Government of Oregon
1843-1845: Executive Committee
1845-1849: Osborne Russell (“Independents Party”) [as Governor]
def. 1845 George Abernethy (“Americans Party”), Asa Lovejoy (“Americans Party”), Peter H. Burnett
def. 1847 Asa Lovejoy (“Americans Party”), the Rev. Elijah White (“Americans Party”)
Presidents of the Republic of Oregon
1849: Judge Columbia Lancaster [interim]
1849-1853: Samuel R. Thurston
def. 1849 Jesse Applegate
def. 1851 John Minto
1853-1855: Asa Lovejoy
def. 1853 Samuel R. Thurston (Democracy), Thomas J. Dryer (American)
1855-1865: Matthew P. Deady (Democracy)
def. 1855 Asa Lovejoy
def. 1857 assorted other Democrats
def. 1861 William A. Smith (Independence)
Note: In 1854, the Second Amendment to the Oregon Constitution lengthened Presidential terms to four years. The term starting in 1857 was the first to which this applied.
1865-1873: Seth Lewelling (Independence)
def. 1865: Peter H. Burnett (Democracy)
def. 1869: La Fayette Grover (Democracy)
1873-1877: James D. Fay (Democracy)
def. 1873: William S. Ladd (Independence)
1877-1885: Henry Yesler (Independence)
def. 1877: John Whiteaker (Democracy)
def. 1881: William W. Thayer (Democracy)
1885-1889: James Dunsmuir (Independence)
1885 def. William W. Thayer (Democracy)
1889-1897: Sylvester Pennoyer (Democracy)
1889 def. James Dunsmuir (Independence)
1893 def. Simeon G. Reed (Independence)
1897-1901: Paul D. English (Democracy)
1897 def. Simeon G. Reed (Independence)
1901-1905: Paul D. English (Democracy—Golden Ticket)
1901 def. Sylvester Pennoyer (Radical Democracy—Sylver Ticket)
1905-1913: Priam Finney [Pact of Progressive Patriots “3-P”]
1905 def. Martin James (Radical Democracy)
1913-0000: Cornelius Marvin [3-P]
Got a couple likes on my
olde US Presidents list for
On Her Own Wings so I thought I'd give some indication that I'm still working on that project. The date for the present-day story has been bumped a little bit later to 1919, but the POD is unchanged and you can assume the situation in the American Republic is still basically the same: vaguely authoritarian alt-Republicans whose racial liberalism is giving way to a "progressive" interest in eugenics, anemic electoral opposition due to its association with treason.
Meanwhile, in the Northwest, things have been going only slightly more smoothly. After independence, the orator Samuel Royal Thurston takes office in a landslide, fights a series of genocidal Indian wars, and destroys the nascent country's fiat currency by printing it in sheafs to pay the militia. Asa Lovejoy, a founder of the city of Boston and a former opponent of independence, succeeds him and it is an open question whether the Republic will survive at all. Only the fortuitous discovery of gold in the Rogue Valley, which can be mined to support a new Oregon Dollar, prevents collapse and domination by the United States.
A familiar party system quickly develops as the county's population swells with ACW refugees and deserters. The Oregon Democracy (later the Democracy Party) is a Jeffersonian-Jacksonian outfit founded by Thurston and newspaper publisher Asahel Bush. It is vigorously racist, supporting further extirpation of the native nations and upholding the constitutional ban on black settlement. It is also more pro-American, regarding former British subjects and the remnants of the Hudson's Bay Company with suspicion and seeking strong relations with the United States. Under Matthew Deady's leadership, Oregon remains neutral in the ACW and trades with both the Liberals and the Laneites.
The Independence Party is founded by an eccentric Mormon publisher from Victoria but soon reinforced by the Yankee-born commercial leaders of Boston and the Willamette Valley. In its liberal philosophy and industrial boosterism, it is similar to the ruling party in America, but less laissez-faire, as befits an undeveloped frontier country which cries out for internal improvements. President Lewelling and his wife Sophronia, Quakers and abolitionists who ran an Underground Railroad station back east, support public works and relief for indigent farmers. There are even currents of utopian socialism in the party, and it runs strong in Icary, Étienne Cabet's radical wheat-growing utopia in the Palouse country. The Independence Party is traditionally more Anglophilic - ironically, given its ideological kinship with the American Republic and the Liberal Party.
During the 1870s and 1880s, Oregon moves towards a modern industrial economy, albeit one heavily based on raw resource extraction. (The single term of drunken Laneite romantic Jim Fay does little to interrupt the process.) Despite his salacious personal life, Yesler is more conservative than Lewelling - his idea of poor relief is buying Alyeska from the Russians and chopping it up into land grants for the urban masses, a Thurstonite policy if there ever was one - but it is still possible for people to believe that the rising tide is lifting all boats. By the election of James Dunsmuir, Oregon's first native-born President, however, the utopians and freethinkers are firmly on the outs. The cabinet is stacked with representatives of American and Canadian trusts and it's clear that the thinly populated country is becoming an economic colony of Toronto, San Francisco, and New York. When Dunsmuir takes violent action against the anti-Chinese rioters on Puget Sound, the stage is set for the rise of Sylvester Pennoyer.
The flamboyant mayor of Boston takes office on a platform of trustbusting, Chinese and Kanakan exclusion, the creation of public land reserves, and thumbing his nose at America and Britain alike. He is wildly popular, and his landslide re-election victory over the affable Unitarian steamboat king Simeon Reed spells an end to the old enlightened boosterism of the I. P. In the dying days of the century, gold is discovered in disputed territory in the Alyeskan panhandle. Conflicts between prospectors of different nationalities escalate into the Oregon Rangers squaring off with the Mounties. Pennoyer's war of words with the Canadian authorities becomes a shooting war under his successor, Malheur rancher Paul English.
However, fighting the might of the British Empire and their Japanese allies across enormous land and sea frontiers proves too great a task for Oregon's untested military. In desperation, English turns to the American Republic. With the continental giant's help, the goldfields are secured, and in 1901, English's "Golden Ticket" of Democrats and patriotic ex-Independents sweeps all before them. The Faustian bargain soon becomes clear: the proud Pacific Republic has become a client state. A distraught Pennoyer tries to undo his actions but to no avail; he drops dead after losing his comeback campaign, providing endless fodder for blood-and-soil conspiracy theorists. Within a few years, what remains of Oregon's government is a nonpartisan dummy administration dictated to from the American embassy, its timber managed for the benefit of the Weyerhauser Syndicate and its mines for Amalgamated Copper. The opposition, from Icarians to quasi-fascist Pennoyerites, are shattered and scattered.
It is 1919. Boston, commercial capital of the Republic, chokes and stews under wildfire smoke. The docks seethe with racial violence. The taverns hum with talk of anarchist revolution. In the Queen Anne mansions of the West Hills, the capitalists consult priests, shamans, and proponents of light-touch sustained-yield forestry to assuage their guilty consciences. And in the middle of the Willamette River sits the warship
ARS Isaac Parker, pride of the American fleet, its gun batteries trained on City Hall.
[all characters after Pennoyer are fictional]