thomas jefferson

John Adams famously became the first one-term President by virtue of his defeat in the 1800 Presidential Election by Thomas Jefferson. However, what if that had not happened? How could Adams win, and what would a second term for John Adams look like?

Whether by his own hand or anyone else's, what is the next step in the explorer-naturalist-politician's life? Two years after he died, the state finally coughed up the money it owed him to his estate, but he was on his way to D.C. to contest claims of corruption/poor governance IIRC. The theory...

After the confusion of 1800, the US amended it's constitution to ensure that Presidential electors vote for one Presidential ticket. Simultaneously, President Jefferson privately expressed support for abolishing the electoral college altogether. His argument was essentially the same as those...

There can be little doubt that when it comes to influential Supreme Court Chief Justices, John Marshall sits at the top. The rulings of his court were crucial to the expansion of the Supreme Court's power, and the supremacy of federal law. Having said that, what if Marshall was never appointed...

We’ve talked before about the PoD of the Land Ordinance of 1784 passing the US Confederation Congress passing as was originally drafted, wherein slavery and involuntary servitude would be unlawful in all federal territory and states made from them starting from 1800. My question for this...

Hello, all, and welcome to my first ever alternate history thread! ...Yay. You can practically tell how excited I am. I'll tell the prologue of the story in the next post, but for now, I'm going to discuss the premise of this story. In it, Thomas Jefferson, who served in the Second...

Point of Divergence ... Thomas Jefferson was a complicated man. As a wealthy landowner, Thomas Jefferson owned many slaves on his plantations. And to all accounts, he treated his slaves rather well at the time, only using the whip in rare and extreme cases of fighting and theft. He made sure...

In 1784, a part of the territorial governance act was narrowly defeated. If passed, this would disallow slavery in any new states made out of the territories? How would this change US history if it did pass?

Let's say that the Napoleon never buys back Louisiana or that Jefferson decides not to buy it, and it goes back to Spain after the end of the Napoleonic wars. As I understand Spain was especially unpopular in Louisiana, and with Mexico, Colombia, Argentina etc. in revolt and revolution could...

Prologue February 11, 1801 It was a cold February day in the young city of Washington. The winds of a brutal Nor’easter howled through the streets, which were empty though it was just noon. Wisps of cold air, like the tendrils of a clambering vine, twisted their way through cracks in the...