Here’s a great Christmas book idea for yourself or someone who loves American history and action stories. The new “Crisis of the House Never United” is by my friend Chuck DeVore, a former California assemblyman once active in Orange County Republican politics. Now he’s chief national initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
The book starts with Alexander Hamilton guillotined under the order of President Aaron Burr on July 12, 1804. The date looked familiar. Yes, that’s the date on which in real life Burr shot Hamilton dead in a duel.
“Crisis” is an alternative history novel premised on Americanever adopting the U.S. Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation. Instead, it splits into loose state coalitions manipulated by the major European powers, mainly Britain and France, fighting the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and on this continent, as well as poaching American shipping.
Chuck also was an intelligence officer in the California National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve. As I was a Russian linguist in Army intelligence, we used to talk about military and foreign policy. He puts his military background to good training in numerous battles with Tom Clancy-style realism and descriptions of the weaponry and killing. It’s a refresher on American history – with a twist.
After Hamilton’s head is chopped off, the book flips back two decades to the battles of the Revolutionary War. The main character is Burr, a lieutenant colonel – same rank as Chuck –leading battles until illness takes him out. Another top character who plays crucial roles later on is Jephthah Clark, a brave enlisted man serving under Burr.
We see a lot of the actual combat from the perspective of Clark. Later, we see peacetime life through him, he marries, has children,and becomes an assistant to the law firm of Hamilton and Burr. Clark raises homing pigeons, which play an important role later in the book.
After the war, there’s a lull in the military action, but a pickup in the intrigue of Burr and New York Gov. George Clinton in preventing the ratification of the new Constitution George Washington and James Monroe are crafting in Philadelphia.
The action really takes off with the death of Washington in 1799, which coincides with real life. Despite the failure to ratify the Constitution and the weakness of the Articles, the father of his country had held everyone together with the force of his personality.
With Washington gone, “America had two national governments, the United Republic of America, a union of Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania led by President Aaron Burr, and the United States of America, purporting to represent all 15 states, though not even yet formally operating.” The URA’s constitution is written by Tom Paine and is inspired by the French Revolution.
Eventually the USA gets its act together, ratifies the Constitution, and elects President Thomas Jefferson and Vice President John Adams, much as happened in 1800, and Madison is secretary of state. The USA allies with Britain, the URA with France.
Burr’s model is Napoleon, then rampaging through Europe, with the Code Napoleon replacing English common law, and extensive use made of Monsieur Guillotine against Burr’s opponents.
The URA then invades the USA, and we have a kind of presentiment of the Civil War that really occurred six decades later. We also see the cruelty of slavery, which everyone wants to get rid of, especially Burr, but remains nonetheless.
At one point, Burr “set in motion his plans to destroy the South’s economy by removing slaves from the plantations and farms where they labored and then send them to Ohio.” And word would be spread throughout the South that any slave “presenting himself to the Republic’s army would automatically be granted freedom and his own land in the Northwest territories.”
I’ll haul up there on the plot to prevent spoilers. Some libertarians and fans of the Confederacy say America would have been better off with the states “never united.” More likely, Chuck’s scenario would have obtained, with the states warring and picked off by the European powers.
John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board and blogs at johnseiler.substack.com