The Lost World

[Хahar 🤔]

In 1896, for the first time in twenty years, actual ideological differences separated the two major-party candidates for President of the United States. As a result, the campaign was more hotly contested than ever. It was to their dismay, then, that industrialists rose on November 4, 1896 to see that the election the day before had produced the following results:

William Jennings Bryan: 236 EV, 50.8%
William McKinley: 201 EV, 46.1%

As was expected, Bryan won the West and South, but it was his victory in McKinley's home state of Ohio that pulled him through. Industrialists feared what would come, as for the first time the corporatist order had a challenger in the White House.

[rzd2255]

Sounds promising.....Don't stop.

[Хahar 🤔]

The new President faced a Republican-dominated Congress: 44 of 90 Senators and 206 of 357 Representatives were Republicans, and many Democrats held right-wing sympathies. Nonetheless, public pressure to enact the policy of bimetallism that Bryan championed grew, until Congress on January 16 enacted the Coinage Act of 1898, allowing silver to be coined at market rates.

Three days later, a group of soldiers arrived at the White House, seized President Bryan, and put him on an train to Canada, where he arrived the next day. A telegram was sent to every community in the nation. It read, in part:

Today the United States Constitution is temporarily suspended, along with the Supreme Court and Congress. Major General Nelson A. Miles is President of the United States. [...] These measures are taken to save the country from communism and civil war. The military has intervened in the tradition of George Washington to prevent mob rule.

[Mr. Morden]

Wait, why is Bryan already in the White House in January 1897?  Wasn't Inauguration Day in March back then?

[Хahar 🤔]

Typo on my part.

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

This sounds very interesting indeed. Please continue!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wow, a military coup ?

[Yelnoc]

What a twist in the plot, I sure didn't see a military coup coming.