AHC/WI: American Republic overthrown

How different would today be if America was overthrown in a Napoleon-esque coup d'etat, around the early days of the republic? An unpopular government under an unpopular President does something crazy and a general seizes DC (or Philly) and declares himself First Consul, ala Napoleon. How would this happen? Could this even happen? Who would be the Napoleon in this scenario? Hell, would the US even survive? Any early state is rather fragile, so I was just thinking about this while reading up on Napoleon.
 
I have an extremely hard time seeing this happen and for pretty much one reason.

States

Most of the officer corps and troops/militia that comprised the cobbled-up US Army of the early 19th century were far more loyal to their home states then the central Federal governement - so it hard see a crazed-general place that much importance on taking over a fairly impotent Federal governement in even the most revolutionary circumstances.
 
I have an extremely hard time seeing this happen and for pretty much one reason.

States

Most of the officer corps and troops/militia that comprised the cobbled-up US Army of the early 19th century were far more loyal to their home states then the central Federal governement - so it hard see a crazed-general place that much importance on taking over a fairly impotent Federal governement in even the most revolutionary circumstances.

Whatif it happened to one of the bigger states than to the US as a whole?
 
Whatif it happened to one of the bigger states than to the US as a whole?

Ok - Let's say a general from NY State decides he's had enough of Albany and marches on the state capital building seeking to establish a New Yorkish Empire? :closedeyesmile:
If your laughing at that notion, much like I am, you can imagine the citizens of America at the time would do the same.

The differences between the French Revolution and why a guy like Nappy could seize power vs the same happening in the US around the same are pretty much night in day.
France had a strong history of prestige-through-autocracy that gave legitimacy to a triumphant general ruling as a despot.
The US had a history of poor parliamentary represensation.
Any american general seeking to emulate Napoleon in that mileu would be seen as a clown at best.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
I agree with @GlobalHumanism insofar that I don't see such a thing happening in OTL's United States, because the USA was far too stable for it. Even if the Constitutional Convention had failed utterly, the Articles of Confederation would just have been amended, instead. Things like Shays' Rebellion were dealt with in OTL. So I don't see the basis for a 'Napoleonic' coup. But let's consider a scenario where the situation is less stable from the outset:

In a thread about disintegration of the early USA, I expressed the idea that this could best be accomplished by installing some kind of dictatorship after a military coup-- which would then be overtrown, leading to most states fearing centralised power, and essentially falling apart into separate countries (or multiple regional unions). My scenario was that George Washington is killed relatively the war, someone else - with less skill - assumes command of the military, and the war drags on longer. Congress, in OTL notorious for its failure to act in a timely manner (and often failing to adequately supply and pay the army), would be even more vehemently criticised in this ATL. Inflation was already a major problem in OTL, and would be worse in case of a longer war. Eventually, either the war is won but the country is utterly bankrupt (so veterans get no backpay and pensions, and Congress is widely criticised) or the war drags on so long that Congress is simply no longer seen as fit to govern by the military. In either scenario, one or more military leaders seize power to "rectify the situation".

That, of course, was about the specific goal of getting the Union to fall apart at the very outset. The idea was that the coup would be a disaster, the 'tyrants' would be widely hated, leading to the defeat of this centralising, authoritarian military dictatorship (and thereafter, the disintegration of the USA). But... the military coup doesn't have to lead to a terribly oppressive tyranny, of course. One might well argue that in this scenario, Congress is failing. So suppose instead that one or more generals seize power, with the explicit aim of creating a more stable (and thus, more powerful) central government. But that they are not very oppressive, and are - like Napoleon in OTL - mostly seen as a bit of a relief for a troubled country.

As for the nature of the regime: I get the impression that most of the generals and top officers in OTL tended towards the (proto-)Federalist kind of politics, and that fits with the aim of strong government, economic controls to fight a chaotic situation, etc. -- So while the exact nature of the resulting government would depend very much on who, exactly, seizes power, I'd expect a man like Alexander Hamilton to be very happy about the results (and quite possibly to - later on - have a hand in shaping them).
 
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Ok - Let's say a general from NY State decides he's had enough of Albany and marches on the state capital building seeking to establish a New Yorkish Empire? :closedeyesmile:
If your laughing at that notion, much like I am, you can imagine the citizens of America at the time would do the same.

The differences between the French Revolution and why a guy like Nappy could seize power vs the same happening in the US around the same are pretty much night in day.
France had a strong history of prestige-through-autocracy that gave legitimacy to a triumphant general ruling as a despot.
The US had a history of poor parliamentary represensation.
Any american general seeking to emulate Napoleon in that mileu would be seen as a clown at best.

I'm not American so I'll have to accept your greater familiarity with the early US but could a more strained constitutional convention result in greater tensions between the States and eventually see a general in some state appoint himself Dictator modelled on the Roman Republican model?
 
I'm not American so I'll have to accept your greater familiarity with the early US but could a more strained constitutional convention result in greater tensions between the States and eventually see a general in some state appoint himself Dictator modelled on the Roman Republican model?

If anything a more strained constitutional convention would just balkanize the US completely - not create a vaccum for a military junta.
Unlike Europe at the time, there was no long standing military tradition. Civilian life was pretty much it - out of that alone theres no way a general post-Washington could pull it off.
 
If anything a more strained constitutional convention would just balkanize the US completely - not create a vaccum for a military junta.
Unlike Europe at the time, there was no long standing military tradition. Civilian life was pretty much it - out of that alone theres no way a general post-Washington could pull it off.

I was talking about within one of these balkanised states. As was said the decentralised nature if the us makes it hard to see how this could happen at national level but it doesn't seem totally crazy to me for a General in one state to take over and break off from the rest of the United States.
 
I was talking about within one of these balkanised states. As was said the decentralised nature if the us makes it hard to see how this could happen at national level but it doesn't seem totally crazy to me for a General in one state to take over and break off from the rest of the United States.

Now that I think about it - it probably could work in places such as the deep south.
For instance, in a US-Breakup scenario, plantation owners in Georgia or South Carolina could opt to go with a hard government (funding a milita-coup against the state capital) to protect their property from trying to flee across state lines (which would be national in this case).

Honestly anything in a US balkanization is pretty much possible.
 
one of the reasons the presidency/central power was made as strong as it was, was because Washington was the obvious guy going to be the initial president, and most everyone trusted him to be a stable first leader. I've no doubt he would have gone for a third term if things still looked unsettled. But he lead the nation into reasonable stability, saw that longer would be a bad precedent, and stepped down. Think what France could have been if Nap had less ego and more Washington. If his horse stepped in a gopher hole after the war, before the constitution, and he fell on his head, there would have been a power struggle, and balkanized states. As previously stated above, it's going to be really difficult to get a US, except with a dictator. The various state/gov'ts make for good checks and balances. but quite likely any individual state, or clump of states could indeed go dictator. Happened all over South America. One big dictator? highly unlikely. One small dictator? unlikely to be able to control much more than his home state, and the others would gang up on him if he tried expanding. So...yay, the grand dictatorship of NY, unable to really do much other than be undemocratic.
 
Replace Washington (or Washington's personality) with a caesarian minded general like Bonaparte. Someone who might have the interests of the country at heart, but also a predisposition to authoritarianism and the ability to sell it.

Whoever this new general is would have to one hell of a politician and highly charismatic. I guess an American bonaparte.
 
The federal army simply wasn't strong enough to pull off a coup, without balkanizing America at that point. You need someone with profound personal prestige and charisma, with Washington pretty much the only one fitting the bill. He wasn't interested in that, I think the only way he might of been tempted would be a hereditary dictatorship princeps style and he had have to of had a son. Still very unlikely, but he was never tested with ambition for his own child, which could of changed his grandest aspirations.
 
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