The following is a list of real or historical people who have been portrayed as
President of the United States in fiction, although they did not hold the office in real life. This is done either as an
alternate history scenario, or occasionally for humorous purposes. Also included are actual U.S. presidents with a fictional presidency at a different time and/or under different circumstances than the one in actual history.
In the short story Hamilton vs. Napoleon by Elizabeth Bennet, Alexander Hamilton in June 1804 announced that he would not fight a
duel with
Aaron Burr, writing "I am not a young, wild bachelor free to throw away his life on a whim. As a family man, and my family already having experienced the loss of a
beloved son thorough the madness of a duel, I have no right to risk depriving this family of mine of a husband and a father". American public opinion in general approved of Hamilton's position. His enmity with Burr became, however, ever more intensive, the two heading for a decisive political duel rather than one with guns. Towards the
1808 Presidential Election, Hamilton and Burr alike worked with relentless energy, which swept off the field other plausible candidates such as
James Madison. Hamilton gathered the remnants of the declining
Federalist Party together with some defectors from the rival
Democratic-Republican Party and various disaffected local factions in different states – altogether creating a strong new party and sweeping to power in 1808. The defeated Burr, bitter and frustrated, left the US ahead of his rival's inauguration, wandered the world and took up some wild schemes and adventures. Burr ended up at the court of
EmperorNapoleon I in
Paris, trying in vain to convince the Emperor to launch an invasion of the United States and eventually accepting a commission as a colonel in the
French Army. For his part, President Hamilton embarked on such pet projects as strengthening the
Bank of the United States, but his attention was soon drawn to foreign affairs. Alarmed by the expiration of the
Jay Treaty and the danger of
war with Britain, which in Hamilton's view would have been disastrous, Hamilton oversaw intensive new negotiations with
London. This culminated with the British undertaking not to impress any more American sailors into the
Royal Navy, in exchange for the US
joining the war against
France and sending a squadron of ten warships to fight in European waters. The treaty also gave the US considerable advantages in trade with British colonies. For the British, this new alliance meant no need to spend resources on preparing for a war in North America. Relying on the good will of Hamilton's United States, British garrisons in
Canada were pared down to a minimum, large units being sent across the Atlantic to reinforce
Wellington in the
Peninsular War – where Hamilton also sent 3,000 volunteer American troops, later increased to 5,000. The reinforced Wellington was able to make much quicker progress than he would otherwise, already in mid-1813 breaching the
Pyrenees and invading Southern France. This faced the embattled Napoleon, already smarting from his disastrous
invasion of Russia, with the dilemma whether to go on trying to maintain French hold over the
German states or rush home to deal with the invasion of French soil. Napoleon dithered – which proved disastrous for him. The
Battle of the Nations at Leipzig ended with a complete rout of the French Army, many soldiers and officers fleeing in a disorderly mass and seeking to get back to France. In the confusion, the Emperor Napoleon was killed at a farm on the outskirts of
Leipzig, among several bodies found lying near him also that of the exile American Aaron Burr. The riddle of what happened there would exercise historians, novelists and conspiracy theorists for generations to come. At news of the Emperor's death, the Bonaparte regime collapsed and the
Allies marched unopposed into Paris and
restored the Bourbon monarchy with
Louis XVIII as the new king. President Hamilton – now on his second term – attended the
Congress of Vienna, his conservative brand of Republicanism favorably impressing the gathered European diplomats and Heads of State. Hamilton succeeded in making one significant contribution to the post-Napoleonic European Order, securing a restoration of the ancient
Venetian Republic, though under Austrian tutelage, rather than Venice being annexed outright. The grateful Venetians erected a giant statue of Hamilton in the
Piazza San Marco. On his way back, the President was held up by storms and floods, spending three days at the inn of a Flemish village – where he had a poignant brief affair with a peasant girl less than half his age. Knowing he would never see her again – and that it was better that way – Hamilton wrote in his diary: "The world will never know the name of
Waterloo, but for me it will always be the place where I had known the sweetest surrender of my life". Hamilton was criticized in
Congress for entangling the US in European affairs and for being absent from the country for an extended period. In response, the President could point to the US being awarded, for its part in defeating Napoleon, the two Caribbean islands of
Guadeloupe and
Martinique. This, however, proved a mixed blessing at best. In coming decades the two islands proved endlessly tiresome to successive American governors, plagued by unrest, rioting and major
slave rebellions and being the scene of heavy fighting in the
American Civil War – until finally taken into the Union as the State of Carribea.
In the short story "Paine's Pain" by Margaret Klein, Alexander Hamilton is elected president in an emergency election called by the
Electoral College after
Tom Paine is assassinated in November 1792. Hamilton would swiftly proceed to annul Paine's reforms and was re-elected President in 1793.
In the alternate history short story "
Must and Shall" by
Harry Turtledove, Hannibal Hamlin becomes the 17th President after his predecessor
Abraham Lincoln was
killed by a
Confederate army sharpshooter at the
Battle of Fort Stevens on July 12, 1864, while observing General
Jubal Early's attack. Hamlin, who had retired to
Bangor, Maine after being passed over for renomination as vice president in favor of
Andrew Johnson, received an emergency telegram to summoned him out of Bangor to Washington, D.C. to assume the Presidency shortly after Lincoln's death. Nine days later on July 21, Hamlin becomes the 17th President and at his inaugural speech, he promises severe retribution on the Confederate States after the
Great Rebellion ends, even using Lincoln's death as justification for the oppressive peace. This involved the hanging of
Jefferson Davis,
Robert E. Lee,
Joseph E. Johnston, and other Confederate leaders for
high treason, a harsh occupation of the rebellious states, the destruction of their economy and further racial division due to the promotion of blacks to important offices, leading to great animosity between the inhabitants of the North and South. The complete military control of the former Confederacy by the U.S., and the continued rebelliousness of white Southerners, continued until at least 1942 - at which time
Nazi Germany smuggled weapons into the South to stir up revolt and distract the U.S. government.
In If the South Had Won the Civil War by
MacKinlay Kantor, Hannibal Hamlin became president in 1863, after the Confederates achieved a decisive victory and
Robert E. Lee's troops occupied
Washington, D.C.Abraham Lincoln, held prisoner in
Richmond, sent northwards a letter announcing his resignation, making Hamlin the new president. It fell to President Hamlin to complete the bitter work of negotiating the border with the newly independent CSA. The most bitter pill he had to swallow was to concede the permanent loss of Washington and its transformation into the Confederate capital – made inevitable by
Maryland joining the Confederacy (as did
Kentucky). Hamlin's main achievement was the retention of
West Virginia in the Union, as well as preventing pro-Confederate militias in
Missouri from detaching that State. In the debate over the location of the new US Capital, Hamlin strongly opposed the proposal of making
Philadelphia the capital – which would have alienated all the states west of the
Alleghenies – and supported the finally accepted compromise of
Columbus, Ohio, which is renamed "Columbia". As he did not stand for re-election in
1864, Hamlin did not actually get to take residence in the new capital at Columbus, which was only made ready years later.
In the alternate history story "Patriot's Dream" by
Tappan King contained in the
anthologyAlternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Winfield Scott Hancock was
Samuel J. Tilden's
running mate in
1876, defeating
Rutherford B. Hayes. Consequently, Tilden became the 19th President with Hancock as his vice president. Although they were elected as Democrats, they later founded the reformist Liberal Party. After serving two terms as vice president, Hancock was elected as the 20th president in
1884 and went on to be re-elected in
1888. His vice president was
Grover Cleveland, who won the Liberal Party's presidential nomination in
1892 and was widely expected to defeat his Democratic opponent
James G. Blaine. Cleveland's running mate was
Susan B. Anthony.
In the short story "A Fireside Chat" by
Jack Nimersheim contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Warren G. Harding died of a stroke during the
1920 election campaign. The election was eventually won by the Democratic candidate
James M. Cox with
Franklin D. Roosevelt as his
running mate. Five weeks after the election, however, President-elect Cox was assassinated by an anti-
League of Nations activist, meaning that Roosevelt took office as the 29th President on March 4, 1921. Shortly after the
Nazi Party rose to power as a result of the Bürgerbräu Putsch in 1922, President Roosevelt and the
Chancellor of Germany,
Adolf Hitler, established an alliance in order to maintain the balance of power.
In the short story "Love Our Lockwood" by
Janet Kagan contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Benjamin Harrison lost the
1888 election to
Belva Ann Lockwood, who became the 23rd President as well as the first woman to hold the office. He was once again the Republican presidential candidate in
1892 and was defeated on that occasion by
Grover Cleveland, who became the 24th President, having previously served as the 22nd President from 1885 to 1889.
In the
alternate history series
Southern Victory novel How Few Remain by
Harry Turtledove, Benjamin Harrison served as the
Secretary of War in the cabinet of Republican President
James G. Blaine from 1881 to 1885. He oversaw the US military during the
Second Mexican War (1881–1882) and consequently shouldered much of the blame for the United States' defeat by the
Confederate States of America, the
United Kingdom and
France. As a result, the Republicans became an ineffectual centrist third party, with their right wing defecting to the Democrats and their left wing establishing the Socialist Party, and the Republicans never again winning the presidency. He was the grandson of
William Henry Harrison, who had served as the 9th President of the United States from March 4 to April 4, 1841, as a member of the
Whig Party.
William Henry Harrison, the actual 9th President of the United States, had an alternate presidency in Tom Wicker's "His Accidency".[1] The
Point of Departure is Harrison's apparently trivial decision to wear a hat and a coat to his inauguration on March 4, 1841, and cut in half the inauguration speech he prepared, delivered in the open on a cold and rainy day. Thereby, Harrison avoided the pneumonia which in actual history killed him a month later, and served out his full term. Thus, Vice President
John Tyler never ascended to the presidency. In actual history Tyler – a
Virginian – had actively promoted
Texas, a
slave state, joining the Union; conversely, in Wicker's alternate history the surviving Harrison, a Northerner, was lukewarm to the idea. As a result, the Texans accepted the offer of
Mexico to recognize Texas provided that it remained independent and did not join the US. Texas indeed remained the
Lone Star Republic and did not join the US. The
Mexican War did not break out and thus
California,
Arizona, and
New Mexico remained part of Mexico. Harrison's care for his personal health turned out to have seriously derailed the
Manifest Destiny.
In First Among Equals by
Jeffrey Archer (first published in 1984), Gary Hart was elected president in 1988, presumably as a result of
Ronald Reagan's failure to negotiate arms reductions with the
Soviet Union. With
Margaret Thatcher's third tenure as Prime Minister already weakened by the election of a
hung parliament and the continuation of her government in the minority, Hart's social and economic policy agendas undermine the position of the Thatcher ministry further, forcing her to call an early election in 1989, which Labour wins albeit with a narrow majority.
Gary Hart is the president from 1981 to 1989 in an alternate world inhabited by
Susannah Dean,
Eddie Dean, and
Jake Chambers at the end of
Stephen King's novel The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. Eddie mentions that Hart was elected in a landslide in the
1980 election after almost dropping out due to the "Monkey Business business." In real life, Hart ran for president in
1984 and
1988 (not 1980 and 1984), and the Monkey Business scandal happened in 1987 (not 1980). In this alternate timeline,
Ronald Reagan never entered politics.
In the alternate history science fiction series For All Mankind, Gary Hart is the president from 1985 to 1993, succeeding
Ronald Reagan. It is mentioned through newsreel footage that Hart won re-election in 1988 by defeating the Republican nominee,
Pat Robertson, in a landslide. His presidency witnessed the development of
nuclear fusion, the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (which Hart refused to intervene in), and the election of Communist
Arnoldo Martinez Verdugo as
President of Mexico. He was succeeded as President by Ellen Wilson, one of America's first female astronauts.
In the alternate history novel The Guns of the South by
Harry Turtledove, Rutherford Hayes was one of the commanders of the
United States Army in the
Eastern Theater during the
Second American Revolution. His brigade of Ohioans was part of the Union army of between six and seven thousand men under the command of General
George Crook. On May 9, 1864, Crook's army attacked
Confederate forces under General
Albert Gallatin Jenkins just south of Cloyd's Mountain,
Virginia. Though the Unions greatly outnumbered their opponents, the Confederates were armed with type of "repeating" rifle, called the
AK-47. With these guns, the Confederate troops were able to hold their position, and the Union troops were forced to retreat to the north. Hayes ended up getting killed during the battle.
Ernest Hemingway was president between
1956 and
1964 in Harry G. Kaufman's story "Boozing in the Oval Room". He entered the 1956 election as an
independent, after the deaths of both
Dwight D. Eisenhower and
Adlai Stevenson (from illness and a road accident respectively). President Hemingway invited
Fidel Castro to
The White House in 1959 and forged a close alliance with Castro's Cuba. In 1962, Hemingway engaged in a scandalous fist fight inside the White House with the much younger
John F. Kennedy, here
Mayor of Boston, over the favors of
Marilyn Monroe.
It is a fact of our history that in 1786 there was a proposal to invite
Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of
Frederick the Great, to be either the President of the Monarch of the United States – but the proposal was retracted even before the Prince could answer. Later, the
US Constitution specifically stipulated that
the President must be a person born in US territory, thus foreclosing the option of Prince Henry or any other European royal assuming the Presidency. However, in the
alternate history timeline of Susan Howard's story "The Republican King of America", an outbreak of social unrest and violent riots in
Philadelphia and other American cities during the Constitutional Convention made the more conservative circles alarmed about "The dangers of Rampant Democracy". The idea of an American Monarchy gathered momentum, with the final text of the Constitution leaving open the option of a foreign-born President. Following the
1789 election, Prince Henry's candidacy was formally put forward. The Electoral College was split down the middle and after four months of tense deadlock, Prince Henry was elected president by a narrow majority.
George Washington was elected vice president, but refused to take the Oath of Office and withdrew to
Mount Vernon in a huff. In 1790 the newborn United States seemed on the verge of civil war, with daily violent clashes between supporters and opponents of the President, rival militias openly training and calls made on Washington to embark on rebellion and "end the new Royal Tyranny, as he did the old". The President considered the options of imposing martial law or alternately resigning and going back to Germany, when he got a surprising invitation to visit the dying
Benjamin Franklin, who had strongly opposed his election. The President accepted and spent a whole day in intensive conversation with Franklin. Three days later, in New York, he made a speech – drafted by Franklin, but delivered with conviction by the President who had gained fluency in English at a remarkable speed: "My Fellow Citizens, I am a Prince born and bred, the brother of a King – but I have crossed a great ocean and came to another land, where the laws and customs are different. You, my fellow citizens, have fought long and bravely to create a Republic, and a Republic it will remain, this my adopted homeland. I will seek no greater Power or Honor than being President of the United States, which is Power enough and Honor more than enough. I will wear no flowing Royal robes, nothing but the sober clothes which any prosperous merchant might have. I will live in no sumptuous palace but in a comfortable house sufficient for my needs. President of a Republic I am, and that I am proud to remain". At the same time, he also dropped the aristocratic "von" from his name, becoming plain President Henry Hohenzollern, and formally renounced all his European titles and possessions. The President's speech reverberated throughout the country (as well as shocking the Royal families of Europe, and especially his relatives in Berlin). George Washington consented to take up the position of Vice President and work together with the President, and they eventually came to be personal friends. The threat of civil war receded, and Americans started to realize that they had a capable, conscientious President who gave keen attention to the country's problems and was far from haughty or overbearing. However, radical groups continued to distrust the President and suspect him of biding his time and still planning to make himself a King. In June 1791, while visiting a farm in
Massachusetts, the President was surprised by an assassin. The first shot missed him and hit a sixteen year old farm worker, who was wounded and lay bleeding and screaming on the ground. Thereupon the President – a veteran soldier – flung himself upon the boy, to protect him with his own body. The President was then killed by the assassin's second and third shots. His funeral was well attended, even his most staunch political foes sharing in the national grief and listening to the moving funeral oration delivered by Washington. Congress refused the request of the Prussian Royal Family to let his body be buried with other deceased Hohenzollerns, writing: "Our President he was and in our land he died most nobly. In our soil he will rest and in our hearts he will live on". Congress also resolved to erect in the new national Capital by the Potomac a tall column bearing a statue of President Hohenzollern, "So that his example will serve to inspire the Presidents who follow". The Constitution was not changed, leaving open the option of foreign-born Presidents – though there was no further attempt to introduce scions of European Royalty. As a result, in 1972 Henry Kissinger was
Richard Nixon's running mate and following the
Watergate scandal became president in 1974. In the
frame story President Kissinger sits in the
oval office after his inauguration, gazes at the Hohenzollern Column which is still prominent on the Capital's skyline, and muses that "But for
Alexander Hamilton's Monarchial dreams, I would not have been here".
In the short story "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" by
Lawrence Watt-Evans contained in Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Herbert Hoover defeated his Democratic opponent
Franklin D. Roosevelt in the
1932 election as a result of
Al Smith, the Democratic nominee in
1928, running as a
third party candidate and splitting the Democratic party. On the advice of his
Secretary of StateHenry L. Stimson, Hoover went to war with
Japan in 1934. After defeating Roosevelt in
1936, Stimson became the 32nd President and, under his leadership, the United States emerged victorious from the war. However, President Stimson was criticized for not crushing Japan entirely by invading the
Home Islands. In 1948,
Adolf Hitler was overthrown and killed by a cabal of generals and
Hermann Göring succeeded him as the second Führer, continuing to serve in that position until at least 1953. Due to the survival of
Nazi Germany,
totalitarianism and
antisemitism grew stronger across the world well into the 1950s.
In
Harry Turtledove's
Southern Victory alternate history series (American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold and American Empire: The Victorious Opposition), Herbert Hoover was initially elected vice president in
1932 on the Democratic ticket with
Calvin Coolidge. Despite the prosperity of the country under
Socialist President
Upton Sinclair after the
Great War (1914–1917), the fortunes of the country had fallen dramatically under Sinclair's successor, Hosea Blackford. The strong stock market which had characterized most of the 1920s had
finally crashed in 1929. President Blackford was unable to deal satisfactorily with the
resulting depression. In 1932, the United States found itself in the Pacific War against the
Empire of Japan. While the war was largely a stalemate on the ocean, Japan ran a successful air-raid on the city of
Los Angeles on the very day that Blackford was in-town for a rally. Thus, when Hoover was nominated to be Coolidge's
running mate, the Democrats were in the strongest position they had been in for over a decade. Coolidge defeated Blackford handily. However, Coolidge died on January 5, 1933, of a
heart attack, less than a month before he was to take office on February 1, and so Vice President-elect Hoover became the 31st president in his stead. Although Hoover was a Democrat, his
Secretary of War was
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a lifelong Socialist politician in spite of being a relative of staunch Democrat
Theodore Roosevelt. Despite some of the initial optimism expressed by the voters, Hoover quickly proved a disappointment. His complete contempt for "paternalism" in the federal government rendered him just as ill-equipped to handle the economic depression as Blackford had been. He made this opinion known when Colonel Abner Dowling, the then-military governor of
Utah, proposed a make-work plan for the state. Hoover flatly refused, despite the fact that the jobless rate in Utah was further exacerbating that already-precarious situation. This stance led the voters to return the Socialists to Congress in 1934. Hoover's handling of foreign affairs also frustrated many of his supporters in the military. While he continued the policy of rearmament begun by Blackford, the Pacific War ended inconclusively in 1934. After Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party came to power in the
Confederate States of America, Hoover proved indecisive in his dealings with the United States' long-time enemy. When Featherston pressed for permission to arm more troops to suppress black uprisings, Hoover (after a period of vacillation) acquiesced, justifying his decision by citing his concerns about "radical" elements among the black Confederate community, and naively concluding that Featherston would not use the increased military against the United States. While Hoover did stand strong against Featherston on the rebellious states of
Kentucky and
Houston which the United States had taken from the Confederate States following the Great War, it was too little, too late. Growing dissatisfaction with Hoover led to his defeat in
1936 at the hands of Socialist
Al Smith and his running mate
Charles W. La Follette, who became the 32nd President. One of Hoover's last official duties included acting as
pallbearer at his predecessor Hosea Blackford's state funeral, as did former President Sinclair.
In the alternate history short story "Joe Steele" by
Harry Turtledove, Hoover's failure to end the United States' downward spiral into the
Great Depression during his term led to his defeat in the
1932 election at the hands of Congressman
Joe Steele of
California, who became the 32nd President. Hoover won only 59 electoral votes from
Connecticut,
Delaware,
Maine,
New Hampshire,
Pennsylvania and
Vermont and would become the last Republican elected to the presidency, as President Steele slowly but surely built up the powers of his office until he was effectively the dictator of the United States. Steele was ultimately elected to six terms from 1932 to
1952, dying only six weeks into his sixth term on March 5, 1953. He was succeeded by his vice president
John Nance Garner, who became the 33rd President at the age of 84. However, he was overthrown and executed almost immediately by
J. Edgar Hoover, who proved to be even more tyrannical than Steele.
In the 2015 alternate history novel "
Joe Steele", which is an expansion of the short-story of the same name, Hoover's role in the novel is slightly larger than in the short story. It is mentioned that the fundamental difference between him and Steele could be seen in Steele's inauguration on March 4, 1933. President Hoover and his wife,
Lou, wore refined (if dated) clothing that suggested their "importance" to the audience. Steele and his wife, Betty, each dressed tastefully, but in clothing the average person might be able to afford. During the
1936 presidential election, former president Hoover sought the
Republican nomination, but he lost to
Alf Landon, who in turn would loose the election in a landslide to Steele.
Portrayed as president in the Red Dwarf episode "
Tikka to Ride". When the Red Dwarf crew inadvertently prevented the
Assassination of John F. Kennedy, he was
impeached in a sex scandal (with a mistress shared with
Mafia boss
Sam Giancana) in 1964. J. Edgar Hoover was forced to run for president by the
Mafia, who blackmailed him with evidence that he was a
cross-dresser. In return for unrestricted Mafia
cocaine trafficking, Hoover allowed the
Soviet Union to set up a nuclear base in
Cuba, resulting in widespread panic, the abandonment of major American cities, the increasing likelihood of nuclear conflict and, in all likelihood, a Soviet victory in the
Space Race due to a demoralized America. Hoover's presidency was erased when Kennedy commits suicide in
Dallas in 1963 (by shooting his past self on the
grassy knoll as the car passes through), restoring the timeline (with the future Kennedy fading out of existence due to him killing his past self).
In the Sliders Second Two episode "Time Again and World", the group arrives in a
parallel universe in which the United States exists in a state of
martial law. After the assassination of
John F. Kennedy by
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1963, J. Edgar Hoover succeeded him as the 36th President, serving for 22 years until his death in 1985, implemented martial law and amended the
Constitution, excising most of the
Bill of Rights. In tribute to Hoover, all police officers wear skirts instead of pants. In that alternate dimension, the prison on
Alcatraz Island is a fully functioning penitentiary where the most dangerous political prisoners are kept, including
civil rights activistsMartin Luther King Jr. and
Robert F. Kennedy as well as loud, out-spoken comedian
Sam Kinison.
Hoover also was president in one of many alternate realities mentioned in
Richard Bowes' From the Files of the Time Rangers. He is briefly mentioned as being President in the 1940s; how he became president or what happens to him is not revealed in the novel.
Another dictatorial J. Edgar Hoover, in
Harry Turtledove's
alternate history short story "Joe Steele", got to power earlier, in 1953 – having won a bloody power struggle between new president
John Nance Garner and Vince "The Hammer" Scriabin (
Vyacheslav Molotov) following the death of President Joe Steele in March 1953 – an avatar of none other than
Joseph Stalin, whose parents in this timeline emigrated to the US making him an American citizen (and eventually an American dictator). Hoover was the head of Steele's secret police, putting him in good position to become the next dictator-president, and proving even more brutal than Steele-Stalin.
In the 2015 alternate history novel "
Joe Steele", also by Turtledove, which is an expansion of the short-story of the same name, Hoover's role is the same as it is in the short-story up until Steele's death. When Steele died in March 1953, Vice President
John Nance Garner ascended to the presidency. While he quickly exiled Lazar Kagan and Stas Mikoian, Vince Scriabin refused to go. Garner also secured the resignation of the entire cabinet, save for
Secretary of StateDean Acheson and
Secretary of WarGeorge Marshall. Scriabin tapped into the remaining clout he had in the Senate. Subsequently, Acheson died in a plane crash. A week later Marshall was about to give a speech, when he was poisoned, turned blue and keeled over. Despite there being several doctors on hand, Marshall died from the poisoning. Garner figured out quickly that someone was moving against him, which he confided in Charlie Sullivan, who'd joined the administration as a speechwriter in 1939. Sullivan accused Scriabin, but also reminded Garner that J. Edgar Hoover was also another likely enemy. He suggested that Garner replace his guard detail, almost exclusively
GBI agents, with soldiers. No sooner had Garner resolved to do all this than he was informed that the House had introduced legislation to
impeach Garner for high crimes and misdemeanors, and suspected Scriabin's hand at work again. Garner took steps to try to slow down the impeachment process. He issued an executive order eliminating the restricted zone for former
wreckers, an act criticized by Hoover. Moreover, the leaders of the impeachment drive were unmoved. The death of Scriabin, who was hit by a car, also did little to halt the impeachment. In the end the House passed three articles of impeachment, and the case went to the Senate, which voted overwhelmingly for conviction. The following day, J. Edgar Hoover, claiming that Congress was attempting to arrogate the powers of the executive to themselves, took temporary executive authority as Director of the United States. He ordered the citizens to follow the local authorities, outlawed assemblies of ten people or more, and arrested Congressional leaders "responsible" for the current state of affairs. He also cleared out the remaining government employees who'd served under Steele and Garner, including Charlie Sullivan. A few months later, a bomb exploded inside GBI headquarters, killing 26 people. Hoover had left just half an hour before. The GBI claimed a relative of a Representative who'd voted against impeaching Garner was responsible, and in response, Hoover clamped down further on Congress.
In the alternate history novel Worldwar: Striking the Balance by
Harry Turtledove, Cordell Hull served as the
Secretary of State from 1933 to 1944 under President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. He held this office during
World War II (1939 to 1942) as well as after the
Race's Conquest Fleet
invaded Earth on June 5, 1942. Given that Vice President
Henry A. Wallace was killed when the Raced dropped an
atomic bomb in
Seattle in 1944, Hull became
second in the line of succession to the presidency. When Roosevelt died later that year, Hull became the 33rd President of the United States. At 72, he was the oldest man to ever serve as president. He selected General
George Marshall to replace him as Secretary of State. As the Race presence on American soil had made Congressional elections impossible to that point, President Hull was resigned to the possibility that he might continue on as president rather than stand for
election in November. The Peace of Cairo did bring the war to an end before the scheduled election. The Race were disappointed that Roosevelt's death and Hull's ascension did not lead to the collapse of the United States.
In a
parallel universe, designated
Earth-712 featured in the comic book The Avengers No. 147 (May 1976), Hubert Humphrey served as president. His immediate successor was
Nelson Rockefeller, who was the incumbent president in 1976. In this universe,
Richard Nixon never had a political career.
The movie World Gone Wild (1988) is set in 2087 where civilization collapsed after a nuclear war. In one scene of the movie, a character is looking at pre-war relics and finds a copy of Iacocca'sautobiography. He mentions that Iacocca had been a great President.
In the internet fiction series Homestuck, American rapper Violent J is elected as dual President on an alternate Earth along with
Shaggy 2 Dope, the other member of the pair's hip hop duo
Insane Clown Posse. Running on the
Juggalo Party ticket, Dope and J would be the first and last Juggalo Presidents of the
United States. This occurs in 2024 CE, the last free election the world would ever see, because the pair are only
puppet rulers being manipulated by an evil alien space
empress.[2]
In the short story "Black Earth and Destiny" by
Thomas Easton contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Andrew Jackson was elected as the 6th president in
1824, defeating
John Quincy Adams. His vice president was
John C. Calhoun. As a result, biological and chemical engineering were developed earlier.
In the short story "Chickasaw Slave" by
Judith Moffett, also contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Andrew Jackson's image is tarnished as a result of a land-dealing scandal. This causes him to lose the
1828 election to
Davy Crockett, who becomes the 7th President. This eventually results in a
Civil War occurring over the
Compromise of 1850 and a different version of the
Confederacy winning its independence in 1853.
In the alternate history/time travel e-book Hail! Hail! by Harry Turtledove in which the
Marx Brothers are sent back in time from 1934 to 1826 and interference with the
Fredonian Rebellion.
Julius Marx realized that Andrew Jackson was scheduled to defeat incumbent president
John Quincy Adams in
less than two years. Marx also realized that Jackson would be sympathetic to the slave-holding Fredonia and would probably fight the
Mexican government. However, Marx also realized that Jackson would certainly be unsympathetic to the
Cherokee who had allied themselves with Fredonia
In the alternate history novel For Want of a Nail, Andrew Jackson at the age of 13 was part of a group of former rebels who after
Thomas Jefferson's execution migrated from the colonies in the Wilderness Walk (1780–1782), led by General
Nathanael Greene whose party also included
James Madison,
James Monroe,
Alexander Hamilton and
Benedict Arnold. He later became a commander of an army from Jefferson (an ex-Patriot state, formerly Mexican Texas), orchestrating the capture of
Mexico City in 1817. By 1819, he has merged Jefferson and Mexico in the United States of Mexico, becoming its first President in 1821.
In the
parallel universe featured in Fringe, Andrew Jackson had never served as president and, consequently, the
twenty-dollar bill did not feature his portrait but that of
Martin Luther King Jr. The counterparts of the Fringe Division members had never heard of Jackson in 2010. It is unclear whether Jackson had never been born in this universe or whether his counterpart had merely had a less distinguished and historically significant life and career.
In the alternative history novel 1824: The Arkansas War by
Eric Flint, Andrew Jackson was one of the four candidates of the
1824 United States presidential election. However, the election is thrown into the
House of Representatives between
Henry Clay and Jackson. Clay forms a political alliance with
William Crawford and
John C. Calhoun while
John Quincy Adams supports Jackson. Clay ends up winning the election. After he becomes president, he engineers a conflict against the independent Arkansas Confederacy (a nation of voluntarily transplanted southern Indian nations and free negroes) by secretly and illegally arming a freebooter expedition led by Robert Crittenden that was intended to (and did) fail miserably.
Henry M. Jackson is the president in 1986 in the "main" US timeline from Edward William Bear's universe in the book The Probability Broach as part of the
North American Confederacy Series by
L. Neil Smith. In the book itself, he runs an
ecofascist government and he is only referred to as "President Jackson"; his identity is confirmed in the later sequel The Gallatin Divergence.
In Margaret F. Kaplan's short story "Stonewall From Canada to Louisiana", the
War of 1812 ended with a crushing defeat for the United States,
Britain imposing humiliating terms and forcing the Americans to cede
New Orleans and much of
Louisiana, as well as half of
Maine, to the British Crown. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, later to become nicknamed Stonewall Jackson, was born in 1824 in a bitter US, licking the wounds of that defeat and seeking revenge on the British - an issue which overshadowed differences among the Americans themselves over such issues as slavery. Tensions and border incidents increased until the outbreak of the War of 1857, with the United States facing a two-pronged British invasion - from
Canada to the north and Louisiana to the south-west. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, in command of the greatly outnumbered United States Army of Maine, commanded in a series of brilliant battles - blocking the invading British, which won him the nickname "Stonewall", and then turning the tables, launching a counter-invasion, and occupying a large slice of Canadian territory. Transferred to the southern front, he did brilliantly there as well. Colonel
Abraham Lincoln served under Jackson on both fronts, and they became good personal friends. The war ended with a major American victory, the US regaining all territory lost in the previous war, as well as gaining some Canadian territory and wresting major economic concessions from the British. General Jackson was credited with a large share in this victory and became a national hero. When he decided to go into politics, his success was a foregone conclusion. In the
1860 presidential election, he was elected president by a landslide, with Abraham Lincoln as his running mate. As President, Jackson sought to use his high personal prestige to find "a humane and widely-acceptable solution to the problem of slavery". During the first three years of his term, President Jackson and Vice President Lincoln worked out what became known as "The Compromise of 1863", providing for a gradual emancipation of the slaves and compensation to their owners. The
election of 1864 were widely regarded as a referendum on this compromise. With Jackson being re-elected by an overwhelming majority, the Compromise - embodied in the
Thirteenth Amendment - was soon ratified in both North and South. President Jackson was universally regarded as one of the greatest of American Presidents, fully worthy of having his portrait on
Mount Rushmore in company with
George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson and
Theodore Roosevelt.
In a
parallel universe featured in the short story "
He Walked Around the Horses" by
H. Beam Piper, Thomas Jefferson was a major participant in the short-lived
rebellion in the colonies of the
British North America in the 1770s. He was the author of the American rebels'
Declaration of Philadelphia in which the colonies were styled as the "United States of America." After the defeat of the rebels, Jefferson fled to
Havana,
Cuba and eventually died in the
Principality of Liechtenstein several years prior to 1809. A seemingly insane individual who claimed to be a British diplomat named
Benjamin Bathurst maintained that the American rebels were successful in their attempts to achieve independence, Jefferson had gone to serve as the President of the United States and had been succeeded by
James Madison.
In the alternate history novel For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga by the business historian
Robert Sobel, Thomas Jefferson was a leading figure in the
North American Rebellion (1775–1778) and the principal author of the
Declaration of Independence. In June 1775, he was named a delegate of the
Second Continental Congress, where he joined the radical
John Adams in seeking independence from
Great Britain. The following year, Adams had Jefferson appointed to the committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence, along with himself and
Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, which was edited by the other committee members, then presented to the Congress on June 28, 1776, where it underwent further revision before being ratified on July 2, 1776, and signed on July 4, 1776. In September 1776, Jefferson was elected to the
Virginia House of Delegates, where he worked to revise
Virginia's laws to bring them in line with his own republican beliefs. In June 1778, after Congress adopted the
Carlisle Proposals and returned the
colonies to British rule, Jefferson was arrested and brought to
London to stand trial for treason. He and Adams were both convicted and executed by hanging in 1779. After Jefferson's death, the former rebels who migrated from the colonies in the Wilderness Walk (1780–1782), led by General
Nathanael Greene whose party included
James Madison,
James Monroe,
Alexander Hamilton,
Benedict Arnold and the 13-year-old
Andrew Jackson, named their settlement in
New Spain "Jefferson" in his honor. Jefferson's radical republicanism subsequently gave birth to a worldwide revolutionary known as "
Jeffersonism".
In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the
North American Confederacy Series by
L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a
Libertarian state after a successful
Whiskey Rebellion and
George Washington being overthrown and executed by firing squad for treason in 1794, Thomas Jefferson adopts a new calendar system in 1796. He originally proposed the calendar system to mark
Albert Gallatin's ascension to the presidency. However, Gallatin protested that the
real Revolution was in 1776, that the Federalist period should be regarded as an aberration, and that commemorating, even by implication, the overthrowing and execution of George Washington might set a hideous precedent. In addition to this, Gallatin assisted historians to still count Washington as the first president. In the calendar systems final form, the year 1776 became the new
year zero Anno Liberatis (A.L.) (
Latin for "year of liberation"). In 1800, he develops a new weight and measuring system ("
metric" inches, pounds, etc.). In 1811, he was targeted for assassination, but survived and killed his attempted assassin, although he did get stabbed in the leg with a knife and is forced to walk with a limp and a cane for the rest of his life. Jefferson was also able to successfully lead an abolitionist movement that sets all slaves (including his own) free by 1820. In
1820, he was elected as the 4th President of the United States and would serve until his death on July 4, 1826, and was succeeded by
James Monroe.
In the short story "The War of '07" by
Jayge Carr in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Thomas Jefferson lost the
1800 election to
Aaron Burr, who became the 3rd President. President Burr kept promising to stand down after one more term but was ultimately elected to a total of nine terms from 1800 to
1832. He died on September 14, 1836, and was succeeded by his 34-year-old grandson and vice president Aaron Burr Alston. It is implied that the presidency will henceforth be a hereditary office, making the United States a de factomonarchy or family dictatorship, as Alston's vice president is Paul Aaron Burr.
In
Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory alternate history series, Thomas Jefferson served as the 3rd President from March 4, 1801, to March 4, 1809, as he did in real life. Following the
War of Secession (1861–1862) in which the
Confederate States of America achieved its independence with the support of the
United Kingdom and
France, his status as a
Virginian (and more substantively, his insistence on a weak central government) tarnished his memory considerably in the United States. Northern
Founding Fathers and his contemporaries such as
John Adams,
Benjamin Franklin, and
Alexander Hamilton were viewed much more favourably. Nevertheless, Jefferson joined
George Washington,
Abraham Lincoln and
Theodore Roosevelt as one of the most memorable US Presidents, though of the four only Roosevelt was viewed in an entirely positive light. In the latter half of the War of Secession, Jefferson's youngest grandson
George W. Randolph had been the
Confederate States Secretary of War, which also contributed to the fact that he was viewed unfavourably by later generations in the United States.
In the alternate history series The Tales of Alvin Maker by
Orson Scott Card, Thomas Jefferson is mentioned as serving as the first President of the United States, which only stretches from the
New England states to
Virginia and extends westward to
Ohio.
In Michael Ferguson's story "Jefferson in Dublin", Thomas Jefferson in 1787 convinced the naval hero
John Paul Jones to reject the offer of
Catherine the Great to take up service in the
Russian Navy. Instead, Jones returned to the United States and Jefferson succeeded in getting for him a new command in the US Navy. The grateful Jones remained beholden to Jefferson. During the
1796 Presidential Election, Jones took a leave from the Navy and was deeply involved in the Jefferson campaign. Due partly to his involvement, Jefferson defeated
John Adams and became the second President of the US. As President, Jefferson took a strong pro-French and anti-British position. While not officially declaring war on
Great Britain, the strained relationship amounted to a
de facto war between the two countries. Jefferson also sent Jones at the head of a naval squadron to France, on a combined military and diplomatic mission. It was Jones who convinced General
Napoleon Bonaparte to abandon his plans for
an expedition to Egypt and Palestine and concentrate all the available French military and naval forces on supporting
a revolt in Ireland. Due partly to innovative tactical and strategic advice which Jones offered to the French naval commanders, and partly to the Royal Navy having to divert considerable forces to North America, the French Expeditionary Force successfully effected a landing in Ireland. The French soldiers were greeted as liberators by the rebellious Irish, and within four months Napoleon reached Dublin and proclaimed the Hibernian Republic, headed by
Wolfe Tone. A further campaign brought Napoleon to Belfast and Derry, sweeping up the last remnants of British resistance in Ireland. The story ends – as its title suggests – with President Jefferson arriving in Dublin for a state visit and being received by a tumultuous crowd. The postscript notes that Britain, demoralized by the loss of Ireland, signed a peace highly favorable to France and the US; that Jefferson served two terms and John Paul Jones was elected as the Third President of the United States in
1804; that Napoleon became the First Consul of the French Republic and retained that title to the end of his life; and that the Franco-American Alliance dominated the world during the 19th century, increasingly marginalizing the
British Empire.
In Turtledove's short story "
Must and Shall", U.S. President
Abraham Lincoln was
killed by a
Confederate army sharpshooter at the
Battle of Fort Stevens on July 12, 1864, while observing General
Jubal Early's attack. He was succeeded by
Hannibal Hamlin, who became the 17th President. Andrew Johnson, whom Lincoln had chosen to replace Hamlin as his vice president on the ticket in that years
upcoming election, was sidelined. On July 21, 1864, he could do nothing but glare up at the podium from the audience as Hamlin was inaugurated.
In the alternate history novel The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by
Stephen L. Carter, Vice President Andrew Johnson was assassinated by the German-born Confederate sympathiser
George Atzerodt on April 14, 1865, whereas President
Abraham Lincoln survived his co-conspirator
John Wilkes Booth's
attempt on his life in Ford's Theatre on the same night. During Lincoln's second term, the
Radical Republicans, led by Senator
Thaddeus Stevens, came to see his failure to punish the South and to protect its freed slaves as akin to treason. Furthermore, the Democrats and the former Confederates regarded Lincoln as a tyrant who imposed his will in violation of the
United States Constitution. These disparate groups formed a coalition against Lincoln and accused him of wartime crimes for having suspended habeas corpus, taking millions from the
Treasury without Congressional approval, declaring
martial law and conspiring to overthrow Congress. Consequently, the
House of Representatives voted to
impeach him in the spring of 1867 and he faced trial in the
Senate, where his attorney was a 21-year-old
African American woman named Abigail Canner.
In the short story "Fellow Americans" by
Eileen Gunn contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Lyndon Johnson lost the
1964 election to
Barry Goldwater, who used negative advertisement extensively by bringing to light questionable incidents from Johnson's past. He became the 37th President and went on to be re-elected in
1968. President Goldwater ordered that
nuclear weapons be deployed against
North Vietnam during the
Vietnam War.
In the short story "Dispatches From the Revolution" by
Pat Cadigan, also contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Lyndon Johnson persevered and decided to run for a second full term in
1968. This caused widespread protests in the United States, eventually leading to a bomb being planted at the
Democratic National Convention in
Chicago,
Illinois in August 1968. The explosion killed Johnson, Vice President
Hubert Humphrey, Senator
George McGovern of
South Dakota and Senator
Eugene McCarthy of
Minnesota. While the official history stated that Senator
Robert F. Kennedy of
New York was likewise killed in the explosion, he was actually killed by a
Chicago policeman. The chaos at the Convention led to a revolution. Governor
Ronald Reagan of
California was elected president in 1968 and turned the US into an autocratic state. He used
nuclear weapons to end the
Vietnam War, leading to the vast majority of the
Vietnamese people being wiped out.
In ARC Riders by
David Drake and
Janet Morris, Lyndon Johnson was still alive in 1991 and still President, at least nominally. He was used as a figurehead by a ruthless cabal which, instigated by a fanatical American nationalist time traveler from the future, overthrew the constitutional government in 1968 and seized power with the intention of winning the
Vietnam War at all costs. By 1991, the whole of
North Vietnam was occupied by American troops but the war continued unabated in central
China, and the US was on the verge of collapse and a nuclear civil war. President Johnson, kept alive by constant medical attention, has no real power and little knowledge of the acts perpetrated by generals and secret policemen in his name.
In the alternate history novel Voyage by
Stephen Baxter,
John F. Kennedy was the victim of an
assassination attempt in
Dallas,
Texas on November 22, 1963. While Kennedy survived, his wife
Jacqueline Kennedy was killed and he was left crippled and incapacitated. His condition forced him to resign and Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th President.
In the short story "Tom Joad" by
Kim Newman and
Eugene Byrne contained in the anthology Back in the USSA in which the United States became a
socialist state called the United Socialist States of America (USSA) as the result of a revolution in 1917, the Federal Bureau of Ideology agents
Eliot Ness and
Melvin Purvis met a bedraggled homeless man named L.B. Johnson in the compartment of a train travelling to
Nevada in 1937. He told the two incognito agents, who were attempting to catch the legendary underground labor activist
Tom Joad, that he was born and raised in
Texas but was dispossessed by the Mexican Occupation some years earlier. Johnson's travelling companions were a teenage girl named
"Boxcar" Bertha Thompson and a
mute and seemingly insanetramp who wore a tiny
bowler hat, "too big baggy pants" and "a too small suit", carried a little
walking stick and possessed a "sharp
toothbrush moustache and wide, scary eyes" which made him look like
Adolf Hitler.
In the alternate history novel The Mirage by
Matt Ruff, Lyndon Johnson was the evangelical dictator of the Christian States of America, a
Third World country which consisted of 17 states in the
East Coast of
North America, at some point during the 20th Century.
In Ward Samuels' short story "Conclusive Evidence",
Lee Harvey Oswald survives
Jack Ruby's attempt to kill him on November 24, 1963. A few hours later he gives interrogators a full confession, directly implicating Vice President Lyndon Johnson in ordering the assassination of President Kennedy. Meanwhile, Johnson had been inaugurated as the new president two days earlier. Upon Johnson's return to the White House, FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover is waiting with Oswald's confession. Johnson asks Hoover to leave him alone for a few minutes, takes a gun from a drawer in the Oval Office and kills himself - his presidency having lasted only two days.
In the alternate history novel Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? by
Bryce Zabel,
John F. Kennedy forced Lyndon Johnson to resign as vice president in January 1966 using evidence which indicated that Johnson had been involved in the
failed attempt on his life on November 22, 1963, as leverage. In exchange for the information not being made public until ten years after his death, Johnson agreed to accept a
plea bargain for multiple counts of bribery and financial malfeasance during his tenure in the Senate. Following Kennedy's
impeachment, trial and removal from office for multiple incidents of extramarital affairs both before and during his term in office,
SpeakerJohn William McCormack became the 36th President on February 24, 1966. Johnson spent the remainder of his life in a
federal prison and died on January 22, 1973, at the age of 64. He was very popular with his fellow inmates as he often assisted them with their appeals.
In Underground Airlines by
Ben H. Winters, the assassination of President-elect
Abraham Lincoln led to the adoption of a modified version of the
Crittenden Compromise, with slavery being preserved into the twenty-first century in the 'Hard Four' states: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Carolina. One consequence of this is the 'Texas War', an inconclusive fifteen-year-long war of secession starting during the presidency of native Texan Lyndon B. Johnson, with the state's opposition to slavery resulting from demographic changes (i.e. growing free Black and Hispanic populations).
In the Avenue 5 episode "Let's Play with Matches", the crew and passengers of the titular interstellar cruise ship decide to replace Captain Ryan Clark with a new elected leader (after a 'citizen's assembly' comprising myriad committees broke down). However, after Clark finds himself being elected, and with eighty-seven per cent of the vote, astronaut Spike Martin comments that it was more than the "Jonas brothers won for their second term".
References
^Published in "What ifs? of American History", New York, 2003
The following is a list of real or historical people who have been portrayed as
President of the United States in fiction, although they did not hold the office in real life. This is done either as an
alternate history scenario, or occasionally for humorous purposes. Also included are actual U.S. presidents with a fictional presidency at a different time and/or under different circumstances than the one in actual history.
In the short story Hamilton vs. Napoleon by Elizabeth Bennet, Alexander Hamilton in June 1804 announced that he would not fight a
duel with
Aaron Burr, writing "I am not a young, wild bachelor free to throw away his life on a whim. As a family man, and my family already having experienced the loss of a
beloved son thorough the madness of a duel, I have no right to risk depriving this family of mine of a husband and a father". American public opinion in general approved of Hamilton's position. His enmity with Burr became, however, ever more intensive, the two heading for a decisive political duel rather than one with guns. Towards the
1808 Presidential Election, Hamilton and Burr alike worked with relentless energy, which swept off the field other plausible candidates such as
James Madison. Hamilton gathered the remnants of the declining
Federalist Party together with some defectors from the rival
Democratic-Republican Party and various disaffected local factions in different states – altogether creating a strong new party and sweeping to power in 1808. The defeated Burr, bitter and frustrated, left the US ahead of his rival's inauguration, wandered the world and took up some wild schemes and adventures. Burr ended up at the court of
EmperorNapoleon I in
Paris, trying in vain to convince the Emperor to launch an invasion of the United States and eventually accepting a commission as a colonel in the
French Army. For his part, President Hamilton embarked on such pet projects as strengthening the
Bank of the United States, but his attention was soon drawn to foreign affairs. Alarmed by the expiration of the
Jay Treaty and the danger of
war with Britain, which in Hamilton's view would have been disastrous, Hamilton oversaw intensive new negotiations with
London. This culminated with the British undertaking not to impress any more American sailors into the
Royal Navy, in exchange for the US
joining the war against
France and sending a squadron of ten warships to fight in European waters. The treaty also gave the US considerable advantages in trade with British colonies. For the British, this new alliance meant no need to spend resources on preparing for a war in North America. Relying on the good will of Hamilton's United States, British garrisons in
Canada were pared down to a minimum, large units being sent across the Atlantic to reinforce
Wellington in the
Peninsular War – where Hamilton also sent 3,000 volunteer American troops, later increased to 5,000. The reinforced Wellington was able to make much quicker progress than he would otherwise, already in mid-1813 breaching the
Pyrenees and invading Southern France. This faced the embattled Napoleon, already smarting from his disastrous
invasion of Russia, with the dilemma whether to go on trying to maintain French hold over the
German states or rush home to deal with the invasion of French soil. Napoleon dithered – which proved disastrous for him. The
Battle of the Nations at Leipzig ended with a complete rout of the French Army, many soldiers and officers fleeing in a disorderly mass and seeking to get back to France. In the confusion, the Emperor Napoleon was killed at a farm on the outskirts of
Leipzig, among several bodies found lying near him also that of the exile American Aaron Burr. The riddle of what happened there would exercise historians, novelists and conspiracy theorists for generations to come. At news of the Emperor's death, the Bonaparte regime collapsed and the
Allies marched unopposed into Paris and
restored the Bourbon monarchy with
Louis XVIII as the new king. President Hamilton – now on his second term – attended the
Congress of Vienna, his conservative brand of Republicanism favorably impressing the gathered European diplomats and Heads of State. Hamilton succeeded in making one significant contribution to the post-Napoleonic European Order, securing a restoration of the ancient
Venetian Republic, though under Austrian tutelage, rather than Venice being annexed outright. The grateful Venetians erected a giant statue of Hamilton in the
Piazza San Marco. On his way back, the President was held up by storms and floods, spending three days at the inn of a Flemish village – where he had a poignant brief affair with a peasant girl less than half his age. Knowing he would never see her again – and that it was better that way – Hamilton wrote in his diary: "The world will never know the name of
Waterloo, but for me it will always be the place where I had known the sweetest surrender of my life". Hamilton was criticized in
Congress for entangling the US in European affairs and for being absent from the country for an extended period. In response, the President could point to the US being awarded, for its part in defeating Napoleon, the two Caribbean islands of
Guadeloupe and
Martinique. This, however, proved a mixed blessing at best. In coming decades the two islands proved endlessly tiresome to successive American governors, plagued by unrest, rioting and major
slave rebellions and being the scene of heavy fighting in the
American Civil War – until finally taken into the Union as the State of Carribea.
In the short story "Paine's Pain" by Margaret Klein, Alexander Hamilton is elected president in an emergency election called by the
Electoral College after
Tom Paine is assassinated in November 1792. Hamilton would swiftly proceed to annul Paine's reforms and was re-elected President in 1793.
In the alternate history short story "
Must and Shall" by
Harry Turtledove, Hannibal Hamlin becomes the 17th President after his predecessor
Abraham Lincoln was
killed by a
Confederate army sharpshooter at the
Battle of Fort Stevens on July 12, 1864, while observing General
Jubal Early's attack. Hamlin, who had retired to
Bangor, Maine after being passed over for renomination as vice president in favor of
Andrew Johnson, received an emergency telegram to summoned him out of Bangor to Washington, D.C. to assume the Presidency shortly after Lincoln's death. Nine days later on July 21, Hamlin becomes the 17th President and at his inaugural speech, he promises severe retribution on the Confederate States after the
Great Rebellion ends, even using Lincoln's death as justification for the oppressive peace. This involved the hanging of
Jefferson Davis,
Robert E. Lee,
Joseph E. Johnston, and other Confederate leaders for
high treason, a harsh occupation of the rebellious states, the destruction of their economy and further racial division due to the promotion of blacks to important offices, leading to great animosity between the inhabitants of the North and South. The complete military control of the former Confederacy by the U.S., and the continued rebelliousness of white Southerners, continued until at least 1942 - at which time
Nazi Germany smuggled weapons into the South to stir up revolt and distract the U.S. government.
In If the South Had Won the Civil War by
MacKinlay Kantor, Hannibal Hamlin became president in 1863, after the Confederates achieved a decisive victory and
Robert E. Lee's troops occupied
Washington, D.C.Abraham Lincoln, held prisoner in
Richmond, sent northwards a letter announcing his resignation, making Hamlin the new president. It fell to President Hamlin to complete the bitter work of negotiating the border with the newly independent CSA. The most bitter pill he had to swallow was to concede the permanent loss of Washington and its transformation into the Confederate capital – made inevitable by
Maryland joining the Confederacy (as did
Kentucky). Hamlin's main achievement was the retention of
West Virginia in the Union, as well as preventing pro-Confederate militias in
Missouri from detaching that State. In the debate over the location of the new US Capital, Hamlin strongly opposed the proposal of making
Philadelphia the capital – which would have alienated all the states west of the
Alleghenies – and supported the finally accepted compromise of
Columbus, Ohio, which is renamed "Columbia". As he did not stand for re-election in
1864, Hamlin did not actually get to take residence in the new capital at Columbus, which was only made ready years later.
In the alternate history story "Patriot's Dream" by
Tappan King contained in the
anthologyAlternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Winfield Scott Hancock was
Samuel J. Tilden's
running mate in
1876, defeating
Rutherford B. Hayes. Consequently, Tilden became the 19th President with Hancock as his vice president. Although they were elected as Democrats, they later founded the reformist Liberal Party. After serving two terms as vice president, Hancock was elected as the 20th president in
1884 and went on to be re-elected in
1888. His vice president was
Grover Cleveland, who won the Liberal Party's presidential nomination in
1892 and was widely expected to defeat his Democratic opponent
James G. Blaine. Cleveland's running mate was
Susan B. Anthony.
In the short story "A Fireside Chat" by
Jack Nimersheim contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Warren G. Harding died of a stroke during the
1920 election campaign. The election was eventually won by the Democratic candidate
James M. Cox with
Franklin D. Roosevelt as his
running mate. Five weeks after the election, however, President-elect Cox was assassinated by an anti-
League of Nations activist, meaning that Roosevelt took office as the 29th President on March 4, 1921. Shortly after the
Nazi Party rose to power as a result of the Bürgerbräu Putsch in 1922, President Roosevelt and the
Chancellor of Germany,
Adolf Hitler, established an alliance in order to maintain the balance of power.
In the short story "Love Our Lockwood" by
Janet Kagan contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Benjamin Harrison lost the
1888 election to
Belva Ann Lockwood, who became the 23rd President as well as the first woman to hold the office. He was once again the Republican presidential candidate in
1892 and was defeated on that occasion by
Grover Cleveland, who became the 24th President, having previously served as the 22nd President from 1885 to 1889.
In the
alternate history series
Southern Victory novel How Few Remain by
Harry Turtledove, Benjamin Harrison served as the
Secretary of War in the cabinet of Republican President
James G. Blaine from 1881 to 1885. He oversaw the US military during the
Second Mexican War (1881–1882) and consequently shouldered much of the blame for the United States' defeat by the
Confederate States of America, the
United Kingdom and
France. As a result, the Republicans became an ineffectual centrist third party, with their right wing defecting to the Democrats and their left wing establishing the Socialist Party, and the Republicans never again winning the presidency. He was the grandson of
William Henry Harrison, who had served as the 9th President of the United States from March 4 to April 4, 1841, as a member of the
Whig Party.
William Henry Harrison, the actual 9th President of the United States, had an alternate presidency in Tom Wicker's "His Accidency".[1] The
Point of Departure is Harrison's apparently trivial decision to wear a hat and a coat to his inauguration on March 4, 1841, and cut in half the inauguration speech he prepared, delivered in the open on a cold and rainy day. Thereby, Harrison avoided the pneumonia which in actual history killed him a month later, and served out his full term. Thus, Vice President
John Tyler never ascended to the presidency. In actual history Tyler – a
Virginian – had actively promoted
Texas, a
slave state, joining the Union; conversely, in Wicker's alternate history the surviving Harrison, a Northerner, was lukewarm to the idea. As a result, the Texans accepted the offer of
Mexico to recognize Texas provided that it remained independent and did not join the US. Texas indeed remained the
Lone Star Republic and did not join the US. The
Mexican War did not break out and thus
California,
Arizona, and
New Mexico remained part of Mexico. Harrison's care for his personal health turned out to have seriously derailed the
Manifest Destiny.
In First Among Equals by
Jeffrey Archer (first published in 1984), Gary Hart was elected president in 1988, presumably as a result of
Ronald Reagan's failure to negotiate arms reductions with the
Soviet Union. With
Margaret Thatcher's third tenure as Prime Minister already weakened by the election of a
hung parliament and the continuation of her government in the minority, Hart's social and economic policy agendas undermine the position of the Thatcher ministry further, forcing her to call an early election in 1989, which Labour wins albeit with a narrow majority.
Gary Hart is the president from 1981 to 1989 in an alternate world inhabited by
Susannah Dean,
Eddie Dean, and
Jake Chambers at the end of
Stephen King's novel The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. Eddie mentions that Hart was elected in a landslide in the
1980 election after almost dropping out due to the "Monkey Business business." In real life, Hart ran for president in
1984 and
1988 (not 1980 and 1984), and the Monkey Business scandal happened in 1987 (not 1980). In this alternate timeline,
Ronald Reagan never entered politics.
In the alternate history science fiction series For All Mankind, Gary Hart is the president from 1985 to 1993, succeeding
Ronald Reagan. It is mentioned through newsreel footage that Hart won re-election in 1988 by defeating the Republican nominee,
Pat Robertson, in a landslide. His presidency witnessed the development of
nuclear fusion, the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (which Hart refused to intervene in), and the election of Communist
Arnoldo Martinez Verdugo as
President of Mexico. He was succeeded as President by Ellen Wilson, one of America's first female astronauts.
In the alternate history novel The Guns of the South by
Harry Turtledove, Rutherford Hayes was one of the commanders of the
United States Army in the
Eastern Theater during the
Second American Revolution. His brigade of Ohioans was part of the Union army of between six and seven thousand men under the command of General
George Crook. On May 9, 1864, Crook's army attacked
Confederate forces under General
Albert Gallatin Jenkins just south of Cloyd's Mountain,
Virginia. Though the Unions greatly outnumbered their opponents, the Confederates were armed with type of "repeating" rifle, called the
AK-47. With these guns, the Confederate troops were able to hold their position, and the Union troops were forced to retreat to the north. Hayes ended up getting killed during the battle.
Ernest Hemingway was president between
1956 and
1964 in Harry G. Kaufman's story "Boozing in the Oval Room". He entered the 1956 election as an
independent, after the deaths of both
Dwight D. Eisenhower and
Adlai Stevenson (from illness and a road accident respectively). President Hemingway invited
Fidel Castro to
The White House in 1959 and forged a close alliance with Castro's Cuba. In 1962, Hemingway engaged in a scandalous fist fight inside the White House with the much younger
John F. Kennedy, here
Mayor of Boston, over the favors of
Marilyn Monroe.
It is a fact of our history that in 1786 there was a proposal to invite
Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of
Frederick the Great, to be either the President of the Monarch of the United States – but the proposal was retracted even before the Prince could answer. Later, the
US Constitution specifically stipulated that
the President must be a person born in US territory, thus foreclosing the option of Prince Henry or any other European royal assuming the Presidency. However, in the
alternate history timeline of Susan Howard's story "The Republican King of America", an outbreak of social unrest and violent riots in
Philadelphia and other American cities during the Constitutional Convention made the more conservative circles alarmed about "The dangers of Rampant Democracy". The idea of an American Monarchy gathered momentum, with the final text of the Constitution leaving open the option of a foreign-born President. Following the
1789 election, Prince Henry's candidacy was formally put forward. The Electoral College was split down the middle and after four months of tense deadlock, Prince Henry was elected president by a narrow majority.
George Washington was elected vice president, but refused to take the Oath of Office and withdrew to
Mount Vernon in a huff. In 1790 the newborn United States seemed on the verge of civil war, with daily violent clashes between supporters and opponents of the President, rival militias openly training and calls made on Washington to embark on rebellion and "end the new Royal Tyranny, as he did the old". The President considered the options of imposing martial law or alternately resigning and going back to Germany, when he got a surprising invitation to visit the dying
Benjamin Franklin, who had strongly opposed his election. The President accepted and spent a whole day in intensive conversation with Franklin. Three days later, in New York, he made a speech – drafted by Franklin, but delivered with conviction by the President who had gained fluency in English at a remarkable speed: "My Fellow Citizens, I am a Prince born and bred, the brother of a King – but I have crossed a great ocean and came to another land, where the laws and customs are different. You, my fellow citizens, have fought long and bravely to create a Republic, and a Republic it will remain, this my adopted homeland. I will seek no greater Power or Honor than being President of the United States, which is Power enough and Honor more than enough. I will wear no flowing Royal robes, nothing but the sober clothes which any prosperous merchant might have. I will live in no sumptuous palace but in a comfortable house sufficient for my needs. President of a Republic I am, and that I am proud to remain". At the same time, he also dropped the aristocratic "von" from his name, becoming plain President Henry Hohenzollern, and formally renounced all his European titles and possessions. The President's speech reverberated throughout the country (as well as shocking the Royal families of Europe, and especially his relatives in Berlin). George Washington consented to take up the position of Vice President and work together with the President, and they eventually came to be personal friends. The threat of civil war receded, and Americans started to realize that they had a capable, conscientious President who gave keen attention to the country's problems and was far from haughty or overbearing. However, radical groups continued to distrust the President and suspect him of biding his time and still planning to make himself a King. In June 1791, while visiting a farm in
Massachusetts, the President was surprised by an assassin. The first shot missed him and hit a sixteen year old farm worker, who was wounded and lay bleeding and screaming on the ground. Thereupon the President – a veteran soldier – flung himself upon the boy, to protect him with his own body. The President was then killed by the assassin's second and third shots. His funeral was well attended, even his most staunch political foes sharing in the national grief and listening to the moving funeral oration delivered by Washington. Congress refused the request of the Prussian Royal Family to let his body be buried with other deceased Hohenzollerns, writing: "Our President he was and in our land he died most nobly. In our soil he will rest and in our hearts he will live on". Congress also resolved to erect in the new national Capital by the Potomac a tall column bearing a statue of President Hohenzollern, "So that his example will serve to inspire the Presidents who follow". The Constitution was not changed, leaving open the option of foreign-born Presidents – though there was no further attempt to introduce scions of European Royalty. As a result, in 1972 Henry Kissinger was
Richard Nixon's running mate and following the
Watergate scandal became president in 1974. In the
frame story President Kissinger sits in the
oval office after his inauguration, gazes at the Hohenzollern Column which is still prominent on the Capital's skyline, and muses that "But for
Alexander Hamilton's Monarchial dreams, I would not have been here".
In the short story "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" by
Lawrence Watt-Evans contained in Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Herbert Hoover defeated his Democratic opponent
Franklin D. Roosevelt in the
1932 election as a result of
Al Smith, the Democratic nominee in
1928, running as a
third party candidate and splitting the Democratic party. On the advice of his
Secretary of StateHenry L. Stimson, Hoover went to war with
Japan in 1934. After defeating Roosevelt in
1936, Stimson became the 32nd President and, under his leadership, the United States emerged victorious from the war. However, President Stimson was criticized for not crushing Japan entirely by invading the
Home Islands. In 1948,
Adolf Hitler was overthrown and killed by a cabal of generals and
Hermann Göring succeeded him as the second Führer, continuing to serve in that position until at least 1953. Due to the survival of
Nazi Germany,
totalitarianism and
antisemitism grew stronger across the world well into the 1950s.
In
Harry Turtledove's
Southern Victory alternate history series (American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold and American Empire: The Victorious Opposition), Herbert Hoover was initially elected vice president in
1932 on the Democratic ticket with
Calvin Coolidge. Despite the prosperity of the country under
Socialist President
Upton Sinclair after the
Great War (1914–1917), the fortunes of the country had fallen dramatically under Sinclair's successor, Hosea Blackford. The strong stock market which had characterized most of the 1920s had
finally crashed in 1929. President Blackford was unable to deal satisfactorily with the
resulting depression. In 1932, the United States found itself in the Pacific War against the
Empire of Japan. While the war was largely a stalemate on the ocean, Japan ran a successful air-raid on the city of
Los Angeles on the very day that Blackford was in-town for a rally. Thus, when Hoover was nominated to be Coolidge's
running mate, the Democrats were in the strongest position they had been in for over a decade. Coolidge defeated Blackford handily. However, Coolidge died on January 5, 1933, of a
heart attack, less than a month before he was to take office on February 1, and so Vice President-elect Hoover became the 31st president in his stead. Although Hoover was a Democrat, his
Secretary of War was
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a lifelong Socialist politician in spite of being a relative of staunch Democrat
Theodore Roosevelt. Despite some of the initial optimism expressed by the voters, Hoover quickly proved a disappointment. His complete contempt for "paternalism" in the federal government rendered him just as ill-equipped to handle the economic depression as Blackford had been. He made this opinion known when Colonel Abner Dowling, the then-military governor of
Utah, proposed a make-work plan for the state. Hoover flatly refused, despite the fact that the jobless rate in Utah was further exacerbating that already-precarious situation. This stance led the voters to return the Socialists to Congress in 1934. Hoover's handling of foreign affairs also frustrated many of his supporters in the military. While he continued the policy of rearmament begun by Blackford, the Pacific War ended inconclusively in 1934. After Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party came to power in the
Confederate States of America, Hoover proved indecisive in his dealings with the United States' long-time enemy. When Featherston pressed for permission to arm more troops to suppress black uprisings, Hoover (after a period of vacillation) acquiesced, justifying his decision by citing his concerns about "radical" elements among the black Confederate community, and naively concluding that Featherston would not use the increased military against the United States. While Hoover did stand strong against Featherston on the rebellious states of
Kentucky and
Houston which the United States had taken from the Confederate States following the Great War, it was too little, too late. Growing dissatisfaction with Hoover led to his defeat in
1936 at the hands of Socialist
Al Smith and his running mate
Charles W. La Follette, who became the 32nd President. One of Hoover's last official duties included acting as
pallbearer at his predecessor Hosea Blackford's state funeral, as did former President Sinclair.
In the alternate history short story "Joe Steele" by
Harry Turtledove, Hoover's failure to end the United States' downward spiral into the
Great Depression during his term led to his defeat in the
1932 election at the hands of Congressman
Joe Steele of
California, who became the 32nd President. Hoover won only 59 electoral votes from
Connecticut,
Delaware,
Maine,
New Hampshire,
Pennsylvania and
Vermont and would become the last Republican elected to the presidency, as President Steele slowly but surely built up the powers of his office until he was effectively the dictator of the United States. Steele was ultimately elected to six terms from 1932 to
1952, dying only six weeks into his sixth term on March 5, 1953. He was succeeded by his vice president
John Nance Garner, who became the 33rd President at the age of 84. However, he was overthrown and executed almost immediately by
J. Edgar Hoover, who proved to be even more tyrannical than Steele.
In the 2015 alternate history novel "
Joe Steele", which is an expansion of the short-story of the same name, Hoover's role in the novel is slightly larger than in the short story. It is mentioned that the fundamental difference between him and Steele could be seen in Steele's inauguration on March 4, 1933. President Hoover and his wife,
Lou, wore refined (if dated) clothing that suggested their "importance" to the audience. Steele and his wife, Betty, each dressed tastefully, but in clothing the average person might be able to afford. During the
1936 presidential election, former president Hoover sought the
Republican nomination, but he lost to
Alf Landon, who in turn would loose the election in a landslide to Steele.
Portrayed as president in the Red Dwarf episode "
Tikka to Ride". When the Red Dwarf crew inadvertently prevented the
Assassination of John F. Kennedy, he was
impeached in a sex scandal (with a mistress shared with
Mafia boss
Sam Giancana) in 1964. J. Edgar Hoover was forced to run for president by the
Mafia, who blackmailed him with evidence that he was a
cross-dresser. In return for unrestricted Mafia
cocaine trafficking, Hoover allowed the
Soviet Union to set up a nuclear base in
Cuba, resulting in widespread panic, the abandonment of major American cities, the increasing likelihood of nuclear conflict and, in all likelihood, a Soviet victory in the
Space Race due to a demoralized America. Hoover's presidency was erased when Kennedy commits suicide in
Dallas in 1963 (by shooting his past self on the
grassy knoll as the car passes through), restoring the timeline (with the future Kennedy fading out of existence due to him killing his past self).
In the Sliders Second Two episode "Time Again and World", the group arrives in a
parallel universe in which the United States exists in a state of
martial law. After the assassination of
John F. Kennedy by
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1963, J. Edgar Hoover succeeded him as the 36th President, serving for 22 years until his death in 1985, implemented martial law and amended the
Constitution, excising most of the
Bill of Rights. In tribute to Hoover, all police officers wear skirts instead of pants. In that alternate dimension, the prison on
Alcatraz Island is a fully functioning penitentiary where the most dangerous political prisoners are kept, including
civil rights activistsMartin Luther King Jr. and
Robert F. Kennedy as well as loud, out-spoken comedian
Sam Kinison.
Hoover also was president in one of many alternate realities mentioned in
Richard Bowes' From the Files of the Time Rangers. He is briefly mentioned as being President in the 1940s; how he became president or what happens to him is not revealed in the novel.
Another dictatorial J. Edgar Hoover, in
Harry Turtledove's
alternate history short story "Joe Steele", got to power earlier, in 1953 – having won a bloody power struggle between new president
John Nance Garner and Vince "The Hammer" Scriabin (
Vyacheslav Molotov) following the death of President Joe Steele in March 1953 – an avatar of none other than
Joseph Stalin, whose parents in this timeline emigrated to the US making him an American citizen (and eventually an American dictator). Hoover was the head of Steele's secret police, putting him in good position to become the next dictator-president, and proving even more brutal than Steele-Stalin.
In the 2015 alternate history novel "
Joe Steele", also by Turtledove, which is an expansion of the short-story of the same name, Hoover's role is the same as it is in the short-story up until Steele's death. When Steele died in March 1953, Vice President
John Nance Garner ascended to the presidency. While he quickly exiled Lazar Kagan and Stas Mikoian, Vince Scriabin refused to go. Garner also secured the resignation of the entire cabinet, save for
Secretary of StateDean Acheson and
Secretary of WarGeorge Marshall. Scriabin tapped into the remaining clout he had in the Senate. Subsequently, Acheson died in a plane crash. A week later Marshall was about to give a speech, when he was poisoned, turned blue and keeled over. Despite there being several doctors on hand, Marshall died from the poisoning. Garner figured out quickly that someone was moving against him, which he confided in Charlie Sullivan, who'd joined the administration as a speechwriter in 1939. Sullivan accused Scriabin, but also reminded Garner that J. Edgar Hoover was also another likely enemy. He suggested that Garner replace his guard detail, almost exclusively
GBI agents, with soldiers. No sooner had Garner resolved to do all this than he was informed that the House had introduced legislation to
impeach Garner for high crimes and misdemeanors, and suspected Scriabin's hand at work again. Garner took steps to try to slow down the impeachment process. He issued an executive order eliminating the restricted zone for former
wreckers, an act criticized by Hoover. Moreover, the leaders of the impeachment drive were unmoved. The death of Scriabin, who was hit by a car, also did little to halt the impeachment. In the end the House passed three articles of impeachment, and the case went to the Senate, which voted overwhelmingly for conviction. The following day, J. Edgar Hoover, claiming that Congress was attempting to arrogate the powers of the executive to themselves, took temporary executive authority as Director of the United States. He ordered the citizens to follow the local authorities, outlawed assemblies of ten people or more, and arrested Congressional leaders "responsible" for the current state of affairs. He also cleared out the remaining government employees who'd served under Steele and Garner, including Charlie Sullivan. A few months later, a bomb exploded inside GBI headquarters, killing 26 people. Hoover had left just half an hour before. The GBI claimed a relative of a Representative who'd voted against impeaching Garner was responsible, and in response, Hoover clamped down further on Congress.
In the alternate history novel Worldwar: Striking the Balance by
Harry Turtledove, Cordell Hull served as the
Secretary of State from 1933 to 1944 under President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. He held this office during
World War II (1939 to 1942) as well as after the
Race's Conquest Fleet
invaded Earth on June 5, 1942. Given that Vice President
Henry A. Wallace was killed when the Raced dropped an
atomic bomb in
Seattle in 1944, Hull became
second in the line of succession to the presidency. When Roosevelt died later that year, Hull became the 33rd President of the United States. At 72, he was the oldest man to ever serve as president. He selected General
George Marshall to replace him as Secretary of State. As the Race presence on American soil had made Congressional elections impossible to that point, President Hull was resigned to the possibility that he might continue on as president rather than stand for
election in November. The Peace of Cairo did bring the war to an end before the scheduled election. The Race were disappointed that Roosevelt's death and Hull's ascension did not lead to the collapse of the United States.
In a
parallel universe, designated
Earth-712 featured in the comic book The Avengers No. 147 (May 1976), Hubert Humphrey served as president. His immediate successor was
Nelson Rockefeller, who was the incumbent president in 1976. In this universe,
Richard Nixon never had a political career.
The movie World Gone Wild (1988) is set in 2087 where civilization collapsed after a nuclear war. In one scene of the movie, a character is looking at pre-war relics and finds a copy of Iacocca'sautobiography. He mentions that Iacocca had been a great President.
In the internet fiction series Homestuck, American rapper Violent J is elected as dual President on an alternate Earth along with
Shaggy 2 Dope, the other member of the pair's hip hop duo
Insane Clown Posse. Running on the
Juggalo Party ticket, Dope and J would be the first and last Juggalo Presidents of the
United States. This occurs in 2024 CE, the last free election the world would ever see, because the pair are only
puppet rulers being manipulated by an evil alien space
empress.[2]
In the short story "Black Earth and Destiny" by
Thomas Easton contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Andrew Jackson was elected as the 6th president in
1824, defeating
John Quincy Adams. His vice president was
John C. Calhoun. As a result, biological and chemical engineering were developed earlier.
In the short story "Chickasaw Slave" by
Judith Moffett, also contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Andrew Jackson's image is tarnished as a result of a land-dealing scandal. This causes him to lose the
1828 election to
Davy Crockett, who becomes the 7th President. This eventually results in a
Civil War occurring over the
Compromise of 1850 and a different version of the
Confederacy winning its independence in 1853.
In the alternate history/time travel e-book Hail! Hail! by Harry Turtledove in which the
Marx Brothers are sent back in time from 1934 to 1826 and interference with the
Fredonian Rebellion.
Julius Marx realized that Andrew Jackson was scheduled to defeat incumbent president
John Quincy Adams in
less than two years. Marx also realized that Jackson would be sympathetic to the slave-holding Fredonia and would probably fight the
Mexican government. However, Marx also realized that Jackson would certainly be unsympathetic to the
Cherokee who had allied themselves with Fredonia
In the alternate history novel For Want of a Nail, Andrew Jackson at the age of 13 was part of a group of former rebels who after
Thomas Jefferson's execution migrated from the colonies in the Wilderness Walk (1780–1782), led by General
Nathanael Greene whose party also included
James Madison,
James Monroe,
Alexander Hamilton and
Benedict Arnold. He later became a commander of an army from Jefferson (an ex-Patriot state, formerly Mexican Texas), orchestrating the capture of
Mexico City in 1817. By 1819, he has merged Jefferson and Mexico in the United States of Mexico, becoming its first President in 1821.
In the
parallel universe featured in Fringe, Andrew Jackson had never served as president and, consequently, the
twenty-dollar bill did not feature his portrait but that of
Martin Luther King Jr. The counterparts of the Fringe Division members had never heard of Jackson in 2010. It is unclear whether Jackson had never been born in this universe or whether his counterpart had merely had a less distinguished and historically significant life and career.
In the alternative history novel 1824: The Arkansas War by
Eric Flint, Andrew Jackson was one of the four candidates of the
1824 United States presidential election. However, the election is thrown into the
House of Representatives between
Henry Clay and Jackson. Clay forms a political alliance with
William Crawford and
John C. Calhoun while
John Quincy Adams supports Jackson. Clay ends up winning the election. After he becomes president, he engineers a conflict against the independent Arkansas Confederacy (a nation of voluntarily transplanted southern Indian nations and free negroes) by secretly and illegally arming a freebooter expedition led by Robert Crittenden that was intended to (and did) fail miserably.
Henry M. Jackson is the president in 1986 in the "main" US timeline from Edward William Bear's universe in the book The Probability Broach as part of the
North American Confederacy Series by
L. Neil Smith. In the book itself, he runs an
ecofascist government and he is only referred to as "President Jackson"; his identity is confirmed in the later sequel The Gallatin Divergence.
In Margaret F. Kaplan's short story "Stonewall From Canada to Louisiana", the
War of 1812 ended with a crushing defeat for the United States,
Britain imposing humiliating terms and forcing the Americans to cede
New Orleans and much of
Louisiana, as well as half of
Maine, to the British Crown. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, later to become nicknamed Stonewall Jackson, was born in 1824 in a bitter US, licking the wounds of that defeat and seeking revenge on the British - an issue which overshadowed differences among the Americans themselves over such issues as slavery. Tensions and border incidents increased until the outbreak of the War of 1857, with the United States facing a two-pronged British invasion - from
Canada to the north and Louisiana to the south-west. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, in command of the greatly outnumbered United States Army of Maine, commanded in a series of brilliant battles - blocking the invading British, which won him the nickname "Stonewall", and then turning the tables, launching a counter-invasion, and occupying a large slice of Canadian territory. Transferred to the southern front, he did brilliantly there as well. Colonel
Abraham Lincoln served under Jackson on both fronts, and they became good personal friends. The war ended with a major American victory, the US regaining all territory lost in the previous war, as well as gaining some Canadian territory and wresting major economic concessions from the British. General Jackson was credited with a large share in this victory and became a national hero. When he decided to go into politics, his success was a foregone conclusion. In the
1860 presidential election, he was elected president by a landslide, with Abraham Lincoln as his running mate. As President, Jackson sought to use his high personal prestige to find "a humane and widely-acceptable solution to the problem of slavery". During the first three years of his term, President Jackson and Vice President Lincoln worked out what became known as "The Compromise of 1863", providing for a gradual emancipation of the slaves and compensation to their owners. The
election of 1864 were widely regarded as a referendum on this compromise. With Jackson being re-elected by an overwhelming majority, the Compromise - embodied in the
Thirteenth Amendment - was soon ratified in both North and South. President Jackson was universally regarded as one of the greatest of American Presidents, fully worthy of having his portrait on
Mount Rushmore in company with
George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson and
Theodore Roosevelt.
In a
parallel universe featured in the short story "
He Walked Around the Horses" by
H. Beam Piper, Thomas Jefferson was a major participant in the short-lived
rebellion in the colonies of the
British North America in the 1770s. He was the author of the American rebels'
Declaration of Philadelphia in which the colonies were styled as the "United States of America." After the defeat of the rebels, Jefferson fled to
Havana,
Cuba and eventually died in the
Principality of Liechtenstein several years prior to 1809. A seemingly insane individual who claimed to be a British diplomat named
Benjamin Bathurst maintained that the American rebels were successful in their attempts to achieve independence, Jefferson had gone to serve as the President of the United States and had been succeeded by
James Madison.
In the alternate history novel For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga by the business historian
Robert Sobel, Thomas Jefferson was a leading figure in the
North American Rebellion (1775–1778) and the principal author of the
Declaration of Independence. In June 1775, he was named a delegate of the
Second Continental Congress, where he joined the radical
John Adams in seeking independence from
Great Britain. The following year, Adams had Jefferson appointed to the committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence, along with himself and
Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, which was edited by the other committee members, then presented to the Congress on June 28, 1776, where it underwent further revision before being ratified on July 2, 1776, and signed on July 4, 1776. In September 1776, Jefferson was elected to the
Virginia House of Delegates, where he worked to revise
Virginia's laws to bring them in line with his own republican beliefs. In June 1778, after Congress adopted the
Carlisle Proposals and returned the
colonies to British rule, Jefferson was arrested and brought to
London to stand trial for treason. He and Adams were both convicted and executed by hanging in 1779. After Jefferson's death, the former rebels who migrated from the colonies in the Wilderness Walk (1780–1782), led by General
Nathanael Greene whose party included
James Madison,
James Monroe,
Alexander Hamilton,
Benedict Arnold and the 13-year-old
Andrew Jackson, named their settlement in
New Spain "Jefferson" in his honor. Jefferson's radical republicanism subsequently gave birth to a worldwide revolutionary known as "
Jeffersonism".
In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the
North American Confederacy Series by
L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a
Libertarian state after a successful
Whiskey Rebellion and
George Washington being overthrown and executed by firing squad for treason in 1794, Thomas Jefferson adopts a new calendar system in 1796. He originally proposed the calendar system to mark
Albert Gallatin's ascension to the presidency. However, Gallatin protested that the
real Revolution was in 1776, that the Federalist period should be regarded as an aberration, and that commemorating, even by implication, the overthrowing and execution of George Washington might set a hideous precedent. In addition to this, Gallatin assisted historians to still count Washington as the first president. In the calendar systems final form, the year 1776 became the new
year zero Anno Liberatis (A.L.) (
Latin for "year of liberation"). In 1800, he develops a new weight and measuring system ("
metric" inches, pounds, etc.). In 1811, he was targeted for assassination, but survived and killed his attempted assassin, although he did get stabbed in the leg with a knife and is forced to walk with a limp and a cane for the rest of his life. Jefferson was also able to successfully lead an abolitionist movement that sets all slaves (including his own) free by 1820. In
1820, he was elected as the 4th President of the United States and would serve until his death on July 4, 1826, and was succeeded by
James Monroe.
In the short story "The War of '07" by
Jayge Carr in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Thomas Jefferson lost the
1800 election to
Aaron Burr, who became the 3rd President. President Burr kept promising to stand down after one more term but was ultimately elected to a total of nine terms from 1800 to
1832. He died on September 14, 1836, and was succeeded by his 34-year-old grandson and vice president Aaron Burr Alston. It is implied that the presidency will henceforth be a hereditary office, making the United States a de factomonarchy or family dictatorship, as Alston's vice president is Paul Aaron Burr.
In
Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory alternate history series, Thomas Jefferson served as the 3rd President from March 4, 1801, to March 4, 1809, as he did in real life. Following the
War of Secession (1861–1862) in which the
Confederate States of America achieved its independence with the support of the
United Kingdom and
France, his status as a
Virginian (and more substantively, his insistence on a weak central government) tarnished his memory considerably in the United States. Northern
Founding Fathers and his contemporaries such as
John Adams,
Benjamin Franklin, and
Alexander Hamilton were viewed much more favourably. Nevertheless, Jefferson joined
George Washington,
Abraham Lincoln and
Theodore Roosevelt as one of the most memorable US Presidents, though of the four only Roosevelt was viewed in an entirely positive light. In the latter half of the War of Secession, Jefferson's youngest grandson
George W. Randolph had been the
Confederate States Secretary of War, which also contributed to the fact that he was viewed unfavourably by later generations in the United States.
In the alternate history series The Tales of Alvin Maker by
Orson Scott Card, Thomas Jefferson is mentioned as serving as the first President of the United States, which only stretches from the
New England states to
Virginia and extends westward to
Ohio.
In Michael Ferguson's story "Jefferson in Dublin", Thomas Jefferson in 1787 convinced the naval hero
John Paul Jones to reject the offer of
Catherine the Great to take up service in the
Russian Navy. Instead, Jones returned to the United States and Jefferson succeeded in getting for him a new command in the US Navy. The grateful Jones remained beholden to Jefferson. During the
1796 Presidential Election, Jones took a leave from the Navy and was deeply involved in the Jefferson campaign. Due partly to his involvement, Jefferson defeated
John Adams and became the second President of the US. As President, Jefferson took a strong pro-French and anti-British position. While not officially declaring war on
Great Britain, the strained relationship amounted to a
de facto war between the two countries. Jefferson also sent Jones at the head of a naval squadron to France, on a combined military and diplomatic mission. It was Jones who convinced General
Napoleon Bonaparte to abandon his plans for
an expedition to Egypt and Palestine and concentrate all the available French military and naval forces on supporting
a revolt in Ireland. Due partly to innovative tactical and strategic advice which Jones offered to the French naval commanders, and partly to the Royal Navy having to divert considerable forces to North America, the French Expeditionary Force successfully effected a landing in Ireland. The French soldiers were greeted as liberators by the rebellious Irish, and within four months Napoleon reached Dublin and proclaimed the Hibernian Republic, headed by
Wolfe Tone. A further campaign brought Napoleon to Belfast and Derry, sweeping up the last remnants of British resistance in Ireland. The story ends – as its title suggests – with President Jefferson arriving in Dublin for a state visit and being received by a tumultuous crowd. The postscript notes that Britain, demoralized by the loss of Ireland, signed a peace highly favorable to France and the US; that Jefferson served two terms and John Paul Jones was elected as the Third President of the United States in
1804; that Napoleon became the First Consul of the French Republic and retained that title to the end of his life; and that the Franco-American Alliance dominated the world during the 19th century, increasingly marginalizing the
British Empire.
In Turtledove's short story "
Must and Shall", U.S. President
Abraham Lincoln was
killed by a
Confederate army sharpshooter at the
Battle of Fort Stevens on July 12, 1864, while observing General
Jubal Early's attack. He was succeeded by
Hannibal Hamlin, who became the 17th President. Andrew Johnson, whom Lincoln had chosen to replace Hamlin as his vice president on the ticket in that years
upcoming election, was sidelined. On July 21, 1864, he could do nothing but glare up at the podium from the audience as Hamlin was inaugurated.
In the alternate history novel The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by
Stephen L. Carter, Vice President Andrew Johnson was assassinated by the German-born Confederate sympathiser
George Atzerodt on April 14, 1865, whereas President
Abraham Lincoln survived his co-conspirator
John Wilkes Booth's
attempt on his life in Ford's Theatre on the same night. During Lincoln's second term, the
Radical Republicans, led by Senator
Thaddeus Stevens, came to see his failure to punish the South and to protect its freed slaves as akin to treason. Furthermore, the Democrats and the former Confederates regarded Lincoln as a tyrant who imposed his will in violation of the
United States Constitution. These disparate groups formed a coalition against Lincoln and accused him of wartime crimes for having suspended habeas corpus, taking millions from the
Treasury without Congressional approval, declaring
martial law and conspiring to overthrow Congress. Consequently, the
House of Representatives voted to
impeach him in the spring of 1867 and he faced trial in the
Senate, where his attorney was a 21-year-old
African American woman named Abigail Canner.
In the short story "Fellow Americans" by
Eileen Gunn contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by
Mike Resnick, Lyndon Johnson lost the
1964 election to
Barry Goldwater, who used negative advertisement extensively by bringing to light questionable incidents from Johnson's past. He became the 37th President and went on to be re-elected in
1968. President Goldwater ordered that
nuclear weapons be deployed against
North Vietnam during the
Vietnam War.
In the short story "Dispatches From the Revolution" by
Pat Cadigan, also contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Lyndon Johnson persevered and decided to run for a second full term in
1968. This caused widespread protests in the United States, eventually leading to a bomb being planted at the
Democratic National Convention in
Chicago,
Illinois in August 1968. The explosion killed Johnson, Vice President
Hubert Humphrey, Senator
George McGovern of
South Dakota and Senator
Eugene McCarthy of
Minnesota. While the official history stated that Senator
Robert F. Kennedy of
New York was likewise killed in the explosion, he was actually killed by a
Chicago policeman. The chaos at the Convention led to a revolution. Governor
Ronald Reagan of
California was elected president in 1968 and turned the US into an autocratic state. He used
nuclear weapons to end the
Vietnam War, leading to the vast majority of the
Vietnamese people being wiped out.
In ARC Riders by
David Drake and
Janet Morris, Lyndon Johnson was still alive in 1991 and still President, at least nominally. He was used as a figurehead by a ruthless cabal which, instigated by a fanatical American nationalist time traveler from the future, overthrew the constitutional government in 1968 and seized power with the intention of winning the
Vietnam War at all costs. By 1991, the whole of
North Vietnam was occupied by American troops but the war continued unabated in central
China, and the US was on the verge of collapse and a nuclear civil war. President Johnson, kept alive by constant medical attention, has no real power and little knowledge of the acts perpetrated by generals and secret policemen in his name.
In the alternate history novel Voyage by
Stephen Baxter,
John F. Kennedy was the victim of an
assassination attempt in
Dallas,
Texas on November 22, 1963. While Kennedy survived, his wife
Jacqueline Kennedy was killed and he was left crippled and incapacitated. His condition forced him to resign and Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th President.
In the short story "Tom Joad" by
Kim Newman and
Eugene Byrne contained in the anthology Back in the USSA in which the United States became a
socialist state called the United Socialist States of America (USSA) as the result of a revolution in 1917, the Federal Bureau of Ideology agents
Eliot Ness and
Melvin Purvis met a bedraggled homeless man named L.B. Johnson in the compartment of a train travelling to
Nevada in 1937. He told the two incognito agents, who were attempting to catch the legendary underground labor activist
Tom Joad, that he was born and raised in
Texas but was dispossessed by the Mexican Occupation some years earlier. Johnson's travelling companions were a teenage girl named
"Boxcar" Bertha Thompson and a
mute and seemingly insanetramp who wore a tiny
bowler hat, "too big baggy pants" and "a too small suit", carried a little
walking stick and possessed a "sharp
toothbrush moustache and wide, scary eyes" which made him look like
Adolf Hitler.
In the alternate history novel The Mirage by
Matt Ruff, Lyndon Johnson was the evangelical dictator of the Christian States of America, a
Third World country which consisted of 17 states in the
East Coast of
North America, at some point during the 20th Century.
In Ward Samuels' short story "Conclusive Evidence",
Lee Harvey Oswald survives
Jack Ruby's attempt to kill him on November 24, 1963. A few hours later he gives interrogators a full confession, directly implicating Vice President Lyndon Johnson in ordering the assassination of President Kennedy. Meanwhile, Johnson had been inaugurated as the new president two days earlier. Upon Johnson's return to the White House, FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover is waiting with Oswald's confession. Johnson asks Hoover to leave him alone for a few minutes, takes a gun from a drawer in the Oval Office and kills himself - his presidency having lasted only two days.
In the alternate history novel Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? by
Bryce Zabel,
John F. Kennedy forced Lyndon Johnson to resign as vice president in January 1966 using evidence which indicated that Johnson had been involved in the
failed attempt on his life on November 22, 1963, as leverage. In exchange for the information not being made public until ten years after his death, Johnson agreed to accept a
plea bargain for multiple counts of bribery and financial malfeasance during his tenure in the Senate. Following Kennedy's
impeachment, trial and removal from office for multiple incidents of extramarital affairs both before and during his term in office,
SpeakerJohn William McCormack became the 36th President on February 24, 1966. Johnson spent the remainder of his life in a
federal prison and died on January 22, 1973, at the age of 64. He was very popular with his fellow inmates as he often assisted them with their appeals.
In Underground Airlines by
Ben H. Winters, the assassination of President-elect
Abraham Lincoln led to the adoption of a modified version of the
Crittenden Compromise, with slavery being preserved into the twenty-first century in the 'Hard Four' states: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Carolina. One consequence of this is the 'Texas War', an inconclusive fifteen-year-long war of secession starting during the presidency of native Texan Lyndon B. Johnson, with the state's opposition to slavery resulting from demographic changes (i.e. growing free Black and Hispanic populations).
In the Avenue 5 episode "Let's Play with Matches", the crew and passengers of the titular interstellar cruise ship decide to replace Captain Ryan Clark with a new elected leader (after a 'citizen's assembly' comprising myriad committees broke down). However, after Clark finds himself being elected, and with eighty-seven per cent of the vote, astronaut Spike Martin comments that it was more than the "Jonas brothers won for their second term".
References
^Published in "What ifs? of American History", New York, 2003