List of Alternate Presidents

[Lorendiac]

1837-1841. William Henry Harrison (Whig-MS) [1]
1841-1845. James K. Polk (D-TN)
1845-1849. Henry Clay (Whig-KY)
1849-1853. Winfield Scott (Whig-VA)
1853-1857. James Buchanan (D-PA)
1857-1861. Stephen A. Douglas (D-IL)
1861-1865. Abraham Lincoln (R-IL)
1865-1873. Joseph Holt (R-KY) [2]
1873-1881. Ulysses S. Grant (R-OH)
1881-1885. John Sherman (R-OH) [3]
1885-1889. Grover Cleveland (D-NY)
1889-1893. John Sherman (R-OH)
1893-1897. Grover Cleveland (D-NY)
1897-1901. William Jennings Bryan. (D-NE) [4]
1901-1905. Adlai Stevenson I  (D-IL) [5]
1905-1913. Theodore Roosevelt (R-NY)
1913-1917. Elihu Root (R-NY)
1917-1921. Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ)
1921-1927. Leonard Wood (R-NH)
1927-1933. Hiram Johnson (R-CA) [6]
1933-1937. John Nance Garner (D-TX) [7]
1937-1945. Huey Pierce Long, Jr. (D-LA)
1945-1953 Thomas E. Dewey (R-NY)
1953-1957. Dwight D. Eisenhower (R-KS)
1957-1961. Earl Warren (R-CA) [8]
1961-1963. John F. Kennedy (D-MS) [9]
1963-1965. William Stuart Symington (D-MO)
1965-1969. William Scranton (R-PA)
1969-1973. Hubert Humphrey (D-MN)
1973-1977. Ed Muskie (D-ME)
1977-1985. Ronald Reagan (R-CA)
1985-1989. Richard Schweiker (R-PA)
1989-1997. Michael W. Dukakis (D-MS)
1997-2005. John McCain (R-AZ)
2005-2009. Jeb Bush (R-FL)
2009-2017. Barack Obama (D-IL)

Footnotes:

1. Martin Van Buren (the incumbent VP) fails to carry the state of Pennsylvania. This means nobody has an Electoral College majority, so the election is thrown to the House of Representatives, with the top two Whigs (in a field of four regional candidates all from the same party) automatically joining Van Buren on the short list of three names for the House to consider. Senator Daniel Webster, having failed to make it into the "final three," moves heaven and earth to round up sufficient votes to put William Henry Harrison over the top.

2. Joseph Holt was a Southern Unionist who had long called himself a Democrat, but was invited by Abraham Lincoln to be his running mate in 1864 as a sign that "balanced tickets" (representing both North and South) were still possible during and after the Civil War. Result: after Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865, Holt inherits the Presidency. By 1868, he is sufficiently trusted by the Radical Republicans that he is able to secure the party nomination for a second term and thus continue with the work of Reconstruction.

3. After President Sherman is shot by deranged office-seeker Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881, he is treated by a progressive surgeon who believes in the newfangled European idea of "sterilize your instruments before you poke them into the patient's body!" As a result, Sherman eventually recovers. Unfortunately for him, most of the thus-acquired "martyr image" has worn off by November of 1884 when he is up for reelection.

4. Most observers felt that Bryan would have lost several swing states to Republican candidate William McKinley, and thus the election, if his fellow Democrat, President Cleveland, had not bitten the bullet and strongly supported the Bryan campaign despite their sharp disagreement over "Free Silver" versus "the sacred nature of the Gold Standard.")

5. Bryan begins his second term, then is assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz in September 1901. Vice President Adlai Stevenson inherits the bulk of a four-year term.

6. At the Republican National Convention of 1920, Hiram Johnson of California arrives with the most delegates already committed to him for the first ballot, due to winning several state primaries, but completely lacks the confidence of the Republican "bosses" of the eastern United States. However, front-runner General Leonard Wood persuades Johnson to take a chance on combining forces with him by accepting the VP slot on the national ticket. (Wood being several years older, and thus likelier to die first.) The duo is elected in 1920 and reelected in 1924. After President Wood dies of natural causes on August 7, 1927, Hiram Johnson inherits the job. He is widely considered a very vulnerable non-elected President when he seeks election to a full term in 1928 -- but instead of capitalizing upon this opportunity to retake the White House, the Democrats stubbornly shoot themselves in the foot by nominating a Roman Catholic "dry" candidate from New York City, (Al Smith); a daring move which painfully fails to resonate within the states which have previously been considered the Democratic Party's "Solid South."  

7. John Nance Garner is in the unique situation of having, in effect, "inherited the Presidency" from a winning candidate who was never inaugurated! On February 15, 1933, Giuseppe Zangara shoots at President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Miami, Florida, and kills him. (Narrowly missing Anton Cermak, Mayor of Chicago, who was standing right next to FDR at the time.) Vice President-elect "Cactus Jack" Garner is sworn in as the new President on March 4, 1933, per the provisions of the Twentieth Amendment.

8. Ike's stroke in November 1957 is so bad that he finds it necessary in December to become the first person to ever resign from the Presidency. According, Earl Warren inherits over three years' worth of a Presidential term.

9. After Lee Harvey Oswald assassinates John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Vice President Symington inherits. Reform-minded Democrats then rejoice at the realization that things might have developed very differently if Lyndon B. Johnson, at the Democratic National Convention of 1960, had agreed to give up all the real power of Senate Majority Leader in exchange for the opportunity to become a marginalized Vice President in the upcoming Kennedy administration. Seeing right through this ploy, LBJ turned down the VP nomination, and thus Kennedy was able to offer that opportunity to his "second choice" (who was actually his preference all along).

Note: I just recently discovered this site, and decided to amuse myself by rattling off a fairly "conservative" list of how things might have gone differently at various points. I may try something more "radical" later on. This time around, I didn't invent any assassinations out of thin air, nor tamper with the timing of when a historical figure is known to have died of natural causes, but I did flip the results of some of the assassination attempts that actually occurred. (And sometimes I assumed the assassin would have shot anyone who happened to be President on that date.)