List of fictional United States presidencies of historical figures (K–L)

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.

K

Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.

• Was president in Fatherland, a novel by Robert Harris later made into a HBO movie. In the novel, Nazi Germany won World War II resulting in a far different world by April 1964. With tensions easing between the world's two major superpowers, a 75-year-old Adolf Hitler welcomes President Kennedy (who was elected in 1960) to a Berlin summit in the interest of fostering détente. Kennedy was believed by one of the main characters to be a shoo-in for re-election until the truth of the death camps is uncovered on the day of the summit. President Kennedy was played by Jan Kohout in the movie.
• In the novel K is for Killing by Daniel Easterman, he becomes the 34th president in 1940 following the assassination of President D. C. Stephenson. Stephenson was elected Vice President under Charles Lindbergh in 1932, and became president upon arranging for Lindbergh's assassination to prevent him from discovering a secret nuclear weapon collaboration plan with Nazi Germany. In the novel, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. is Speaker of the House and becomes President when Stephenson is killed by his own wife, but blames it on German agents and uses it as a pretext to sever all ties with Germany.

Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.

• In Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World Without World War I (2014) by Richard Ned Lebow in which neither World War I nor World War II took place, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr was elected president in 1960 and served two terms. His First Lady was the former model, Broadway actress and Winner Take All hostess Athalia Fetter. She became a prominent civil rights activist, which resulted in a rapid decline in her husband's popularity. Although they were portrayed as a fairy tale couple, they often had extremely heated arguments in the White House. JPK's Attorney General was his younger brother John F. Kennedy. During an argument with the First Lady, JPK once remarked that he wished that he had married Jack's wife Jacqueline Kennedy as he was certain that she would have been a vacuous First Lady who would remain out of politics.

John F. Kennedy

• In the parallel universe featured in The Twilight Zone episode "The Parallel", no one had ever heard of John F. Kennedy.
• In the parallel universe featured in the film Quest for Love, John F. Kennedy likewise served as the US President but he was never assassinated. In 1971, he was elected Secretary-General of the League of Nations, which still existed as World War II never happened in that universe.
• In the 1980 novel Timescape by Gregory Benford, the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 was averted by a high school student who interrupted Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas School Book Depository, attacking the shooter and sending the would-be fatal third shot awry. Although seriously injured, Kennedy survived. This interference created an alternate timeline in which William Scranton was the US President in 1974, having defeated Robert F. Kennedy due to a telephone tapping scandal.
• In James P. Hogan's The Proteus Operation, John F. Kennedy is elected president in 1972, in an alternate history where Nazi Germany won World War II and the German-Japanese Axis rules all the world except for North America and Australia. President Kennedy vows "not to give up a single inch of free soil" and engages in an increasingly tense Cold War with the Nazis and Imperial Japanese, facing the bleak possibility of either defeat in the coming hot war or the destruction of the world in a nuclear holocaust. In 1974, Kennedy sponsors a secret time travel project to send a special commando unit back to 1939, whose intervention eventually creates our own history.
• In Brad Ferguson's The World Next Door, John F. Kennedy was still alive and still legally the President in the 1990s as the US and the whole world were completely devastated in 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into all-out nuclear war and no further elections were ever held. Kennedy is hated and detested by the remnants of the American population, starting to revive by their own efforts in small pockets here and there. Generally considered "The man who destroyed the country", Kennedy's exact whereabouts are unknown, and he is rumored to be "hiding out in a bunker somewhere."
• Herbert B. Douglas' story "The Mother of all Murder Trials" is an alternate history in which Jacqueline Bouvier married John G. W. Husted, Jr. rather than John Kennedy. Kennedy then married Marilyn Monroe and was elected president in 1960 with her at his side. In their first year, Monroe was a highly successful and glamorous First Lady, but afterwards their marriage went under increasing strain, bitter quarrels and mutual (justified) accusations of infidelity. Late on the night of September 30, 1962, President Kennedy discovered his wife in bed with his brother Robert F. Kennedy, pulled a gun and killed both of them – being found by White House aides bitterly crying with the smoking gun still in his hand. A week later Congress unanimously voted to impeach Kennedy and remove him from office, whereupon he was charged with murder. After dismissing a lawyer who tried to plead "temporary insanity", Kennedy pleaded guilty and specifically asked the court to sentence him to death as "the least which I deserve", refused to appeal the sentence and went to the electric chair after the Pope came to America to personally give him absolution. His last words were "God bless America – I am ready to do my last duty for my country". While initially considered a monster, Kennedy's sincere and obvious penitence won him considerable public sympathy and he was widely regarded as "a tragic hero". The enormous attention to this sensational murder case relegated to the back pages the news of Soviet missiles being placed in Cuba. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who took office on October 1962, contented himself with warning the Soviets that any use of these missiles would be "answered ten-fold" by American missiles placed in Turkey. In 1965 Johnson – concluding that there was no chance left to topple the Cuba regime – reached a secret deal with Fidel Castro, for removal of US sanctions in return for a Cuban promise not to "export the revolution". This caused an open breach between Castro and Che Guevara, who was arrested in Havana and executed on treason charges.
• In "Winter of Our Discontent: The Impeachment and Trial of John F. Kennedy", by Bryce Zabel (originally written on collaboration with Harry Turtledove, but completed by Zabel alone), President John Kennedy survived an assassination attempt in Dallas and went on to be re-elected in 1964. However, in 1966 two investigative reporters, Chuck Duncan and Alan Lefkowitz, published sensational revelations on misdeeds in the Kennedy Administration. This led to Congress eventually impeaching Kennedy and removing him from office.
• In one of the alternate realities featured in The Coming of the Quantum Cats by Frederik Pohl, John Kennedy was a Senator from Massachusetts in 1986 who was married to a woman named Marilyn. At the time, Nancy Reagan was President of the United States. She was considered a strong and assertive President, who successfully guided her version of the United States through the major crisis of an invasion from a different reality. Her husband Ronald, known as the First Gentleman, was mostly disregarded.
• In the alternate history novel Voyage by Stephen Baxter, John Kennedy was the victim of an assassination attempt in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. While Kennedy survived, his wife Jacqueline Kennedy was killed and he was left crippled and incapacitated. His condition forced him to resign and Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th President. Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 and, on July 20, 1969, he conducted a widely broadcast phone call with the Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Joe Muldoon, the first men to set foot on the Moon. During the phone call, former President Kennedy committed the United States to send a manned mission to Mars, which Nixon eventually took up and started implementing in practice. The Mars flight was launched from Jacqueline B. Kennedy Space Center, which was named for the late First Lady, in 1980.
• In the alternate history Dark Future novel series by Kim Newman, John Kennedy was defeated by Richard Nixon in the 1960 election after it was discovered that he was having an affair with Marilyn Monroe.
• In the short story "The Impeachment of Adlai Stevenson" by David Gerrold included in the anthology Alternate Presidents, the title character defeated Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 after Eisenhower made the mistake of choosing Joseph McCarthy as his running mate instead of Richard Nixon. However, Stevenson proved to be an extremely unpopular president, leading to his impeachment and subsequent resignation in August 1958. Stevenson was succeeded by John Kennedy, his untested 41-year-old vice-president who becomes the 35th President. Although the story ends immediately after Stevenson has decided to resign, it is heavily implied that Nixon, already the front runner for the next Republican nomination, will defeat Kennedy in the 1960 election. This is due to the public's antipathy towards the Democrats and the fact that Kennedy is a much derided figure due to his recent marriage to the Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe, referred to derisively as "the new Monroe Doctrine."
• In the short story "The Kennedy Enterprise" by David Gerrold contained in the anthology Alternate Kennedys, John Kennedy was raised in Hollywood and eventually decided to become an actor. Although he was cast in numerous films in the 1940s and the 1950s, roles began to dry up by the time that he had reached his mid 40s. However, in 1966, he was cast in what would become his best known role, namely Captain Jack Logan of the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701) in the hugely popular science fiction television series Star Track.
• In the alternate history novel The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss, John Kennedy was a publisher in Boston, Massachusetts in 1995. Although born and raised in the North American Union, Kennedy had a strong sense of his Irish heritage and hated the British Empire for its past and continued transgressions against Ireland from the Great Famine (1845–1852) to the abject poverty and brutal exploitation of Irish miners in the present. He adopted a separatist stance, which he expressed through the magazine Common Sense, frequently skirting the edge of legality. He was suspected of being a member of the terrorist organisation, the Sons of Liberty. When the Thomas Gainsborough painting The Two Georges was stolen from the Governor-General's mansion in New Liverpool in June 1995, Royal American Mounted Police officers Thomas Bushell and Samuel Stanley and the painting's custodian Dr. Kathleen Flannery followed suspected Sons member Joseph Killbride to Boston, they met with Kennedy, who proved combatative in dealing with Bushell and made very subtle and inappropriate advances towards Flannery. His brother was a Catholic archbishop.
• In the first parallel universe featured in Sliders, the United States was a severely impoverished nation whereas Mexico was an industrial giant and a world power. Americans emigrated across the Mexican border in droves. Furthermore, the world was undergoing global cooling. In this universe, the Twenty-second Amendment, which states that no person may be elected to the presidency more than twice, had seemingly never been ratified. Consequently, John Kennedy was elected to the nation's highest office in every election from 1960 to 1992. At the time of Quinn Mallory's visit to this universe in September 1994, Kennedy was serving his ninth term as president. He did not plan to run for re-election in 1996. He was married to the former Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe.
• In a parallel universe featured in the Sliders Season Two episode "Time Again and World", John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. After the Rosenbergs were executed, the director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover became the 36th President. As a result of Hoover's rise to power, much of the United States Constitution was abridged and martial law was declared. In the Second Gettysburg Address, President Hoover spoke out against the ills of civilisation, claiming that democracy was leading to godless amorality and the breakdown of the family unit. Hoover remained president for 22 years until his death in 1985. Martial law had effectively rendered the United States a police state by 1996.
• In a parallel universe featured in the Sliders Season Two episode "Obsession", a young psychic from San Francisco predicted the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865 and thereby prevented his death. Lincoln was so grateful and impressed that he created a cabinet post known as the Prime Oracle, whose job was to predict natural and man made disasters. He and his successors were so successful that millions of American citizens came to trust and believe in psychic abilities. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was likewise prevented and he survived until May 1995, when he died at the age of 78 due to complications from Addison's disease. Attendees at his funeral included his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. By 1996, the President of the United States was little more than a figurehead for the country as not even the President could question the Prime Oracle's infinite wisdom.
• In the Elseworlds comic book miniseries Superman: Red Son, John Kennedy lost the 1960 election to Richard Nixon, who was later assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. However, he was President by 1978. During his presidency, he had divorced his first wife Jacqueline Kennedy and married Norma Jeane Baker, becoming the first U.S. President to divorce and remarry while in office.
• In the film C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, a 2004 mockumentary directed by Kevin Willmott which depicts a timeline in which the Confederacy won the American Civil War, completely annexed and absorbed the United States, and perpetuated slavery. By 1960, when only 29 percent of voters approve of slavery, Roman Catholic Republican John F. Kennedy is elected CSA president over Democrat Richard Nixon. However, foreign policy such as the Newfoundland Missile Crisis^[1] distracts him, and he is unable to implement his domestic agenda before being assassinated.
• In the alternate history novel The Sky People by S. M. Stirling, John F. Kennedy served two full terms as the 35th President from 1961 to 1969. Although he was initially considered weak on anti-Communist matters, he was elected to a second term in 1964. His successful handling of the Vietnam War, the Thailand Border Crisis of 1966-1967 and the Six-Day War silenced the majority of his critics. The key US base on Mars was named after Kennedy.
• In the alternate history novel The Gladiator by Harry Turtledove, the decision of John Kennedy to back down during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 was a signal to the world that the United States was not as serious about fighting the Cold War as it held itself out as being. After the US withdraw its troops from the Vietnam War in 1968, communists and socialists formed popular fronts in the face of the United States' perceived weakness. With the Soviet Union's support, these popular fronts were able to successfully topple Western Europe's capitalist and democratic governments and established People's Republics. The United States was the last nation to fall. By the end of the 20th Century, the entire world had turned to communism. By the late 21st century, the United States was seen as harmless and was completely obedient to the Soviet Union.
• In the parallel universe featured in Fringe, the nonagenarian John F. Kennedy was serving as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations in May 2009 but planned to resign his position in order to lead a new US government agency aimed at slowing ecological breakdown.
• In the mockumentary What If...? Armageddon 1962, President-elect John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a 73-year-old postal worker named Richard Paul Pavlick in Palm Beach, Florida on December 11, 1960. Consequently, Vice President-elect Lyndon B. Johnson was inaugurated as the 35th President on January 20, 1961. Johnson's failure to settle the Cuban Missile Crisis led to a nuclear war in October 1962.

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy

• Patrick Kennedy was elected in 2000 in the story "Prince Pat" by George Alec Effinger in the anthology Alternate Kennedys, defeating the incumbent Republican, former Secretary of State James A. Baker. In real life, Patrick Kennedy, son of President John F. Kennedy, was born August 7, 1963, and died two days later of infant respiratory distress syndrome. This would have made him, at 37, the youngest president in history. In style and plot, the story parallels the Shakespeare play Henry V.

Robert F. Kennedy

• The novel A Disturbance of Fate by Mitchell J. Freedman is premised on Robert Kennedy surviving Sirhan Sirhan's assassination attempt and going on to serve two successful terms as president with Ralph Yarborough as his vice president and eventual successor.
• In one of the episodes of What If? on the Discovery Channel, Robert Kennedy won the Democratic nomination in 1968 with Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. as his running mate. He defeated Richard Nixon and George Wallace in the general election to become the 37th President but was shot to death in September 1969.
• In the story "President-Elect" by Mark Aronson in the anthology Alternate Kennedys, Robert Kennedy survives his encounter with Sirhan Sirhan and adds a strong law and order theme to his campaign. Pressured by incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson to more closely toe the party line (or more precisely, the LBJ line) or else risk having his election sabotaged, Kennedy bolts and becomes the Republican nominee with Richard Nixon as his running mate. The Democrats nominate his brother Ted Kennedy to run with the incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Kennedy/Nixon barely edges Kennedy/Humphrey, but before he can be inaugurated, Robert is killed when he accidentally drives off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, leaving Nixon to become the 37th President.
• In the 1969 alternate history If Israel Lost the War by Richard Z. Chesnoff, Edward Klein and Robert Littell, Israel was defeated in the Six Day War, Sirhan Sirhan went home to share in his people's victory celebrations, and Robert Kennedy passed unscathed through the kitchen of The Ambassador Hotel and went on to be elected as the 37th President. On entering office, Kennedy feels that the fall of Pro-Western Israel at the hands of the pro-Soviet Nasser's Egypt has dangerously tipped the global balance of forces, and he orders an escalation of the Vietnam War through a land invasion of North Vietnam. However, American forces get bogged down far short of Hanoi, due to intensive Vietnamese guerrilla activity plus the direct mass intervention of Chinese "volunteers", similar to those who fought in the Korean War. As a result, the President's popularity sharply plunges by 1969, when the book ends.
• In the short story "Fellow Americans" by Eileen Gunn contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Barry Goldwater defeated the early favourite and incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and went on to be re-elected in 1968. During his term in office, President Goldwater ordered that nuclear weapons be deployed against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. In 1990, Robert Kennedy, who had never seriously sought the Democratic presidential nomination, was serving as the Governor of New York and proceedings had been instituted against him for an alleged impropriety which he had committed while in his office. While attending the opening ceremony of the 1990 New York World's Fair in the Tower of Diminished Expectations, Governor Kennedy was the subject of an attempted assassination but survived as he had been wearing a bullet proof vest. During his convalescence, he informed his wife Ethel Kennedy that he intended to seek the Democratic nomination for the 1992 presidential election and run against the incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush, who was increasingly unpopular due to his perceived poor handling of the economic recession. However, as the would-be assassin had not been caught, Ethel was afraid that he would strike again and attempted to persuade her husband to abandon his plans to run for the presidency. Her efforts proved unsuccessful. Kennedy remained bitter that Johnson had chosen Hubert Humphrey as his running mate in the 1964 election as he was convinced that, with him on the ticket, Johnson would have defeated Goldwater and that he (Kennedy) would have gone on to be elected president himself in 1968.

Ted Kennedy

• Mentioned in The Simpsons episode "Bart to the Future" and was president sometime before Lisa Simpson.
• A list of US Presidents since the 1950s in Robert A. Heinlein's book Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984) concludes with "Eisenhower, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy", presumably referring to both Robert Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. This joke was used earlier in A Boy and His Dog (1976) when the main character lists the presidents in order: "Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy...". This list was also mentioned as the USA presidents in The Number of the Beast for Timeline 2 (the Future History timeline) as Woodrow Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, ..., Neemiah Scudder Interregnum.
• Elected president in 1980 in the first edition of Jeffrey Archer's novel "Shall We Tell the President?". He had narrowly managed to defeat Jimmy Carter on the fifth ballot at the Democratic National Convention. He picked Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers as his running mate and they defeated Illinois Governor James R. Thompson by a 147,000 votes in the popular vote and became the 40th President. (In the revised edition, Florentyna Kane, from Archer's "Kane and Abel" and "The Prodigal Daughter" was the president.)

Rev. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

• In an episode of What If? on the Discovery Channel, Martin Luther King was Vice President under Robert Kennedy and succeeded him as the 38th president in September 1969. Major of his initiatives are détente and continue program of Great Society (but under a new name). He was assassinated in 1971. He was succeeded by Vice President George McGovern.

Wynton Kelly

• In the German Tageschau for the Wende Gruppe Wiedervereinigungsfest, Wynton Kelly was President of the United States in the 1970s, during a crisis between the US and the USSR around the "Herald des Freien Westens", a communication satellite. The secret services of both sides of the Iron Curtain claimed that the other side had stolen crucial parts of the satellite for military purposes. Kelly gave a broadcast speech in which he warned the Soviet leaders to immediately deliver to stolen parts back to the US under threat of a nuclear attack. In return General Bravonov, the Soviet leader, warned the US to return their parts of the satellite. The broadcast speech can be viewed on YouTube under the tag "Wiedervereinigungsfest".

L

Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

• In the short story "Fighting Bob" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Robert La Follette won the 1924 election. He was the Progressive Party candidate, defeating the Republican incumbent Calvin Coolidge and their Democratic opponent John W. Davis. He entered office as the 31st President on March 4, 1925. However, his term in office proved to be short-lived as he died on June 18, 1925 (as he did in real life). After William Henry Harrison, who died after one month in office on April 4, 1841, he was the second shortest-serving president in US history. He was succeeded by his vice president Burton K. Wheeler, who became the 32nd President. Given that La Follette was 69 years old in 1924, he was the oldest man ever to be elected to the presidency.

Fiorello H. La Guardia

• Fiorello La Guardia was elected president in 1951 in the 1939 Robert Heinlein novel For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs, after democracy was restored from an extreme-right dictatorship in the late 1940s. La Guardia served two terms, mainly concerned in a titanic struggle with the banks, ending with the American banks effectively nationalised and a system of social credit established. Posterity remembers him as one of the United States' greatest presidents.

Rose Wilder Lane

• 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, Rose Wilder Lane served as the 21st President of the North American Confederacy from 1940 to 1952. After Harriet Beecher Stowe, she was the second woman to hold the office.

Lyndon LaRouche

• In two parallel universes featured in the Sliders Season Two episode "Time Again and World", Lyndon LaRouche was president in 1996. In these universes, the United States had been under martial law since the assassination of John F. Kennedy by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on November 22, 1963.

Le Duc Tho

• Le Duc Tho was president in a story in The Onion publication Our Dumb Century, where Gerald Ford surrenders the United States to the Viet Cong after the end of the Vietnam War. Le's policies include renaming Washington, DC to New Hanoi, DC; arresting Ford and his cabinet; and converting the US to a collectivized-agrarian economy.

Robert LeFevre

• 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, Robert LeFevre served as the 23rd President of the North American Confederacy from 1960 to 1968.

Curtis LeMay

• In the alternate history novel 11/22/63 by Stephen King, Curtis LeMay was elected as vice president in 1968. He became president after George Wallace was assassinated by Arthur Bremer on May 15, 1972. However, he was defeated by his Democratic opponent Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota in the 1972 election.

Joe Lieberman

• In the satirical novel Why Not Me? by Al Franken, the author portrayed himself as being elected as the 43rd president in 2000, running as a dark horse candidate on a platform of eliminating ATM fees. He is eventually given the Democratic nomination over the incumbent vice president and early favourite Al Gore due in a rise in support when the Y2K bug solely effects ATMs. He was the first Jewish President and won the election in a landslide. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was his running mate, making the Franken-Lieberman ticket the first all-Jewish presidential ticket since Reconstruction. President Franken suffered from severe depression and mood swings. For instance, he attacked Nelson Mandela and appointed Sandy Koufax as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Franken resigned after 144 days in office on June 10, 2001. In his resignation speech, he said: "It is my fondest wish that, in the fullness of time, the American people will look back on the Franken presidency as something of a mixed bag and not as a complete disaster." Lieberman succeeded him as the 44th President, going on to serve a total of eighteen years in office. In stark contrast to Franken, President Lieberman was widely considered to be one of the greatest Presidents in US history. Notably, the novel, which was written in 1999, correctly predicted that Lieberman would be the Democratic vice presidential nominee in the 2000 election, though with Gore rather than Franken as the presidential candidate.

Rush Limbaugh

• Rush Limbaugh portrays himself as president in The 1/2 Hour News Hour. Ann Coulter serves as his vice president.

Abraham Lincoln

. (By definition, any different course or outcome of the American Civil War would have involved a different life and presidency for Abraham Lincoln.)

• In the parallel universe known as Earth-Three, which formed a part of the original DC Multiverse and was introduced in Justice League of America #29 (August 1964), Abraham Lincoln was an actor who assassinated President John Wilkes Booth.
• In the alternate history novel For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga by the business historian Robert Sobel, Abraham Lincoln was a railroad lawyer in the Confederation of Indiana, one of the original five confederations which made up the Confederation of North America (CNA). At some point after 1861, Lincoln was one of two lawyers who assisted Patrick Gallivan extend his Indiana Northern Railroad to Manitoba in the north and through Southern Vandalia to connect to Mexican railroads in the South, making Gallivan the master of rail transport in the western CNA.
• In the short story "How the South Preserved the Union" by Ralph Roberts included in the anthology Alternate Presidents, David Rice Atchison, a prominent pro-slavery activist, became the 13th President following the deaths of his predecessor Zachary Taylor and Vice President Millard Fillmore in a carriage accident. Several months after President Atchison's accession, the American Civil War broke out on April 17, 1849 with the secession of Massachusetts from the Union and the Second Battle of Lexington and Concord, from which the rebelling abolitionists, who styled themselves as the New Minutemen, emerged victorious. New Hampshire and Vermont seceded shortly thereafter and were soon followed by the rest of New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The seceding states banded together to form the New England Confederacy with Daniel Webster as its first and only President and the revolutionary abolitionist John Brown as the commander of its army. The war came to an end in 1855, two years after President Atchison had issued a proclamation promising that any slave who fought in the United States Army would be granted his freedom following the end of the war and that any factory slave who worked satisfactorily would be granted his or her freedom after the war and would be paid for that work from then onwards. Later on, President Stephen A. Douglas (who was elected in 1860) introduces the Civil Rights Act of 1861, which abolishes slavery throughout the entire United States. Abraham Lincoln "never rose higher than a seedy congressman from Illinois" and was regarded as "a vulgar, incompetent man who amounted to little and accomplished less." He was eventually shot and killed in a barroom brawl in 1865 by an actor named John Wilkes Booth in a dispute over theater tickets. In the late 1880s, a science fiction dime novel was published which portrayed an alternate history in which Lincoln became president, the Civil War did not begin until 1861 and it was the slaveholding South rather than the North which seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy. However, the novel was largely dismissed as the idea of Lincoln becoming President was regarded as being laughably far-fetched.
• In the short story "Lincoln's Charge" by Bill Fawcett contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Abraham Lincoln was defeated by Stephen A. Douglas, who became the 16th President, in the 1860 election. In the hope of avoiding warfare, President Douglas attempted to reach a compromise with the Southern representatives in the Congress. The Manumission Act of 1862 was intended to preserve the Union by freeing the slaves over a period of ten years, giving everyone time to adjust. While Douglas heralded the law as another great compromise analogous to the Compromise of 1850, the Southern representatives formed the Confederate States of America and began arming for war. After the outbreak of the American Civil War later on that year, Douglas was fearful of further provoking the South and did not introduce conscription as the Confederacy had done. Consequently, the professional though much smaller U.S. Army was overwhelmed and nearly destroyed by the Confederate army at Manassas Creek in Virginia in 1862. It took the United States over a year to recover from this disaster, creating a period of false peace. Although everyone in the North initially welcomed it, the false peace gave both sides time to build their armies as well as providing an opportunity for the United Kingdom to decide to support the Confederacy with the full backing of the British Empire's diplomacy and trade. Douglas continued to negotiate with the Confederacy in an attempt to reach a compromise, failing to understand that every day lost meant another victory for the South. Lincoln accepted a commission as the commanding general of the Illinois Militia in the Union Army. His own commanding officer was Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant. General Lincoln believed that he would have been able to prevent the war if he had been elected or, failing that, would have shown the kind of decisive leadership of which Douglas was seemingly incapable, built a real army and crushed the Confederacy before they were able to build a large army of their own. Shortly after leading his troops into battle for the first time in 1863, Lincoln was shot and killed by a Confederate sharpshooter while still on horseback. Although the story ends with Lincoln's death, it is heavily implied that the Confederacy will eventually win the war with the support of the British and establish an independent nation.
• Abraham Lincoln had strongly backed the military appointment of John Alexander McClernand, a prominent War Democrat. In our history this did not have far-reaching consequences, but in the divergent timeline of MacKinlay Kantor's If the South Had Won the Civil War it had disastrous results for the US and for Lincoln himself. In this timeline General Ulysses Grant was killed by being accidentally thrown off his horse on May 12, 1863, at the start of the Vicksburg Campaign. In the aftermath, McClernand insisted on assuming command despite being a political appointee who was not fitted for the job. By thoroughly bad generalship, McClernand managed to totally lose the Vicksburg Campaign and get the Army of Tennessee almost completely destroyed. Soon afterwards, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee made some better decisions than in our history and managed to win the battle and largely destroy the Union Army of the Potomac as well. Two such major disasters following one upon the other caused a panic reaction in the North. Washington D.C. descended into total chaos, with mobs running through the streets, looting, raping and lynching Blacks, and Lee's army captured the city without firing a shot and proceeded to restore order. With the mobs howling for Abraham Lincoln's blood, it was safest for him to be taken into a comfortable custody at Richmond, Virginia, from where he sent northwards a letter announcing his resignation and conceding the Confederacy's victory. Vice President Hannibal Hamlin became president following Lincoln's resignation. The captured Lincoln did succeed in prevailing upon Jefferson Davis to respect the wishes of West Virginians and let them stay in the Union - a small face-saving gain to the defeated North which helped create better relations later. In 1864 Lincoln was released by the Confederates and started a law office in Chicago, which did surprisingly well — but despite all the differences from out history, he still got murdered by John Wilkes Booth, in this case at a Chicago theater.
• In Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel The Guns of the South, several members of the South African white supremacist organisation Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging traveled back in time from 2014 to January 1864 and provided Confederate army general Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47s, allowing the Confederate States of America to win the American Civil War, which became known as the Second American Revolution. Abraham Lincoln remained in Washington, D.C. even with the defeat of the U.S. Army in the face of the Confederate AK-47s at the Battle of Bealeton. Upon the arrival of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lincoln invited General Lee into the White House to negotiate an armistice, ending the war. He spent the remainder of his term attempting to negotiate favorable terms with the Confederacy in the final peace. In the 1864 election, Lincoln carried twelve states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Michigan, West Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nevada) with 83 electoral votes. However, he was narrowly defeated by the Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour, who carries ten states with 138 electoral votes and becomes the 17th President. After leaving office, Lincoln toured Missouri and Kentucky, agitating tirelessly in favor of the two disputed states remaining in the Union. In the post-war plebiscites, Missouri voted to remain in the Union whereas Kentucky voted to join the Confederacy. Lincoln then returned to Illinois where he practiced law and grew old in obscurity.
• In Turtledove's alternate history short story "Must and Shall", 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. He was succeeded by his Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, who became the 17th President. President Hamlin used his predecessor's death as justification for the oppressive peace imposed upon the former Confederate States following the defeat of the Great Rebellion. This involved 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 a parallel universe featured in the Sliders Season Two episode "Obsession", a young psychic from San Francisco predicted Abraham Lincoln's assassination in Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865 and thereby prevented his death. Lincoln was so grateful and impressed that he created a cabinet post known as the Prime Oracle, whose job was to predict natural and man made disasters. He and his successors were so successful that millions of American citizens came to trust and believe in psychic abilities. By 1996, the President of the United States was little more than a figurehead for the country as not even the President could question the Prime Oracle's infinite wisdom.
• In the short story "The Lincoln Train" by Maureen F. McHugh contained in the anthology Alternate Tyrants, Abraham Lincoln was the victim of an assassination attempt in Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. He survived but John Wilkes Booth's bullet remained lodged in his brain and he was rendered a vegetable. William H. Seward, the Secretary of State, succeeded him as the 17th President. President Seward organised population transfers of Southern civilians to the Western territories where they were left to die of starvation and disease.
• In the alternate history novel How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove, the first novel of the Southern Victory series, General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia forced the Army of the Potomac under the command of General George B. McClellan onto the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and destroys the opposing army in the Battle of Camp Hill on October 1, 1862. Following this decisive victory, Lee moved eastward and occupied Philadelphia. As a direct result, the Confederate States of America earned diplomatic recognition from the United Kingdom and France, which forced the United States to mediate. The Confederacy therefore gains full recognition in the War of Secession came to an end on November 4, 1862. In the 1864 election, Abraham Lincoln was soundly defeated and left office in disgrace. Returning to private life, Lincoln developed an interest in workers' rights. Influenced by Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto, he spent most of the following two decades touring the United States and gained a reputation as a staunch socialist. During a trip to St. Louis in 1877, he and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln both contracted typhoid. Lincoln survived but Mary would die from it. Following his election in 1880, President James G. Blaine, the only Republican other than Lincoln to ever hold the office, led the United States into another losing war, the Second Mexican War (1881–1882), with the Confederacy and its European allies which cost the US a section of the state of Maine to be annexed into the Canadian province of New Brunswick as one of the terms of the armistice. This second disastrous war in less than twenty years instigated by a Republican president doomed the party to political irrelevance. After one last attempt to convince Republican leaders to make workers' rights the central issue of their platform at a decisive meeting in Chicago, Illinois in 1882, Lincoln and many of his followers defected to the Socialist Party. While in Chicago, he stayed with his eldest and only surviving son Robert Todd Lincoln, who worked as an attorney for the Pullman Company. The younger Lincoln continued his involvement with the Republicans, making no secret of his disapproval for his father's politics and, to that end, opposed his defection to the Socialists. While he continued to welcome his father at his home, he forbade him to invite Socialists into it. In the years after the end of the Second Mexican War, the Socialist Party surpassed the Republican Party as the nation's second party. In spite of this, it would not become the majority party in the House of Representatives until 1918 and would not win the presidency until the election of Upton Sinclair in 1920, which ended 36 consecutive years of Democratic control of the Powel House. Lincoln was widely reviled in the United States and among the white population of the Confederate States for his role in the War of Secession, although he was viewed positively by Confederate blacks. He was almost universally considered to be the worst president in US history.
• In the Elseworlds one-shot comic book Superman: A Nation Divided in which Kal-El's spaceship landed in Kansas during the 1840s and he was raised by a farming couple named Josephus and Sarah Kent, Abraham Lincoln received reports from General Ulysses S. Grant concerning the superhuman individual Private Atticus Kent and his tremendous contributions to the Union war effort in 1863. Initially, Lincoln was sceptical of this story until Atticus came to the Oval Office while the President was meeting with the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and demonstrated his powers. Consequently, Lincoln realised Atticus's potential and understood that his powers must be used for the good of the nation. Atticus later decisively participated in the Battle of Gettysburg where he ended the battle by capturing Confederate States Army Generals J.E.B. Stuart and Robert E. Lee. Atticus instructed the latter to instruct the Confederate States Army to surrender. Afterward, Atticus spent two days burying the dead at Gettysburg and was present at Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Despite General Lee's surrender, Atticus continued to put down continuing Confederate resistance and soon captured Confederate States President Jefferson Davis, thus ending the war. During the Union celebration, Lincoln invited Kent to attend a performance of the Shakespearean comedy As You Like It in Ford's Theatre, where the President was almost the subject of an assassination attempt at the hands of the actor and Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth. Using his superhearing, Atticus heard Booth preparing to fire his pistol and threw him off the balcony. Booth was killed when he landed on his own dagger. As a result, Lincoln was provided with a Secret Service organised by Atticus on September 7, 1863. Furthermore, Lincoln recruited Atticus' help in overseeing the Reconstruction of the former Confederate States of America on May 23, 1864. Atticus later attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4, 1865 on the steps of the completed Capitol Dome.
• In the alternate history novel "Lee at the Alamo" by Harry Turtledove, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th president in 1860 which prompted several slave states to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America, as occurred in real life. The first battle of the American Civil War took place in Texas, one of the seceding states, from February to March 1861, as Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee opted to defend U.S. property at the Alamo, rather than surrender it to the Texas Militia. It came known as the Second Battle of the Alamo. While Lee was ultimately forced to surrender, he became a national hero. When President Lincoln learned that Lee had refused the position of Commander of the Union Army, he arranged to meet with Lee in the White House. With some careful words and persuasion, Lincoln convinced Lee to remain with the Union, rather than join his home state of Virginia in secession. Lee, realising Lincoln's sincerity, agreed to take a commanding position in the west, and stipulated that he be allowed to retire if he were asked to fight his fellow Virginians. Lincoln agreed, and went one better, promising Lee a farm should he retire. As the story ended in April 1861, neither Lincoln's fate nor the final outcome of the war were established.
• In the essay "If Booth Had Missed Lincoln" by Milton Waldman - part of the classic 1931 collection If It Had Happened Otherwise - Booth's gun fails to fire at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865 and he is put in an insane asylum. Abraham Lincoln is charged with mismanaging the recently concluded Civil War, and there is repeated friction between Lincoln and a hostile United States Congress. Before Congress can impeach him in 1867, however, Lincoln dies, discredited and castigated as a spendthrift warmonger. Lincoln's role in this story is similar to that of his successor Andrew Johnson in real history.
• Similar to the above, in the alternate history novel The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen L. Carter, Abraham Lincoln survived the Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth's attempt on his life in Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865 whereas Vice President Andrew Johnson was assassinated by Booth's co-conspirator George Atzerodt on the same night. During his second term, the Radical Republicans, led by Senator Thaddeus Stevens, came to see Lincoln's failure to punish the South and to protect its freed slaves as akin to treason. Furthermore, the Democrats and the former Confederates regarded Lincoln as a tyrant who imposed his will in violation of the United States Constitution. These disparate groups formed a coalition against Lincoln and the accuse him of wartime crimes for having suspended habeas corpus, taking millions from the Treasury without Congressional approval, declaring martial law and conspiring to overthrow Congress. Consequently, the House of Representatives vote to impeach him in the spring of 1867 and faced trial in the Senate, where his attorney was a 21-year-old African American woman named Abigail Canner.
• In Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain, John Brown succeeded in his raid on Harper's Ferry and touched off a slave rebellion in 1859, as he intended. The rebellion spread far, developing into a full-fledged war throughout the South, the rebellious slaves joined by numerous European radicals such as Garibaldi. John Brown did not survive to the end, but Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass assumed leadership and eventually won the war, detaching the Deep South and making of it the predominantly Black Republic of New Africa. Abraham Lincoln, a prominent Whig politician, was bitterly opposed to the United States accepting the loss of its Southern portion to the Black rebels. Lincoln continued to agitate and - though he had no legal authority for it - managed to raise and equip a considerable army which he himself commanded. Under the slogan "One Union Forever!" Lincoln proceeded to lead an invasion of New Africa with the intention of restoring its territory to the United States, but was defeated and killed in a bitter battle, along with most of his troops. New Africa prospered and its Black citizens remembered Lincoln with loathing as the most intransigent of their foes.
• In Robert Skimin's Gray Victory, in 1864 General Johnston remains in command of Atlanta and keeps his soldiers inside the fortifications, fighting a long-drawn siege war of attrition until the Northern elections of November 1864. Abraham Lincoln loses the support of the war-weary voters and George B. McClellan is elected president. McClellan orders a cease-fire, followed by a peace in which the independence of the South is recognized. The defeated Lincoln remains alive, with Booth having no reason to assassinate him, and remains a hero to many. Blacks in the Confederacy, denied the freedom which Lincoln promised in his Emancipation Proclamation, create a strong organization named "Abraham" in Lincoln's honor, determined to achieve their freedom by themselves. Lincoln is touched and sympathetic to their struggle, but stays clear of the plots by radical abolitionists to re-ignite the war.
• In the 2004 mockumentary CSA: The Confederate States of America, Abraham Lincoln served as the sixteenth and final President of the United States after the Confederate States get the United Kingdom and France to help them win the Civil War. American general Ulysses S. Grant surrenders to Robert E. Lee on April 9, 1864 after the Confederate army captures Washington D.C.. Also, the Confederacy annexes the remaining parts of the United States and the title of President of the United States is abolished. Lincoln attempts to escape to Canada (in blackface) with the help of Harriet Tubman. However, they are caught by Confederate soldiers and captured. Tubman is executed and Lincoln is imprisoned. In 1866, he is pardoned by Jefferson Davis and exiled to Canada. Lincoln remains in Canada until he died in June 1905 at the age of 96. Shortly before his death, Lincoln laments not having made the Civil War a battle to end slavery.
• In Saviour of the Empire by George Fields, it is contended that even if the North American colonies had not rebelled against British rule, Abraham Lincoln would have still been fated to fight a civil war against slave-owning rebels -but he would have done it as Sir Abraham Lincoln, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In this timeline, Lincoln entered politics due to indignation at slave-owners foiling the Emancipation Law in 1833. After a stint in the North American Provincial Legislature he graduated to the Imperial Parliament in London and soon achieved prominence despite the aristocracy's disdain for his "uncouth provincial manners". Was among initiators of the finally approved Emancipation of the Slaves in 1856. He becomes Prime Minister in 1857 amidst the worst crisis in the history of the British Empire - widespread rebellions of slave-owning colonies in North America, the Caribbean and South Africa, simultaneously with the Indian Mutiny, a Second Opium War with China and a Russian invasion of the Ottoman Empire, Britain's ally, aimed at seizing Constantinople - and with the Russians actively aiding and abetting all of Britain's other foes. Sir Abraham guided the Empire through four terrible years of war on land and at sea on multiple fronts, and succumbed to an assassin's bullet just as victory came in plain sight. Hundreds of thousands followed his cortege through the streets of London. He was interred at Westminster Abbey in the presence of Queen Victoria and declared to have been "Among the Greatest of England's Sons", on a par with King Arthur and Francis Drake.

Charles Lindbergh

• Charles Lindbergh appears in The Plot Against America, an alternate history novel by Philip Roth. He defeats President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 election to become the 33rd President by playing upon the public's fears of going to war. Once in office, he cancels defense-related agreements with the Allies, and signs non-aggression treaties with Nazi Germany and with the Empire of Japan, which he justifies on the grounds that they will keep America out of war, and that the Axis are doing the world a favor by fighting and destroying communism in the Soviet Union and China. At home, he implements several programs designed to marginalize the Jewish community in the U.S. Henry Ford serves as his Secretary of Interior.
  • He serves until 1942 when Vice President Burton K. Wheeler succeeds him.
  • At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Lindbergh was in the employ of the Nazis the entire time; years earlier, German agents had kidnapped Lindbergh's only son (see Lindbergh kidnapping) and used him as a hostage ever since to force Lindbergh to obey them. The treachery is discovered, Roosevelt is re-elected to the White House, and the U.S. enters the war on the Allied side.
• He is also president in the 1973 alternate history The Ultimate Solution (1973) by Eric Norden. Unlike in Roth's book, he is not elected but made a puppet president by the Nazis after they conquer the US in the 1950s, on a par with the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, and remains at this job until 1973 when he – together with most of the world's population – is killed in a nuclear war between Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.
• Lindbergh as President has a more minor role in the history another Nazi-victorious timeline, the unpleasant GURPS timeline known as Reich-5. In this timeline Giuseppe Zangara succeeded in assassinating Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. He was followed by Garner, after whom Lindbergh gained power, followed by Henry Wallace. All of them proved unable to handle the Great Depression - finally leading to the far-right William Dudley Pelley, who became President following Lindbergh's assassination and getting elected to a full in 1944, assuming dictatorial powers, and inviting the Nazis to conquer the US to help him against the pro-democracy resistance, ending with a totally Nazi-dominated world.
• Charles Lindbergh is president in the novel K is for Killing by Daniel Easterman. He is elected as the 32nd president in 1932 with D. C. Stephenson as his Vice President. Stephenson arranges the assassination of Lindbergh and his wife in 1940 to prevent him from learning about a secret plan to collaborate with Nazi Germany on atomic weapons.
• Charles Lindbergh is president in the novel Farthing (2006) by Jo Walton. In a world where Britain and Nazi Germany reached a peace arrangement in 1941, Lindberg is president in 1949. He is preparing to meet with the Emperor of Japan to strengthen ties between the two countries.

Belva Ann Lockwood

• In the short story "Love Our Lockwood" by Janet Kagan in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Belva Ann Lockwood defeated the incumbent Democratic Grover Cleveland and their Republican opponent Benjamin Harrison in the 1888 presidential election to become the 23rd President. The first woman to hold the office, she ran as the Equal Rights Party candidate. Her vice president was Alfred H. Love. President Lockwood inspired both male and female suffragettes. She lost her bid for re-election to Cleveland in 1892, who took office as the 24th President on March 4, 1893. He had previously served as the 22nd President from 1885 to 1889.

Huey Long

• In the short story "Kingfish" by Barry N. Malzberg in the anthology Alternate Presidents, Huey Long avoids assassination in 1935 and runs for president in 1936 as an Independent. He defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt and becomes the 33rd President. He invited Adolf Hitler to visit the United States, and allowed him to be assassinated via a bomb in 1938, leading to war with Nazi Germany. Although he had previously told his Vice President John Nance Garner that he did not intend to run for re-election in 1940, Garner became increasingly skeptical that Long would keep his word and therefore provide him with the opportunity to run. His suspicions were confirmed following the outbreak of the war.

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