AH Challenge: Have A President Serve Three Consecutive Terms

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have a President serve three consecutive terms after 1800, but before 1900. So George Washington is off limits.

Also, if you could feasibly have more presidents serve three terms, that would be cool.


Edit- I know, I screwed up the title.
 
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Sachyriel

Banned
You can edit the title when you edit the post. It's easy.:eek:

EDIT: Also, Lincoln isn't assassinated. /Thread :p
 

Dialga

Banned
Abe Lincoln would be the only Prez that fits the criteria who was good enough to serve for that long had he not been assassinated. Maybe Andrew Jackson, but I'm not sure how.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
I recall reading that Grant was gearing up for a third term in 1880 and almost beat Garfield for the nomination. Perhaps if he manages to nab the ticket for a third time?
 
I doubt Lincoln will run. He expected to retire and travel the West Coast. Maybe he'll accept a governorship in the west (President's did not have a pension, and he had been offered the governorship of I believe it was the Washington territory on two occasions), but not a third term.

I recall reading that Grant was gearing up for a third term in 1880 and almost beat Garfield for the nomination. Perhaps if he manages to nab the ticket for a third time?
Grant ran (by this time the public had forgotten/forgiven the massive corruption of the administration) but I don't know if he was close.
 
Let us take the list of OTL 2-term Presidents of 19th century.

Note that when Washington declined to seek third term, he gave old age as reason. He proved right: he died in 1799.

Adams ran for second term as incumbent and lost.

The next was Jefferson. He was healthy in 1809 - he was to live till 1826. What was his stated reason for not seeking a third term?

After Jefferson, the two term presidents were Madison in 1817, Monroe in 1825, Jackson in 1837, Grant in 1877.

Which of those was most likely to seek a third consecutive term?
 
Had Lincoln survived the murder attempt and he were as shocked as most main stream Republicans by the reaction of the South's white to his magnanimity he might have tried to push through the measures on Civil Rights and voting rights for former slaves called 'radical' in OTL.

Achieving this would be hard. I can imagine that he may come to the conculsiont that he needed a third term.
 
Well, Jefferson is actually easiest - a large part of his being willing to retire (my opinion based on the man's character) was being secure in the belief that Madison would continue to carry out his vision in broad terms. Either have the two fall out, or kill Madison off early, and Jefferson seeks a third (and fourth?) term. Perhaps he inspires Monroe to serve three or four terms after him.

I wound up with Lewis Cass serving three consecutive terms in my Thalers timeline, but it was sort of cheating - the ACW erupted near the end of his second term, and retiring in the middle of a civil war simply would not have done.
 
I agree with an earlier poster that they key to having multiple persons serve three consecutive terms would be to have Jefferson (or someone else early in the century) start the trend. Nevertheless, I wouldn't say that it's easy to get Jefferson to serve that long (he continually expressed a good deal of apathy and/or antipathy to his time in office). The most compelling reason I can think of would be a war in 1807, probably against Great Britain. If Jefferson does not serve three terms, it will be hard to get either Madison or Monroe to do so, both being more or less followers in that respect.

The next opportunity would have to be either Andrew Jackson or Henry Clay. The key to either would be to avoid OTL's election of 1824 (which can be done with some health butterflies to William Crawford, one way or the other). Note that I'd wouldn't expect both men to be able to do so in the same timeline. In either case, a war is probably needed to make the third term easily feasible in light of Washington's example, though if you fiddle with the dates, the 2nd BUS might be a reason for Jackson to stay on (and kill it).

Speculating on Lincoln first requires a description of what Reconstruction looks like under Lincoln, and even then I have a hard time seeing Lincoln have the energy or political capital to undertake a third term.

Probably the most plausible route, IMHO, would be to have the US more directly lose the War of 1812, though manage to keep Jackson a hero but have the British do something to provide a long-term thorn to the South (like maybe keep Florida Spanish, and or buy it themselves). The desire for revenge takes over as the South supports a more centralized government to enable a large US Army and Navy for a rematch sometime in the 1830s (in which case Jackson again becomes a nice candidate to lead such a rematch). The downside of such a change is that the cumulative effect will be to cause a significant divergence in the political culture (and probable borders) of the US, rather than a rather haphazard divergence of having a US that more-or-less resembles OTL's than happens by 1900 to have had a three term president.
 
Jackson is the best bet for a three termer without much fiddling done to the timeline. In 1824, he won a plurality of both popular and electoral votes, but since there were four candidates, he did not get a majority. The House of Representatives ended up deciding who would become the president, and chose Adams. Had the House decided according to the "will of the people," Jackson would have been elected in 1824. Judging by his popularity as president, he could have easily won re-election in 1828 and 1832, making a total of three terms.

Keeping Jackson's historic presidency of 1829-1837 and adding a third term onto the end is highly unlikely. The nation was sliding into a depression by the end of his second term. Martin Van Buren inherited the financial crisis when he took office in 1837 and was not re-elected. Plus, by 1836, Jackson was in poor health, suffering from chronic headaches, severe abdominal pains, and a hacking cough. The musket ball lodged in his lung caused him to cough up blood regularly and pained him. Add to that his advanced age by the election of 1836 (69) and it would have been suicide to run for another term that year.
 
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