As governor, he would champion expanded infrastructure (like many states, Pennsylvania had established its own “State Bureau of Improvements” in the 1850s, and Fleak sought to extend this office and build more state-funded roads and railways to complement the portions of the national network that passed through his home state), in addition to pushing for more acceptance for unions. In 1896, Pennsylvania established one of the first state-level Arbitration Boards, which sought to find fair deals between union members and their employers. Although some criticized the board as being too pro-capital, it was nevertheless a major step for progressives of the era.

The decision to run for the 1898 election had been a reluctant one, according to family, as Fleak had enjoyed his time in state politics and his six years as senator, but had been eyeing retirement. However, he and several of his state and national party allies believed that, while the reforms Beck had instituted were necessary, they needed to be tempered. They feared that if another Reform Progressive might be too hard a sell to the country, handing the office to a Democrat that might try to reverse some of Beck’s improvements. He announced in December of 1897 that he would run, and by April of 1898, he had secured the largest share of delegates through the party's primary system. After the perfunctory first ballot at the party convention that summer, delegates quickly shifted their support, and Fleak won the party nomination on the fourth ballot. His subsequent win in November seemed to validate his convictions: the country liked the progressive direction the Federalists were selling, but wanted this in manageable stages, not at breakneck speeds.

In his inaugural address on March 4th, 1899, President Fleak praised his predecessor and promised to maintain the progress achieved over the past six years. He promised to support women as they worked to secure the passage of the Third Amendment (which was still six states shy of ratification at the time), and to work to help balance the needs of labor and capital in a way that would benefit the whole nation. Newspapermen covering the speech called it sound but unremarkable, which would, in many ways, come to encapsulate Fleak’s time in Washington House.

Within weeks of taking up residence in Washington House, the president announced an expansive infrastructure bill that his administration would champion in Congress. It called for extensions or upgrades on most of the existing National Roads. Most notably, the president sought extensions of these federal routes to connect more with Canada, Texas, and California. At the time, only the 11th National Road in Oregon had been built with foreign connection points. President Fleak and his Transportation Secretary, Andrew Jameson, sought similar extensions for the 2nd, 4th, 9th, and 10th National Roads, as well as the creation of the “12th National Road” to link Prosperity, Jefferson, with Texas. The plan also called for more paving of the National Roads, in particular in regions where there was a denser population and thus more use of the emerging motorcarriage technology, popularized by the Lowery Steammobile Company and it’s various competitors, like Henderson Steam Motors, Doughty Automobiles (which was experimenting with electric battery vehicles in several cities), and Oststein Motorwerks (an import from the Texas Federation, and experimenting in gasoline-powered internal combustion engines). While still a novelty in rural areas, motorized, self-propelled carriages were becoming increasingly common in several major urban areas, and many municipalities began enacting special laws to govern them.

Like all such infrastructure plans, the 1899 bill also included provisions for the federal rail network. All National Road expansions and connections included matching rail lines. This bill also called for major upgrades and repairs, again with a special focus on urban areas that had seen significant growth and needed new or expanded facilities to handle it properly. The USRC would receive a major boost in investment for new rolling stock as well, to start phasing out the cars that had largely been in service since shortly after the War Between the States. Additionally, and for the first time, the new infrastructure bill provided funds to municipalities that wanted to build streetcar systems and what the government called “urban trains,” smaller lines that could connect cities and towns that were closer together. Of all the provisions in the bill, this caused the most debate, as representatives from rural districts complained that the government was disproportionately allocating funds to urban areas at the expense of rural citizens. The bill would ultimately pass in May, but because of its urban focus, it was a close vote and would be something Congressional Democrats and Republicans could rally behind in the midterms in 1900 and 1902.

As Congress debated the infrastructure bill, national attention was pulled away by foreign developments. Back in February, the King of Bavaria, Maximilian II, had died unexpectedly, leading to a succession crisis - his only son, Prince Albrecht, was ineligible to take the throne due to a morganatic marriage, leaving Maximilian II’s grandson, 12-year-old Prince Louis-Charles, as the heir. The complication was that Louis-Charles was also the son of King Henri VI of France and his wife, Queen Adelheid, the daughter of the late King Maximilian II. While most Bavarians were open or even happy with the idea of a joint crown between Bavaria and France, the Hohenzollern leaders of the Union of German States balked at this expansion of French power.

Tension over the ascension of Louis-Charles as King of Bavaria, with his uncle Albrecht as regent, continued to build, with threats and diplomatic pressure coming from the Prussian-led Union of German States, while the South-German Confederation and Austria backed the succession. Then, on April 26, tragedy struck. During a visit of the young King to Munich with his mother, a bomb was thrown at the royal procession. The blast killed Louis-Charles and wounded both Queen Adelheid and Prince Albrecht. The bomb-thrower, Johann Reiber, was a member of several radical communalist organizations. However, under interrogation, he supposedly claimed he had been hired to carry out the attack by some unknown contacts in Prussian-dominated Frankfurt. The Bavarians and French loudly announced this information, making the bold claim that the attack on Louis-Charles had come from Prussia. Demands and counter-demands flew quickly from Paris and Berlin, and by early May, war had broken out, with France, South Germany, and Austria fighting against the Union of German States.

America had sympathizers for both sides of the conflict, and President Fleak declared early on that the United States would remain strictly neutral. He worked with Secretary General David Helms - the first black man to hold that post - along with party allies in Congress, to pass the Neutral Commerce Act in August, forbidding any US Company from selling arms and munitions to “any country at war while the United States remains neutral.” There was grumbling from the business sector, but Fleak and most Federalists believed it was important to keep the country from being dragged into any foreign conflict. Officially, Fleak said that this law was totally aimed at the growing fight between the French and Prussian alliances, but privately, Fleak was growing worried about getting dragged into a conflict that might be brewing within the British Empire.

In 1899, the British Liberal Party lost that year’s election, and Liberal leader Henry Rhodes was replaced as Prime Minister by Tory leader Jonathan Oswald, who had previously held the post from 1884 to 1896. Oswald was vehemently opposed to any devolution of power in Ireland, which had been increasingly demanding some form of home rule. Additionally, there were growing signs of strain in British India and in the Far East, where Britain had considerable stakes in both China and Japan. President Fleak and both his Secretary of the Exterior, Joshua DeCamp, and his Secretary of War, Christopher Fields, feared that conflict was brewing in the vast realms of Queen Charlotte and hoped they could keep the United States out of it. Peace was their number one goal.

During the fall of 1899, the President began working with his Education Secretary Quentin Hickman to plan what he hoped would be the biggest domestic policy of his presidency. In his private papers, Fleak wrote that he wanted to “modernize the old Preston system and bring it into the Twentieth Century.” Hickman held meetings over the fall and winter of 1899, traveling across the country to meet with teachers, administrators, parents, and state legislators and governors, in an effort to develop a concrete plan for the President’s vision of a modern school system. The result was the Education Acts of 1900.

What the Fleak Administration presented to Congress in the Spring of 1900 was not one bill, but four: The National Curriculum Act (NCA), the Secondary Standards and Completion Act (SSCA), the Technical and Industrial Education Act (TIEA), and the National Normal School Act (NNSA). The NCA would establish a national “core curriculum” to ensure that all American schoolchildren receive instruction in civics, reading, mathematics, and basic sciences. This law stated that these standards would not be an attempt to micromanage schools, but rather to provide guidelines consistent nationwide. The bill would establish the Federal Curriculum Board to help oversee this effort and work with states to achieve coherent implementation. The SSCA mandated that the Department of Education establish an “exit exam” for all secondary school students, to be used for admission to “tertiary” level schools (colleges and universities). Students who passed the exams would receive the “Uniform Secondary Certificate.” The USC would have three levels: basic, satisfactory, and advanced, which would allow students access to different types of tertiary school programs based on their performance. The TIEA established funding to set up (or expand existing) polytechnical schools as part of the tertiary level of the national education system. Lastly, the NNSA would sponsor teacher-preparation schools (or programs at existing schools) with a standardized curriculum to prepare the nation’s teachers.

The president initially expected this package of bills to sail through Congress, but quickly encountered opposition from many Democrats, as well as some Federalists, and united opposition from Republicans. The 29 Social Progressive Alliance members backed the plan, but getting it through Congress required several months of negotiations and promises to back other pet projects from other politicians over the coming year. Finally, in June, the bills were passed, marking the largest overhaul of the American education system since the 1870s.

On July 1st, 1900, the state of Jefferson became the 30th state to ratify the Third Amendment, meeting the required two-thirds majority for implementation. All adult women in the United States now had the right to vote. There were huge celebrations across the country, with many communities marking the occasion in their annual Fourth of July celebrations just days later. Candidates planning on running in the November midterm elections began new outreach strategies to win over female voters, other than some Republicans, who still rejected the notion of women voting, and mostly refused to court them for their support.

Meanwhile, the international situation continued to worsen. Ireland had broken out in revolt against Oswald’s government in London. Although the eastern side of the island remained in British hands, the city of Galway was in rebel control. The Irish Republicans were putting up a valiant fight for independence. At the same time, India saw major street protests calling for home rule under the crown, culminating with the two major nationalist groups, the Indian National Congress and the Indian Reform League, issuing the Amritsar Declaration of Rights on June 10, 1900, calling for, among other things, the creation of the Dominion of India, with a locally elected legislature and the right to governor internal affairs with little interference from London. Finally, internal conflict broke out in China and Japan, both under heavy influence from London, which drew still further attention for British resources. The Empire was stretched thin and would not be able to hold things together for long.

In Europe, the conflict between the Prussian and French alliances had stalled, with massive trench lines forming across the main front between the two blocs. The American press followed the movement (or lack thereof) with interest, especially as each side began deploying new weapons. The machine gun terrified everyone who heard of its destructive force. The Prussians began deploying early-model airships, first for scouting, but by mid-1900, they’d been used to drop bombs - still more of a terror weapon than something that caused massive destruction, but this still made headlines. An end to the conflict seemed elusive, and would remain so for the next several years.

In the November 1900 elections, the Federalists managed to maintain their majority in Congress, but some slips concerned party insiders. In particular, many seats that had seemed safely in the party’s control had gone to members of the Social Progressive Alliance. The Republicans also did poorly in many areas outside the Coastal South, helping offset some of the Federalist losses. Speaker of the House Jonathan Blomberg retained his position, as did Secretary General David Helms. Of more important note, the number of women in the House went from two (Vivian Hemsworth of Massachusetts, who’d been in Congress since 1893, and Amanda Compton of the District of Manhattan, who’d been elected in 1898), to 15. Of those, three were SPA members, the rest were Federalists.

The state of Virginia caught national attention for a law passed in September of 1900 titled “An Act to Promote and Protect Civic Harmony,” known by most simply as the Harmony Law. The language in the bill sounded harmless enough, claiming to “promote the peace, comfort, and mutual respect of all citizens by authorizing communities to provide separate and appropriate facilities for the public convenience and education of distinct civil distinctions recognized within this Commonwealth.” The vague-sounding “civil distinctions” was then defined as the “social conditions, heritages, or communities of habit as are generally recognized within the Commonwealth.” All of this bland, bureaucratic language amounted to legalizing the segregation of whites and blacks in public life across the state. Since the 1870s, communities in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia had enacted various local statutes that brought about some degree of racial separation, but it was always piecemeal, and there was on-and-off pressure from the federal government to curtail such action. The 1900 law in Virginia was the first time a state attempted to enact a uniform code for such practices. In early 1901, the rest of the Coastal South mimicked the Virginia law, triggering loud outrage from other parts of the country - both from black-dominated regions like Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, but also from progressive strongholds in New England. President Fleak himself claimed the law was “an affront to liberty, and to the legacy of those who fought and died in the War to save the Union.” It would take some time, but by 1902, the “Harmony Laws” would be in federal court, as various groups challenged their constitutionality.

While the attorney general and the Justice Department looked into the shenanigans in the South, the Administration’s attention again turned to a major campaign promise: a federal-level arbitration bureau that would work with unions and capital to resolve labor disputes. President Beck had been able to get Congress to fully legalize workers’ rights to organize in 1898, but many companies were still dragging their feet in negotiating with the unions. Fleak sought to change that.

The Federal Arbitration Bureau Act, introduced in March 1901, established an office within the Department of the Interior empowered to compel negotiations in industries engaged in interstate commerce or operating under federal charter. Its jurisdiction was limited—small, local employers remained under state authority—but within those boundaries, the law gave the new Bureau real authority. Companies and unions that reached an impasse could be summoned before federal mediators, and firms that refused to participate in good-faith talks faced steep fines or even suspension of federal contracts.

The bill passed after weeks of contentious debate, with Federalists framing it as a matter of “industrial peace” rather than labor politics. Critics on the right denounced it as another step toward bureaucratic meddling—“Franklin’s hand in every workshop,” as one southern Republican complained—warning that fines and federal arbitration would strangle private enterprise. From the left, reformist Federalists and the rising Social Progressive Alliance argued the opposite: that the law lacked real enforcement power and merely papered over exploitation. They renewed calls for the long-delayed Department of Labor, first proposed under Beck but still stalled in committee. To radicals, Fleak’s bureau was “conciliation without justice.” Yet to the president and his allies, it remained a triumph of moderate reform: a mechanism to keep the Republic’s industries running, neither captive to capital nor commandeered by labor—a policy of balance, not passion.

In its first year, the Bureau found itself inundated with petitions, most of which came from the rail and steel sectors. Its earliest success came in the Illinois Rail Dispute of 1901, when a threatened strike by locomotive engineers was averted after Bureau mediators brokered a compromise on a ten-hour workday and a modest wage increase. Both company and union accepted the settlement, and the papers hailed the result as proof that arbitration could replace unrest. But the following spring brought a sobering test. When millworkers in Red River Parish, Louisiana, struck over pay cuts at several sugar refineries, the Bureau declined jurisdiction, ruling that the affected companies operated solely within the state and held no federal charters. The decision, though technically correct, enraged labor leaders and confirmed fears on the left that the FAB’s reach ended exactly where exploitation was most entrenched. To them, the Bureau proved that the government could recognize injustice but had not yet gone far enough to remedy it. Fleak, however, regarded it as vindication: a proof that the Republic could legislate fairness without surrendering to zeal.

With the Arbitration Bureau a going concern, labor debates dropped from the headlines, and Americans turned their attention to the growing field of invention. Across the country, workshops and factories produced new machines that promised faster travel, cleaner power, and broader connectivity. The new century had truly dawned, and Americans approached it with cautious confidence, believing that progress, properly managed, would serve them well. One such invention would be hailed as the “wonder of the century” when it was successfully tested in June of 1901: the first heavier-than-air powered flying machine.

This achievement came not from the great workshops of the East, but from the Arkansas River plain in central Jefferson. On June 14th, 1901, two machinists from the small community of Red Fork - Oscar Vaughn and Levi Harcourt - fitted a lightweight kerosene motor to a canvas-and-wood biplane glider and coaxed it into a brief, steady flight of several hundred feet. The pair worked out of the modest Red Fork Machine Works, supplying engines and parts to the larger industrial city of Andersonville just up the river, and their experiment drew only a handful of onlookers. They called the craft the Prairie Hawk, though they described the achievement as nothing more than “a powered glide.” Local papers dubbed them the Jefferson Airmen, and the story traveled widely enough to draw polite curiosity across the Republic. It would be several years before such “powered glides” would be more than a side-show novelty - the first government officials from Franklin wouldn’t visit Vaughn and Harcourt until 1904 - but looking back, historians point to this moment as the birth of heavier-than-air aviation, and the state of Jefferson proudly claims the moniker “First in Flight.”

While the flight of the Prairie Hawk marked a new stage of previously unimaginable progress in the air, Americans were already well accustomed to the burgeoning progress of “horseless wagons” on the ground. Julius Lowry’s steamers had been a going concern since the 1880s, and by the turn of the century, they were a common sight in most cities and a growing number of smaller towns. Nor were they the only such vehicles on the road. In addition to Lowry’s steamer competitors - The Bell Roadworks Company and the Mercer Steamcarriage Company, among others - the nation’s roads also saw the emergence of “motors,” powered by internal combustion engines and popular in western states and in the Texas Federation, and “autos,” all-electric vehicles popular in the largest cities, where short trips and the easy access to electricity made them practical. In a mere two decades, the self-propelled wagon had gone from a novelty at county fairs to a reliable tool for doctors, postmen, and shopkeepers traveling short distances beyond the reach of streetcars or rail.

To celebrate the growing adoption of this new technology, President Fleak invited Julius Lowry to bring one of his latest model steamers, the Lowry Type-12 “Liberty Cruiser,” to Franklin to be the president’s official conveyance in the annual July 4th Parade in 1902. That morning, the parade took shape at President’s Square, for the regular route up Union Avenue, across the Ohio River, and up to the Congress Hall - a nearly 2-mile journey. The steamer had been kept a secret, hidden inside Washington House’s forecourt. As the parade started, the President and his wife, Marian, stood on the mansion’s north balcony, waving and reviewing the troops. After about 15 minutes, they left the balcony and got aboard the motor-carriage, with Mr. Lowry and his wife, Amanda, and joined the procession northward. Gasps and cheers rang out as the steamer emerged from Washington House with the president, and newspaper photographers captured the moment in a barrage of flash powder. The gasps, gapes, and cheers followed the sight of the president in the motor vehicle all along the route. In the days that followed, newspapers across the country carried the story of the first American president to ride in a motorized carriage. Lowry’s company got a big boost, of course, but to forestall complaints from competitors, there had been other steamers and autos in the parade carrying a few other dignitaries, including Vice President Landon in a model by Mercer, and Transportation Secretary Jameson riding in an auto produced in Franklin by Harper Electro-Motor Company.

A little more than a month later, on August 23rd, 1902, a major crisis erupted in the Caribbean when the USS Philadelphia intercepted a Cuban-based privateer off the coast of South Carolina. The vessel, the SS Belle of Matanzas, carried a significant cache of guns, ammunition, and explosives. Its English-speaking crew made clear that they were drawn from the Southern exile community that had settled around Matanzas Bay after the War Between the States, and that their cargo was intended for anti-Union radicals in the Coastal South.

Federal authorities had long been aware of these small but highly agitated cells calling for Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia to secede from the Union. Their intermittent contact with the exile community in Cuba was likewise known, but the government had generally regarded them as - quoted from an 1894 report - “essentially harmless.” The seizure of the Belle of Matanzas made such assessments appear dangerously naive. The press seized on the episode, demanding that Fleak “do something,” and by “something,” most commentators meant either an American landing in Cuba or a sweeping crackdown on domestic separatist clubs.

Fleak, however, chose restraint. Attorney General Leyton Price opened a formal investigation into the affair and into the radical groups in the Coastal South more broadly, but his inquiry produced little of substance. The Cuban vessel carried no documents identifying who was meant to receive the illicit cargo, and neither Price nor the president supported a mass roundup of groups they continued to regard as fringe and constitutionally protected. Fleak argued privately that such organizations acted as a “vent for discontent” and that suppressing them might provoke the very instability they claimed to fear.

On the question of military action, the administration was adamant. Any intervention in Cuba would mean a direct confrontation with Spain, and Fleak would not authorize such a risk while the European War, now in its fourth year, continued abroad. Although Spain maintained official neutrality, it sympathized with France and was widely believed to be supplying Paris with weapons, ammunition, and credit. “Unless Spain herself strikes at the United States,” Fleak told one visitor, “there will be no war in Cuba while I am in Washington House.” And so the Belle of Matanzas affair dragged on through the fall of 1902, wearing heavily on the president.

Tragedy struck on January 20th, 1903. Just four months shy of his sixty-first birthday, President Fleak collapsed during a meeting with his cabinet. The next morning, newspapers reported that he had suffered a stroke and was “alive, but in critical condition.” Vice President Peter Landon, who had been in Alabama attending to family matters following the death of his elder brother, rushed back to Franklin. There, the cabinet voted to have Landon assume “the basic duties of the presidency” as Acting President.

This action was immediately challenged in court. The Constitution made no explicit provision for an “Acting President”—only for the vice president to succeed fully in the event of a presidential incapacitation, something neither Landon nor the cabinet was prepared to invoke. The question wound its way through the courts, but fate made the matter largely moot. Over the next six weeks, Fleak’s condition alternated between brief rallies and alarming declines, until he slipped into a final coma on March 2nd. Two days later, on March 4th, shortly before one o’clock in the afternoon, President Alexander Fleak died. Church bells across the capital tolled for an hour as flags throughout Franklin were lowered in mourning.

The following day, in a simple and somber ceremony in the House Chamber, Peter Landon took the oath of office, becoming the first Black man to serve as President of the United States. In his brief inaugural remarks, Landon struck a tone of solemn unity. He spoke of the nation’s grief, of President Fleak’s steady example, and of his own intention to follow a path of moderation and restraint. Without overstatement, he acknowledged the symbolic weight of his accession, remarking that public office in the Republic “belongs to all who would uphold the Constitution with diligence and honor.” With that, Peter Landon assumed the presidency, carrying the nation into an uncertain spring.