A Stronger Federalist Party

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Most histories of the early US take the decline of the Federalist Party as a given. Part of it is Jeffersonian-Jacksonian trimupthalism. Part is an inability to see the Federalists surviving the addition of new states and the expansion of sovereignty. Also after losing the election of 1800 and thus losing office the party essentially imploded to a New England regional party that then vanished after the war of 1812.

However the Whigs of the 1830’s had many of the platforms of the Federalists – tarrifs, internal improvements, a national bank…so what is needed is a way to bridge the gap between the collapse and the revival under a new name.

I see the key problem in the person of Adams. He may or may not have been a great man [he was quite out of intellectual favor until very recently]. He was certainly a complete mistake as a President. He never saw himself as a party leader. He quarreled incessantly with the major leadership of the party under Hamilton. He was a protomonarchist who never grasped the populist nature of the American presidency, especially once the secular saint Washingington no longer held the office. He was also far too much the prig New England moralist. So he has to go.

Presume that during the election canvas of 1796 some Jacobin supporter assassinates him [or have him die of fever or drown crossing a river – I prefer the Jacobin but it is useful rather than necessary]. The Federalist electors are without a candidate. My guess would be John Jay as he was both governor of New York and not known for being Hamilton’s creature. He also had negotiated a treaty with England that the Jeffersonians hated and thus could be a lighting rod to meet their wrath head on. If not Jay substitute Pickney.

The Jefferson-Jackson party was essentially an alliance of Dixie and the trans-Apalachian West. To keep the Federalists alive they must form a Western wing so have them preempt the Jeffersonians on expansionism. With Jay as figurehead President have Hamilton push the XYZ Affair with France to open war. Hamilton would have been able to negotiate a favorable treaty with Britain as the British were in tight straits during this period. So the US enters the war in return for a major loan on the City of London, Ontario [and by implication the contested border forts left over from the Revolutionary War], Florida and Louisiana. The military that in OTL Adams raised happens more easily with British credit standing behind the USG. Louisiana was very poorly defended. The Floridas were essentially undefended. With a bit of support from the RN the US occupation would be more of an occupation than an invasion. The new lands in turn win the West to the Federalist side.

Have Hamilton provide a command to a political rival, Aaron Burr, in return for Burr switching his Tameny Hall political machine to the Federalist side.

Jay would not have been happy as President. So let him move back to the USSC as he did in OTL with Burr and Pickney being elected as a North-South ticket in 1800. Burr the hero of New Orleans would win the Transapalachian West. Even in OTL 1800 was a near run thing. Here New York, Tennessee, and Kentucky stay in the Federalist camp while Florida, Ohio and Louisiana join them. We never have a Jeffersonian era.

The removal of British support to the Amerinds opens the West to faster settlement as does the route inland from New Orleans. There will be no war of 1812 as the US stays in the British camp. We buy Quebec and Hudson’s Bay out to Oregon by war’s end [the British were always short of money and would have regarded the remnants of Canada as a waste – we can argue if they would also sell Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador which the British did not really see as Canada]. As allies of Britain against Spain have the US take Cuba, Texas, New Mexico and California before the Spanish switch sides in 1807-08.

The Democratic Party will still grow. Jefferson will be their Bryan, the great prince who was never President. Jackson will still knit the party into a national whole. Jackson will still have his Indian victories in the Southeast [faster wars without British support] but would have been an active militia general in Cuba, Texas and perhaps New Mexico.

You essentially get a bigger US faster. The national bank has a major party supporter from the first. The silly war with the UK is avoided so DC and several coastal cities don’t get burned. We also get richer on wartime trade with England and her allies. The Barbary Wars still happen only once they are seen to be working the RN helps. So the US probably keeps Cyrenaica which it took in these wars as our first imperial colony

With the US on the mouth of the Mississippi from say 1798 there is a more immediate market for Fulton’s steamboats on the river. This in turn means a smaller New York as there is less reason for an Eire canal so the big explosion in NY comes a decade later with the New York Central RR. If you want a funny twist have Hamilton, still a power behind Burr’s two terms as President, offer Mississippi Valley lands to British and Allied [Hanoverian, Portuguese, Nassau, Brunswick, KGL…] veterans in 1814-16. This would speed up the settlement of the region by a generation.

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