President John Hancock

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

President John Hancock by Eric Lipps and Raymond Speer

Author says: what if George Washington refused the Presidency? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).

Part 1: John Hancock, first president of the United States of America, celebrated his fifty-seventh birthday.

Hancock had been an unlikely choice for that position. It had been all but universally agreed at the Philadelphia constitutional convention that George Washington would be the first president under the new system. Unfortunately for that plan, the strongest dissent came from Washington himself, who disliked politics and preferred to remain in private life. Efforts to persuade him to accept the office were finally answered by direct reference to the apparent fix in his favor: "I have made clear my disinterest in the office of Chief Magistrate, being inclined to retire to private life after having served my country in peace and war. And I emphatically do not wish to receive the office as a gift, making at its very inception a mockery of the new democracy we have fought so hard to create".

"I have made clear my disinterest in the office of Chief Magistrate, being inclined to retire to private life after having served my country in peace and war. And I emphatically do not wish to receive the office as a gift, making at its very inception a mockery of the new democracy we have fought so hard to create"With the heroic general out of the picture, the Electoral College found itself unable to agree on a replacement. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, John Rutledge of South Carolina, Samuel Huntington of Connecticut, New Yorker New Yorkers George Clinton and Alexander Hamilton, and Hancock's fellow Bay Stater Benjamin Lincoln were all touted as candidates.

In the end, it was Hancock's prestige as president of the Second Continental Congress, at which he had overseen the debate over the Declaration of Independence, which carried the day for him. Hancock had established himself as a man of absolute fairness and integrity at that time, and had done nothing since to sully his reputation. "If we cannot have Washington", one elector is reported to have said, "there is no better choice than Mr. Hancock if we wish to establish the presidency as a seat of utter personal and political probity".

"If we cannot have Washington, there is no better choice than Mr. Hancock if we wish to establish the presidency as a seat of utter personal and political probity" But Hancock's presidency was a troubled one. The new United States was continually harassed by Great Britain at sea and through Native American proxies on land, and struggled to make ends meet financially. Nor did it help that Hancock's health was failing, often limiting his ability to respond promptly to political difficulties. In October of 1791, only the personal intervention of Washington prevented a military coup on the part of officers demanding payment of their salaries in gold rather than rapidly inflating paper currency, a repetition of a similar crisis in 1782 during the Revolution: at the crucial moment, Hancock was too ill to act.

By 1791 Hancock had made it clear that he would not seek or accept a second presidential term, opening the door to the fiercely contested election of 1792 which would place Alexander Hamilton in the presidency - the only individual born outside the United States ever to hold the office. (The Constitution's requirement that presidents be native-born contained an exemption for those who were U.S. citizens at its adoption).

President Hancock's decision not to seek reelection proved prescient, for he would live only five more months after leaving office on March 4, 1793. Had he died while president, there might have been a national crisis, for while the Constitution provided that the vice-president - John Adams, in this case - would act as president, there was disagreement over whether he should remain in that position until the next scheduled election year or only until a new, emergency election could be called, and Adams had more than his share of detractors. The issue would not be clarified until the passage of the Eleventh Amendment in 1801, following the bitterly contested 1800 election, which specified explicitly in one of its several clauses that in the event of "presidential death or disability" the vice-president "shall become president, with all powers, privileges and responsibilities pertaining to that office, and shall serve until the next scheduled election as provided by law, at which he shall be eligible" to seek another term.

Part 2: George Washington's foremost precedent was his decision not to assume the chief magistracy of his country; in a note which he wrote to a fan in 1796, George Washington commented: "I eschewed the honor the sundry politicians thought they did for me because, for myself, I was tired of Public Life, and for my country, I was apprehensive that the future might be disfigured if Generals in Chief grew to regard the Presidential Office as an Entitlement for their Services to the United States".

"I eschewed the honor the sundry politicians thought they did for me because, for myself, I was tired of Public Life, and for my country, I was apprehensive that the future might be disfigured if Generals in Chief grew to regard the Presidential Office as an Entitlement for their Services to the United States"One of the adages used by Henry Clay to great effect against Andrew Jackson was that "Washington wanted to refuse the Chief Executive Office to anyone who might think it was an Appointment owed to men in military command". Clay managed a 145 to 141 electoral vote victory over Jackson in 1832, who had been campaigning for 4 continual years on the theory that a corrupt bargain had put John Q. Adams in the White House in 1828. Had Adams not forfeited his chance for a second term, and ceded the candidacy to the more vigorous Clay, perhaps Jackson would have won and destroyed the federal banking system as he promised to do.

"Washington wanted to refuse the Chief Executive Office to anyone who might think it was an Appointment owed to men in military command"The next general to present himself for the Presidency was Zachery Taylor. Governor Lew Cass defeated that officer. (Had a third party candidate named Martin Van Buren done better in the race, electoral votes in the Northeast would have been switched to Taylor, who might have won the election. If something had made Van Buren a more prominent man nationwide, that could have indirectly made Taylor the winner).

"No Army officer who has attained the rank of lieutenant general or better, or a similar grade in the Navy, shall be eligible to be President or Vice President"Following the Civil War, a popular Union Gen, Ulysses Grant, campaigned for the office and was widely expected to win, but Horatio Seymour came from behind in that dramatic election and beat Grant.

In the Progressive Amendment of 1905, several different changes were made in the Constitution including three electoral votes for District of Columbia, poll tax abolition, child labor forbidden for those under fifteen, and a natralized citizen's right to run for President. The fourth provision of that Amendment was that: "No Army officer who has attained the rank of lieutenant general or better, or a similar grade in the Navy, shall be eligible to be President or Vice President". Since that law was enacted, John Pershing, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MccArthur and William Westmoreland have been forbidden the Presidency.

Author says to view guest historian's comments on this post please visit the Today in Alternate History web site for Part 1 and Part 2.