In the early months of 1862, most of the focus in Franklin was not on the upcoming election. Instead, all eyes seemed glued to the debates in Congress over Secretary Powell’s recovery proposals. First, the Upper Louisiana Reorganization Act called for the territory to be split into three territories, each with its own territorial government, with the goal that each territory could likely become a state within the next decade. These new territories were Montana, Metropotamia, and Washingtonia. In tandem with this law was the Oregon Territory Reorganization Act, which would split off the westernmost counties of the territory as the “Territory of Oregon,” which would be fast-tracked for statehood later that year, with the rest of the existing territory becoming the Territory of Clark (named for William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition). These two proposals passed Congress fairly quickly in late January.

What came next was far more attention-getting: The Western Homestead Act. This bill would open up millions of acres of federal land in Montana, Metropotamia, Washingtonia, Clark, and Oregon to settlers to claim virtually for free, provided they lived on the land for at least five years and made improvements. The administration in Franklin hoped that this law would finally help tame the West, allow for an outlet for those in the South who were the most upset at the new post-war order, and disperse and dilute the current concentration they had. Some Democrats and the handful of Republicans from Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Jefferson, and Arkansas balked at the idea of giving the land away for free, especially at a time of economic depression - they argued instead that the land should be sold to help raise money for the federal government, to then in turn help aid war recovery. Federalists and most Democrats, on the other hand, countered that few people would have the money to buy up this land, save wealthy land speculators who would only further drive up the price and prevent westward movement. The votes in both the House and the Senate were close, but in the end, the bill was passed and signed into law by Acting President Brandt on February 10th, 1862.

With these new domestic wins under his belt, Brandt announced on February 19th that he intended to seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. This was welcomed news from most party members; however, a few that had hoped to take on the party’s mantel in November - namely Timothy Hammond, representative from Pennsylvania, and Governor Harrison Bently of Platte - cried foul and challenged the announcement in federal court, arguing that, since Brandt had been in office since 1858, he had served more than half of Hawthorne’s elected term; therefore he was ineligible to run according to Article 3, Section 1, Paragraphs 9 & 10 of the new constitution. Brandt scoffed at the notion and continued to build a campaign while working with his cabinet to further his recovery agenda.

While this case waited to be heard in court, Powell’s next proposal was presented on February 25th: the Southern Land Reappropriation Act. This bill was by far the most controversial of Powell’s proposals. It called for the reallocation of agricultural land in Southern states to assist the freedmen population and poor whites. Specifically, the would-be law stated that any plantation 250 acres or larger or that had held fifteen or more slaves would be seized by the federal government and redistributed by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Every representative from the South balked at the proposal, regardless of party (except, of course, the freedmen-controlled states of Louisiana and Mississippi). This alone was not enough to block the bill, but there was plenty of pushback from Northern Democrats and even a few Federalists (those more aligned with the “traditionalist” wing of the party, not the abolitionist wing). The primary concern for Northerners was the precedent this law would set, empowering the government to seize private property without proper “due process.” In a compromise, the bill was altered to any plantation that was 500 acres or larger or had held twenty-five or more slaves. In the closest vote of any of the Brandt Administration’s recovery acts the Southern Land Law passed (217 to 212 in the House, 29 to 25 in the Senate) and was signed into law by the Acting President on March 15th. The following day, the Federal District Court in Franklin ruled in the Acting President’s favor regarding his presidential bid, a ruling that his opponents appealed. The Supreme Court would decide the issue in May.

In the meantime, Secretary Powell stepped off the national stage for a moment, replaced by Treasury Secretary Moore with his new banking bill. Titled “The United States Central Banking Act,” the proposal would nationalize most of the banking industry. The Second Bank of the United States would be reorganized as the Central Union Bank, and all banks that had more than $2,500 in deposits would be placed under federal control in a series of regional banks that would work in tandem with the CUB. Smaller, local banks would still be allowed to operate but under regulation from the federal government, as dictated by Congress and the CUB. The law also stated that the national government would insure all deposits of up to $250 in smaller banks and up to $500 in federally controlled banks. This bill was also hotly debated, though it would pass with a slightly higher margin - 230 votes to 199 votes in the House and 33 to 21 in the Senate. The acting president signed the Central Banking Act at a special ceremony at the Franklin headquarters of the Second Bank of the United States on April 10th.

The following week, Ulysses Portman announced that he was willing to be considered for the Federalist candidate for the presidency. This came a few days after Upton Ellsworth, who had served as the largely ceremonial president of the Confederation, announced that he did not want to be considered for the ticket. Although a few other party members had announced interest in being considered by their fellow Federalists, most commentators in the press saw Portman as a shoe-in and the only leader in the party with any chance of winning nationally against Brandt.

The following month, Acting Secretary Yates announced that his office, in conjunction with the British Foreign Ministry, had selected the sites for two of the three naval bases promised to the United Kingdom in the recent treaty. The first would be approximately 150 acres on the lower west side of ruined Manhattan. This essentially recognized a defacto situation, as the Royal Navy had set up a semi-temporary base of operations there as part of their cooperation with the Confederal Navy during the war, on land that had been vacated after earlier fighting. The second base would be in Savannah, Georgia, where the British and Confederal forces had landed in 1860 as part of the March on Atlanta. The final location was still being determined, but the Exterior Department indicated that it would likely be somewhere in Florida.

Then, on May 20th, the Supreme Court announced, in a 4 to 3 ruling, that Brandt would be eligible to run for the upcoming election. The justices argued that Article III, Section 1, Paragraphs 9 & 10, which had been argued by the plaintiffs would disqualify Brandt, would not apply in this case since Brandt had technically not assumed his position under the provisions of that document. Furthermore, they accepted the argument that Brandt had only been serving as acting president and doing so under the emergency declared by the Free State Congress. Hammond and Bently and their supporters lambasted the decision in the press but quickly shifted gears to prepare for a convention fight, trying to find enough potential delegates that might support keeping Brandt from the nomination.

An assassin's bullet nearly upended the entire election process on July 4th, however. Brandt and Portman, seen as two heroes of biggest heroes of the recent war, jointly hosted an Independence Day celebration in President’s Square in front of Washington House. A disgruntled former Union Army officer from Alabama named Horatio Plinth approached the two leaders at the receiving line in front of the presidential mansion as they were greeting attendees and opened fire. Luckily, a bystander saw Plinth pull out his weapon and lunged at him, striking his arm just as he pulled the trigger. The shot missed both Brandt and Portman and harmlessly hit the wall of Washington House, and the crowd subdued the would-be assassin. Army guards quickly swept in and apprehended Plinth, whose trial later that year would only be eclipsed by the upcoming election. In the many years since, writers have written countless stories about what would have happened if Plinth had managed to take down Brandt, or Portman, or both (which had been his intent, as he later admitted to in court).

The following week, in what was seen by many as a reaction to this attack, Congress passed the controversial Anti-Slaver Penalty Law, which stated that all former officials of the Hawthorne government, including southern congressmen, in addition to any person who had owned slaves, would be barred from holding federal office or from participating in federal elections. This was the most controversial bill considered by the so-called “Reconstruction Congress,” with nearly a week of boisterous debate in both chambers. Members of all parties voiced their objections, especially to the provision that all former Southern congressmen - some of whom were serving in the current legislature - would be barred from holding office. When the question was called, 215 members of the House voted in favor, with 214 against, with 28 senators in favor, 26 against. Brandt, who had kept silent during the debate, shocked some observers when he announced his veto of the law on July 18th. This was not, however, the last time this issue would be raised before the upcoming election.

Three days later, a much less controversial bill passed Congress: the statehood act for Oregon. The territory held its constitutional convention back in March, and it would have submitted its request to Congress in the spring but was held up over a debate on where to place the state’s capital. The territorial capital had been at Astoria, the thriving port at the mouth of the Columbia River. However, some Oregonians had fought to move the capitol to New Boston, located at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. Supporters of both cities bickered for weeks before a compromise was reached - follow the national example and build a new capital further inland to encourage settlement. Thus, surveyors spent weeks looking for suitable sites along the Willamette River, far upstream from New Boston, ultimately settling on the hamlet of Smeadston, at a bend in the river about 70 miles south of where the Willamette and Columbia join together. The settlement was renamed Willametta, and the territorial legislature began working with architects and engineers on plans to turn the small village into the new capital.

Oregon’s statehood process is also a milestone, as it is the first state to draft a new constitution in the wake of the new national constitution. As such, it adopted several of the new changes, including a defined executive cabinet with a legislative liaison position, as well as adopting a single six-year term for governor. The new constitution also set up six “native counties” administered primarily by local tribes. However, this was not the only state to see new innovations in their local constitutions by this time. During the war, four of the Confederal States - Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maine - adopted what was considered at the time more radical changes, essentially mimicking the Confederal constitution with a unicameral legislature, whose leader became their state’s head of government. In two of those states - Massachusetts and Connecticut - they got rid of a separate head-of-state figure (governor) and had the head of their legislature serve as both heads of state and government. There were some legal challenges early in 1861 and 1862 after the adoption of the new federal constitution, about whether or not these state governments violated Article 5, Section 5, guaranteeing a “republican form of government.” The Supreme Court ultimately upheld these “alternative” constitutions in June of 1862, which eventually paved the way for states to experiment more variedly in the years that followed. The key requirement that the court pointed out was that as long as the rights of citizens that were guaranteed in the federal constitution were not being violated, and as long as leaders in the state were elected by the citizens in a free and fair manner, the exact structure of such a government did not matter. It did not have to mimic the national model.

On July 28th, 1862, the Democratic Party’s National Convention opened up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with hundreds of delegates from across the country. Although the betting odds for the nominee heavily favored Hugo Brandt, Timothy Hammond and Harrison Bently had been working hard to try and challenge the frontrunner, ultimately deciding on having Bently be the challenger, with Hammond the vice presidential candidate should Bently secure the nomination. Brandt promised party delegates - and voters at large - that he would not only continue his current agenda of trying to encourage westward expansion and to try and reintegrate the nation but that he would expand upon his existing efforts. He wanted massive railway expansions to the West, saying that by 1870, he wanted statehood on the horizon for most of what had been the Upper Louisiana Territory. With regards to the South, Brandt praised the efforts at getting the freedmen land and helping agriculture recover to pre-war standards and defended the decisions to punish the larger slave owners. Bently and Hammond, meanwhile, charged that the acting president was “ruling with an iron fist” and decried how the Southerners were being treated. They also criticized the Yates Treaty, saying that Brandt should not have promised so much to the British. The convention saw a lot of heated debate, but ultimately, the Bently/Hammond faction only ever amounted to about a fourth of the delegate total, and on July 31st, the Democratic Party voted to make Hugo Brandt their candidate. As his running mate, Brandt had had two leading candidates in mind, as his own Acting Vice President, Andrew Temple of Iowa, had announced he wished to retire. The first was Indiana Senator Abraham Lincoln, who had presided over the constitutional convention and who had been an ardent abolitionist and supporter of the Free State government during the war. The second was Cassius Clay, a popular representative from Kentucky who helped organize Kentuckian resistance to Hawthorne when the former president had placed the state under military occupation after it had made moves to join the Free States. After two rounds of balloting, Lincoln withdrew his name from consideration, giving the nomination to Clay. Lincoln later wrote a friend about this decision: "The party ticket needed a Northerner and a Southerner, and Clay - the planter-turned-abolitionist - would be a powerful symbol for the country should he win.”

Two weeks later, the Federalist Party assembled for their national convention in Hartford, Connecticut. Although their stronghold remained New England, they had a rapidly growing base in Louisiana and Mississippi among the freedmen population. The famous “Commander” Joshua Back, who’d led the slave revolt that had turned into the New Africa Republic, had joined the party and gave a very moving address praising the Federalists for their steadfast support of abolition and legal equality. There had been some discussion of trying to draft Black as Portman’s running mate, but this did not gain much traction. While many in the party liked the idea, they believed the country was not quite ready to have a former slave serving in the republic’s second-highest office. Ultimately, Ulysses Portman was nominated as his party’s presidential candidate (the second time he’d received such an honor), and Pennsylvania Senator Thaddeus Stevens was nominated as his running mate.

At the end of August, the battered and diminished Republican Party gathered in Richmond for their convention. There were open discussions about whether or not the party should even have a nominee running for the presidency, as there was almost no chance they would win. Virginia Governor Peter Doyle, who had successfully negotiated a separate peace with the Free States and saved his state from military occupation, was adamant that the party must continue and could not slink into the shadows. They should repudiate the excesses of the Hawthorne regime while fighting to protect the doctrine of States’ Rights and try to check Democratic and Federalist overreach wherever possible. He pointed to the successful lobbying that helped derail the controversial Anti-Slaver law the previous month as an example of the “positive good” his party could do. Doyle would ultimately be nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, with Orville Kent, a representative from Jefferson, as his running mate.

September 1862 was a busy month for the United States. First, statehood bills for both Kanasaw and Gigadhoi were presented to Congress and would draw much more debate and delay than the bill for Oregon had in July. Both territories had worked in tandem to draw up near-identical constitutions that would, they hoped, balance the guarantee of “republican governance” with a desire to preserve Native traditions and sovereignty. Both states would create bicameral legislature, with the lower house being called the General Assembly and elected by all citizens. The upper house was called the Council of Nations, with representatives chosen by the various tribes within their territories. A governor would head each state and preside over an Executive Council consisting of the elected governor, the elected chiefs of each Native nation, and the appointed heads of the executive departments. The council would have the power to override the governor's actions, similar to the federal cabinet’s power in the 1861 constitution. Both states would set up land trusts that would govern land use within the territory, managing land leases and resource use on behalf of the people. Each tribe in the state would have designated “homelands,” where they would govern directly. Land was also set aside as belonging to the whole state, which would be governed directly by the state (and would be the areas where white settlement would be more encouraged). There was some pushback, especially from congressmen representing Virginia and the Carolinas, as well as Jefferson and Arkansas. The biggest complaints were about the potential for limiting where people could and could not live (even though both constitutions guaranteed freedom of movement and residency) and the boundaries of Gigadohi. Officially, the boundaries of the territory had been kept as the pre-war boundaries of the Native Nations District.

However, since early 1860, the government of what had become Gigadohi had controlled not only the old native district but also the land directly to the west, all the way to the Mississippi River. Complaints were made, but since the freedmen had taken over the government of Mississippi after the war, they had been willing to allow the Natives to have this additional land. As such, their statehood proposal included it. Prominent Native leaders, including now-Governor Watie of Gigadohi and the head of the Choctaw Nation, Peter Hatchootucknee Pitchlynn, came to Franklin to personally advocate for the passage of these statehood bills. The vote was called for both states on September 15th. For Kanasaw, the final tally in the House was 401 to 28 in favor and 45 to 9 in favor in the Senate. For Gigadohi, there was more pushback, and final approval came at 372 to 57 in the House and 40 to 14 in the Senate. Both states officially entered the Union on September 16th.

The other major political drama in September 1862 was the introduction of a revised Anti-Slaver bill. Unlike the previous version in July, this one did not ban anyone from voting, just from holding federal office. On top of that, the groups barred from federal office were more limited: members of the Hawthorne administration, officers in the Union Army who had been convicted of committing atrocities against civilians during the war, and any person who had owned twenty or more slaves. This revised legislation still met opposition in Congress, but it was more muted compared to the debates from the summer and with far fewer Northern detractors. The House voted on September 22nd, with 299 representatives in favor and 130 opposed. The next day, the Senate also approved the law, with 38 senators voting in the affirmative, 16 against. Acting President Brandt signed the bill into law on September 25th, and we now know that, according to his journals, he originally planned on vetoing the bill but was persuaded to sign the law by several cabinet members.

The final weeks before the election saw a flurry of activity from candidate surrogates across the country, making speeches on behalf of Brandt and Portmand (and even a few for Doyle). Then, on October 10th, the last bit of controversy before the vote occurred in Mississippi, where the freedmen-controlled state legislature passed a law that barred all former slave owners and any official from the pre-war government from voting or holding office in the state. Joshua Black, now governor of Mississippi, promptly signed the proposal into law, proclaiming it “the beginnings of justice.” The courts, however, had other ideas. Within days of the signing, several newly disenfranchised citizens took the state government to court over the law, stating that it violated Article I of the new federal constitution. The federal district court would rule in the plaintiff’s favor and put a hold on the law until the appeals process was complete. This outraged many freedmen across the country and ultimately laid the groundwork for one of the most consequential Supreme Court rulings of the 19th Century.

On November 4th, 1862, American voters went to the polls to elect their next president for the first time since the end of the war. On most people’s minds was that the last presidential election had led directly or indirectly to the recent conflict. The citizenry hoped that such tragedy would not be easily repeated. In the electoral college, there were 490 votes up for grabs, meaning that the candidates needed 246 votes to win. When the results were announced on November 17th, Brandt had 255 electoral votes, Portman had 178 electoral votes, and Doyle had 57 electoral votes (all of them from the South save one of Oregon’s three electoral votes). This rather closely mirrored the popular vote as well. Over 5 million people voted. 54.76% of the votes went to Brandt, 37.62% to Portman, and 7.62% to Doyle. In Congress, Brandt’s party would be just shy of 50% of the seats in both houses, requiring the Democrats to work with either the Federalists or Republicans on certain issues. In the House, the Democrats had 202 out of 430 seats, the Federalists had 154, and the Republicans had 74. In the Senate, the Democrats had 28 out of 60 seats, the Federalists had 18, and the Republicans had 14.

In the final weeks of 1862, as the country began to look ahead to the coming year, the inauguration of Brandt as the fourteenth president, and the prospect of finally putting the War Between the States in the past and beginning to build America’s future, the president-elect made a surprising announcement. Just three days after the results of the Electoral College were announced, Brandt released a statement that he intended to nominate Ulysses Portman as his new Exterior Secretary in a gesture of goodwill and reconciliation. Some thought that the former Confederal leader might turn down the offer, not wanting to serve in the cabinet of his political opponent. Portman, however, saw this as a perfect opportunity to continue to serve his country and told the press that he would be happy to serve in the Presidnet-elect’s cabinet should the House approve his appointment.