1909 Confederate States Presidential Election (Brothers No More)

Confederate States presidential election, 1909
All 199 electoral votes of the Electoral College; 100 electoral votes needed to win
	Electoral College results
President before election; Thomas E. Watson; People's Agrarian	Elected President ; Lee Slater Overman; Confederate

The Confederate States Presidential Election of 1909, the 9th CS presidential election, took place on November 2, 1909. Confederate Party candidate Lee Slater Overman defeated Farmer's Party candidate Marion Butler and Southern Party candidate Jeff Davis to become the 11th President of the Confederate States.

Background[]

The six years before this election were a time of great political upheaval in the Confederacy. President James D. Richardson was assassinated in 1905, leaving the presidency to the leader of the People's Agrarian Party, Vice President Thomas E. Watson. Watson seized the opportunity to pass many of his progressive policies, though legislative opposition prevented many of his desired reforms from passing. His presidency allowed the People's Agrarian Party to rise in power, winning seats both in local state legislatures and the Confederate Congress. Entering this election, Watson decided not to run for president due to his uncertain eligibility, but was determined to help his party win its first presidential election.

Confederate Party Nomination[]

The Confederate National Convention was held from June 15-20 in Dallas. The convention had to choose between adopting progressive policies into their platform or fully opposing the party which they had worked with just six years before. They chose the latter and nominated Senator Lee Slater Overman of North Carolina for president. Overman was a former Southern Party member and protege of Zebulon Baird Vance, the 1885 Southern Party nominee for president. He switched parties in 1901 due to his opposition to President Benjamin Tillman and won election to the Confederate Senate just two years later. Richmond P. Hobson, a hero of the Spanish-Confederate War and CS Representative from Alabama, was nominated for vice president.

Farmer's Party Nomination[]

The People's Agrarian National Convention was held from June 11-14 in Atlanta. President Watson had a firm control over the party's central apparatus and so was free to essentially choose his successor. His chosen man was Secretary of State Marion Butler, a former senator from North Carolina. The delegates then chose Thomas Gore of Oklahoma for vice president.

Southern Party Nomination[]

The Southern National Convention was held from July 2-6 in Birmingham. The two main candidates were Representative John Sharp Williams of Mississippi and Senator Jeff Davis of Arkansas. Davis was part of the progressive, avidly pro-slavery wing of the Southern Party, and had a fiery personality compared by some to former President Tillman. Williams was a more conventional and moderate Southern Party politician who was also a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. On the second ballot, Davis won the nomination and pledged to return the Confederacy to its "original character." There were some concerns by party elite that Davis would turn voters off due to his similarity to Tillman, and so they specifically asked Tillman not to endorse him publicly.

The Campaign[]

As tends to happen in a three-way presidential race, this was a very heated and fast-moving campaign. Each candidate tried to get as much national exposure as possible, even stooping to bribing newspaper editors to publish their speeches. Each man had a geographical area of strength. Overman was strong in the traditional Confederate strongholds of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Davis was popular in his home state of Arkansas and the bordering states of Mississippi and Louisiana, where he spent much of his time giving speeches and meeting voters. Butler and the progressives were overwhelmingly popular in the states of Oklahoma and Sequoyah, both of which President Watson helped bring into the Confederacy. The main battleground of the campaign was Texas, which was seen as a tossup between all three sides and also possessed the most electoral votes of any state.

Overman ran a more traditional campaign than his two opponents, hoping to present himself as the stable and reliable choice for president. A lot of Confederate messaging for this campaign revolved around the slain President Richardson, as they urged the people to elect Overman to finish what he started. They also reminded the people of Richardson's assassin, a hardcore Southern Party supporter. In their pamphlets, the Southern Party was the party of uncivilized murderers and the Farmer's Party was the party of disruptive charlatans.

Davis made campaign stops around the country, determined to speak in every major city even if he was booed off the stage. He raged against both the "business-backed" Confederates and the "socialist" progressives. He represented the views of many citizens of the time, especially in the Deep South, who felt they had been left behind by modern politics and wished to return to the natural order of the 1870's and 80's. Davis also played off his name, Jefferson Davis, comparing himself to the Confederacy's beloved first president and pledging to return the nation to those simpler times.

Unlike his predecessors, President Watson did a lot of campaigning for Marion Butler. He accompanied Butler to nearly every campaign stop, making clear to his progressive supporters that this was his chosen man for president. Butler himself pledged to carry on Watson's reforms and finish what term limits stopped him from doing. There was a lot of excitement surrounding the progressive campaign, as many voters felt that they had finally found a party that represented their interests over all others. The rapidly improving economy helped this feeling, as well.

Results and Aftermath[]

With the electoral votes divided three ways, no candidate was able to attain a majority. The election was close in almost every state, with the exceptions being Oklahoma, Sequoyah, and Virginia. It was closest in North Carolina, where Overman won by only 0.67 percent over fellow North Carolinian Marion Butler. Butler would have won the election with a majority of votes if he managed to take his home state. Texas was also very close, with Overman winning the state's 30 electoral votes with only 36 percent of the popular vote.

With no winner in the electoral college, the election went to the House of Representatives. The House was still firmly controlled by the Confederate Party, as the newly elected progressives of this election did not take office until February 18. The vote, then, went firmly in favor of Overman, who would go on to be the 11th Confederate President. Overman thus became the second president in Confederate history to win election while losing the popular vote, the other being Alexander H. Stephens in 1879. This election outraged progressive voters and politicians, who saw this as a stolen election that ignored the will of the people. It inspired the Farmer's Party to add another reform to their wish list, as Thomas Watson began advocating for a two-round voting system in the case that no candidate achieved a majority.

Overman would go on to have a quiet term in office, leading the Confederate economy back to a state of normalcy as the European embargo was finally lifted. Pressure would ramp up in the last year of his presidency, as World War I broke out in Europe and the United States entered it in 1915. The president was forced to begin preparing the nation for a potential conflict, though war did not break out until two months after he left office.