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Chains of Consequences: The Obscure Presidential Assassinations – James A. Garfield

I always find it difficult to really get a handle on the late 19th Century Republicans as individuals I have to say.
As EdT observed (about the UK) the 1880s is one of the most politically fascinating periods for politics, which is certainly also true in the USA - as you say, the challenge for us is to bring the characters to life as official accounts can be stuffy. I always appeal to Punch magazine as a way to humanise British politics of the era, and the same is true for America with its counterpart Puck, as well as things like Harper's Weekly, which Wiki has a number of illustrations from.

I do like the illustration Gary got in of Conkling trying to solve the puzzle of balancing the ticket in his favour, which parodies this contemporary popular puzzle game from the late 1870s. Another good one is this Puck illustration showing Grant surrendering the nomination to Garfield, parodying heroic illustrations of Grant accepting Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in the Civil War.

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Just noticed a couple of typoes I've told Gary about. You'd think I would get Blaine's home state right after how many times I mentioned it in The Twilight's Last Gleaming (of course, I knew he was from Maine but my brain copy-pasted from the previous sentence).
 
Just noticed a couple of typoes I've told Gary about. You'd think I would get Blaine's home state right after how many times I mentioned it in The Twilight's Last Gleaming (of course, I knew he was from Maine but my brain copy-pasted from the previous sentence).

If not that then certainly the embarrassment of having part his home state annexed by the British following the Second Mexican War.
 
If not that then certainly the embarrassment of having part his home state annexed by the British following the Second Mexican War.
I was reflecting the other day that my biggest 'Tim Congdon' moment related to TL-191 is I am absolutely convinced on a core level that Calvin Coolidge died soon after his election and was succeeded by his VP Herbert Hoover, to the point that I double taked at @Lord Roem mentioning something about what Coolidge wrote about being retired from the presidency.
 
Which is better than late 19th Democrats which can be summed up as two individuals, a non-consecutive one and a perennial one.
It's not all about the presidency!

Bryan (and what he represented) really represents a sea change in the character of the Democrats and ensured they would be more than just the party of "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" in the future, so I tend to mentally subdivide the eras here. The 1880s are more what I associate with the Gilded Age, the time when the middle bit of the US electoral map is still mostly greyed-out territories so the silverite vote isn't as important yet.
 
Yeah, but, well, the Democrats who are not Cleveland (and mayyyyyyybe Tilden) are the Redeemers perpetrating horribleness.
There are some exceptions, but yeah.

It definitely feels that at times of Democratic nadir from the Civil War to the 1960s, the choices were "someone from New York, maybe Ohio at most, or a Southern Lost Causer Who 'Won' A Rigged Election". Which is why America and the world kind of lucked out that FDR had won the rather close New York gubernatorial election in 1928, or who knows who they could possibly have run in 1932 when basically anyone would have beat Hoover? Al Smith again? I feel that's an under-explored POD.
 
Most tragic thing about all this, of course, is losing this glorious beard for whatever the hell it is Arthur is attempting.
 
The thing I always remember about Chester Arthur apart from the obvious is that his grandson Chester Arthur III was a constantly skint bisexual astrologist/sexologist/LGB liberation activist who was associated with several other better-known LGB liberationists in mid-twentieth century California.

Constantly skint because his father Chester Arthur II was apparently a complete waste of space who burned through all of that Port of New York money.

EDIT: Did I mention he was associated with the IRA? Because he was totally associated with the IRA, too.
 
The thing I always remember about Chester Arthur apart from the obvious is that his grandson Chester Arthur III was a constantly skint bisexual astrologist/sexologist/LGB liberation activist who was associated with several other better-known LGB liberationists in mid-twentieth century California.

Constantly skint because his father Chester Arthur II was apparently a complete waste of space who burned through all of that Port of New York money.

EDIT: Did I mention he was associated with the IRA? Because he was totally associated with the IRA, too.
Reading more and more about him and he seems to have been specifically grown in a lab to be the most attractive man possible to me. He apparently was also a major backer of Upton Sinclair??? And starred in this 1930 film about interracial relationships with Paul Robeson??? He’s like a woke Forrest Gump.
 
Reading more and more about him and he seems to have been specifically grown in a lab to be the most attractive man possible to me. He apparently was also a major backer of Upton Sinclair??? And starred in this 1930 film about interracial relationships with Paul Robeson??? He’s like a woke Forrest Gump.
That's cool. My knowledge pretty much extends to what I said above.
 
Reading more and more about him and he seems to have been specifically grown in a lab to be the most attractive man possible to me. He apparently was also a major backer of Upton Sinclair??? And starred in this 1930 film about interracial relationships with Paul Robeson??? He’s like a woke Forrest Gump.
It gets better. It turns out he was also a massive fan of Edward Carpenter (the Gay Vegetarian Socialist Poet who was a partial inspiration for Maurice) and the two met repeatedly and Arthur may have had sex with him or Carpenter became a strong Political & Sexual mentor of sorts. Oh and Carpenter was the one who told Arthur about Walt Whitman's sex life and how Whitman was probably Bi.

Well guess I have a new candidate for a cool Socialist President then.

Edit: Arthur wrote about having sex with Carpenter in a letter to Allen Ginsburg, this just gets better!
 
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