List of fictional United States presidencies of historical figures (H–J)

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Lists of fictional Presidents of the United States
A – B C – D E – F
G – H I – J K – M
N – R S – T U – Z
Unnamed fictional presidents
Fictional presidencies of
historical figures
A - B C - D E - G
H - J K - L M - O
P - R S - U V - Z
Candidates
Vice Presidents

The following is a list of real or historical people who have been portrayed as President of the United States in fiction, although they did not hold the office in real life. This is done either as an alternate history scenario, or occasionally for humorous purposes. Also included are actual U.S. presidents with a fictional presidency at a different time and/or under different circumstances than the one in actual history.

Contents

H

Hannibal Hamlin

  • In the alternate history short story "Must and Shall" by Harry Turtledove, Hannibal Hamlin becomes the 17th President after his predecessor Abraham Lincoln was killed by a Confederate army sharpshooter at the Battle of Fort Stevens on July 12, 1864 while observing General Jubal Early's attack. President Hamlin used Lincoln's death as justification for the oppressive peace imposed upon the former Confederacy following the defeat of the Great Rebellion. This involved the hanging of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and other Confederate leaders, a harsh occupation of the rebellious states, the destruction of their economy and further racial division due to the promotion of blacks to important offices, leading to great animosity between the inhabitants of the North and South. The complete military control of the former Confederacy by the U.S. continued until at least 1942, at which time Nazi Germany smuggled weapons into the South to stir up revolt and distract the U.S. government.
  • In If the South Had Won the Civil War by MacKinlay Kantor, Hamlin became President in 1863, after the Confederates achieved a decisive victory and Robert E. Lee's troops occupied Washington, D.C.. Abraham Lincoln, held prisoner in Richmond, sent northwards a letter announcing his resignation, making Hamlin the new President. It fell to President Hamlin to complete the bitter work of negotiating the border with the newly independent CSA. The most bitter pill he had to swallow was to concede the permanent loss of Washington and its transformation into the Confederate capital - made inevitable by Maryland joining the Confederacy (as did Kentucky). Hamlin's main achievement was the retention of West Virginia in the Union, as well as preventing pro-Confederate militias in Missouri from detaching that State. In the debate over the location of the new US Capital, Hamlin strongly opposed the proposal of making Philadelphia the capital - which would have alienated all the states west of the Alleghenies - and supported the finally accepted compromise of Columbus, Ohio. As he did not stand for re-election in 1864, Hamlin did not actually get to take residence in the new capital at Columbus, which was only made ready years later.

Winfield Scott Hancock

Warren G. Harding

W. Averell Harriman

Benjamin Harrison

William Henry Harrison

  • William Henry Harrison, the actual 9th President of the United States, had an alternate presidency in Tom Wicker's "His Accidency".[1] The Point of Departure is Harrison's apparently trivial decision to wear a hat and a coat to his inauguration on March 4, 1841 and cut in half the inauguration speech he prepared, delivered in the open on a cold and rainy day. Thereby, Harrison avoided the pneumonia which in actual history killed him a month later, and served out his full term. Thus, Vice President John Tyler never ascended to the presidency. In actual history Tyler – a Virginian – had actively promoted Texas, a slave state, joining the Union; conversely, in Wicker's alternate history the surviving Harrison, a Northerner, was lukewarm to the idea. As a result, the Texans accepted the offer of Mexico to recognise Texas provided that it remained independent and did not join the US. Texas indeed remained the Lone Star Republic and did not join the US. The Mexican War did not break out and thus California, Arizona, and New Mexico remained part of Mexico. Harrison's care for his personal health turned out to have seriously derailed Manifest Destiny.

Gary Hart

Rutherford B. Hayes

Ernest Hemingway

Charlton Heston

Paris Hilton

Ernest Hollings

Henry Hohenzollern (Prince Henry of Prussia).

  • It is a fact of our history that in 1786 there was a proposal to invite Prince Henry of Prussia, bother of Frederick the Great, to be either the President of the Monarch of the United States - but the proposal was retracted even before the Prince could answer. Later, the US Constitution specifically stipulated that the President must be a person born in US territory, thus foreclosing the option of Prince Henry or any other European royal assuming the Presidency. However, in the alternate history timeline of Susan Howard's story "The Republican King of America", an outbreak of social unrest and violent riots in Philadelphia and other American cities during the Constitutional Convention made the more conservative circles alarmed about “The dangers of Rampant Democracy”. The idea of an American Monarchy gathered momentum, with the final text of the Constitution leaving open the option of a foreign-born President. Following the 1789 election, Prince Henry's candidacy was formally put forward. The Electoral College was split down the middle and after four months of tense deadlock, Prince Henry was elected President by a narrow majority. George Washington was elected Vice President, but refused to take the Oath of Office and withdrew to Mount Vernon in a huff. In 1790 the newborn United States seemed on the verge of civil war, with daily violent clashes between supporters and opponents of the President, rival militias openly training and calls made on Washington to embark on rebellion and “end the new Royal Tyranny, as he did the old”. The President considered the options of imposing martial law or alternately resigning and going back to Germany, when he got a surprising invitation to visit the dying Benjamin Franklin, who had strongly opposed his election. The President accepted and spent a whole day in intensive conversation with Franklin. Three days later, in New York, he made a speech - drafted by Franklin, but delivered with conviction by the President who had gained fluency in English at a remarkable speed: “My Fellow Citizens, I am a Prince born and bred, the brother of a King – but I have crossed a great ocean and came to another land, where the laws and customs are different. You, my fellow citizens, have fought long and bravely to create a Republic, and a Republic it will remain, this my adopted homeland. I will seek no greater Power or Honor than being President of the United States, which is Power enough and Honor more than enough. I will wear no flowing Royal robes, nothing but the sober clothes which any prosperous merchant might have. I will live in no sumptuous palace but in a comfortable house sufficient for my needs. President of a Republic I am, and that I am proud to remain”. At the same time, he also dropped the aristocratic “von” from his name, becoming plain President Henry Hohenzollern, and formally renounced all his European titles and possessions. The President’s speech reverberated throughout the country (as well as shocking the Royal families of Europe, and especially his relatives in Berlin). George Washington consented to take up the position of Vice President and work together with the President, and they eventually came to be personal friends. The threat of civil war receded, and Americans started to realize that they had a capable, conscientious President who gave keen attention to the country’s problems and was far from haughty or overbearing. However, radical groups continued to distrust the President and suspect him of biding his time and still planning to make himself a King. In June 1791, while visiting a farm in Massachusetts, the President was surprised by an assassin. The first shot missed him and hit a sixteen year old farm worker, who was wounded and lay bleeding and screaming on the ground. Thereupon the President – a veteran soldier – flung himself upon the boy, to protect him with his own body. The President was then killed by the assassin’s second and third shots. His funeral was well attended, even his most staunch political foes sharing in the national grief and listening to the moving funeral oration delivered by Washington. Congress refused the request of the Prussian Royal Family to let his body be buried with other deceased Hohenzollerns, writing: “Our President he was and in our land he died most nobly. In our soil he will rest and in our hearts he will live on”. Congress also resolved to erect in the new national Capital by the Potomac a tall column bearing a statue of President Hohenzollern, “So that his example will serve to inspire the Presidents who follow”. The Constitution was not changed, leaving open the option of foreign-born Presidents – though there was no further attempt to introduce scions of European Royalty. As a result, in 1972 Henry Kissinger was Richard Nixon’s running mate and following the Watergate scandal became President in 1974. In the frame story President Kissinger sits in the oval office after his inauguration, gazes at the Hohenzollern Column which is still prominent on the Capital’s skyline, and muses that “But for Alexander Hamilton’s Monarchial dreams, I would not have been here”.

Herbert Hoover

  • In the short story "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" by Lawrence Watt-Evans contained in Alternate Presidents, Herbert Hoover defeated his Democratic opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election as a result of Al Smith, the Democratic nominee in 1928, running as a third party candidate and splitting the Democratic party. On the advice of his Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, Hoover went to war with Japan in 1934. After defeating Roosevelt in 1936, Stimson became the 32nd President and, under his leadership, the United States emerged victorious from the war. However, President Stimson was criticized for not crushing Japan entirely by invading the Home Islands. In 1948, Adolf Hitler was overthrown and killed by a cabal of generals and Hermann Göring succeeded him as the second Führer, continuing to serve in that position until at least 1953. Due to the survival of Nazi Germany, totalitarianism and antisemitism grew stronger across the world well into the 1950s.
  • In the alternate history short story "Joe Steele" by Harry Turtledove, Hoover's failure to end the United States' downward spiral into the Great Depression during his term led to his defeat in the 1932 election at the hands of Congressman Joe Steele of California, who became the 32nd President. Hoover was the last Republican elected to the presidency, as President Steele slowly but surely built up the powers of his office until he was effectively the dictator of the United States. Steele was ultimately elected to six terms from 1932 to 1952, dying only six weeks into his sixth term on March 5, 1953. He was succeeded by his vice president John Nance Garner, who became the 33rd President at the age of 84. However, he was overthrown and executed almost immediately by J. Edgar Hoover, who proved to be even more tyrannical than Steele.
  • In Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory alternate history series (American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold and American Empire: The Victorious Opposition), Herbert Hoover was initially elected vice president in 1932 on the Democratic ticket with Calvin Coolidge. Despite the prosperity of the country under Socialist President Upton Sinclair after the Great War (1914–1917), the fortunes of the country had fallen dramatically under Sinclair's successor, Hosea Blackford. The strong stock market which had characterised most of the 1920s had finally crashed in 1929. President Blackford was unable to deal satisfactorily with the resulting depression. In 1932, the United States found itself in the Pacific War against the Empire of Japan. While the war was largely a stalemate on the ocean, Japan ran a successful air-raid on the city of Los Angeles on the very day that Blackford was in-town for a rally. Thus, when Hoover was nominated to be Coolidge's running mate, the Democrats were in the strongest position they had been in for over a decade. Coolidge defeated Blackford handily. However, Coolidge died on January 5, 1933 of a heart attack, less than a month before he was to take office on February 1, and so Vice President-elect Hoover became the 31st president in his stead. Although Hoover was a Democrat, his Secretary of War was Franklin D. Roosevelt, a lifelong Socialist politician in spite of being a relative of staunch Democrat Theodore Roosevelt. Despite some of the initial optimism expressed by the voters, Hoover quickly proved a disappointment. His complete contempt for "paternalism" in the federal government rendered him just as ill-equipped to handle the economic depression as Blackford had been. He made this opinion known when Colonel Abner Dowling, the then-military governor of Utah, proposed a make-work plan for the state. Hoover flatly refused, despite the fact that the jobless rate in Utah was further exacerbating that already-precarious situation. This stance led the voters to return the Socialists to Congress in 1934. Hoover's handling of foreign affairs also frustrated many of his supporters in the military. While he continued the policy of rearmament begun by Blackford, the Pacific War ended inconclusively in 1934. After Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party came to power in the Confederate States of America, Hoover proved indecisive in his dealings with the United States' long-time enemy. When Featherston pressed for permission to arm more troops to suppress black uprisings, Hoover (after a period of vacillation) acquiesced, justifying his decision by citing his concerns about "radical" elements among the black Confederate community, and naively concluding that Featherston would not use the increased military against the United States. While Hoover did stand strong against Featherston on the rebellious states of Kentucky and Houston which the United States had taken from the Confederate States following the Great War, it was too little, too late. Growing dissatisfaction with Hoover led to his defeat in 1936 at the hands of Socialist Al Smith and his running mate Charles W. La Follette, who became the 32nd President. One of Hoover's last official duties included acting as pallbearer at his predecessor Hosea Blackford's state funeral, as did former President Sinclair.

J. Edgar Hoover

  • Portrayed as president in the Red Dwarf episode "Tikka to Ride". When the Red Dwarf crew inadvertently prevented the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, he was impeached in a sex scandal (with a mistress shared with Mafia boss Sam Giancana) in 1964. J. Edgar Hoover was forced to run for president by the Mafia, who blackmailed him with evidence that he was a cross-dresser. In return for unrestricted Mafia cocaine trafficking, Hoover allowed the Soviet Union to set up a nuclear base in Cuba, resulting in widespread panic, the abandonment of major American cities, the increasing likelihood of nuclear conflict and, in all likelihood, a Soviet victory in the Space Race due to a demoralized America. Hoover's presidency was erased when Kennedy commits suicide in Dallas in 1963, restoring the timeline.
  • In the Sliders Second Two episode "Time Again and World", the group arrives in a parallel universe in which the United States exists in a state of martial law. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1963, J. Edgar Hoover succeeded him as the 36th President, serving for 22 years until his death in 1985, implemented martial law and amended the Constitution, excising most of the Bill of Rights. In tribute to Hoover, all police officers wear skirts instead of pants. In that alternate dimension, the prison on Alcatraz Island is a fully functioning penitentiary where the most dangerous political prisoners are kept, including civil-rights activists Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as well as loud, out-spoken comedian Sam Kinison.
  • Another dictatorial J. Edgar Hoover, in Harry Turtledove's alternate history short story "Joe Steele", got to power earlier, in 1953 – having won a bloody power struggle following the death of President Joe Steele – an avatar of none other than Joseph Stalin, whose parents in this timeline emigrated to the US making him an American citizen (and eventually an American dictator). Hoover was the head of Steele's secret police, putting him in good position to become the next dictator-president, and proving even more brutal than Steele-Stalin.
  • He also was president in one of many alternate realities mentioned in Richard Bowes' From the Files of the Time Rangers. He is briefly mentioned as being President in the 1940s; how he became president or what happens to him is not revealed in the novel.

John Hospers

Cordell Hull

Hubert Humphrey

I

Lee Iacocca

  • The movie World Gone Wild (1988) is set in 2087 where civilization collapsed after a nuclear war. In one scene of the movie, a character is looking at pre-war relics and finds a copy of Iacocca's autobiography. He mentions that Iacocca had been a great President.

J

Andrew Jackson

Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson

Michael Jackson

  • Michael Jackson was president in the short story, "SEAQ and Destroy" by Charles Stross.

Rev. Jesse Jackson

  • Jesse Jackson was president in Greg Costikyan's 1994 story "The West is Red", in which the Soviet Union won the Cold War. Jackson tried to walk a tightrope, instituting moderate social democratic reforms and partial nationalisations without altogether dismantling capitalism. However, an attempted coup d'état in 1989 tipped the balance and in the aftermath of its failure the United States fully adopted Communism.

Thomas Jefferson

  • In a parallel universe featured in the short story "He Walked Around the Horses" by H. Beam Piper, Thomas Jefferson was a major participant in the short-lived rebellion in the colonies of the British North America in the 1770s. He was the author of the American rebels' Declaration of Philadelphia in which the colonies were styled as the "United States of America." After the defeat of the rebels, Jefferson fled to Havana, Cuba and eventually died in the Principality of Liechenstein several years prior to 1809. A seemingly insane individual who claimed to be a British diplomat named Benjamin Bathurst maintained that the American rebels were successful in their attempts to achieve independence, Jefferson had gone to serve as the President of the United States and had been succeeded by James Madison.
  • In the alternate history novel For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga by the business historian Robert Sobel, Thomas Jefferson was a leading figure in the North American Rebellion (1775–1778) and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. In June 1775, he was named a delegate of the Second Continental Congress, where he joined the radical John Adams in seeking independence from Great Britain. The following year, Adams had Jefferson appointed to the committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence, along with himself and Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, which was edited by the other committee members, then presented to the Congress on June 28, 1776, where it underwent further revision before being ratified on July 2, 1776 and signed on July 4, 1776. In September 1776, Jefferson was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, where he worked to revise Virginia's laws to bring them in line with his own republican beliefs. In June 1778, after Congress adopted the Carlisle Proposals and returned the colonies to British rule, Jefferson was arrested and brought to London to stand trial for treason. He and Adams were both convicted and executed in 1779. After Jefferson's death, the formers rebels who migrated from the colonies in the Wilderness Walk (1780–1782), led by General Nathanael Greene whose party included James Madison, James Monroe, Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold and the 13-year-old Andrew Jackson, named their settlement in New Spain "Jefferson" in his honour. Jefferson's radical republicanism subsequently gave birth to a worldwide revolutionary known as "Jeffersonism".
  • In the alternate history novel The Probability Broach as part of the North American Confederacy Series by L. Neil Smith in which the United States became a Libertarian state after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and the overthrowing and execution of George Washington by firing squad for treason in 1794, Thomas Jefferson adopts a new calendar system in 1796. He originally proposed the calendar system to mark Albert Gallatin's ascension to the presidency. However, Gallatin protested that the real Revolution was in 1776, that the Federalist period should be regarded as an aberration, and that commemorating, even by implication, the overthrowing and execution of George Washington might set a hideous precedent. In addition to this, Gallatin assisted historians to still count Washington as the first president. In the calendar systems final form, the year 1776 became the new year zero Anno Liberatis (A.L.) (Latin for "year of liberation"). In 1800, he develops a new weight and measuring system ("metric" inches, pounds, etc). In 1811, he was targeted for assassination, but survived and killed his attempted assassin, although he did get stabbed in the leg with a knife and is forced to walk with a limp and a cane for the rest of his life. Jefferson was also able to successfully lead an abolitionist movement that sets all slaves (including his own) free by 1820. In 1820, he was elected as the 4th President of the United States and would serve until his death on July 4, 1826 and was succeeded by James Monroe.
  • In the short story "The War of '07" by Jayge Carr in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Thomas Jefferson lost the 1800 election to Aaron Burr, who became the 3rd President. President Burr kept promising to stand down after one more term but was ultimately elected to a total of nine terms from 1800 to 1832. He died on September 14, 1836 and was succeeded by his 34-year-old grandson and vice president Aaron Burr Alston. It is implied that the presidency will henceforth be a hereditary office, making the United States a de facto monarchy or family dictatorship, as Alston's vice president is Paul Aaron Burr.
  • In Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory alternate history series, Thomas Jefferson served as the 3rd President from March 4, 1801 to March 4, 1809, as he did in real life. Following the War of Secession (1861–1862) in which the Confederate States of America achieved its independence with the support of the United Kingdom and France, his status as a Virginian (and more substantively, his insistence on a weak central government) tarnished his memory considerably in the United States. Northern Founding Fathers and his contemporaries such as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton were viewed much more favourably. Nevertheless, Jefferson joined George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, though of the four only Roosevelt was viewed in an entirely positive light. In the latter half of the War of Secession, Jefferson's youngest grandson George W. Randolph had been the Confederate States Secretary of War, which also contributed to the fact that he was viewed unfavourably by later generations in the United States.

In the alternate history series The Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card, Thomas Jefferson is mentioned as serving as the first President of the United States, which only stretches from the New England states to Virginia and extends westward to Ohio.

Andrew Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson

References

  1. ↑ Published in "What ifs? of American History", New York, 2003
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