Inspired by this thread, Cranberry and I have decided to launch an interactive election series contemplating the political history of a united North America. I encourage you to read the Prologue first, but if you're anxious to vote, here's a short version of the events that led to this moment in Alternate History: Benedict Arnold's successful conquest of Canada in the winter of 1775-76 convinced France to intervene in the American Revolution a year earlier than in OTL. As a result, the War of Independence ends in 1779 (rather than 1783) and leaves the new United States in control of the Eastern half of North America. Meanwhile, the success of the American Revolution leads to rebellions in Mexico and France; distracted by the rising Jacobin menace, Spain reluctantly grants Mexico independence in 1782, and the former Spanish colony unites with the U.S. to form the Commonwealth of North America in 1783. Tasked with choosing the first president of the new republic, members of the Continental Electoral Council have the choice of Acting President Benjamin Franklin (architect of the new Commonwealth), former loyalist Congressman Alured Clarke, Governor Bernando de Galvez, and Governor Miguel Hidalgo. You have one vote; the runner-up becomes VP.
Prologue
“The bodies of Empires litter the American landscape.”
-Thomas Paine, 1783
Map of the Commonwealth of North America, 1784
I. October, 1762. London.The news swept through the British capital like an early spring breeze, carried on the whispers of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, spreading through the pubs and shops to nestle in the ear of every Englishman. The features of the tale seemed to shift with each retelling, until few could discern the fact from the fiction, but the heart was always the same: Louis XV had capitulated, the French had laid down their arms, and the Kingdom France had sent emissaries to King George to secure the terms of peace. Never had a rumor been so happily received in London, and cries of “God Save the King” could be heard not just in the streets of the capital, but in British holdings around the world.
The terms of peace would prove even sweeter than victory itself. Unable to maintain its empire, the French would cede the entirety of their claims in America to Britain, reserving only a small patch of the Caribbean for their own. Not only the prized Ohio River Valley, but Canada, Louisiana, and Spanish Florida would become the domain of George III, who at the age of 22 became the ruler of the largest empire ever seen in the Western world.
“No prince has ever begun his reign by so glorious a war and so glorious a peace,” the Lord Egremont said of the young monarch. But wars and empires have their fee, and it would soon become clear that the victory had cost more than it was worth. Britain had taken on the curse of Achilles, and she would pay the price.
II. April, 1775. Concord.Indeed, the two decade that followed the signing of the Treaty of Paris would prove the most frustrating of the century for the rulers of the British Empire. Weighted by the debts of nearly a century of wars, Parliament was in desperate need of revenue. Attempts to raise funds by taxing her American colonies were met, not with gratitude, but with outrage. Long accustomed to governing their own affairs, the American colonists were not inclined to surrender their sovereignty to a monarch an ocean away, and they resisted the new taxes with tooth and nail.
What began as peaceful protest against Parliamentary overreach turned to simmering contention and then to war. By the spring of 1775, the situation had grown so grave that both sides had begun to prepare for war. The tension was worst in Massachusetts, where British soldiers occupied the city of Boston, and the fear of a military reign of terror grew to the point where colonial militiamen began stockpiling arms and ammunition in the town of Concord in case they were called upon to defend their homes with force of arms.
That day came in early April 1775, when a force of British regulars commanded by Major John Pitcairn began a midnight march on Concord to seize the munitions and arrest the leaders of the revolutionary movement. Instead, they met with a force of armed colonials who, after an initial skirmish on the village green in Lexington, repelled the British troops at the North Bridge in Concord. Retreating back along the road to Boston, Pitcairn’s troops were harassed by scores of colonial militia, who appeared on all sides and nearly destroyed the regulars entirely. The American Revolution had begun.
III. January, 1776. Quebec.A month after the battles at Lexington and Concord, delegates from 13 of Britain’s North American colonies met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the Second Continental Congress. Unlike the first Congress that had met a year previously in Carpenter’s Hall, this Congress was to be a war government. By June, the body had approved the formation of a Continental Army commanded by Virginian war hero George Washington, who assembled his forces and laid siege to the city of Boston, where several thousand British troops still held the colonial militiamen at bay.
Later that year, Congress authorized an expedition into Canada whose aim was to liberate the city of Quebec and bring the northern provinces into the Union. Commanded by Generals Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery, the army moved north along the St. Lawrence River and, after a long and arduous campaign, succeeded in wresting Quebec from British hands on New Years Day, 1776. This victory, and Washington’s successful liberation of Boston two months later, would convince France to enter the war on the side of the Americans when independence was declared that summer. Though Britain would launch a successful campaign later that fall, taking New York City and forcing Washington to retreat to Philadelphia, the arrival of a French army led by the Comte de Rochambeau in the spring of 1777 meant that the war was, effectively, over.
IV. November, 1782. Mexico City.The war raged on. In New York, Washington and his French allies defeated the British at Brandywine Creek and lay siege to New York City. To the North West, Benedict Arnold and George Rodgers Clark drove the British from the frontier, while Richard Livingston battled Loyalists in Upper Canada. To the South, Nathanael Greene led an combined French-American force into Florida and succeeded in taking Pensacola in May of 1778 and New Orleans five months later. By 1779, it was clear that Britain stood little chance of subjugating the colonies, and reluctantly agreed to recognize the independence of the new United States of America.
The success of the American Revolution inspired revolutionaries the world round. In France, members of the Third Estate declared themselves the National Assembly, overthrew the King, and proclaimed the birth of the French Republic. Across the ocean in the colony of New Spain, Mexican revolutionaries launched their own campaign for independence in the spring of 1780. With the powers of Europe embroiled in yet another war with France, the new republican regime having declared war on her monarchial neighbors, Spain could do but little to maintain her colonial holdings, and reluctantly recognized Mexican independence in 1782.
V. May, 1783. Philadelphia.The euphoria that had followed the coming of independence was soon muted by the realities of building a republican government in a world at war. By the time the eighth session of the Continental Congress adjourned in the waning months of 1782, it was clear that the patchwork “Confederation” that united the 19 states was not strong enough to govern so vast a country. Saddled with debt, beset by pirates on the high seas, and plagued with turbulence at home, the Union seemed in danger of collapsing. The war in Europe only exacerbated the growing crisis: trade with the continental has slowed to nearly a standstill, and the navies of both Britain and France have taken to seizing American ships at random, ostensibly to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy. To the south, the newborn Republic of Mexico labored under similar burdens, with the new republican government struggling to establish order.
In its hour of crisis, the continent turned to Benjamin Franklin, the famed "father of electricity," to light the way. In a secret meeting between Mexican and American delegates in the spring of 1782, Franklin proposed a radical and world-changing course of action: the two fledgling republics would unite to form a single, Continental Commonwealth spanning from the icy northern territories of Rupert's Land to the rainforests of the Yucatan Peninsula. Only then, said Franklin, would North America be strong enough to demand the recognition and respect of the powers of Europe.
A Convention composed of delegates from Mexico and the 19 American states met at Philadelphia the following year. There, Franklin introduced a proposal to create a united Continental government much like the Albany Plan he had authored during the French and Indian War. The new government would be composed of three branches: a legislative Congress composed of representatives from each province, a president chosen by an "Electoral Council" every four years, and an independent judiciary appointed jointly by the two other branches. As expected, the idea was controversial, and several delegates threatened to walk out, but Franklin's prestige, combined with the timely seizure of several American merchant ships off the coast of Maryland, convinced the Convention to approve the plan. By the following May, the proposed "Charter of Government for the Commonwealth of North America" had been ratified by all 19 states and the Mexican legislature.
Continued...
Poll
