This issue of infrastructure expansion would get regular attention throughout President Rowling’s tenure in the Washington House. First, the 8th, 9th, and 10 National Roads Act was presented to Congress in July of 1887, to create three of the requested routes: Franklin to St. Augustin via Atlanta, for the 8th National Road; Franklin to Metropolis via Calumet, for the 9th National Road; and St. Louis to Hugosville via Chickasaw, for the 10th National Road. As with the expansions in the 1860s, these new routes would simultaneously have a rail line built with them to serve the USRC service. This bill had broad, multi-partisan support, and overwhelmingly passed Congress on July 19th, 1887, and was signed into law days later by the president. Construction on the routes would start that fall and continue into the 1890s, the last sections being completed in 1901. 

The major companion to this expansion was the National Road International Connections Act, which would be submitted to Congress in May of 1889, which proposed making extensions on several existing routes to connect internationally to Canada, Texas, and California: The 2nd National Road would be extended up from Boston and New York in two separate routes up to Canada, along with connections made at Calumet that would be part of the 9th National Road. The 4th National Road would be extended from New Orleans to the Texas Federation, as would the 7th National Road from Prosperity, in the state of Jefferson. Ambitiously, the act also called for two connections to be made to the Union of Californias, whose frontier with the United States remained very sparsely settled. First, the 10th National Road would be extended from Hugosville to the border with the Province of Colorado and Rococas, California’s largest yet most sparsely populated territory. This route would go from Hugosville to Beacon - the settlement founded by Church of the Third Testament trekkers back in the 1840s on the shores of the Salt Sea - and eventually on down to San Francisco. The second proposed route would be a specially-created “11th National Road” that would go from New Boston, Oregon, south to the border with Alta California, ultimately terminating at San Francisco. This act had provisions for funding to help the USA’s neighbors build some of the connecting infrastructure, though this was mainly for the two California connections, not those with Texas or Canada. The ambitious nature of this project, especially out West, led to months of delays and back and forth in Congress before final approval was given in August of 1889. Exterior Secretary Oliver Newsom would work with Interior Secretary Jonathan Beak to negotiate with Canada, Texas, and California on these projects, something that would carry over into the next administration and still be an ongoing work in progress by the end of the century. 

Another major political issue for the Rowling Administration was that of representation for the Districts of Washington and Manhattan. Neither the Constitution of 1789 nor the Constitution of 1861 had any provision for a “federal district,” and as such, the two jurisdictions had been treated essentially like territories - that is, they were allowed to set up local democratic government (albeit, under a federally-appointed administrator), but had no representation in Congress, nor the ability to vote for president. But, unlike territories, there was no mechanism for these districts to become states.  This issue had largely been ignored when the only district in question had been the District of Washington, home to the nation’s capital and less than 100,000 residents. Since 1880, however, the District of Manhattan, home to well over half a million people, had also existed under this same bureaucratic grey area. Those residents did not like suddenly losing representation in Congress and the ability to vote for president There had been protests to this new status almost immediately - despite having wanted “liberation” from the state government in Albany and a flood of federal funds to help rebuild the city, Manhattanites had assumed that provisions would have been made to preserve their voting rights, something that had not materialized. Several major protests had occurred under the Drake Administration, and one had even helped organize a “sister protest” in Franklin, but to no avail. Drake had responded by saying that if Manhattan wanted those rights, they’d have to return to the state of New York, something the locals did not want to do. 

The Federalist Party had been somewhat split on the issue, with some of the more traditionalist-minded members saying “nothing could be done,” but Rowling and other reformers felt differently. With more attention falling on the city due to the impending completion of the Freedom Triumphant statue, among other federally funded construction projects that were progressing at or ahead of schedule, the Society for Manhattan Voters launched a major protest and lobbying campaign starting in 1889 to try and get Congress and the President to “do something.” Rowling, the constitutional scholar that he was, felt that the best way to solve the issue would be to draft an amendment to fix this oversight. So, working with Secretary General Thorne, Speaker Caldecott, and other leaders from Congress, that’s just what he did. The result was the First Amendment to the Constitution of 1861, released to the public in January of 1890. The proposal formally defined what a “federal district” was, gave each such district 1 senator and at least one representative (with language that would essentially give districts the same sort of population-based representation as states had), gave district citizens the “full rights and protections as enjoyed by the citizens of the several states,” including the right to vote for president, and created a formalized process by which new districts could be established in the future. The proposed amendment was controversial, as many expressed concerns about cities essentially “seceding” from their state, which could affect revenue for state governments, despite the language in the amendment that stated, “No Federal District shall be established from territory within a state without the consent of that state’s legislature.” Debate would drag on for months, but the Amendment finally passed both houses of Congress on July 1st, 1890, allowing President Rowling to proudly mention the progress at the dedication ceremony for the Freedom Triumphant Statue three days later. It would take two more years to get the amendment passed by the requisite 30 out of 39 states to agree, but by the time the 1892 election came around, the citizens of both Franklin and New York City were able to vote for president and send representatives to Congress. 

The matter of women’s suffrage was another major political debate under President Rowling. When he took office, seven states had given women the vote: Washingtonia, Clark, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont. The 1886 Federalist Convention had endorsed “suffrage by state,” but there were those in the party, including at least two members of the Cabinet, in addition to Speaker Caldecot, who supported either federal legislation or possibly even a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote. The President, however, remained reticent to embrace the federal suffrage route, especially after the dragged-out fight over the First Amendment. There was plenty of opposition in Congress, despite having Speaker Caldecott onboard, and not just from the Republicans and conservative Democrats. Thus, a federal suffrage amendment would have to wait a while longer.

That said, the Federalist “state-by-state” strategy did gain ground during Rowling’s tenure. In 1887, the New York State legislature granted women the right to vote, and in the 1888 mid-term elections, New Jersey and Pennsylvania voters passed ballot measures establishing women’s suffrage. The Ohio legislature would do the same in 1889, and the Maine legislature overturned the 1886 failure at the ballot box by granting women the right to vote in 1890. The Brandt legislature followed suit in 1891, and on the 1892 ballot, Oregonians were given the choice to give women the vote, which also passed. Similar attempts were made in Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Louisiana during this time, but failed. By the time President Rowling left office, women in 14 states could vote, which amounted to over a third of the states. Also of note, the 1892 election would see the first woman ever elected to Congress, Vivian Hemsworth, representing one of Boston’s congressional districts.  

President Rowling presided over two unique non-political moments during his presidency. The first was the opening of First Capital Park in Georgetown, Maryland, in August of 1889. This park consisted of the grounds of the original Capitol building in Old Washington City, which the Potomac Preservation Society had acquired in 1883 (the old presidential mansion, however, had been purchased by the Roosevelt Family of New York and had opened as a hotel in 1888). Vice President Young attended the dedication ceremony, which occurred on August 24th, the 7th anniversary of the destruction of the city. The preservationists, working in conjunction with the State of Maryland, had built a modest museum on the north side of the property, a short distance from the ruins themselves, which contained artifacts from the Battle of Washington, architectural drawings for the capital as planned, along with models showing what the building would have looked like if it had been completed and not destroyed. The ruins themselves had been lovingly cleared of any overgrowth, stabilized, and had tasteful landscaping completed around them. What remained of the building were parts of the stone walls of the north and south wings. The central rotunda that would have connected the two wings had not yet been built when the British burned old Washington City, but in the place where it would have been, a plaza had been paved, with a large flag pole in the middle, proudly flying the stars and stripes. 

Almost a year later, on July 4th, 1890, President Rowling himself was present when the Freedom Triumphant statue was dedicated at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The United States Government had constructed a 160-foot stone pedestal at the site of the old Fort Clinton (actually, the fort had been converted into the base of the pedestal), and then the statue, itself 155 feet tall, had been erected on top under the guidance of British engineer Sir Benjamin Baker. The pedestal had been decked out in red, white, and blue bunting, with special grandstands erected to accommodate the crowds. The parkland around the statue (today known as Freedom Park, but then known as Battery Park) was jammed with onlookers, as was the waters of the harbor. The New Yorkers and visitors from farther afield hoped to not only get a glimpse of the president, but also Crown Princess Augusta Charlotte, who came to represent Britain and Canada for the occasion. It was the first time in history a member of the royal family had visited the United States, and it almost became the bigger story than the statue itself.

The official ceremony took place just after sunset. President Rowling’s remarks reflected on thirty years since the end of the War Between the States and the end of slavery, and what it meant to be trying to live out the words of the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal - a point where he also lent a word in favor of women’s equality as well, to the consternation of some. He thanked those veterans, American, Canadian, and British, who had fought for the liberation of New York, and praised New Yorkers for their hard work in rebuilding their city. Following that, Princess Augusta Charlotte, who, in a little over a decade, would become Queen Charlotte II, gave greetings on behalf of her mother, the Queen, and on behalf of Prime Minister Jonathan Oswald of the United Kingdom and of Prime Minister Gregory Kent of Canada. She spoke eloquently of the shared heritage of Britain and the United States, and the prospect of a shared future, and how all three nations stood as guardians of liberty and freedom, which the statue represented. Following her remarks, Alexander Hamilton III, the former administrator of the District of Manhattan and son of the 7th president of the United States, was given the honor of flipping the switch that illuminated the statue’s famous lantern. Moments after that, fireworks erupted over the city. 

The following day, at a reception given by the President and the Governors of New York and New Jersey in Brooklyn, Princess Augusta Charlotte extended a surprise invention to President Rowling: her mother asked that he visit the United Kingdom next year for a formal state visit, where he would be given a reception at Buckingham palace as well as other honors. This invitation was unprecedented and came as a shock to many, including the American and British diplomatic corps. The President accepted the invitation on the spot, and planning was almost immediately put into motion. By the end of the year, Washington House announced that President Rowling would sail on the presidential yacht, the USS. City of Franklin, escorted by a small navy flotilla, in late May of 1891, and spend just over a week in the United Kingdom. There was some concern from the cabinet and members of Congress about the president essentially being absent from the country for a month, but following President Littlefield’s 1880 precedent when he visited Canada, the administration felt that any pressing business of state could be dealt with via telegraph. Vice President Young would also remain in Franklin for the duration of the trip, and Attorney General Wendyle Bennington floated the idea that, if an unprecedented emergency were to arise, the cabinet could vote to authorize the Vice President to serve temporarily as Acting President during such a crisis. This theory, thankfully, went untested but would be the subject of much academic debate for years to come until later amendments could codify what was to be done in the case of presidential incapacitation. 

On May 24th, tens of thousands of people lined the dockside in New York City as President Rowling, his wife Clara, their three adult children and their spouses, and Exterior Secretary Newsom boarded the City of Franklin. The ship and its protective cruisers, the USS Astoria, USS St. Louis, and the USS Boston, set sail late that afternoon for a seven-and-a-half-day journey eastward across the Atlantic. Just after dawn on June 1st, the flotilla entered British waters and was greeted by a welcoming flotilla consisting of the HMS Majestic, the HMS Imperial, the HMS Undaunted, the HMS Alert, and the HMS Daring. The visitors were given a 21-gun salute and escorted to Southampton. Once ashore, the presidential entourage was given a brief welcome by the British Foreign Minister Andrew Lodge and the US Ambassador Peter Yates, and then escorted to the train station, where the official royal train had been sent to escort the Americans to London. Arriving at Charlotte Station in the late afternoon, the President was greeted by Crown Princess Augusta Charlotte and her husband, Prince Wilhelm, before heading to the American Embassy. 

Around noon the following day, President Rowling and his wife were given a formal carriage parade through London from the embassy to Buckingham Palace, with tens of thousands of Londoners lining the street waving US and UK flags, welcoming the American visitors. At the palace, Queen Charlotte I gave Rowling a formal audience, followed by several meetings with senior government officials, before that evening’s official state banquet to welcome the Rowlings to the United Kingdom. The following day, the president and the exterior secretary attended a session of the House of Commons, sitting in the Distinguished Visitors’ Gallery. While there, Prime Minister Oswald presented a formal motion of welcome, which was passed unanimously by the House. That evening, the Prime Minister hosted the American delegation at 10 Downing Street. 

On June 4th, President Rowling was a guest of the Lord Mayor of London, Caden Boxhall, and gave a speech at the Guildhall to assembled dignitaries, including several leading MPs and British businessmen. In his address, the president said:

The following day, Foreign Minister Lodge escorted the Americans around London, with a special visit to the British Museum, a luncheon hosted by the Royal Geographical Society, and an evening reception at the Royal Alexander Hall, where the president met with prominent scientists, artists, and educators. On June 6th, the presidential entourage traveled out to Oxford, where the university awarded him with an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law. While there, he gave an informal address to students on constitutional governance and was feted by the university chancellor. 

The Rowlings were back in London on June 7th, where the president had several meetings with American expat business leaders, more local London elite, and gave an interview with the London Times, before hosting a dinner at the U.S. Embassy. For the official end of the trip, American dignitaries were invited to visit Windsor Castle on June 8th and 9th, where the President and Queen Charlotte I had a longer, more informal meeting, and where the royal family gave a farewell dinner on the 9th. The next day, the President and his party returned to Southampton, where they once again boarded the City of Franklin and began the journey home to the United States. The “British Tour” was hailed as a success by the press on both sides of the Atlantic, followed with keen interest not only by the politically savvy but by many ordinary citizens as well. 

The summer and early fall of 1891 were relatively quiet affairs for the administration, and the president took time to recover from his overseas journey. In his private diaries, he wrote that, while he deeply enjoyed the time in Britain, he absolutely hated the 16 days he spent at sea, and would like to avoid such extended time on water for the remainder of his life, if possible. November, however, delivered a national tragedy. Hugo Brandt, the president who’d guided the nation through the War Between the States and the rebuilding afterwards, died on November 20th, 1891, at the age of 79. Since the mid-1870s, the former president had largely remained out of the spotlight and enjoyed a quiet retirement in Columbus, Ohio. Hearing that the former statesman had been in poor health, President Rowling had gone to visit Brandt in October, and he later recorded that “even in his ailing, frail state, you can still see the vigor in his eyes, the eyes of a man who saved a nation.” Brandt was given an elaborate state funeral in Franklin on November 28th, 1891, and it is estimated that over half a million people flooded the city to pay their final respects. Former presidents Littlefield and Drake, the only remaining previous chief executives still living, attended the ceremonies along with Rowling, Secretary General Thorne, most of the cabinet, members of Congress, and the justices of the Supreme Court. While not the first state funeral in Franklin, it was by far the largest. Brandt’s remains were then interred at the Mount Ida National Memorial Cemetery. 

Congressional politics during the Rowling administration were relatively calm, with just a few key things of note. Following the 1888 election, the Social Progressive Alliance members chose to no longer formally caucus with the Federalist Party. Consisting of just six members, from New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Louisiana, they made up just under 1% of the seats in the 51st Congress, so for the time being, they were not a force to be reckoned with. They would mostly vote in line with the Federalists on significant issues, but decided they wanted to start wielding their party's independence while in Congress to help gain greater notoriety for their cause. In that same election, the Federalists still maintained, by three seats, their majority in the House, and the Democrats gained 56 seats, still in third place behind the Republicans, but only by eight seats. Derek Thorne was retained as Secretary General, and Andrew Caldecott remained as Speaker of the House. The Senate saw modest gains for the Democrats, but the Federalists still enjoyed slightly more than 50% of the seats. In 1890, the trend continued for the Democrats. The Federalists remained the largest party in both houses, but finally lost the majority they’d initially won in 1886. Secretary General Thorne and Speaker Caldecott both stayed in their position, but getting passage of bills did require some negotiation for the first time in four years.

The Election of 1892 introduced a new feature in presidential politics: the party primary election. The Federalists adopted a new system where party organizations in each state would organize a vote of their members on which candidate their delegates would endorse at the national convention held in the summer. The Federalists had been experimenting with this at the state level throughout New England for almost two decades. In 1886, two states, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, had used this system for their delegate selection. President Rowling had been intrigued with the reform, and had convinced enough party leaders to have the entire Federalist Party use this system for 1892. The other parties mostly ridiculed the plan, but it did capture the imagination of the country. The chief candidates for the Federalist nomination were Vice President Jefferson Young of Missouri, Governor Dale Hamlin of Connecticut, Colin Beck, representative from Illinois, and Peter Thompson, senator from Mississippi. While Rowling had been a moderate reformer, Young had been a compromise moderate conservative, and proved a hard sell for party members, and so did not perform well during the primary elections held that spring. Governor Hamlin struggled for similar reasons. In the end, it came down to Representative Beck and Senator Thompson. Thompson, a black man, was seen as a bold choice, and many argued that it was high time the Federalist Party “put it’s money where it’s mouth is” when it came to racial equality and put a black man at the head of its ticket, nearly two decades after the party had successfully elected Frederick Bailey as Vice President. Others were still worried that the country wasn’t ready for a black president, and those fears likely pushed Beck over the top, winning him the majority of delegates, which was confirmed at the party convention in July in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Illinois representative was seen as a major champion of the reform wing, and publicly supported a women’s suffrage amendment, and convinced the party to adopt the “federal path” to women’s suffrage as part of their platform, abandoning the 1886 decision to support the “state-by-state path.” To help balance Beck’s eagerness for reform, a moderate was sought as a running mate. First, the position was offered to Vice President Young, who balked at the offer. In the end, Governor Hamlin was selected. 

Two weeks later, in Brooklyn, the Democrats gathered for their convention. Two main candidates had broad support when the delegates met on July 25: Albert Hollister, the governor of Minnesota, and Peter Tindle, a representative from Virginia. Ultimately, the contest came down to the women’s suffrage issue. Hollister believed that the party should stay neutral, and leave it up to the states, but not endorse the movement or condemn it. Tindle, meanwhile, was a modernist and believed that the party should endorse the “state-by-state” method. With the political winds shifting, Tindle was able to win over a majority of delegates and become the Democratic nominee for the presidency. Richard Towns, a representative from Platte, was selected as the vice presidential nominee, giving an East/West balance to the ticket. 

The first week of August, the Republicans met in Charleston, South Carolina, to select their candidates. Brance Haley, senator from Jefferson, was the clear front-runner from the get-go. Haley had been born in Indiana before moving to Jefferson as a youth with his family, and had come from a Democratic family. He’d joined the Republicans in the 1870s, and he saw his party’s redemption via a path that focused on local control and through the courting of Western voters, which he believed would support keeping Franklin out of their business. This strategy had started to bear some limited fruit, gaining three House seats in Platte, one in Metropotamia, and nearly taking the lone seats in Clark and Washingtonia. As his running mate, the Republicans selected James Crown, the mayor of Atlanta. 

All three candidates participated in major campaign efforts, travelling across the country at a pace not seen since Littlefield. In another first, Beck and Tindle met in St. Louis on October 1st for a first-of-its-kind presidential debate, which was covered by every major newspaper at the time, with highlights going out live over the telegraph wires, and some communities gathered at their local P&T office to hear what the two men were saying. Most in attendance in St. Louis agreed that Beck was an eloquent speaker and handled himself with aplomb, while Tindle seemed flustered at times. That said, Tindle did give good pushback on Beck’s support of a national women’s suffrage amendment, which was still seen by many as a somewhat radical choice, even if women in just over a third of the states could now vote. Tindle even used that statistic as proof that the state-by-state method was working, and that the federal government shouldn’t overstep its bounds. For those following the coverage via telegraph highlights, Tindle’s less-than-stellar live performance wasn’t obvious, though it would be discussed at length in the newspapers over the next several days. 

In the end, the results were extremely close.  Beck benefited from President Rowling’s overall popularity, the growing support for the women’s suffrage movement, and his promises to work to introduce labor laws that he felt were “long overdue,” such as an hours-per-week cap, stricter bans on child labor, and workplace safety concerns. Tindle, meanwhile, still struggled to shake the bad taste President Drake had left in the nation’s mouth, even six years later. That said, as is often true when one party has the incumbency, some voters just believe a change is in order. When all the electoral votes were counted, Beck had the most, at 344, but this was 22 shy of the required majority. Tindle came in second, with 238 electoral votes, and Haley came in third, with 148 electoral votes. For the first time since the Election of 1826, there was no winner of the absolute majority, meaning, for the third time in U.S. history, a contingent election in Congress would decide the winner of the presidency. 

In such situations, the House of Representatives chooses the presidential winner, with each state delegation getting one vote, meaning that a candidate in this election would need 21 out of 41 delegations to win. Meanwhile, the Constitution stipulated that the Senate would choose the vice president, and each senator would cast a vote, meaning that the winner would need to get 41 out of 80 senatorial votes. When the 53rd Congress assembled in January of 1893, the Federalists controlled 18 out of 41 House delegations, the Democrats 14, and the Republicans 9. The delegations voted along those party lines in the first ballot for the contingent election, but in the second ballot, several delegations were swayed to vote the way the majority of people in their states had voted, resulting in Colin Beck winning the necessary 21 state delegations and the presidency. In the Senate, meanwhile, the Federalists had 33 seats, with the Democrats at 28, and the Republicans at 19. According to the Constitution, when a contingent election was to be held in the Senate, they were to only vote for the top two candidates, in this case, Dale Hamlin and Richard Towns. Federalists in the chamber tried to urge their colleagues to elect Hamlin, since the House of Representatives had already selected Beck as the winner of the presidency, but there several senators who believed that, with Beck not winning the majority outright in the Electoral College, it might be best for the country to have the vice presidency go to one of the other parties. After a few hours of deliberation, the vote was held, and Richard Towns was chosen as the 20th Vice President of the United States with 47 votes to Dale Hamlin’s 33. For only the second time in the nation’s history, the sitting President and Vice President would not be from the same party - an outcome that would fuel vigorous debate about changing the election rules.  

The Election of 1886