WI: George Washington lives 15 more years?

Lets say Washington doesn't get sick (or the doctors don't botch his treatment) and he lives until 1814. What would he do in the intervening years? Would he continue fighting the Natives, would he (around 80) take up arms against Canada and the British soldiers, and what would his legacy be living nearly 2 decades past retirement?
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Washington was seriously losing his mojo in the last years of his life. He had proven willing to come out of retirement in order to command a standing army whose obvious purpose was as much to intimidate the Jeffersonians as to protect against any foreign threat. He had interfered with President Adams in his insistence that Hamilton be made Inspector General of the army. He thought the Alien and Sedition Acts were a great idea.

Washington did more politically stupid things in the last two years of his life than in the rest of his life put together. Had he lived longer, he could well have screwed up even more and ruined the golden historical reputation he has enjoyed IOTL.
 
Lets say Washington doesn't get sick (or the doctors don't botch his treatment) and he lives until 1814. What would he do in the intervening years? Would he continue fighting the Natives, would he (around 80) take up arms against Canada and the British soldiers, and what would his legacy be living nearly 2 decades past retirement?

Don't think he'd do much, TBH.....he was getting up there in years, as it is. More than likely, he'd stay home, doing whatever it was retired politicians would do back then. :cool:
 
He might have written some kind of a memoir.

What I would like to have seen from this kind of timeline are Washington's comments on his successors. He's one of the few Presidents to serve his full term without the opportunity to see his successor's full term.
 
I'll quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

"That leading Federalists opposed to Adams did not consider the [no-third-
term] rule absolutely binding is evident from their attempt in 1799 to
persuade Washington to accept a third term..." Richard P. McCormick, *The
Presidential Game: The Origins of American Presidential Politics* (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1982), p. 245.

No doubt it is extremely unlikely that Washington would accept--but suppose
his health had been better, and the Hamiltonians had persuaded him: "General,
this is different from 1796. This time only you can save the nation from the
Jacobins [i.e., Jefferson]. Yes, we know you said in 1796 that you would not
be a candidate again, but [anticipating TR in 1912] when a man says at
breakfast in the morning, 'no thank you, I will not take any more coffee,' it
does not mean that he will not take any more coffee to-morrow morning, or
next week, or next month, or next year."

So Washington once again reluctantly decides he must accept his country's
call. What next? Obviously he is not going to get the office without bitter
opposition. After Jay's Treaty, viewed by Republicans as a sell-out to the
British, Washington was anything but a non-controversial, non-partisan
national hero; one Republican toast in 1796 was "A speedy death to General
Washington." In his retirement, he endorsed the Sedition Act, no doubt
largely because of resentment of the Republican slanders about him. Still,
he is George Washington, and has far more prestige than any other possible
Federalist candidate, including Adams. If Adams insists on remaining a
candidate, the split in the Federalist ranks between Washington and Adams
presumably assures Jefferson's victory. But what if Adams sees the
hopelessness of the situation and simply gives up, leaving Washington and
Jefferson to fight it out? https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/QFr8-CeL0t4/z3_IdVRUkkwJ
 
Don't think he'd do much, TBH.....he was getting up there in years, as it is. More than likely, he'd stay home, doing whatever it was retired politicians would do back then. :cool:

But if he's in better health, he may run for President again in 1796, and maybe in 1800 . . . and then the precedent of serving only two terms never exists. Huge potential butterflies there.
 
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