alternatehistory.com

History is changed drastically by the smallest accidents. Take the design of the American flag: the Stars and Stripes. The legend of the Betsy Ross design of the flag is well-known to most Americans; however, it is much less known that George Washington wanted six-pointed stars rather than five, and that his personal command flag at Valley Forge had six-pointed stars. Had this change not been made, a vastly different world would have come to pass.

The premise of this tale is not so far-fetched; rule by monarchs was the norm, and the few republics (the Netherlands, Venice, etc.) that existed in the 18th Century had strong heads of state as well. The colonies in Latin America were ruled by viceroys of their European masters; by contrast, the colonies of British North America were historically given a very loose rein because of tumult in the mother country—between the English Civil War, the Protectorate, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution and the Jacobite Rebellion, there was very little concern for British subjects across the Atlantic.

Commerce changed all this. Georgian Britain, after Scotland was brought under heel, stabilized and began to direct its energies to expanding profits, and to do this it needed to expand its power greatly. To finance its wars in Europe and North America, as well as to expand its influence in India, the British government found it expedient to impose its will gradually upon its American colonies, who were generating enormous profits for London.

Fed up, the Americans revolted. They were disorganized and often at odds against one another; even the constitution of the Continental Congresses was thrown into doubt, and financing the war for independence proved almost impossible. Indeed, without the economic and military support of Spain, France and Holland, the Americans would have likely lost the war, precisely because of a general lack of organization and chain of command.

The lack of central authority soon caused a lot of trouble for the newly independent States. The Articles of Confederation were simply inadequate for the task of competent government, and in 1787 a convention to “amend” the Articles was formed.

In this allohistory, the United States Flag, designed in 1778, has a blue canton of thirteen six-pointed white stars (Washington's historical Command Flag) and thirteen red and white stripes. By 1787, this change to the flag has changed history enough to alter the proposals at the Constitutional Convention. The small change to the American flag had altered the thought processes of George Washington enough to increase his self-confidence and organizational ability, even if only by a little. This esteem would inadvertently contribute to the demise of the proposed Constitution of 1787.

  • The Virginia Plan

    There are several differences between history's Virginia Plan and the one in this story. The alternate plan had a bicameral legislature, with the lower House of Representatives apportioned according to each state's revenue given to the proposed federal government in the last general election, but still popularly elected every three years, and the upper House of Peers, likewise apportioned, but appointed by the state's legislature for a term of seven years.
    Another departure from the historical Plan was the Executive Council of several persons, elected by the House of Peers.
    The most important (and controversial) departure involved the President-General, who, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armies and Chief Magistrate of the United States, was also Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The borrowing of the term President-General from the Albany Plan of 1754 was telling, and suggested that Madison was being influenced by Benjamin Franklin and Washington alike, and pushed an even more centralist plan. As a sop to the small states, the President-General would be chosen by a College of Electors, with each state having one vote.​
  • The Delaware Plan
    Even more infuriated than historically, the delegates from the small states took the opportunity to mock the name House of Peers and devised their own plan, spearheaded by John Dickinson of Delaware. They proposed a unicameral legislature, styled the Continental Congress, where each state was entitled to one vote, a multimember Federal Executive that was returned once a year, which in turn elected a Supreme Tribunal whose members served an indefinite term.
  • The failed Franklin Compromise
    With the small and large states at a greater impasse than was experienced in our time-line, there were attempts to meet half-way, but these were generally weaker and had less support than the historical Connecticut Compromise. One attempt was similar to history, the Pennsylvania Plan of Benjamin Franklin, which gave equal suffrage to the states in the House of States and proportionality to the House of Representatives, and that members of the House of States (to be called Stateholders) would also convene as an electoral college to choose the President-General.
    The Franklin Plan was rejected 6 to 7 (Rhode Island, surprisingly, sent delegates to the alternate Constitutional Convention.) Because of this, no progress was made on any of the further issues facing the Convention, and it was quietly dissolved some months later, on Tuesday, September 11th 1787. Historians in other worlds would write conjectures on what would have happened had one more state voted for the Franklin Plan in the affirmative...

The federalists, unsuccessful at the Convention, did not ease up on their nationalist rhetoric, nor did the antifederalists who, emboldened by the failure in Philadelphia, decried any talk of further centralization, under the banner of liberty and independence. The federalists, for their part, were seen to have over-played their hand, and thought to be sympathizers of monarchy, while the antifederalists were seen as misguided at best, and radical democrats at worst.

The upshot of all this is that the failure of peacefully amending the Articles of Confederation would make renewed violence inevitable, and not just in North America.

In Britain, while talk of regaining the Colonies lost in the War of Independence was moot, and business with them was greater even than before, there was the danger that events on the west coast of New Spain could trigger a new war. In France, the interest on loans made to support the American Revolution was becoming intolerable, and with a terrible harvest for the last few years, a great fear was in the air. The Holy Roman Empire remained, as Voltaire quipped, neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire, while Italy was but a geographical idea. The Ottomans were the Sick Man of Europe, while China was the Sick Man of Asia. Russia, under Catherine the Great, was establishing a colony in Alaska in 1787 and had her eyes set on Poland as well.

The “butterflies” of the failure of the Philadelphia Convention soon made themselves felt domestically. With no new Constitution, there was no new federal government, and therefore no new whiskey tax—and no Whiskey Rebellion. However, the United States under the Articles of Confederation still had the mounting problem of debt and no effective way to collect taxes at the confederal level. The establishment of the Bank of North America in 1781 helped stabilize the money supply in the new United States, but the states themselves were still free to issue their own financial instruments.

Politically, the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, will try to use the Virginia Plan to be adopted by the larger states (at least Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia) to be the backbone of the renewed United States. In their view, if the smaller states wanted to join, so much the better, but if not, then they could try their independence alone.

In any case, the US under the Articles resembled Poland with its liberum veto, where nearly everything required unanimous consent, and like the Polish Commonwealth, would end partitioned...


Top