Have the US (with a different constitution giving more power to the president for a longer term) run by Jefferson and have him set up a nondenominational arts and crafts, agriculture and natural philosophy, military, naval, and civil engineering national University funded by a set percentage of the tariff receipts from imports.
Jefferson would want the tariffs set low because he was an agriculturist romantic. He thought only farmers represented the soul of society and America should avoid factories like Britain was starting to build.
Now Hamilton takes over. He establishes export tariffs and higher import tariffs because he was a mercantilist romantic and wants industrialism. The university gets more money. It starts to attract scientists and students from overseas.
Then America gets involved in the Napoleonic wars. We are short of cannon and other manufactures so we set tariffs very high indeed, just like in 1815 in reaction to being embargoed twice by the British.
So we are considerably larger, with much higher tariffs, and the university is a going concern. Science progresses rapidly, which makes America's exports (and imports) grow to the point where we are spending more than the rest of the world combined on R+D.
Lets say the POD is in 1780 because of a much more successful Revolutionary war. Not impossible, Britain was having it's own problems. A shorter war leaves more power in the hands of the upper class Americans, and they want a stronger chief executive less responsive to 'mob rule'.
I figure it's 80 years to 1860, so with twice the rate of scientific progress we have the equivalent of 1940 technology.
Yeah, it's possible.
The polymers have been discovered, but cotton is still cheap because of all the land available and because of artificial fertilizers. The population of the US is twice as large because cheaper transport and better sanitation have had their affects. We have tapped all the hydroelectric sites and lots of nitrates are made with electrical power using electrolysis which means that heavy water is essentially free as a byproduct.
So plutonium (in this timeline, U233) bombs are available and can be used in dealing with the slavery problem.
Jefferson would want the tariffs set low because he was an agriculturist romantic. He thought only farmers represented the soul of society and America should avoid factories like Britain was starting to build.
Now Hamilton takes over. He establishes export tariffs and higher import tariffs because he was a mercantilist romantic and wants industrialism. The university gets more money. It starts to attract scientists and students from overseas.
Then America gets involved in the Napoleonic wars. We are short of cannon and other manufactures so we set tariffs very high indeed, just like in 1815 in reaction to being embargoed twice by the British.
So we are considerably larger, with much higher tariffs, and the university is a going concern. Science progresses rapidly, which makes America's exports (and imports) grow to the point where we are spending more than the rest of the world combined on R+D.
Lets say the POD is in 1780 because of a much more successful Revolutionary war. Not impossible, Britain was having it's own problems. A shorter war leaves more power in the hands of the upper class Americans, and they want a stronger chief executive less responsive to 'mob rule'.
I figure it's 80 years to 1860, so with twice the rate of scientific progress we have the equivalent of 1940 technology.
Yeah, it's possible.
The polymers have been discovered, but cotton is still cheap because of all the land available and because of artificial fertilizers. The population of the US is twice as large because cheaper transport and better sanitation have had their affects. We have tapped all the hydroelectric sites and lots of nitrates are made with electrical power using electrolysis which means that heavy water is essentially free as a byproduct.
So plutonium (in this timeline, U233) bombs are available and can be used in dealing with the slavery problem.