1942 U.S. special presidential election

The 1942 U.S. special presidential election brought the Wheeler government’s constitutional crisis to an electoral conclusion: after martial law, arrests, and the seizure of political and media institutions, democratic procedures were restored and voters returned Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency. Held on November 3, the election produced a Democratic sweep of the House and Senate as well as a landslide victory for Roosevelt’s third term.

Crisis and the call for an election

The vote followed Charles A. Lindbergh’s disappearance and Burton K. Wheeler’s assumption of power as acting president. By October 9, martial law had been imposed across the country. Wheeler told Congress that Lindbergh had been kidnapped and was being held somewhere in North America; meanwhile, borders were sealed, airports and seaports closed, and military and police forces were assigned to maintain order.

The crisis deepened with arrests of political figures, including Lionel Bengelsdorf, and the detention of public officials and critics of the administration. On October 16, Anne Morrow Lindbergh escaped from Walter Reed Army Hospital and broadcast a call to restore civil rights, release those detained, reopen the occupied news organizations, and remove Wheeler through constitutional procedures. She asked Congress to arrange a special presidential election to coincide with the scheduled congressional election. Her intervention initiated the restoration of orderly democratic procedure that culminated in the November vote.

The result

On Tuesday, November 3, 1942, the Democrats swept the House and Senate, and Roosevelt won a landslide victory for a third presidential term. The election thus provided an electoral answer to the attempt to govern under emergency powers: rather than leaving the future of the presidency to Wheeler’s administration, the crisis ended in a decisive result at the polls.

Aftermath and significance

The political settlement was followed the next month by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and, four days later, declarations of war against the United States by Germany and Italy. Congress approved the country’s entry into the war without a dissenting vote in either chamber. Republicans remaining in Congress, discredited by their association with Wheeler’s acting presidency and demoralized by their electoral defeat, pledged support to Roosevelt and the war effort.

After his inauguration, Roosevelt granted Wheeler a full pardon for offenses he might have committed while acting president, explaining that a criminal prosecution of a former acting president would distract the country during wartime. The election therefore did more than select a president: within the novel’s political crisis, it helped reestablish constitutional government before the United States entered the global conflict.