What are some ways that Ohio Territory (the Old Northwest / the modern Midwest) could of become an independent nation, with a POD after the end of the American Revolution?
Cinematically thinking, if I didn't have to bring plausibility into it and had a butterfly net I'd have Washington die sometime before his men can offer him a crown in 1783 and have them go with their other plan, to retreat from the pre-Constitutional chaos of the US and go form their own nation in Ohio Territory. Keeping other historical events mostly the same, like many books do in order to make a point, they'd be joined by Shay's rebels, the Whiskey rebels (led into exile by a defecting Albert Gallatin), and Aaron Burr's coalition of planters and adventurers (why bother take Louisiana or invade Texas when they can get in on the the ground floor of a country in the making closer to home?). Maybe Gallatin would negotiate an extremely implausible peace with the Indian Confederation and the Prophet movement would be edited out of history by carefully released butterflies (thus the Amerindians of Ohio Territory would never reject manufactured items and way of life).
All of that would be great in a book, comicbook, movie, whatever and is my idea of a fun (and thus "good") Tl.
But I've gathered since I joined that tastes on these boards run a bit contrary to my "if it's fun, it works, plausibility be damned" approach.
So what are some plausible ways that Ohio Territory could become an independent nation?
Perhaps equally implausible, I do like the idea of Jefferson using the territory as the guinea pig for his dream of an agrarian utopian America, only for it to get out of his hands (or out of the hands of those who succeed him, whichever it may be).
I guess more realistically it might deal with some British plot to introduce a buffer state between the US and the less settled parts of Canada (thus to keep illegal US settlers out?) after the British negotiate away their forts on the Ohio river. Or maybe that's still thinking too far-fetched?