us history

Simple as it sounds- Clay, Calhoun and Webster either never get into politics or leave early. Maybe after the embarrassment of the War of 1812 (for Clay and Calhoun) and then the financial struggles of the Panic of 1815 lead to them not running for re-election in 1816? Clay was hinting at...

William Henry Harrison had the shortest term of office of any US President, serving as president for only 31 days before dying in office of pneumonia. But this makes me wonder, what if he didn't catch pneumonia? What if he served a full term as president? What kind of president would he be and...

What would early America have looked like as a union but with provinces similar to Canada instead of states?

Hello all, So, the colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe, a noted social reformer. In 1735, Georgia (under Oglethorpe's proprietorship) banned slavery -- both the slave trade and ownership of slaves -- becoming the only one of the Thirteen Colonies to do so. This was known as the...

Hello all, So, this is a bit of a weird one. Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, ran for President of the United States in 1844. Now, there is little chance that he could have won in real life -- Mormons were extremely unpopular among mainstream US Protestants, and Smith and his followers had...

BLACKLEG IN THE WHITE HOUSE The Presidency of Henry Clay This timeline discusses the putative presidency of Henry Clay. I will make infoboxes and occasionally use RNG to make plot decisions that I do not trust myself to make. If I find it enjoyable to write, I will continue to write it, after...

With a POD no later than 1939, how do we get the U.S. in World War II much earlier than OTL, with American forces fighting against Germany, Italy, and Japan? Preferable if this can be done before June 1941.

I have been looking for this information on google for some time now but i dont find it, i am sure i read somewhere a couple of years ago that Kennedy did fire or discipline one of the military officials behind operation northwoods?, is this correct?. Also, president Kennedy was against some...

I know this is relatively recent history, but just to set the stage for this DBWI thought experiment I'll recap the past 20 or so years of US history. In 2000, after a nail-biting election campaign, Vice-President John Kerry defeated George W. Bush and became the 43rd American President. Kerry...

As he later related in his memoirs, Richard Nixon seriously considered resigning the American Presidency in August 1974 after Republican congressional leaders revealed that he would certainly lose the impending impeachment vote in the House of Representatives. But Nixon feared the humiliation of...

In 1991, New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously dithered over whether or not to run for President in the upcoming Democratic primaries. Ultimately he decided not to run, claiming that New York's budget problems were too much of a distraction, and Bill Clinton was nominated instead. Had Cuomo...

Although he was the second longest serving President in American history, Calvin Coolidge is generally remembered as one of America's worst chief executives. In office from August 1923 to January 1933, Coolidge did nothing to confront the Great Depression after the 1929 Stock Market Crash. If...

Ulysses S. Grant is usually judged as a fantastic general but a mediocre President. He won the Civil War, but his administration was plagued by economic problems and scandals. In his day Grant was hailed as the equal of Washington and Lincoln, but after his death many historians portrayed him as...

In 1804, Vice-President Aaron Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel. Burr was furious over Hamilton's support of a rival Republican over him for Governor of New York, in addition to Hamilton's personal attacks on Burr's character. Hamilton considered accepting Burr's offer, but...

In 1855 Abraham Lincoln ran for the U.S. Senate from Illinois. At a time when Senators were elected by the legislature Lincoln initially did well in early balloting. But when it became clear he didn't have enough votes to win Lincoln bowed out in favor of anti-slavery Democrat Lyman Trumbull...

In 1904, after Theodore Roosevelt's landslide election to a full term, journalists pressed the young President over whether or not he would run again in 1908. Roosevelt dodged their questions and continued to do so until 1908, when he announced his bid for a second full term. Roosevelt's critics...

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have a woman be elected President of the United States on or before the year 2000.

In 2004, John Kerry wanted his friend John McCain to be his running mate on a bipartisan "unity ticket." Polling from May 2004 showed that a Kerry/McCain ticket had a 14% lead over Bush among registered voters. McCain showed interested but he ultimately declined and endorsed Bush. Curiously...

Despite its name the War of 1812 lasted three years, from 1812 to 1815. While the US saw its capital burned and the invasion of Canada failed, America didn't technically lose the war and the peace was negotiated on favorable terms. At the same time the US didn't decisively win either. So how...

In this poll, you're provided with losing candidates from 1900 to 2012 who were nominated by the two major American political parties but never became President. Candidates who did at one point lose but then came back to win, such as Richard Nixon, or candidates who won once but lost a second...