American History Hit - What If George Washington Became King?

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

‘No occurrence in the course of the war has given me more painful sensations.' This was George Washington's response when the idea of his becoming 'King' was put to him.But what if he had? What would an American royalty look like? Who would have succeeded Washington? And why did this not happen?Don is joined for this episode by Michael Hattem, author of The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History’ and ‘Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution’.Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's April 30th, 1789. It's quite the scene today here on Wall Street, outside New York's American Coronation Hall.

The stately structure with its pediment and columns shrouded in red, white, and blue, is backdrop to a marching band, moving up the block towards Broadway. A teeming crowd has gathered, held back by a phalanx of soldiers in tricornered hats. The atmosphere is giddy and confused. No one's ever witnessed what's about to ensue. Inside the hall, the archbishop checks his notes. The throne is dusted yet again, and the royal jeweler does a last polish of the crown before placing it atop its blue velvet cushion. Everyone's nervous, but none more so than the man who will soon be king.

King George I, King George Washington of America. Hello, all Don Wildman here, this is American history hit. It is among the bedrock notions of our nation enacted into law. that an American president cannot serve more than two elected terms in office. After two, it's over, no questions asked. So says the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution as approved by Congress March 21, 1947, ratified by the states four years later in 51. At that point, 75 years ago, it was on the books. Two terms, that's it. The thing is, all this roots from a pretty grand assumption that our founding father, George Washington,

had made it so, that he deliberately, magnanimously stepped away from the presidency in 1797 after his two terms were up, thus setting a precedent for presidents for all time, or at least until FDR came along and flouted the unwritten rule by being elected four times. In reaction to that dynasty, Congress passed the 22nd, and enough of the nation agreed, and here we are. So, this assumption, what did George Washington really say? Was this self-imposed term limit as deliberate a precedent as popular understanding suggests? Or was it made so by generations that followed? And what if he'd stayed on for another term, or another?

Indeed, what if our first president had instead been our first king, King George I? And what sort of kingdom might Washington have ruled? It's a worthy question, when you consider the norm in those days. days was monarchy and had been for centuries. And today we'll entertain all this with historian Michael Haddam, author of the timely book, The Memory of 76, The Revolution in American History, finalist for the 2025 George Washington Prize, and past and prologue, politics and memory in the American Revolution. Michael is currently the associate director of the Yale New Haven Teachers Institute. He previously joined us here to discuss Paul Revere's ride so many moons ago.

Hello, Michael. Thanks for turning up again. Thanks for having me. Today's a counterfactual where we ask a question many of us are anxiously revisiting these days. If George Washington had decided otherwise and remained in office beyond his two terms, how might he have formed a different idea of the presidency than we have today? Indeed, what if Washington was king? You ready for this conversation, Michael? Absolutely. Let's do it. Honestly, I expected this to be a much simpler conversation, but no sooner did I circle in on this subject. And there are so many implications. It's such a useful thing for understanding the government we actually got. So let's start there with a Washington presidency. Few facts. George Washington, only president ever to win every state in the union. I mean, they're only 13, so it's not a fair comparison. But it does speak to his popularity. Not sure there's ever been a president with such universal support among his populace. Did he earn this as president or was this left over from the war?

That's a great question. I think it is largely left over from the war. It's often forgotten just how contentious Washington's administrations were. That's really true. Right? I mean, he did not have a fun time as president of the United States. It's in his first administration when the first party system emerges and all the animosity between Hamilton and Jefferson.

So basically, you know, his administration gives birth to partisan politics in the United States. And then, of course, you know, the highly contentious J-Treaty with England in the 1790s, and that becomes one of the biggest points of dispute between these two new parties, the federalists who really wanted to restore the relationship with England for commercial purposes, primarily, and the Democratic Republicans of Jefferson who wanted to maintain the alliance with Revolutionary France. So there's a lot going on, and Washington is not especially popular figure in the 1790s for large portions of the United States. In what way? What do people have a problem with?

I mean, Democratic Republicans, people who lean towards Jefferson's side, you know, had deep reservations and significant critiques of the Washington administration. First, for it's the way that it was purporting to take a neutral stand on the war between Britain and France. But then, of course, the J-Tradie doesn't seem to reinforce that notion. So there is a sense among a lot of Americans that the Washington administration is saying one thing and doing another. And that's not something that we always associate with George Washington, right? And then, you know, that Washington's close relationship with Hamilton and his support for the Hamiltonian program, right, of a national bank of the growth of the Treasury Department

and the support for manufacturing over agriculture. This is not music to the ears of many Americans. And, you know, in the end, yes, a lot of that is driven by Hamilton, but, you know, Washington is president, and he takes a good brunt of that criticism. We just consider him in such holy terms. Yeah. But this man goes from fighting a war, eternal, impossible war, and then lands in this presidency that's never been tried before. And everybody around him is fighting with each other. It's all forming itself. And it's come out of this previous time that nobody ever talks about when they refer to this time, you know, you have the articles of Confederation, which was basically a document or a form of government that sort of took the

Federals out of it. The whole idea was to have as little bit of the federal government as possible in this new land. And very quickly, people, you know, in the government, realize this is just not going to work. Yeah. Yeah. Washington was one of those people, you know, and after the conclusion of the war, the Confederation Congress had very little power or authority and certainly really didn't have any authority to raise revenue. And that's a real sticking point for a lot of people who would go on to become supporters of the new constitution. And it's really a big motivation behind the convention in the first place is the need for a stronger federal government and especially one that could raise revenue and hopefully one that would be able to

to put a bit of a break on what many people considered the sort of runaway state legislatures, which were granting all kinds of debt relief because of the post-war recession. So, you know, all those things are drivers for the new Constitution, and Washington agrees with all that. And we had presidents before Washington under the particles of confederation. There were literally U.S. presidents. They were more like today's vice presidents. They were kind of like in charge of the Congress, and they only lasted for one year.

and then it was on a rotational basis. How many were there? They were like six or eight of them, right? Yeah, there were, yeah, there were at least half a dozen. Yeah, exactly. Of which John Hancock was one early on. Prominent men. But they were presidents of the Congress.

Yeah, they knew that they didn't have that kind of role that anything had now, this kingly role that we have today. Yeah, yeah. Washington is the first to sign the U.S. Constitution. Eventually, the capital city is named after him. Mm-hmm. I'm speaking to the popularity of this man at the time, even though he's in the midst of everything you're talking about.

So as his second term winds up, and I have to remind myself, was he elected into his first term or was he named? I forget. No, he was elected. Yeah. But it was a unanimous election. Right, right. I mean, in a sense that he was effectively named because there was no real opponent and it was a sort of fait accompli. Yeah, exactly.

So as his second term winds up in 1796, 97, he's been in office since 1789, two terms, eight years. just like today. He's making his decisions about the future. No one seriously expects him to step aside, right? I mean, that would be kind of absurd. Yeah. Well, on the one hand, you know, he'd already set this precedent. He'd already set a precedent that he was the kind of person who was willing to step aside. And I think, you know, we can talk about that because if we talk about Washington, you know, becoming king or not becoming king, it's worth it's worth talking about some of the reasons why he didn't become king. But that go a little bit deeper than just, you know, the immediate politics of the 1790s. But as the second administration is winding down, Washington is tired. Yeah. You know, like you said, he's been in this office for eight years. It's been a contentious eight years. He doesn't leave office necessarily feeling especially good about the job that he did.

Although, you know, he's consistently ranked so high on. and, you know, historians, polls of presidents. But, you know, I think he was, he had a lot of regrets or reservations about, you know, how this new government and new nation had got its start under his watch. Well, he's also deeply involved in creating this Constitution. So, he's got to be wondering how this is all going to work out. He wants to see this thing happen. Yeah. I mean, the thing about the Constitution, you might ask, you know, for Washington to have become king, there would have had to have been a different constitution. Right.

But maybe not necessarily, or maybe not as much as we might think, right? The power granted to the executive in the constitution is actually really significant and not especially what you might expect if you think back to the sort of historical characterizations of the colonists and these early Americans, you know, as being sort of anti-monarchical, they gave the executive a lot of authority, right? And part of the reason for that was there wasn't wide expectation that Washington was going to be this executive, right? Maybe not permanently, but they expected that he was going to be the first. And of course, being the first, you are the one who sets a lot of, you know, unwritten precedents and things like that. And that goes

to the two terms of leaving. But he didn't leave office for the purpose of setting, a two-term limit, right? He left because he was tired and he wanted to go home. Yeah. Right. He was done with New York and Philadelphia and he wanted to go home to Mount Vernon. So much of this is rooted in the farewell address that he issues through the papers. He never addresses anybody with this. It's a letter really. And it's one that's primarily written by Alexander Hamilton. Yeah. And previously written by James Madison after the first term. Like they all thought they had to address the people. And so Washington signs off on this. Of course, he's part of this. He's He does the final edits.

It's his speech. But this is really where he articulates his hopes and dreams for the country. And mostly it's about how do you stay out of foreign entanglements and not have parties and all sorts of things? And not have parties. Yeah. And he doesn't really talk about his role or the role of the presidency that much. Right, right.

There's a telling event that happens in Newburgh, New York, March 1783, which is the culmination of so much that's afoot in the war that is now coming. to a closer, where at end of the revolution, were nine years in a constitution away from George Washington becoming president, just to put you in the frame of time. Articles of Confederation have taken effect. The event that I'm talking about actually starts kind of a year earlier with a letter. It's written by someone named Colonel Lewis Nicola. May 22nd, 1782, he is writing to George Washington about a contentious issue within the troops.

The Army is not happy. And this is going to play out to really demonstrate how Washington is. is going to be effective in dealing with the politicians that are around him and so forth. Can you explain this event for us? Yeah. So, okay, so Lewis Nicola was an officer. Yeah, rabble rouser. Yeah, a rabble rouser.

He was born in Ireland, actually. And he writes this letter in 1782 amidst longstanding resentment on the part of the army. Both the officers and the rank and file, the regular soldiers. That in no small part has to do with the fact that Congress was very delinquent in paying Yes. The army, right? They had been, you know, less than attentive, let's say, in supplying the army. I mean, you know, in some sense, they did what they could.

But, you know, without the power to tax, you know, with the Continental Congress and then later the Confederation Congress, there was little that they could do, really, to raise money except ask states for money. requisitions they were called, and the states did not have to comply. And so there is this real resentment growing. And if we think about the context, it's 1782. And, you know, Yorktown has already happened. So the last major engagement of the war, you know, is almost a year in the, you know, in the rearview mirror. And so there's this period of sort of stasis that happens between Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris in 1783. And what you have is you have the Northern Army, which is encamped at Newburgh, New York.

You know, these soldiers are sitting around and kind of stewing on this resentment, right, against the Congress. And Nicola writes this letter in 1782, you know, expressing his dissatisfaction with Congress, especially over the lack of payment for the troops. Yeah. But he also calls on Washington to assume the role of king. Sure. Right. And I think the important thing to understand about that, there's a lot of historical context

that goes into understanding the significance of that kind of request, right? If we think back to, you know, the most famous among the colonists and the Americans would have been Oliver Cromwell, right? I mean, Cromwell was the Puritan leader of the parliamentary forces in the English Civil Wars in the 1640s and 1650s, you know, and Parliament was reacting and fighting against the tyrannical abuses of Charles I. And when the war is over and the war against the crown was won and Charles I was, there was a regicide. Cromwell assumes this role that he called the Lord Protectorate.

Right. It's basically, he's basically assuming the kind of dictatorial powers that Charles I had. But he's doing it in the name of the people and in the name of this Puritan revolution. And so, you know, Cromwell loomed large in colonial political culture because British history, English history was the colonist history up until the revolution. We know that Washington had a biography of Cronwell, and we can assume that he read a very famous, the most famous history of the civil wars, which was by Lord Clarendon, who had actually been a participant in the event. And he had been a revolutionary on the side of Cromwell until he sort of took this unprecedented step. And then he became effectively a royalist and supported the restoration of the monarchy. And so, you know, Cromwell loom large in the memory of the colonists.

And interestingly, in New England, he was a quite popular figure in the 17th century. Up until about the early 18th century, he was quite a popular figure because he was the Puritan revolutionary. And, you know, New Englanders had really identified with him strongly, but as the political culture changed in the early 18th century, so became more, more whiggish, I guess you could say. His sort of stock began to decline. But for a while, he was a popular figure. And so everybody had, you know, Cromwell was the specter hanging over.

You know, he was the threat that was hanging over the American Revolution. Would the American Revolution go the way of the English Revolution? of the 1640s. Of course. Well, it speaks to how fragile the notion of republicanism was for Americans. Because, like we said, I mentioned before, monarchy is the norm. And so as soon as you run into contentious problems and whatever kinds of national problems there's going on, people are naturally, you know, we even do it today. You want a strong man. You want a strong central leader to take care of this problem. My father used to say this to all his mind. A beneficent dictator is the best ruler there could possibly be. Unfortunately, there's no such thing, he would say to me.

I'll be back with more American history after this short break. When we talk about republicanism, you know, we're talking about essentially a non-monarchical form of government, right? You can have all kinds of different republics. But, you know, it was a strong Republican bread that ran through colonial political culture that was not shared in England. And it probably because people in England, the English Civil Wars were the was, was, was an event in the past that they were embarrassed by.

And they did not really want to remember or commemorate that. And that's why they put all of their, you know, all of their memorial energy into the glorious revolution, right? Which supposedly, you know, reset the balance between the parliament and the king. But in the colonies, there was this longstanding Republican thread, maybe less so in Virginia, which was kind of known as a royalist colony in the, um, in, in, in the colonies. the mid-17th century, but just generally speaking, and, you know, Republican was an epitet in 18th century England. And they used those kinds of terms when, certainly when describing

New Englanders during the 1760s and 1770s, but also the columnists. And, you know, they would say that, you know, they're, they're aiming for independence, these Republicans, you know. So it's, it's a it's a strong distinction between how a Republican was perceived in England versus in the colonies. Yeah. And so that's where this all leads with this letter. Almost a year later, March 1783, there's a secret meeting. This moment we're talking about in Newburgh, the Continental Army officers who are impatient for payment and assurance of pension from the Congress, both of which, who knows what they're ever going to get, discuss their grievances amongst senior officers of the Army. And it's all consistent. a lead up to what would be a coup d'etat against the Continental Congress. And their idea is to name Washington as monarch. That's what Lewis Nicole is suggesting, right? Yeah, I mean, it gets more complicated by the time that you get to 1783 because Horatio Gates is involved. Right. So Gates is sort of Washington's rival general going back, you know, really to the,

almost to 76, 77. And, you know, what happens in the camp at Newburgh is, you know, the talk about the Congress and about payment. Part of the reason they were getting even more upset was because Congress had recently passed a resolution, effectively, promising half pay to a retired soldiers, and yet they hadn't paid any of it. So you have these soldiers who are not getting paid, but also have precedents set now for they're probably not going to get their pensions either. Right. And so this is, you know, just further stirring up the resentment. And it kind of gets kicked off with another sort of letter written by Major John Armstrong, who is the assistant or the aide to camp to General Gates, you know, and he's basically

calling on the soldiers. He's criticizing Washington, because Washington had been taking a very moderate tone when it came to these issues. You know, one of the most striking things about Washington's leading of the military during the revolution was his relationship with Congress, right? He has a very deferential relationship with the Congress. He is very careful about maintaining that, not giving any signs of, you know, dissatisfaction with the Congress. And there are people in the Congress who are worried that Washington might pull a cram law, right? But he never gives any hint of that. And he has been constantly now for years telling his men, you know, relaxed, you know, Congress has a lot to deal with, but they're, you know, they're going to take care of you. Don't worry. You know,

I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that they take care of this. And the soldiers, by 1783, you know, they want Washington to be more forceful, you know, and stop being so, conciliatory and deferential. And they, that this, this address by Armstrong essentially says that, you know, if Washington won't do that, if Congress won't comply with paying the army, then the army should collectively threaten to either disband, just disband, leave, which would basically mean the country was unprotected, or they should state their willingness to refuse to to span after the peace treaty is signed. And that is almost worse, right?

Because there is a longstanding fear in Anglo-American culture and throughout the colonies and into the new nation of what was called a standing army. Right? A standing army is a permanent army. Yes. And this is one of the things that Charles I tried to do is to raise a standing army. armies were supposed to be raised when there was war. And they were raised from the militias of the counties or of the colonies, right?

And when that war was over, then those men went back home. They went to their farms or whatever. There was no such thing as a professional soldier. And a standing army was a threat to liberty, Republican liberty, because it could be marshaled against the citizens or against the government in a time of peace. And so that threat by the soldiers to refuse to disband is basically is a really serious threat. It's basically threatening a military takeover. Exactly.

It's a very classic scenario here when faced with the crisis the military wants to step in or some of it does. He stands there in this room. I mean, let's just frame this exactly. There is a room and everybody's in it. You can go visit that building today in Newburgh, New York. And Washington stands there and he addresses the situation. The characterization of this moment is important because here's this guy who has, you know, remarkably carried this entire war on his shoulders throughout the entire length of it. And people think, these soldiers think of him in a sort of, I don't know, sacred way, I suppose, or they certainly look up to him a lot.

He stands there and decides to address this by first taking out his glasses and putting them on. And in this very human moment, they see a frailty to him, you know, a netherly. You know, a normal human characteristic. He can't see the paper he's reading off of. And it is this choice that he makes, I guess for necessity, really, that really kind of underscores the moment. How does he address this in a persuasive way? Yeah. So essentially what happens is Washington gets wind of this address in the camp, and he calls for a meeting.

But a few days later, he wants to let things calm down a little bit because the letter was quite inflammatory. And so he holds this meeting and he shows up at this meeting. This is in March of 1783. And the main thing that he does is he reads this letter from a delegate to Congress, I forget his name, basically talking about how he was going to, you know, try to lobby this fellow members in the Congress to take care of the payment issue and all of that. And so Washington wanted to show, you know, there are.

are people in Congress who are, you know, lobbying on your behalf. Yeah. And then he, to read that letter after his main sort of address, he takes the letter out and he takes his glasses out. And he's supposed to have said something like putting on his glasses. He says, you'll have to forgive me because I've grown old and blind in service to my country. There you go.

You know, and it's the combination of the glasses and seeing a moment of vulnerability, really in their leader. but also this allusion to, you know, this a very republican kind of civic virtue that he kind of encapsulates in that single statement, you know, that, I mean, the myth of the Newburgh address is that the soldiers start weeping in the room, you know, that's the story as it's often told. I'm weeping right now as you're telling me. It's a quite moving moment and whether, regardless of the mythologization of it, You know, it is a really moving moment, and it's undoubted that it had a significant impact. It really did diffuse the situation, certainly among the soldiers, maybe not amongst Gates' most hardcore supporters, especially among the officers. But the soldiers were, you know, felt, look, we've been, we've, we have also gotten old in the service of our country side by side with this guy.

And he didn't need glasses when I first saw him, you know, kind of thing. And that moment really disarmed the so-called Newberg conspiracy. Does George Washington here, I mean, I've already mentioned, he doesn't mention it in the farewell address. Does he mention it elsewhere like now that he doesn't believe in kingship or that kind of thing, that there's something special going on in this country that's really tough to make work, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah, I mean, maybe not in those exact words. I think it was an unspoken assumption that Washington did not believe in. Well, I should say didn't believe in monarchy necessarily.

In fact, I think it's part of the reason that people don't often think about why, about the possibility of Washington having become king is because there is a sort of popular misunderstanding about the revolution, that it was an anti-monarchical revolution. Just because it's a just because a Republican revolution doesn't necessarily mean it was an anti-monarchical revolution. If you read the Declaration of Independence, it's got a lot of, criticisms of George the 3rd, right? But the reason that it's only criticizing George the 3rd and not Parliament is because in the previous years, it had become accepted amongst colonists that Parliament had no authority over the colonies. And they had already basically dismissed Parliament's authority over them.

And so the reason that the declaration focuses on George the 3rd is because the crown was the colonist's last remaining connection to Britain. And so that's the relationship that now, that's the political band that now has to, that's the final political ban that needs to be cut in order to establish independence. And we have read the declaration in such a way that, you know, that it implies that the revolution was anti-monarchical. But there's no anti-monarchical statements in the Declaration of Independence. It's not saying, you know, monarchy is a horrible, wrong form of government. the Declaration doesn't say anything like that. Thomas Payne says that in common sense, you know, and that's very popular.

But the Declaration doesn't say that. And, you know, so we, but we sort of read that into the Declaration because of the way that it's focused on George III. What I think is so effective about Washington in this moment, and in general, the beginnings of this country, is the real cynicism about power. I mean, you have to control power. And that's how Washington really plays this. And that's where we get the phrase separation of power, the very basis of this constitution, that if you control, if you concentrate too much power in one area or one person, you're going to have corruption. You're going to have this thing go wrong, which is going to undermine your whole idea of individual rights, which is the new, you know, enlightened idea of civilization that every human being has rights instead of, you know, just certain of us. Yeah, yeah.

And that's the source of so much of what his perspective. I guess. Yes. Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, republicanism in the colonies was, it was a specific strain of English republicanism. Some people call it radical republicanism. Some people call it classical republicanism. But basically, it went back to these opposition writers in the 17th century. And basically what they took from these guys and what stuck in the colonial political culture was this, concern about power. Right? A person was a virtuous citizen in a republic by putting aside their own interests for the common

good. Yeah. Right. And the root of this idea is the idea that power is corrupting of anyone. Anyone who has power, it will corrupt them. It'll just, you know, that old phrase, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Colonists absolutely believe that. And a part of, also part of being a virtuous citizen meant that you had to be constantly vigilant, constantly on watch for this kind of corruption.

And that's, you know, that's a big part of it when you read stuff that the colonists are writing in the 1760s and 1770s, they're pointing out that we are seeing the kind of corruption that we have always feared in the parliament. Yes. In the ministry, right? And it almost takes on a sort of conspiratorial. tone and, you know, and that, that has become a sort of, you know, longstanding feature of American political culture after the Revolution. Yeah, we also have in the 1700s, the neoclassical thing. You know, we're all looking back to Rome at this point. Yeah.

There's a big awareness of that and how Rome was one thing when it was a republic and then it was another thing when it became a dictator. Absolutely. Yeah, that's just as big a warning story as the English Revolution. Yes, exactly. And Washington, I mean, you know, Caesar is the prime example. example of that. But the Roman figure who maybe had the most sort of purchase, certainly on Washington, was Cincinnati, who is this Roman citizen. It was a member of the Senate here and there. And in the

450s, BC, he is approached by the members of the Senate to assume the role of a dictator, basically because the Roman Republic had a mechanism for dealing with emergencies which was to appoint a temporary dictator and there was some military emergency a Roman army was in trouble and so they appoint Cincinnati dictator and he takes over the army

and he goes and and takes care of what he has to take care of in terms of rescuing the Roman army and whatnot and then and then he comes back and famously, you know, relinquishes the office of dictator and goes back to his farm. And in fact, he actually did this twice, right? And that, Cincinnati is the model of a Republican leader, certainly in Washington's mind. And for Washington, he is insistent and set upon playing the role of Cincinnati, right? From the moment that he assumes the control,

of the army in 75, he constantly has Cincinnati's on his mind as his role model. Well, in a way, maybe those Norbrook guys were asking him to do this all temporarily. I mean, that could have been part of that idea. Yeah, I mean, well, that's true too. But of course, Cromwell is a, Cromwell is an example of it. It's very rarely temporary. If we think about Cincinnati, you know, we've sort of enshrined him in American culture. He's, you know, the source of the name of, you know, the city of Cincinnati, the Society of the Cincinnati, which is the sort of hereditary organization for descendants of officers and soldiers of the Continental Army.

So his importance to Washington has sort of led to his memory sort of being sprinkled around American culture. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. The counterfactual, let's just entertain this for a bit. It's interesting to consider because it really does, if it went this way, we ironically, and maybe sadly, would become England again. We'd basically go right back to a parliamentary situation. You'd have the House of Commons instead of the House of Representatives, House of Lords instead of the Senate. All of this is, of course, what much of this is based upon. The cabinet would be ministers, not secretaries, all answering directly to the president, which is another one of these concentrations of power not approved by Congress. The courts would be ministers. would be royal courts as they are, royal justice. Of course, all this has been moderated in modern times over in England, but so much of this would be the situation that we'd have. You know, a minister of the, whatever they call them, exchequer or something, would be Alexander Hamilton. It's a funny idea. I mean, but think about it. I mean, a lot of what you're talking about

is just terminology. Yes. The main difference, I mean, you know, House of Commons, House of of Representatives is not fundamentally different. They have a lot of the same. They have a lot of the same. charges, they were popularly elected. The main difference would be the House of Commons, you know, the House of Lords. The House of Lords was made up of nobility. Yeah, people with landed titles. Now, you don't have that in the United States. And even if Washington wanted to become king, there was never going to be any political will to establish a nobility or landed titles. So you probably still would have ended up with something like the Senate, you know. I don't know. It's hard to think about what would be different. There's two scenarios in which Washington

could become king, right? One is, in theory, he could have, you know, asserted for the creation of a essentially king, kingly office at the constitutional convention and become king by constitution. Or he could have become king by refusing to leave office, right, in 1796. So there's, There's different ways that this could happen, and both of those have, I think, different implications. But I think it's the second one that people tend to think of most if we think of this possibility. Well, it just reminds us that this is quite normal to consider at the time because it's the normal way things have been. It's what generations before have been used to. What's happening now is not just brilliant men coming along to change things and fighting to do it, but also there's ideas in the era that have been there for 100 years now.

You know, and that's all going to play out in Europe. It takes a lot longer for things to dismantle in Europe. By 1848, the year of revolution in Europe, everything's falling apart. It starts with the French. And all that happens. Nonetheless, let's say that took hold here. It's a fun little thing to consider the hereditary thing. So say Washington is king and who's going to be his follow up.

He's going to die in 17-19-1800 or something. He has no errors because. he's without children. And so who's going to become this guy? If you look at the trees... Well, he had stepchildren. His male stepchild was Jackie Custis, who was a, who was not the most diligent of students. He wasn't, you know, Washington wasn't especially proud of a lot of what Jackie did, but Jackie ended up dying in 1781 anyway. Yeah, yeah. Because he wanted to be at the Battle of Yorktown, and he eventually died of camp fever shortly after. So... It's crazy to consider this, but there is, through that tree, you end up with Robert E. Lee, you know, because Martha Dandrich is married. She's Martha Washington and the Dandrich tree goes down to Robert E. Lee. That's right. So he could very well, he could have been a prince at some point. And this whole thing. But actually, that's a really interesting part of this, because this is the thing that kings can do that our situation could not address throughout that whole antebellum period. Had you had a king, well, you know, all things can.

go wrong. But presumably you have someone who's above the fray, you know, who concentrates power so he or she can inflict this upon situations such as we have right now, you know, where you have division and partisanship and that's the idea of this. I mean, yeah, but that's a more 17th century notion of monarchy because the monarchy in England after the glorious revolution was a quite neutered monarchy, right? The Hanavarians who come after, you know, come in the 18th century, the Hanoverian monarchs, because of the revolutionary settlement in England after the glorious revolution, where all this power is given to parliament and the prerogative of the king is diminished. I mean, it's such that the king actually technically retained a veto over parliamentary

legislation, but no Hanoverian monarch ever dared to use it, right? Because of what that would imply, even though they technically had the prerogative to do that. So, you know, the example of the monarchy for most colonists and Americans who had, you know, had gone through the revolution in recent times was not a powerful monarchy. And in fact, that's what they were asking for in some sense in the early mid-1770s when they were sending these petitions to King George to say, please intervene with Parliament. Exercise your veto over the coercive acts. And of course, George III was never going to even consider doing that.

He saw what happened to his predecessors. Absolutely. They got their head chops off. And so they had, you know, they had seen, they had experience of not an especially powerful monarchy, which is what makes the executive that they end up creating. in the Constitution all that much more striking that because of the powers that it's given. In fact, there's a quote, I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but about King George who saw the Constitution and said he basically has more power than I do.

You know, and there was that that was a sense in England, you know, and it's also why, one of the reasons why there was such resistance against the Constitution amongst antifedrals because of this powerful executive. I bite your tongue, Michael. King George I would not have been neutered. I mean, well, I don't think that would have been the case. I think if we had had it here, he would have ended up, definitely would have ended up having more prerogative than George the third day. Absolutely.

Well, that's your point. Exactly. Yeah. That the Constitution actually vests the presidency with a huge amount of power. We're seeing that play out. And that is what gets tested over the next 200 years. Yeah, yeah. Is the increasing power and expansion of the executive branch through the powers of the presidency.

We're seeing current events. you call executive power, executive order, that is expansion of power. And, and, you know, we're seeing it play out even as we speak. Yeah. But let's look backwards. They couldn't have taken the articles of Confederation and just rewritten them, could they? I just, this is a big constitutional conversation, but. I mean, some sense, that's what they did at the convention. Okay. Yeah, you're right. You know, I mean, they drafted something from scratch, but, you know, so I mean, in some sense, I think that it's, I think the more likely scenario is, because there's no will for monarchy, certainly in the 1780s for sure. They just wanted a stronger federal government that could tax, basically. But when you get to the 1790s, I think the more likely scenario, if it could be likely at all, was about Washington perhaps staying on. Right. And then, you know, yes, Washington has no airs. So then you have to ask, well, if Washington just stayed on, what would happen? What happens after that? Because there is no air, right? I mean, I think that you probably, basically the party struggle of the 1790s and 1800s would have become a

struggle over the throne. Right? And we have precedent for that. We have Anglo-American precedent for that Because in 1688, you know, James II abdicated the throne, but because he was run out, basically. And then Parliament said, we have the right to appoint a new king from an entirely different family line, right? So the choice of king, of Washington's successor, would have ended up having, probably having to come down to Congress. Right? And, you know, by if Washington, depending on how long Washington held on, I mean, he ends up dying in 1799. But, you know, there's a huge turn happening politically in 1799 and 1800. Yeah.

Towards the Democratic Republicans, you know, and this is really the sort of the culmination of the conflict between these two. You know, you can't even imagine, I don't think, like, what that fight might have looked like. I love to see this through that the general that was George. Washington becomes the president. And so much of his psychology is a military officer's mindset. And the sense that, you know, you have to empower your soldiers to fight. You can't just tell them what to do. They have to want to do it. And the same goes for the citizens of this country that he's helping to birth. And that's going to be the ultimate separation of power. The power that rests with the people is going to keep things in balance. So he's basically saying by stepping away in his farewell address, the unity of government, which I'm quoting, which constitutes you, one people, is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence. God, it just kind of chokes you up, doesn't it? It's an incredibly clear perception of why this all matters. And it's so much the father figure,

really. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, it's clear a statement of popular sovereignty as you're going to get. And it's interesting how we, you know, his use of the term independence, because he's, you know, On the one hand, he's not just talking about, you know, independence from European conflicts and whatnot, right? But he's talking about, you know, your individual independence, too, right? But it's also going to be your Americans. You're not just Virginians. You're not just New Englanders. It's this idea of Americanism as a real thing that needs discipline and needs practice.

You know, you've really got to work at it. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's part of the Republican tradition, but also for Washington, some sort of allude to a sort of argument about how the first Americans were the Continental Army soldiers, right? Because, you know, all through the war, there's still these distinctions and differences and animosities between people from different states and different regions, right? But the Continental Army is really the first time when ordinary Americans from all different parts of the country, come together and have a vision of something that's bigger than just any individual colony that have that they're the first ones to have a sort of sense of national identity, right? And Washington is at the heart of that and making that happen. So, you know, in some sense, you know, he is at the, he is at the heart of the beginning of an American national identity just as the, as the leader of this continental army. Yeah. Well, it's the point of this counterfactual really is to find

how absurd it was from Washington's perspective. I mean, there's so much, so much he wrote and so much in his behavior, Newberg crisis, all of this is so informed by his true passion, which is, I did this for a reason, and it was to help create this country that is rooted in the power and the people. It's an amazing thing. So that's why it's, you know, you can't put a crown on this guy because he just wouldn't take it. But that says, speaks volumes to how brilliant this man really was at that time. Yeah. And I mean, how singular, right? I mean, all around him in the 1790s is, you know, this partisan politics is rising and emerging, you know, and he was never, you know, partisan politics is one of his biggest, you know, fears. It's one of the things that he disliked the

most, you know, and so, you know, he held, he held firm on that. And I think it's that all of that is part of the reasons why it's people don't often think about. the possibility of what if Washington had become king? Because even if you don't know a lot about Washington, it kind of just sounds ridiculous, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the one thing, we were talking about, you know, if we were talking about going forward a little bit, and I think he absolutely would have thought this or had this in mind when he pondered the possibilities. But let's say Washington had stayed on as president. He's still, you know, fundamentally remembered as the military leader of the revolution, right? So it still would be the

Cromwell dynamic of a military leader taking, you know, having control of the government. That might have set a precedent that then might have, you know, produced many more situations like that through American history, where, you know, there's a, you know, whatever kind of war there is, a successful general, you know, then sees it as their, their right, you know, or their, entitlement to then take over the government. Yeah. Right. And that's what had happened in the past.

So I don't, there's not, there's no reason really to think that that wouldn't have continued to happen. And we might have seen, you know, a secession of, of military, monarchical dictatorships. Well, these days when we have so much controversy to do with the executive branch, I often find myself saying to friends and family, you know, hey, there's a lot in the bank here. You know, there's a lot in the bank in American history that flouts that idea that we're going to end up with an authoritarian dictator. But, but, you know, you always worry. And that's, it's a crisis that has to be addressed over and over again, which is really what George Washington was,

was all about. These guys were brilliant. I'm sorry. It sounds corny to say it, but they really were. I mean, you know, and they would have said, you know, that it's, it's not, it's not guaranteed. Yeah. that that will never happen. And part of our civic duty as American citizens, you know, just like it was for the colonists in the 17, 1760s and 1770s, is to be on guard against that. Well, and to be vigilant and to be vigilant. And know your history, excuse me. Absolutely. You know? And start with this man. Michael Haddam, author of the book, Memory of 76. Read it this year. My goodness. 250 is coming. It's called the memory of 76, the revolution in American history. What is the George Washington Prize? I didn't even know that existed. The 2025 George Washington Prize?

Yeah, it's, well, it's been around for maybe 20 years. It's co-sponsored by Mount Vernon, a Gilder-Lairman Institute for American History, and Washington College. And it's actually one of the biggest book prizes in the country. The award is $50,000. And this man wrote it. Thank you so much, Michael. We'll see you again. Thank you, Don.

Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes. Two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.