Presidents of the Confederate States of America
1861-1873: Jefferson Davis (Democratic) [1]
1873-1878: Robert E. Lee (Confederate Democrats) [2]
1878-1888: P.G.T. Beauregard (Reform) [3]
1888-1898: Simon Bolivar Buckner (New American) [4]
1898-1900: John W. Morton (Reform) [5]
1900-1913: Nathan Bedford Forrest II (Safeguard) [6]
1913-1918: Harrison S. Truman (Confederate Free Officers) [7]
1918-1923: W.L. Churchill (Confederate Free Officers) [8]
1923-1924: Mason Patrick (Confederate Free Officers) [9]
1924-1928: William.H.Murray (Progressive) [10]
1928-1938: David Wark Griffith (Christian Union) [11]
1938-1958: William Faulkner (Futurist) [12]
1958-1968: Harrison S. Truman (Dixie Front) [13]
1968-1971: Elvis Aaron Presley (Dixie Front) [14]
1971-1973: Audie Murphy (Dixie Front) [15]
[1] Initially, a provisional President, Davis was elected in his own right less than a month later as the best man to lead the secessionist states to victory. That being said, Jefferson Davis did not have the Washington spirit that many though he would and the victory of the Confederacy in the Second War of Independence was won through a combination of blind luck and the skill of Generals Lee, Longstreet and Jackson at Gettysburg which allowed the Army of Northern Virginia to hold Washington to ransom. Even at the peace table, Jefferson Davis was felt to let the side down, abandoning Maryland and the untapped potential of the Arizona Territory in exchange for troublesome West Virginia, Kentucky and the Oklahoma territory. As a peacetime leader, Davis saw little improvement. A trade war with the Federal government and European unwillingness to trade with a slave state - no matter how rich in cotton - saw a massive erosion in the Confederate economy and the standard of living. A slave revolt in Louisiana finally exploded the tensions of that had been brewing and the Democratic Party was forced to dissolve itself between separate factions. Davis' final act as President and lasting legacy was his signing of the first amendment to the Confederate Constitution - removing the term limit of the President from 6 years to 5.
[2] The shortcomings of Davis led to calls for a strong man, a successful man, a man who'd really helped win independence - and so General Lee, into his first term as Governor of Virginia, was convinced to stand for office. Lee's big achievement was to reform the patchy, inadequate Confederate forces into a unified federal force with proper training; this meant pushing things through the state governments, which led to the common phrase, "only E. Lee could borrow from Lincoln". The problem was that Lee's big achievement was his only achievement as he was greatly uninterested in the Confederacy as an actual nation-state, seeing himself as Virginian first, and he was also not actually that good at the nitty-gritty of politics and bureacracy. Much of the work was done by his many officials, all of them with their own state-first agendas. Outside of army towns, the economy and standard of living continued to fray, and Lee's overseas view of a Man of Honour was ruined by his involvement in the Louisiana Slave Revolt and later Alabama Slave Revolt (a euphamism for grinding guerilla war).
[3] Civil War Hero, Conservative Stalwart and someone that actually cared about the Confederate States P.G.T. seemed like a good fit to steer the Confederacy towards a new direction. His Reform party would 'strip the extravagance' out of Government, mainly consisting on cutting the bureaucracy and streamlining government, he would demand the a reform of the monetary system as the Confederate Dollar fell further and further as the recession of 1880 took hold and he would also bring about the beginnings of the Confederate Welfare state inspired by the Bismarck model despite the protestations of the Upper Classes and Plantation elites who started to refer to him as the 'Napoleon of the South'. In particular he would finally establish foreign relationships with other nations, mainly the Congo Free State with Confederate Soldiers being sent as 'Advisers' to help the private control of the Congo in exchange for rubber plantations, slaves and money.
Beauregard's main aim during his presidency was to finally crush the slave revolts and white dissent as well (mainly consisting of Anarchists and Socialist revolutionaries). The Board of Intelligence would be used to clamp down on secret meetings and plots against the Government and the use of the Confederate Military, Concentration Camps and there new Machine Guns being used to finally crush the slave revolts. By the end of his presidency Beauregard had managed to stop the Confederacy sliding into ruin though it was still in a sorry state.
[4] 1888 was the election for the early Confederacy. The malaise that had taken hold in the proceeding 20 years was, it was hoped, finally to be broken, but that the New American Party were to be the ones to take it there no one could quite believe. Formed as a Confederate Nationalist Party after the War, the New Americans had become an eclectic mix of Evangelists, proto-Progressives, manifest destiny maniacs all broadly united in the fact that Slavery was strangling the future that had been won in 1863. However, through the genius of soon-to-be-President Bolivar no one actually realised it.
Now considered ahead of his time, Bolivar completely ignored the issue of nationwide Abolition in 1888. His native state of Kentucky had instituted a ban of inter-state trading then full liberation of its own slaves but that had been before his single term as Governor. For his Presidential election, Bolivar promised a national renewal and to take a part in the games of the other Great Powers, which made the public swoon as Reform and the remaining Democrats squabbled over the Gold Standard. Immediately in Office, Bolivar set his sites on annexing Cuba, however a sudden crisis between Haiti and the Dominican Republic quickly forced a change of tact and the Confederate Navy pounced on Hispaniola, which was subdued within a few years by an Army used to fighting guerrillas and became the first Colony of either American Republic. Meanwhile, business ventures in Central America always had the Navy shadowing them to ensure they dominated. The result was a brief war-scare between 1891-1893 with the Union, which allowed Bolivar to convince the Confederate Senate to vote an end to slavery on the grounds it would allow the Confederacy to sign an alliance with Britain - it was ratified by the Senate in April 1893, just in time to ensure Bolivar's reelection.
For his second tenure, Bolivar concentrated on economics. With cheap Labour of freedmen and influx of immigration from Western Europe, Bolivar wanted to rid the South's dependency on cotton, modernise the railways and industrialise it to match the Union. This was less successful. Railways were built, but disagreements between individual states on gauges and jurisdiction made it difficult for the government to organise the project in the more developed states, though Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma massively improved their infrastructure with Bolivar's initiative. Meanwhile, the influx of British investors and Plantation owners hoping to adapt to the modernisation did begin an Industrialisation fuelled by Virginian coal. However, attempts by the new workers to unionise caused no end of trouble. Bolivar butted heads with the Board of Intelligence's heavy-handed suppression, feeling it could ruin everything and he attempted to shut it down, only to face a massive backlash from the owners of the new businesses who felt the Board their main security. From their Bolivar entered a form of malaise as his own Party refused to back him for a third term, he ended his Presidency to accept an offer to be new Governor-General of the Congo Free State after 'Stonewall' Jackson's retirement.
[5] The first president to have lived more of his life under Confederacy than Union, Morton was a war hero, a favoured son of Tennessee, and had served both Beauregard and Bolivar as the Overseer ("Cyclops") of the State Knights - the overly theatrical lawmen, famed for their white shirts and college fraternity lingo, who dealt with crime and disorder outside of county boundaries. He'd resigned over Bolivar's "betrayal of the very reason we fought" and became openly involved in the Reform Party's efforts to retake government. Allegations swirled at the time that Morton was 'in' with the Board of Intelligence too and receiving information to help his election. While he'd have liked to have reinstated slavery in full, the new ties to Britain made this impossible outside of the grim interior of Hispanola (where nobody could easily see it).
So instead, Morton passed laws bonding the freedmen more to their employers, had the Knights deal with "crimes" by "socialist agitators", and had a few troublemakers "disappeared" (to Hispanola). To the white majority, he was finding a way to bring the benefits of industrialisation while preserving Confederate society. Confederacy-wide infrastructure projects were brought in, including a boating system and new roads, and the Knights and army both continued to become more powerful and professional - completing the transformation the CSA from a club of states into a proper nation. This sort of federalisation and industry with "conservative racial values" would be called Beauregardist, versus Bolivarist and the flailing Declarers (after the declarations to secede) who backed "states rights".
Morton would have probably achieved more if his second visit in Hispanola hadn't seen him shot by an unknown rebel. (The locals claimed it was "Toussaint", as in the leader of the first rebellion, and "I'm Toussaint" would gradually enter the global political lexicon)
[6] 'The mask of civilisation was whipped off, only to reveal the white mask of barbarism beneath it,' as Ambrose Bierce described the 'Safeguard Presidency.'
Forrest inherited his grandfather's brutality without his talent. Constitutionally, there was an order of succession. Constitutions don't mean much when when concerned citizens in the army and... fraternal organisations... decide that strong actions is needed during an emergency. Hence, the Senator for Georgia taking the oath in the confused weeks following Morton's assassination.
One of the great questions of American historiography is why the CSA didn't collapse during Forrest's Presidency. The brutality in Hispanola might have been forgiven by the international community in the first years after the death of Morton, but as it rolled on and on it became a festering sore that drove the CSA further and further away from the European powers.
At home, the purges began with the few Labour activists who had been tolerated in Atlanta, Galveston and New Orleans; then they expanded to the Scallywags who called for the restoration of the old constitutional order; by 1910 the Confederate government was engaged in the disappearance of Declarers. Neither Beauregardists or Bolivarists knew what the new government stood for- though like all its predecessors, the government certainly stood on the throats of its black population.
Forrest was a weak man and a cipher for those around him. In truth, there was a plan by his government- power at home, peace on the streets, and money in their pocket. His government adopted a policy of 'Promote or Perish'- officers, civil servants and business leaders who went along with the Forrest regime were given sinecures, 'economic concessions' and a blind eye. Those who didn't... well, the wise ones kept their heads down.
By 1913, there were more colonels in the Confederate Army than there were sergeants in the United States.
A diplomatic pariah, an economic basket case, a top-heavy and flailing government- in the north, diplomats wrote to their masters that the mood in government was that reunification and reincorporation was just around the corner.
It was not to be.
[7] The corruption and incompetency of the upper echelons of the military disgusted a clandestine movement of young officers who looked up to the glorious legacy of the War of Northern Aggression, and had begun to formulate a new ideology of their own, modelled after the halting attempts to emulate Prussia. They envisaged a society firmly under the hand of the military, but it was not to be a country owned by the Planters or their archaic feudal beliefs. They wanted to see nothing less than a revolution in how Southerners viewed their country and its values and their relationship with the state. Harrison Truman led a small group of lower-rank officers to overthrow the government in Richmond, and with their opposition being promoted on the basis of loyalty to Forrest, there was barely anyone competent to stop them.
Truman's government proved itself as despotic as its predecessor - but crucially it had clear values, and more importantly was led by vigorous, at least faintly competent men. The states were effectively abolished, replaced by a system of military districts. Large Planter estates were nationalised - mostly by arresting their owners on charges of sedition, and taking their land into trust. Crimes that had been punishable by death or lengthy jail sentences were now turned into terms of unwaged labour - building the infrastructure and industry needed to bring the Confederacy kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.
Truman insisted his government was merely a temporary one, which would hold free elections any day now, but every year it seemed less and less likely such an election would be held - and simultaneously the foundations of the Officers' State became ever more secure. Truman also scrupulously courted the traditional Confederate benefactor of the British - in particular winning them over through the destruction of the concealed slave plantations of Hispaniola. These plantations would soon be put to work again, on the backs of political prisoners. It was an economic boom. And then in 1918, the Confederacy was drawn into the Third Morocco Crisis that would tip Europe into war. Truman was a competent administrator, but what the Confederacy needed was a warlord...
[8] In many ways the direct result of the close relationship between the Confederacy and Britain, Winfield Leonard Spencer-Churchill was always destined for some form of greatness, scale was the only question. Growing up in the pomp and patriotism of Bolivar years surrounded by the legends of Lee and Longstreet, "Winnie" remained throughout his life the quintessential romantic were Manifest Destiny was concerned, however he married his dreams with an iron pragmatism that was drilled into him at the Virginia Military Institute. Stationed in Hispaniola when President Morton was killed, Churchill initially had no trouble with extremist measures of the Safeguard Presidency, however as it prolonged and mutated he took a "leave of absence" to train with the British Army and get to know his father's aristocratic family then returning immediately to protect the Truman Presidency where he became a close adviser and Captain-General of the Norfolk District, effectively making him the second most powerful man in Virginia and made him Truman's logical successor.
An undeniable Anglophile, Churchill was ready to meet the challenges of the Great War. His speedy acquisition of Cuba from Spain and the Panama Canal from France secured allied shipping and the Caribbean, and the Confederate Navy eased an enormous amount of pressure from the Royal Navy in the Atlantic. However, despite a cordial relationship with Prime Minister Chamberlain, he did not share many of his countrymen's fondness for Prussian ways or of Kaiser Wilhelm. Using French courting of the US, and Home tensions about conscription, as an excuse not to send an expeditionary force to sure up the Allies position in Alsace. Instead, Churchill concentrated the CSA's war effort on Africa, and by 1916 from Dakar to Lagos was in American hands. However, the Clemenceau Telegram nearly ruined all.
Outrage amongst the Officer Corps was explosive as the Mexican Empire attacked Texas. Panic in Richmond set in as it was expected Union troops to come streaming back down to avenge the defeat of Gettysburg, but it never came. While the Mexican's had been greedy enough to accept France's offer, the US did not think Kentucky and Upper Canada worth the trouble and President Hearst maintained his neutrality, though he was happy to sell Mexico as many guns as needed. With this reprieve, Churchill rallied the nation and the army to stop the Mexican advance at Houston. The trench warfare that had dogged the muddy fields west of the Rhine were joked to be a picnic compared to those dug in the Texas desert, but after two years bloody effort the Confederacy advanced into Chihuahua and Tamaulipas just as the BEF tanks reached the Seine.
Keeping a quiet figure at the Treaty of Charlottenburg, Winfield Churchill managed to hold onto Cuba and linked up American West Africa to the Congo via British Nigeria with territory taken from the French, however he was forced to surrender the fruits of Mexico which embittered many. This Churchill wrote in his diaries was the reason he chose not to stand for President in the upcoming elections, and made much more suspicious of Britain's attitude to the Americas going forward. Nevertheless, Churchill's Presidency is rightly held up for marrying martial brilliance with a return to democracy (however limited to white, serving officers above a certain rank) and stability to the Confederacy.
[9] General Mason Patrick was a career soldier from Virginia who fought in the conquest of Hispanola, in the war against the insurgents, in the Safeguard-era sackings, in the overthrow of Safeguard, and on both the Mexican and Congolese fronts of the Great War. He was effective, merciless, and with an eye for new technology, pioneering the use of integrated air cavalry with infantry - something that greatly ravaged the Mexican forces. He also had little interest in political bureacracy, being part of the Dixie Spartan movement of soldiers who believed in Trumanism even more than Truman. Churchill put Patrick in to arrange the so-called 'Brass Election' (after the service medals worn by officers), which he did with steely resolve and the brutal Night of Fires, when certain figures in the Board of Intelligence died in arson attacks by "negro vigilantes" (actually the State Knights in disguise). With the once-mighty Board cowed (and those "vigilantes" found among freedman NCOs that had been looking a bit too organised), the 'Brass Election' could go ahead without interference.
Patrick happily stood down and returned to the work of a general, reorganising the Confederate forces. Unfortunately for his officer-voted successor, Patrick had spent a lot of money for that reorganisation - right when the Confederacy was in debt. His successor was very unhappy when they came in.
[10] One of the Oklahoma 'Good Old Boys', William.H.Murray was the first civilian leader of the Confederacy in over 20 years and his populist appeal to Military officers of a rural background, his history dealing with the Native Americans of Oklahoma (unlike the guerrilla wars against slave revolutionaries, the dealing with Native Americans was quick and efficient as the were rounded up into reservations with tribal chiefs dealing with troublemakers themselves) and also being a talented speaker meant that William won against the muddled messaging of Ben.M.Millar of the Democrats and D.W.Griffth of the Christian Union. The minute Murray got into office he was informed the Confederacy was in debt, which wasn't good for Murray's populist welfare plans. So Murray had to turn to the only folks that would give him money...the British.
The problem for Murray was the management had changed.
The same year Murray had been elected, the Labour Party in Britain had managed to win a small majority under J.R.Clynes and unlike Chamberlain, Clynes wasn't particularly fond of supporting a slaveocracy in name only and preferred the more Progressive U.S.A. His price for Confederate debt being erased was steep, the sale of the Congo and Cuba to Britain, in return not only would Britain erase the Confederates debt but also provide them money and support in the years to come. Murray horrified tried to turn to the Germans, but there demand for large swathes of CSA Africa was just as insulting to Murray. The image of Murray going cap in hand to the British would cause riots across the CSA and Murray's reputation would never fully recover. A famous cartoon of Foreign Minister Ramsay MacDonald running rings around as Murray and his Foreign Secretary McAdoo stared in horror would sum up the feelings of many. Despite it all the Confederacy would start to recover and despite losing national pride in the end stability was what the CSA needed. Murray would manage to get through voting rights for all White Men over 21 and White Women who owned property and were over the age of 28 during his time in office, provide funding for destitute farmers, as well as establish national parks and finally get the CSA rail system properly running but it didn't matter in the end. In 1928, Murray would be ousted in a landslide as the CSA demanded someone else to lead them out of just stability into something better.
[11] Griffith was famously a self-made man, going from rural poverty to being one of the country's top silent filmmakers - helped by the fact that Griffith toed the line under Forrest and Truman, making him the only filmmaker in action at times. His status let him move in the 'right circles' under the Free Officers years, putting him in position to surely win the Presidency if not for the fact Murray was better. Griffith had refused to leave the stage and prepared for a rematch against Murray - he banged the drum for years on restoration of pride, on not letting fairweather foreign friends push them around, and of hanging on to Hispanola.
The Confederacy would see a wealth of organisations and clubs for the benefit of young people, a huge state focus on the arts & bringing the film industry up to foreign technical standards, a tightening of education, and an increase in welfare programs. That is, however, welfare programs if you were a good Christian, for the CU began to shape law to force conservative religious standards on the population. Swathes of the city found this intolerable, but not enough to stop him winning re-election. His biggest pressure came from Hispanola, which underwent "civilising": the black and hispanic population were given new education and mandatory protestant church services while their overseers faced new regulations and, to their horror, an alcohol ban. The whites turned on the CU en masse and several dark plots were broken up at gunpoint. The black and hispanic population continued to seethe and, unnoticed in Richmond, new militias were forming in the dark.
Nobody on the 'mainland' gave much of a crap about wealthy decadent overseers being told what to do, until Griffith used his second term to bring an alcohol ban to them - part of the Christian Union manifesto most had thought would never happen. The State Knights rode out to crack down on moonshiners and bootleggers, much to the horror of the rural community who had not yet been fully touched by Griffith's laws. Protests grew, and were cracked down on. People grew unhappy. (In Hispanola, in Griffith's last year, some people became very dead in militia ambushes) He lost the next election as it didn't matter if he did things to other people but when I can't get a beer, Jack.......
[12] If there was one man who would end Prohibition and bring the CSA kicking and screaming into the modern age then by god it would be William Faulkner. A great-grandson of the Confederate Colonel William Falkner, Faulkner had been brought up on stories of his Great-Granddad's legacy and decided that he was going to be as great as his granddad, joining the Army during the Mexico war (despite his short height) he would see the horror of Modern Warfare in action as well as be given his misspelt last name. In the aftermath Faulkner would leave the CSA and tour Europe and whilst there meet artists and creatives in the Futurist movement like Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who would form the National Futurist Party that same year, obsessed with violence, youth and technology the creatives and political types would greatly influence the young Faulkner. Heading back to his native Mississippi Faulkner would watch the chaos of the Murray and Griffith regimes. He would start getting into politics as prohibition went under way as Faulkner was an infamous alcoholic. Creating the Confederate Futurist Party with many other like minded intellectuals and creatives he would use this to his advantage as Griffith stepped down. Campaigning on a Nationalist, Anti-Prohibitionist and Modernist Campaign (Faulkner abused the the films and arts funding that Griffith had built up to speak to the nation), Faulkner won handily particular against the Populist and scarily Marxist campaign of Huey Long for the Progressive-Democrats and the bizarre campaign of Christian Union candidate William D. Pelley.
Faulkner quickly got into action, repealing prohibition laws almost immediately. He would also reduce the power of the State Knights, now hated by many up and down the country. Now securely in place, Faulkner would bring his Futurist ambitions to bare. Land Reform inspired by the ideas of Henry George were implemented which farmers approved off, gender equality would pushed through including to the military (which the rather small Confederate army compared to the U.S.A's approved of) and various industries would be nationalised or owned by Government run Syndicates with Unions having a massive say in the running of there industries. The CSA's Army would also be Modernised massively as Faulkner pumped more and more money into it, all in preparation for his grand plans beyond. In 1943 just election loomed, Faulkner produced his ace.
The decisive invasion of Mexico would be a shock to many as the Confederates stormed through the nation, the Americans lead by President Lovestone more preoccupied with the Pacific conflict than with what the C.S.A was doing. Seizing the capital Mexico within a few weeks as the Mexican forces melted, Faulkner would declare an election. Unsurprisingly Faulkner would win and continue onto a second term in which he continued his plans even more as Mexican Guerrillas were ground into a fine paste and new plans to deal with black and Hispanic populations were implemented as they were 'modernised', a continuation of Griffth's plan mainly as any trace of cultural identity or identity at all was stripped away and they were converted into 'Modern Citizens'.
Faulkner would continue further as war in Europe bloomed yet again between the forces of Socialism vs. Reactionaries, with Faulkner staying out for the most part. However in 1948 things would begin to change, Faulkner would declare he was running for an unprecedented third term and when the Democrats and CU complained he kneecapped there electoral chances as much as possible using his connections to the Media Syndicate of Pappy O'Daniel to paint them as traitors which easily hobbled the campaigns of Long and Shivers. Faulkner would win yet again and after so long of winning and winning things would start to reach his head. A combination of booze, ballooning ego and foolishness convinced him to invade Cuba and the Congo in 1952 as a way to win them back from the British Commonwealth still licking it's wounds from the European War, he didn't anticipate the resolve of the Bevan Government against him as the C.S.A-Commonwealth War would last for the six years as the Commonwealth would slowly take back Cuba and the Congo as well as the C.S.A's African colonies. By 1958 the once grand C.S.A was now confined to the America's once again and Faulkner was forced to resign, a drunken shell of a man who was once considered great by many.
[13] The Confederacy was arguably at its lowest ebb for decades - and defeat at the hands of a socialist power led to Red insurrections in what remained in Confederate hands, from Mexico, to Hispaniola to the Cotton Belt itself. The political system was as split as it had ever been. Many predicted collapse in a few short years. And into the void stepped the man who had saved the Confederacy from the profligacy of the Safeguard Regime.
Truman was a much changed man from his youth. Gone was the uniform, replaced by the dark lines of a Futurist suit. Truman promised a synthesis of the Futurism Griffith had promised, with the concrete achievements of the Free Officer's Regime. Ostensibly standing as an independent, he gathered behind him shards of the existing parties into the Dixie Front. And in 1958, he was elected in a landslide.
Truman was also rewarded with a strong majority in the Confederate Congress - and he now had licence to do the unthinkable. Truman looked to the decades of trauma the nation had endured and came to one diagnosis. Time and again, Dixie had suffered because of the own suppurating wound with her Northern neighbour, and her reliance on European powers who treated Dixie with a mixture of tolerance and loathing. The root of both, was the treatment of Dixie's non-white citizenry.
The Ham Project saw the organisation of the expulsion of the Confederacy's black population to Hispaniola, the nationalisation of land there, and its eventual independence as a 'Confederate Associate' under ostensible military protection. Mexico was granted independence entirely. And Truman opened up the Confederacy to diplomacy with her Northern neighbour, seeking a closer relationship than any of his predecessors. The combination was controversial to say the least. The independence of black-ruled Hispaniola was a plan steeped in Confederate racial paternalism and the treatment of people who had lived in North America at least as long as the whites disgusted many outside of the Confederacy. But in a few short years, Hispaniola would throw off its remaining ties, becoming the New Republic of Haiti, and slowly but surely, the Confederacy began to be seen as a 'normal' country.
Truman was rewarded with re-election in 1963, and took another unprecedented step. The Confederacy was renamed, to the Democratic Republic of Dixie. The Dixie Front itself had altered, as an old generation of reactionaries was cleared and a new generation of Dixie workers, engineers and smallholders stepped to the forefront.
Truman began to organise a transfer of power to his successor, a young man for the new times. But the changes Truman had wrought had opened up deep fissures in Dixie society, between traditional landowners, industrial workers, farmers, and a dozen more cleavages besides. Political violence began to rise as the 60s came to a close, and in a great irony the former military dictator seemed singularly ill-prepared for political arena becoming a battlefield.
[14] Presley had grown up in even worse poverty than Griffith and his only two ways out were gospel choir or joining the army - and Presley enjoyed the ladies too much for the former. He would become a respected sergeant and was one of the last men out of Cuba in '57, crippled from the waist down. Unlike many similarly wounded men, Presley stood for local office in his home of District 37 and became one of the 'golden boys' of the Truman era. Here was a photogenic young man with the perfect voice for the public, a 'bad boy' past that wasn't too bad, and a heroic background. He also was a genuine fan of some forms of black American music, which had trickled across the borders from the Union and around Hispanola - something that helped indicate the New Dixie. What could go wrong?
What could go wrong was that Presley had a painkiller addiction, not to mention addiction to the finer things in general. Part of this was due to post-traumatic stress disorder from the last days of his war. Initially, Presley was a globally popular figure and he was managing to hold at least 51% of Dixie together by sheer charisma & promise of youth. But the demands from across the land were numerous, and the industrial & agriculture demands after the Ham Project removed cheap labour were extreme, and political violence was stalking the cities and farmland. Presley appointed "the Colonel", his old CO Richard Nixon, to head the Confederated Bureau of Investigation to crack down on the violence rather than upgrade the powers of the State Knights. That was a sensible act.
Others did not follow, as Presley's governance became sloppy and he was "ill" for multiple summits and cabinet meetings. The power of the president had been so great for so long, there wasn't really a way for the state to do anything but pause when Presley was out of his mind on pills. Figures around him hoped this could last until the next election. Instead he died in mid-air from a heart attack en route to the League of Nations.
[15] One of the few people with no military record in the Dixie Front, Murphy has avoided his mandatory service by his star power in front of the camera. Leaving his poverty stricken home in Texas, Murphy had gotten a job under Griffith's plans to kick start the Confederate movie industry in one of it actor's guilds. Starting out as a stuntman, he experienced a meteoric rise to stardom and the best known Texan in the whole world as his films "Scarlet", "The Last Cowboy in Havana" and "El Diablo" became box office smashes in the 40s and 50s.
With such a presence, Murphy had quickly become cultivated by the Dixie Front as one of its future leaders and softer hearts. Initially reluctant, he soon enjoyed the theatrical side of the Senate, quickly becoming it favourite son with seats on dozens of committees where his chief success became the organiser of the nation's centenary celebrations. After Truman stood down, Presley appointed him as Secretary of State and he soon became the power behind the throne of Dixie foreign policy. Because of this, and its lack of enthusiasm, no one really pegged the former B-movie actor with a chance when the bare-knuckle brawl of the succession came. Yet using grass roots stumping campaign outside Government House in Richmond, Murphy has essential carried to the Presidency by an angry mob and defectors in the Presidential guard.
Domestically, Murphy let his rival General Curtis Le May dictate the terms, as new welfare programs were introduced and the power of the State Knights was eroded for the "invisible hand" of the Bureau, hoping that the tensions of Presley years would burn themselves out. Abroad, Murphy carried on with two main priorities of the Dixie Front: relax relations with the North, and removed the reliance on Europe. Mostly successful, he managed to sign with US President Jimmy Stewart, the Lexington Accords which across large parts of the border reduced checkpoints and led to much freer movements of people and trade which has gradually benefited the Dixie economy. He also signed new agreements with the Republic of China and enjoyed receiving Russia's Tsar Vladimir (a keen fan of Murphy's 1945 adaptation of "War and Peace") in 1972.
Though he did not stand for reelection in '73, he did make a political come back in the 1980's when things looked shaky again. Murphy carried on the root laid down by Truman and Presley and is credited as the conduit through which the long shadow of rule by God and Generals was ended. Now a second rate power that keeps mostly to itself, Dixie shows no signs of the dissolution that irked the years of Davis and Forrest - no matter what the recent "Independence" motion in the Texan House of Representatives or Governor Buchanan's Neo-Crusader Movement might say.
