Josiah Marks (Napoleon's World)

Josiah Robert Marks (11/23/1829-3/7/1907) was the 15th President of the United States of America, serving between 1873-1881. He was known as the "Great Negotiator" due to his pushing of Southern states to adopt a more gradual approach to disabling slavery in the wake of the Compromise of 1868. He was regarded as one of the keenest politicians of his day and is often cited among Democrats, especially Southern Democrats, as one of the first great leaders of their party.

Besides the Presidency, Marks was one of the most notable members of the Marks political family from the South, serving as the Governor of Florida from 1859-61, 1865-69, and 1871-73. He was also a professional lawyer, served as a judge in Florida on three separate occasions, including a stint on the state's Supreme Court, and later in life was the United States Ambassador to Colombia.

Marks is often cited as the "First Great Southerner," "the Compassionate Emancipator," or "the First Liberal." Many modern Democrats shy away from celebrating Marks, as his plan to disable slavery was built largely on guarantees to Southern elites that the new economic system would be designed on a more efficient model of exploitation than before. Still, he is often granted the same credit as George Adams and Horatio Seymour in avoiding a civil war, and for his intelligent and cautioned approach to foreign policy.

Election of 1872
In 1872, incumbent President Peter Bryce declined to run for office, leading to a groundswell of debate over who should be his replacement in the National Party's pro-military camp and the Nationalist anti-military camp. Meanwhile, the Southern-based Democrats rallied around Josiah Marks, who was initially reluctant to run but eventually acquised and allowed his name be submitted at the 1872 convention on the second ballot. He selected John C. Addison, a powerful New Jersey Senator and former Lutheran minister, to be his running mate.

The Nationalists eventually had an insurgency from within their own party, declining to nominate popular New York politician Samuel Tilden in favor of career soldier James Arthur Stennis, who had never held elected office and who ran an extremely lackluster campaign. Marks defeated Stennis resoundly, carrying 90% of the popular vote in the South and capturing a bevy of traditional Nationalist strongholds, including Indiana, Ohio and Huron, as well as trouncing the Stennis-Cox ticket in battleground states such as New York, New Jersey and Aroostook.

Domestic Policy and "Southern Abolition"
The election of a Southern politician, especially by such a wide margin, suggested that the critical issue entering the 1870's would be the implementation of the deconstruction of slavery agreed upon in the controversial Compromise of 1868 as well as the expanding role of military officers in the United States government. Marks was notably anti-military, having never served in the army and believing that the alarming growth of the army since the early 1860's, and especially since the Military Act of 1871, would lead to a military coup. Marks' role as the first Southern President since the shortlived tenure of Zachary Taylor led him to be called the "Hero of the South" and much attention was afforded towards how he would move forward, especially with Nationalists in control of Congress.

Marks disappointed a number of powerful Southerners when he announced that he had no intentions of working to repeal the Compromise of 1868, which he knew was a political impossibility with the powerful National Party in control of government. He also, however, ended whispers of a possible Southern secession, and he began working in secret on a plan for what he was terming "Southern Abolition."

In the north, however, the abolitionist frenzy had grown to such a fury that the election of a Southerner, especially one who still admitedly owned slaves, was seen as unacceptable. Abolitionist John Brown began a campaign called "Free America or No America," and encouraged his supporters to assassinate Marks. In fact, gunmen opened fire on Marks' carriage when he visited Philadelphia in 1873 and only a month thereafter, a team of assassins were fought off by Marks' personal bodyguards at a hotel he was staying at in Albany. A number of abolitionist politicians gathered in Yorktown, Huron in January of 1874 to discuss a potential secession of northern states to form a new country. As Yorktown Convention leader James Ramsay put it, "Let them have their slaves, and let us have none of them!" It appeared, barely a year into Marks' Presidency, that the secession crisis was brewing again for the complete opposite reasons.

Marks, who had discussed with influential General Abraham Lincoln and several top Southern officers a law that would curtail the powers of the military and end the "armed state of violence" Marks feared the current climate had created, realized that he was caught in an unenviable position. He could either cut the Northern-dominated military in half, as he had promised in his campaign, and leave the country susceptible to civil war and potentially an invasion from Canada, or he could expand the military and make a show of force, as President Stephen Douglas had done a decade prior during the Secession Crisis, in return for reneging on his goals and expanding the military's powers.

Marks reluctantly opted for the second option and passed the Executive Order of 1874, making Lincoln the General-in-Chief of the United States Army and adding 75,000 soldiers to the United States Army. The Yorktown Convention's plans fizzled and sputtered shortly thereafter, especially after the prominent Northern officers they needed support from boycotted their measures. Marks travelled to Boston that summer to give a stirring address later known as the Marks Doctrine, in which he outlined many of the ideals of the United States and how they would be implemented in the deconstruction of slavery.

In fact, Southern Abolition was a very delicate process that Marks himself had to cut a number of deals with Southern Governors who despised the federal government to implement. Many of his plans involved a tacit support of plans to maintain "anti-colored laws" in the South that applied to freedmen throughout the country, and Marks had unofficial agreements with a bevy of Southern leaders, both Democratic and Nationalist, to veto any legislation passed through Congress that would combat laws designed to assist freedmen. In turn, Marks also sought out many of the Nationlists who opposed him at his election and negotiated a structured plan to abolish slavery through the states, not through the federal government, arguing that it was and always would be a matter of the right of the state. He signed a letter that he circulated to every Nationalist member of Congress in 1875 vowing to respect the Compromise of 1868 and to help them abolish the institution, if they in turn agreed to a policy of "zero interference" with freedmen in the South. Marks famously told Nationalist Senator Charles Wright, "I'll give you your abolition if you give me my freedmen."

Although the policies Marks knowingly turned a blind eye to would cause a system of segregation and racial tension throughout the South until the 1940's and 1950's, and racial disparity into the 1980's, he was one of the few Southerners to adapt a pragmatic approach to the dying institution of slavery and tear it apart with a means acceptable to the entrenched Southern gentry.