This was my entry for last month's list challenge! The challenge for this month is themed around Kings, and there's still two more weeks to get your entry in!
Watering The Tree of Liberty
Governer-Generals of the United States of America
1789-1793:
Henry Knox (Independent)
def 1789: (with John Jay) unopposed
1793-1801:
Henry Knox (Federalist)
def 1792: (with Nathaniel Gorman) Thomas Jefferson (Republican)
def 1796: (with Benjamin Williams) Thomas Jefferson (Republican)
1801-1813:
Samuel Chase (Federalist)
def 1800: (with Fisher Ames) Albert Gallatin (Republican)
def 1804: (with Fisher Ames) John Randolph (Republican), William Findley (Republican)
def 1808: (with Fisher Ames) unopposed
1813-1831:
Harrison Gray Otis (Federalist)
def 1812: (with William Davie) Charles Pinckney (Southern Federalist)
def 1816: (with William Davie) unopposed
def 1820: (with Joseph Story) unopposed
def 1824: (with Joseph Story) unopposed
def 1828: (with Joseph Story) unopposed
overthrown 1831 by Second American Revolution
Presidents of the Confederated States of America
1831-1837:
Smith Boughton (Jefferson and Liberty)
def 1832: William Heighton (Republican), Louis McLane (National)
1837-1841:
Stephen Simpson (Jefferson and Liberty, endorsed by "Utopic" Republicans)
def 1836: Thomas Skidmore ("Workingman's" Republican), Daniel Webster (National)
1841-1845:
Thomas W. Dorr (Jefferson and Liberty)
def 1840: George Ripley (Utopic-Republican), Daniel Webster (National), Thomas Skidmore (Workingman-Republican)
1845-1849:
Frederick William Evans (Utopic-Republican)
def 1844: Daniel Webster (National), James Harper (Native American), George McDuffie (Jeffersonian), Josiah Warren (Workingman's), Thomas W. Dorr (Jefferson and Liberty)
1849-1850:
John H. Noyes (Utopic-Republican)
def 1848: Lewis Charles Levin (Native American), Daniel Webster (National), Edmund Ruffin (Jeffersonian), Josiah Warren (Workingman's)
assassinated 1850 by Peter Sken Smith working with the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner
1850-1853:
Lewis Charles Levin (Native American)
1853-1857:
Robert Y. Hane (Jeffersonian)
def 1852: Frederic Hedge (Utopic-Republican), Josiah Warren (Workingman's), Daniel Webster (National), Charles Naylor (Native American)
1857-1861:
James Henry Hammond (Jeffersonian)
def 1856: Moncure Conway (Utopic-Republican), William Greene (Workingman's), Levi Boone (Native American)
1861-1862:
Charles Sumner (United Abolitionist Ticket)
def 1861: Jacob Thompson (Jeffersonian)
assassinated 1862 by the combined efforts of the Baltimore Ring
1862-1865:
J. W. Booth (Jeffersonian)
def 1864: no election held
assassinated 1865 by Boston Corbett as part of Butler's Mutiny
1865-1869:
Boston Corbett (Utopic-Republican)
1869-1877:
Benjamin Butler (Utopic-Republican)
def 1868: August Willich (Social Democratic Workingman's), Daniel Vorhees ("Union" Jeffersonian), Lysander Spooner (Liberty)
def 1872: Horace Greeley (Union and Liberty), William H. Sylvis (Social Democratic)
def 1876: Otto Weydermeyer (Social Democratic), Carl Schurz (Union and Liberty)
assassinated 1877 by John "Black Jack" Kehoe as part of First American General Strike
1877-1881:
John Kehoe (Social Democratic)
1881-1882:
Thomas Ewing (Union and Liberty)
def 1880: Ira Steward (Social Democratic), Charles J. Guiteau (Utopic-Republican)
assassinated 1882 by Charles J. Guiteau
1882-
0000: Charles J. Guiteau (Utopic-Republican)
Every step along the way to Hell was precedented, justified by what came before.
It was right to overthrow the Federalist junto. The country had been founded on such acts, of course, and the House of Hamilton (for even if Treasury Secretary was no longer the post it was when his father held it, "King Phillip II" was still on an equal level to Otis) had proved itself on an equal level of despotism to the House of Hanover. Sure, rioters storming the President's House, mutiny in the ranks, Mexican soldiers marching across the Mississippi to "restore order", all of these things were regrettable. But the violence of Federalist rule--the muzzling of the press and the hanging of seditionists and the fawning at Britain's feet--far outstripped the violence deployed against it. Wisely did the new government, on Jeffersonian principles, bind the Presidency's powers, so that America would never again be ruled by kings.
It was right for Levin to take the Presidency. His party commanded the largest fraction, if not a majority, of the Electors, and after a little debate a few of the more anti-Catholic Nationalists and anti-competition-for-jobs Workingmen agreed to back him. The previous president had had some...odd religious ideas, even for an Utopic, and owed his victory more to vote-splitting than to any actual election, so few bothered to look deeply into the assassins' sources of funding, or precisely who allowed them to slip past the few guards around Independence Square. Then, "General" Sken Smith was caught crossing the St Croix River into Canada, and was stupid enough to try and have his secret society bail him out. The American people soon rejected the party of a President who, even if he was unconnected with the death of his predecessor, had no clean hands when it came to such mob violence.
It was right for Corbett to slay the head of the Baltimore plotters. That cabal of Southern planters had been the aggressors, seizing the Presidency by force. Sumner bled out on the floor of a train carriage, and the Jeffersonians' "Electors", virtual hostages in New York under the guns of the city police, made a mockery of democracy and swore in a nine-days-wonder of an actor who'd greased the plot's wheels as Mayor of Baltimore. By the time the 1864 election was cancelled on the grounds of "public order", things reached a fever pitch. The Massachusetts State Militia, one of the few Northern militias to remain loyal, launched the final revolt, but it was a Jayhawker of New York who had been fighting from the beginning who fired the fatal shot on Booth. The rattled Electors' response was to proclaim him President, for the time being--if only because he was the only neutral figure willing to let them lead him, and who the country was willing to be led by.
It was right for Kehoe to take the Presidency. Butler, the general who fought for freedom and democracy, had turned into a petty showboater willing to go on and on and on in office. Government expropriation was widespread across the "special military districts", fuelling a civil service full of cronyist makework. By turns posing as the friend of labour and the friend of business, Butler ultimately chose his side by 1875, after negotiations to build in Mexico fell through and American-Pacific Rail collapsed. With millions out of work following "Black Tuesday", strikes and riots became commonplace across the States, and the government's response was to send in the militias, led by ex-Jayhawkers who viewed the rioters as godless. In revenge for Bloody Jim Lane's slaughter in St Louis, the Presidential train was derailed passing through Pennsylvania. The Social Democrats, in a violent mood, may not have known that Kehoe and the Molly Maguires were involved with the assassination, but when they learnt of it, they certainly didn't care, and neither did the American people.
And so, here the American people were. The year was 1882, and Charles J. Guiteau, former Governor of Niagara, was standing over the cooling body of President Ewing, holding a gun. In front of him, the Electors. Rather than run, or shoot some more, Guiteau calmly slid his pistol back into his trousers and began to speak. He cited the rebellions of 1831 and 1865, which had prevented tyranny by ending individual tyrants (ones
everyone, not just Guiteau, considered tyrants). Kehoe and Levin, who had been confirmed after ordering the deaths of their predecessors (by a majority of the popularly-elected Electors, not a slim minority). Corbett, his "esteemed predecessor", sworn in as an emergency measure in similar circumstances. The speech was rambly, but the point was clear--and backed up by the Utopic militias outside. What better reward was there, for a man who, by slaying a tyrant and a scoundrel, had unified his party and saved his country, than the Presidency?
It was a precedent many would follow in the years to come.
The principles of Jefferson had been tortured until they turned upside down. Every twenty years, or near enough, the government was overthrown, but the old order was not renewed, merely the faces on top of it. Once, one man was legitimised to defend himself from the tyranny of a majority using force; now, one man was legitimised by his use of force to tyrannise a majority. Sovereginity had passed out of the hands of the people, but it had not passed into the hands of any one man, or one family. It remained floating free in the air, ready to be picked up by anyone with courage, and used.
Other nations have been said to have had despotism tempered with assassination. Only America proclaimed that fact.
--Marcus P. C. Lamar, One Nation Under Brutus: the United States, 1882-1962
