The American Monarchy

[Colin]

Well first off this is quite a good timeline I just have one question as of now:

Is the Senate somehow different in this timeline than in reality? In 1800 the Senate was elected by the state legislatures and so Hamilton would have had to have lost the state legislature vote in New York to keep his seat. In Hamilton's Plan that he put before the Convention the Senate was elected for life and could only be thrown out if they were impeached, thus create a Senate in line with the English House of Lords. If Hamilton's Plan was put into place then Hamilton would be in his Senate seat for life unless he did something worthy of impeachment, which you surely would have mentioned.

Also just a little reality check here. Hamilton never supported a hereditary monarchy. What he proposed was the election of a President who would serve a life term "on good behavior", which would be closer to an elective monarch like the Pope then a hereditary one like the Kings of England. While Hamilton was often derided as a monarchist he never proposed something akin to what he is said to here.

[Colin]

Washington adopts Hamilton, perhaps?  The former was always a father-like figure for the latter to the point it was even rumored Washington was Hamilton's true father.

How did that get started? It's a pretty well documented fact that he was born in the Caribbean, I mean he didn't even come to the North American colonies until he was 18.

[Colin]

I really don't see how, at this point, America could keep itself out of a European war. It has basically allied itself completely with Bonaparte and company, going beyond friendship and into a personal union. This does make sense, both the House of Washington and the House of Bonaparte would see themselves as new Enlightenment monarchs out to destroy the traditional order, however this makes them stronger friends than they were in OTL. They should keep building up that army because the British will come knocking at their door soon, and I hope it's not in 1812 you need a good dose of butterfly effect in their to keep things from getting stale.

[Colin]

I figured that MS and AL would be added as separate states to increase the number of slave states. Remember that in this period, Ontario and Quebec are two extra free states putting the Union out of balance.

Well Verily's point about the gulf coast of MS, and AL when it forms, is still valid unless the US has annexed Florida and I didn't notice it.

[Colin]

Eh, that's true. I guess I could redraw the map for next update.

This map might help you though. It shows which modern counties of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama made up West Florida.

[Colin]

I don't really see why the Jacksonian's would rename themselves the Republicans as republicanism, in the sense of opposing the monarchy, would seem to be a very dead subject as it seems that most Americans like and respect the monarchy. By naming themselves Republicans they actively state that they are against monarchy, as that is by its very nature republicanism. I would actually have suggested a name like the American Party or the Constitutional Party would be more appropriate and more in line with the patriotic and pro-monarchy sentiments of the time.

[Colin]

Interesting, very interesting. I do have to say how I like that this Civil War is an actual civil war, in that it is two sides fighting for control of the same government, as opposed to a war of secession. Excellent timeline overall, a few problems concerning the lack of any butterfly effect but I can let those off because of the amount of effort and just fantastic quality of this timeline.

[Colin]

Maps please! I love maps. No maps obviously makes me very very sad.

As for the format I liked the previous format better. This format seems more dry than before. Plus having written things in both timeline form and "history textbook" form I seem to like the latter better than the former. It also seems easier to write, I didn't have to spend time figure out dates for events to occur.

[Colin]

Tomorrow, probably. I spent the entirety of today getting my December 1st college apps in.

Oh where did you apply?

[Colin]

Private writings by the Prime Minister released after his death would later show him to be a deeply prejudiced, racist man, and his image among Americans has depreciated considerably in recent years because of it.

Well actually that normally doesn't happen. It's an easy to find fact that Woodrow Wilson, for example, was as rascist as Mr. Watson is in this timeline but that hasn't soured his reputation with many Americans, at least Americans that know who he is. Just because, years after the fact, historians figure out that a person is deeply rascist doesn't mean that the public immediately scorns him, of course it also has to do with what myths and "histories" people have been fed about the man.

[Colin]

Private writings by the Prime Minister released after his death would later show him to be a deeply prejudiced, racist man, and his image among Americans has depreciated considerably in recent years because of it.

Well actually that normally doesn't happen. It's an easy to find fact that Woodrow Wilson, for example, was as rascist as Mr. Watson is in this timeline but that hasn't soured his reputation with many Americans, at least Americans that know who he is. Just because, years after the fact, historians figure out that a person is deeply rascist doesn't mean that the public immediately scorns him, of course it also has to do with what myths and "histories" people have been fed about the man.

You have to be careful about judging people in the past by today's standards. By today's standards, a lot of public figures who lived in Wilson's time were "racists." In fact, by today's standards all of the Founding Fathers were "racists" (and "sexists" too). 

Please don't lecture me about judging people by today's standards, if anything you should be lecturing these unnamed people in Lief's TL for judging Mr. Watson by today's standards. All I am saying is that even if it comes out that some famous leader or historical figure was very racist, as happened with Wilson and as has happened, in some way, to Abraham Lincoln, his belief in sending the freedmen back to Africa isn't exactly what the abolitionists had in mind, people often don't have opinions that change so quickly on figures of historical importance that oftne become mythologized with time.

As for Wilson when you have people in 1912 call you rascist, if you segregate institutions that were desegregated before and had been for well over 60 years, and if you fire every black official appointed by any arm of the federal government, mostly black postmasters in African American majority towns in the black belt I think it's safe to say that you were rascist even by the standards of the day. Of course you should look at historical figures in comparison to their own time however there are plenty of very important very famous people who cannot be redeemed even if looked at in the context of their own time period.

[Colin]

BTW, Yugoslavia wasn't named Yugoslavia until the late '30s.

Well it would be possible that it could be named Yugoslavia from the beginning, since the name means union of the Southern Slavs, instead of first being called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Also I think it would be possible that such a Yugoslavia would be smaller than our Yugoslavia. It is quite possible that an independent Hungary could keep all of pre-Trianon Hungary, including Croatia, which had historically been part of Hungary since the 1200s. Also likely would be that the Slovenes remain part of Austria as, again, they had been directly ruled from Vienna since the 1300s. They would basically be nothing more than a slight extension of Styria and Steiermark.