Most Interesting Early American TL?

Best idea for Early American TL

  • Compromise prevents American Revolution

    Votes: 2 6.5%
  • British win Revolutionary War

    Votes: 5 16.1%
  • Constitutional Convention fails

    Votes: 9 29.0%
  • Washington vetoes Hamilton's bank bill

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Franco-American War in 1798

    Votes: 8 25.8%
  • 1800 election disorder leads to civil strife

    Votes: 2 6.5%
  • Other (Please Specify)

    Votes: 5 16.1%

  • Total voters
    31

Anaxagoras

Banned
Of the following choices, which does the board think would make the most interesting TL of Early American Alt History?

1. Pre-war political settlement prevents American Revolution?
2. British win Revolutionary War?
3. Constitutional Convention fails?
4. Washington vetoes Hamilton's bank bill?
5. USA declares war on France in 1798?
6. 1800 election disorder leads to civil strife?
7. Other (please specify)mayo clinic
 
How about a story in which Alexander Hamilton doesn't get killed in a duel?

Honestly, this man had so much potential that it'd be hard to imagine him NOT in the White House at some point. :cool:
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Franco-American war. The Federalists could be saved after all.

But would it have been worth it? I've often thought that the Federalists would have taken the opportunity of war to suppress the Jeffersonians by force. The Alien and Sedition Acts would have just been a prelude to even worse measures. Hamilton himself said that they should march the army through Virginia to "put the Republicans to the test of resistance" or something along those lines.
 
How about a story in which Alexander Hamilton doesn't get killed in a duel?

Honestly, this man had so much potential that it'd be hard to imagine him NOT in the White House at some point. :cool:
The problems with this are a.) Alexander Hamilton had burned a great deal of his bridges by the time of his death, especially among Federalists with his anti-Adams letter, and had been publicly acknowledged as the center of a fairly sordid affair involving adultery, corruption, and blackmail, and b.) Hamilton was Mr. Federalist, and after John Adams no Federalists were elected to the Presidency. Even assuming Hamilton manages to work his way to the top of the Federalist ticket, by the time he could get there, the Federalists were on their way out. America just was not digging the Federalist groove, and most of their candidates were buried. And by the time the party system had rejiggered itself he's an old man and there are new rising stars (assuming he could ever work his way into prominence in a splinter Democratic-Republican / Democratic faction).

Unrelated, I think the failure to pass the Constitution is one of, if not the, most interesting PODs in American history. I'd like to write a TL about it some day, but it's such an enormous departure with so many variables it's tough to imagine where all the strands would go.
 
If the Constitutional Convention had failed there would almost certainly have been another try, everyone acknowledged that the articles of Confederation weren't working. However if you keep them in place long enough for the Napoleonic Wars to start the British "threat" (which was never as big as Americans thought it was) will disappear meaning you might get a balkanised USA. How Westward expansion will work under that is full of opportunities.
 
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