A less plausible one, but the idea did have me wondering: What if the United States had been like Argentina?
Of course this is far more stable than the concept would imply, but I didn’t want this one to have over 60 entries and endless asterisks and little civil wars.
General War Directorate
1776-1777:
Gen. George Washington
1777-1778:
John Jay
1778-1779:
Gen. Benedict Arnold
1779-1783:
Gen. Henry Lee III
First Confederation Period
1783-1787:
John Jay
1787-1790: Nathaniel Greene
1790-1793: Alexander McDougall
The Hamiltonian Republic
1793-1797
Thomas Pinckney (Federalist Party)
1797-1803
Alexander Hamilton (Federalist Party)
1803-1805
John Adams (Federalist Party)
Second Confederation Period
1805-1809 Anthony Wayne (supported by former anti-administration party)
1809-1813 James Wilkinson
1813-1817 John Randolph
1817-1837
Andrew Jackson (Democratic-Republican)
Second American Republic
1837-1841
Winfield Scott (Democratic-Republican)
1841-1845
Lewis Cass (Democratic-Republican)
1845-1849
Joseph Lane (Democratic-Republican)
1849-1857
Abraham Lincoln (Republican)
1857-1861
William Seward (Republican)
1861-1865
Horace Greeley (Liberal Republican)
1865-1873
George B. McClellan (National Republican)
1873
Salmon P. Chase (National Republican)
1873-1877
James G. Blaine (National Republican)
1877-1881
Thomas F. Bayard (Civic Reform Party)
1881-1885
George B. McClellan (National Republican)
As was the case with most of the states born out of revolution and war in the new world, The early history of the United States of America was characterized by internecine struggle between differing regional interests, competing ideologies and the great question of government, which for most of its existence plagued the young republic.
The ineffectual military directory which led the Thirteen Colonies during the war for independence -the respected but conservative general Washington of the French and Indian War, the more ambitious but unreliable hero of Quebec, Benedict Arnold, and finally the man who led the nation through Yorktown, Paris and the Articles of Confederacy, General Lee-, was followed by an equally divided system in which the states held greater power than Congress or the largely ceremonial and toothless presidency, which for all the pomp and fuss was seen as inconsequential for most of its existence. The sole exception was the tenure of John Jay, who held both the presidency and the position of Secretary of State, and as such wielded at least enough diplomatic power to properly represent American interests in a difficult period.
The transition period towards the First American Republic, or the Hamiltonian Republic as it is often called by historians, was fraught with conflict between those advocating for a strong central government and those who defended the system created by the Articles. The key figure of this period, as the name implies, was Alexander Hamilton, who first from Congress and then as president Pickney’s secretary of the treasury, slowly sought to add attributions and special privileges to the national executive.
While Hamilton’s own presidency and the passage of the Constitution of 1797 are perhaps the biggest watershed moments of the period, in truth the creation of the Hamiltonian Imperial Presidency was a process going on for over a decade of long and hard work for Hamilton.
The defining moment of the Hamilton presidency was nevertheless not the creation of the National Bank or the fight over the tariffs or the Shennadoah Rebellion, but America’s entry into the war against France. While the question of whether the United States’ aggressive foreign policy precipitated the beginning of the war of the second coalition is one that still surrounds any debate about the Hamilton Administration, the fact that the war was much sought after by the president, and that the administration’s centralizing, authoritarian impulses were exacerbated by the war are harder to deny.
Neither the conquest of Florida nor the aging Benedict Arnold’s victory over Leclerc’s Grandee Armee at New Orleans could overcome the growing popular opposition against “Hamilton’s Tyranny”, whether it took the form of higher taxes and martial law, the new “Supreme” Court’s generous over interpretations of the Aliens and Sedition Act or the threats to shut down Congress. In the end, General Anthony Wayne’s Army of the Ohio was the only thing keeping the angry mobs from attacking President’s House, and more controversially, a decisive factor in Hamilton’s impeachment and the appointment of Wayne as Adam’s secretary of war.
The return to the Articles of Confederation did not do away with every single of Hamilton’s reforms nor did it strip the president of all the powers accumulated in the past twenty years, but President Wayne largely shied away from any of his predecessors excesses.
The same could not be said of Wayne’s rival and successor, General Wilkinson. A man of great ambition but a dubious and scheming character, Wilkinson plotted with elements of both the deposed Hamiltonian faction and the former anti-administration -and even the Spanish government, as was eventually proved-, faction to elevate himself to the presidency and then persecute his predecessor with the power of both the Press and courts behind him. Anthony Wayne’s sham trial and imprisonment deeply divided and mobilized the people as few issues did since the end of the war. When rumors spread that the General was to be executed by a firing squad in secret, there was no troops and no scruples stopping the raging mob from ransacking the Presidential residence, or indeed, much of that area of Philadelphia.
Neither the release of General Wayne nor General Wilkinson joining the despised Hamilton and divisive Arnold in exile did much to calm the waters, and the turbulent decade would eventually birth to a fourth and even greater monster: General Andrew Jackson.
A humble son of the west, Jackson had been a hero of the Florida and Ohio campaigns, and was seen as a good, strong unifying figure in a time of great national division. Yet despite coming to power on the back of the Planters’ and farmers’ interests, Jackson would with time prove to have autocratic instincts to rival those of Hamilton and Wilkinson.
Indeed, moved more by instinct than by ideology or high minded ideals, Jackson did not waste time founding Banks or Courts, but rather moved through Congress and acted as interpreter of the Will of the People. Invested by Congress with emergency powers in the name of curbing the citizenry’s discontent and political instability, Jackson soon found himself in an endless search for enemies both foreign and domestic to feed the angry mob, taking advantage of everything from anti-Masonic hysteria, fear of slave revolts, anti-immigrant prejudice and anti-British sentiments to keep his government in a constant state of alertness and paranoia.
Bucking convention by seeking a second and even a third presidential term, the Jackson administration’s growing authoritarianism was equally lauded and criticized for a time, the destruction of Tecumseh’s Confederacy and the Five Tribes giving Jackson enough political capital for a time to allow for even his most notorious excesses to go unnoticed.
In the end, though, Jackson had simply made too many enemies, and was fighting on too many fronts, and what neither the Hardtford Conspiracy nor the Nullification Rebellion could do was finally accomplished by Winfield Scott, one of Jackson’s very own Generals, and perhaps the best one, at the head of an army of northern militias, western tribes and even Canadian and British contingents, all eager to see the end of Jackson’s reign.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Miller’s Farm many a thing were made clear and many a thing had to happen: for once, the Articles of Confederation were finally put to pasture and a new constitution, one that established a strong central government without promoting central tyranny was promulgated. In a compromise between the southern and northern states, the capital was moved from Richmond back to Philadelphia, while the question of slavery in the western territories was temporarily put on hold by the Gray Amendment.
Still, the conflict between southern and northern states, and indeed, the Slave Question, remained brewing in the background for the next decade, only occasionally threatening to erupt, until the election of a young reformist by the name of Abraham Lincoln, and the beginning of the Great American Civil War.