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.
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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. Hamlin, who had retired to Bangor, Maine after being passed over for renomination as vice president in favor of Andrew Johnson, received an emergency telegram to summoned him out of Bangor to Washington, D.C. to assume the presidency shortly after Lincoln's death. Nine days later on July 21, Hamlin becomes the 17th president and at his inaugural speech, he promises severe retribution on the Confederate States after the Great Rebellion ends, even using Lincoln's death as justification for the oppressive peace. This involved the hanging of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and other Confederate leaders for high treason, 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., and the continued rebelliousness of white Southerners, 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, Hannibal 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, which is renamed "Columbia". 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. In Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters, the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln led to the adoption of a modified version of the Crittenden Compromise, with slavery being preserved into the twenty-first century in the 'Hard Four' states: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and a unified Carolina. Presumably, Hannibal Hamlin as Vice-president-elect would have been sworn in as president as a result of Lincoln's assassination.
Winfield Scott Hancock In the alternate history story "Patriot's Dream" by Tappan King contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Winfield Scott Hancock was Samuel J. Tilden's running mate in 1876, defeating Rutherford B. Hayes. Consequently, Tilden became the 19th president with Hancock as his vice president. Although they were elected as Democrats, they later founded the reformist Liberal Party. After serving two terms as vice president, Hancock was elected as the 20th president in 1884 and went on to be re-elected in 1888. His vice president was Grover Cleveland, who won the Liberal Party's presidential nomination in 1892 and was widely expected to defeat his Democratic opponent James G. Blaine. Cleveland's running mate was Susan B. Anthony.
Warren G. Harding In the short story "A Fireside Chat" by Jack Nimersheim contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Warren G. Harding died of a stroke during the 1920 election campaign. The election was eventually won by the Democratic candidate James M. Cox with Franklin D. Roosevelt as his running mate. Five weeks after the election, however, President-elect Cox was assassinated by an anti-League of Nations activist, meaning that Roosevelt took office as the 29th president on March 4, 1921. Shortly after the Nazi Party rose to power as a result of the Bürgerbräu Putsch in 1922, President Roosevelt and the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, established an alliance in order to maintain the balance of power.
W. Averell Harriman President Harriman, mentioned in The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein, is presumably W. Averell Harriman. In reading an almanac from our universe, it is noted that Dwight D. Eisenhower served one of his terms in office (meaning he either served from 1949 to 1957 or 1957–1965).
Kamala Harris In the play The 47th by Mike Bartlett, Kamala Harris (played by Tamara Tunie) becomes the 47th president after President Joe Biden resigns. After Trump supporters disrupt the first presidential debate between Harris and Donald Trump, they enforce mob rule throughout the United States, with Harris having Trump arrested and briefly imprisoned but ultimately releasing him out of fear that it would make him a martyr. With Trump dying a week before the election from injuries he sustained during a car crash, it is suggested that it may have been orchestrated by Harris, with liberal reporter Charlie Takahashi, who had been blinded through torture by Trump supporters during the violence, persuading her to do so to end the violence.
Benjamin Harrison In the short story "Love Our Lockwood" by Janet Kagan contained in the anthology Alternate Presidents edited by Mike Resnick, Benjamin Harrison lost the 1888 election to Belva Ann Lockwood, who became the 23rd president as well as the first woman to hold the office. He was once again the Republican presidential candidate in 1892 and was defeated on that occasion by Grover Cleveland, who became the 24th president, having previously served as the 22nd president from 1885 to 1889. In the alternate history series Southern Victory novel How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove, Benjamin Harrison served as the Secretary of War in the cabinet of Republican president James G. Blaine from 1881 to 1885. He oversaw the US military during the Second Mexican War (1881–1882) and consequently shouldered much of the blame for the United States' defeat by the Confederate States of America, the United Kingdom and France. As a result, the Republicans became an ineffectual centrist third party, with their right wing defecting to the Democrats and their left wing establishing the Socialist Party, and the Republicans never again winning the presidency. He was the grandson of William Henry Harrison, who had served as the 9th President of the United States from March 4 to April 4, 1841, as a member of the Whig Party.
William Henry Harrison William Henry Harrison, the actual 9th President of the United States, had an alternate presidency in Tom Wicker's "His Accidency".Published in "What ifs? of American History", New York, 2003 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 recognize 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 the Manifest Destiny.
Gary Hart In First Among Equals by Jeffrey Archer (first published in 1984), Gary Hart was elected president in 1988, presumably as a result of Ronald Reagan's failure to negotiate arms reductions with the Soviet Union. With Margaret Thatcher's third tenure as prime minister already weakened by the election of a hung parliament and the continuation of her Conservative government in the minority, Hart's social and economic policy agendas undermine the position of the Thatcher ministry further, forcing her to call an early election in 1989, which Labour wins albeit with a narrow parliamentary majority. Gary Hart is the president from 1981 to 1989 in an alternate world inhabited by Susannah Dean, Eddie Dean, and Jake Chambers at the end of Stephen King's novel The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. Eddie mentions that Hart was elected in a landslide in the 1980 election after almost dropping out due to the "Monkey Business business." In real life, Hart ran for president in 1984 and 1988 (not 1980 and 1984), and the Monkey Business scandal happened in 1987 (not 1980). In this alternate timeline, Ronald Reagan never entered politics. In the alternate history novella trilogy Then Everything Changed by Jeff Greenfield, Gerald Ford wins the 1976 election after clarifying his statement that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration" during the second presidential debate, albeit winning the electoral votes of Ohio and Mississippi to achieve a narrow victory of 272 to 266 in the Electoral College and losing the popular vote to Jimmy Carter by around 1,500,000. In 1980, Gary Hart defeats Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination and ultimately defeats Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in the general election. Dale Bumpers served as Hart's running mate, later becoming Vice President and Hart's "point man" with Congress. Hart's election victory was largely attributed to Ford's unpopularity, public backlash against economic downturn, the Republicans' twelve-year incumbency in the White House and John B. Anderson's decision against contesting the election as a third-party candidate. Hart nominated as his attorney general Rose Bird, the first woman to hold one of the top four Cabinet posts, keeping her in mind as a candidate for a Supreme Court vacancy. Early into his first term, following the announce of a strike by air traffic controllers, Hart was discovered having an affair with White House intern Serena Brown by Assistant White House Chief of Staff Hillary Rodham.