In 1777, John and Thomas Adams and their families arrive in New Orleans, having fled Massachusetts with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Both men soon become active in producing propaganda aimed at encouraging a new rebellion. The refusal of Spanish authorities to hand over the 'traitors' further angers the British, who are already incensed that the Adamses' fellow colonial rebel Alexander Hamilton has been given safe haven.

In 1777, Benjamin Franklin is arrested in London while on a last desperate mission to appeal to Parliament for 'an equitable solution to the grievances between the colonies and the Crown.' Because Franklin still has influential friends in England, he is not executed; instead, he is sent to prison, and, in September of 1788, will be transported to the newly established Botany Bay penal colony in Australia.

In 1826, Thomas Jefferson dies in exile in France. Once wealthy, he is broke and deep in debt at his death. His funeral will be attended by several of the surviving members of the American revolutionary movement, including Aaron Burr, who has been living in Paris since the collapse of the Mexican independence movement in 1818 forced him to flee that Spanish colony. In a burst of gallows humor, Burr describes the gathering as "the finest collection of condemned traitors in one place in all of modern Europe".

In 1814, Britain concludes a treaty with native tribes granting it sovereignty over the large Illinois Territory in exchange for guarantees that it will limit white settlement in the region. Although London will initially make real efforts to abide by these pledges - motivated by a desire to avoid another round of bloody, and expensive, Indian wars at a time when it faces a deadly foe on the Continent - it will prove impossible to keep settlers out, and, faced with the choice of honoring its treaty commitments or protecting white holdings against often lethal raids, the British government will take the latter path.

In March of 1816, the Crown Colony of Ohio will be created from part of the Illinois Territory; in August of the following year, another portion of the same lands will be incorporated as the colony of New Cornwall. These moves, undertaken without consultation with the local tribes, will be harbingers of the British choice to favor white settlerment despite its pledges not to do so.

In 1790, exiled American patriot Benjamin Franklin dies in Britain's Botany Bay prison colony in Australia, at the age of 84. In that community of exiles, the elderly Franklin has become something of a folk hero; his survival to such an age despite years of imprisonment in England and transportation in 1788 to the primitive conditions of the Botany Bay outpost is considered a sign of his toughness, and his accounts of the American try for independence appeal to his fellow transportees, who have no more reason than he to love the Crown. Franklin's revolutionary rhetoric will inspire the creation of an Australian version of the American Sons of Liberty after his death.

In 1802, President Alexander Hamilton puts into effect a plan he and President Washington had discussed during the latter's administration, declaring New York's Columbia College America's 'national university.' Under this scheme, promising students from all over the country will be invited to Columbia to be groomed for leadership positions in government and the military. Southerners are angered that a 'Yankee' university has been chosen for this honor, and insist that such Southern schools as Virginia's William and Mary College at least equally deserve. Southern congressmen vow to block the use of any federal money for the new national university.

In 1777, George Washington is captured at his estate at Mount Vernon, to which he has returned to salvage what he can before Tory mobs wreck the place following the collapse of the American colonial rebellion.

An informer tips off local British officers, and Washington is dragged from his bed at two in the morning after having spent the previous day feverishly packing his valuables.

In 1777, Alexander Hamilton arrives in New Orleans, having fled New York by ship a step ahead of British troops assigned to arrest him. Angry demands from British authorities that he be surrendered to them are ignored.

In 1813, Australia's version of America's old Sons of Liberty stages a replay in Sydney harbor of the 1773 Boston Tea Party exactly forty years earlier: a gang of masked 'patriots' dumps a shipment of tea into the water in protest of the high taxes imposed on that commodity's importation to then island continent. This relatively harmless stunt will be followed by more violent actions expressing colonists' resentment of their treatment by the mother country.

Established after the death of Benjamin Franklin, who had been transported to the primitive Botany Bay outpost after years of imprisonment following his unsuccessful last-ditch attempt to secure a peaceful settlement between Britain and its rebellious American colonies, the Australian Sons of Liberty have been a thorn in the side of the colonial administration there for years.

In 1808, the Africa Act, passed by Parliament the previous October, goes into effect, banning the African slave trade and empowering British naval vessels to intercept and impound slave ships on the high seas.

The Act inspires fury in the slaveholding American colonies, sparking talk of a new rebellion.

In 1837, Sir Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke demonstrate the first successful electric telegraph, transmitting a short message along five miles of wire strung between Euston and Camden Town in England.

Others have been working on similar systems, including the colonial American inventor Samuel F. B. Morse. Wheatstone and Cooke's demonstration, however, will win them priority in receiving a royal patent on this device.

In America, Morse will turn his attention to what others see as an impractical extension of the telegraph: the "telephone" a device capable of transmitting the human voice over a wire.

The competition between Wheatstone and Cooke in England and Morse and others in Britain's American colonies is a sign of the growing industrial and scientific power of the colonies since the decision by the Crown and Parliament during the Napoleonic period to end its earlier practice of stifling American industry to maintain a captive market for British manufactures. That policy, which had been profitable in the eighteenth century, had hobbled the colonies' ability to provide the mother country with arms during the years of conflict with the French Empire, nearly enabling Bonaparte to win.

In 1813, Andrew Jackson is chosen as spokesman for the growing number of settlers in Tennessee and dispatched to Fort Coxeboro, the de facto capital of the newly incorporated colony, to present a list of the settlers' grievances to the authorities there. The settlement had been founded in 1791 by Tench Coxe, the Loyalist scion of a wealthy Philadelphia family, who had made a name for himself under General Sir William Howe during the American colonial rebellion of the mid-1770s.

Unfortunately, the only real 'authorities' yet established there are the officers of the military garrison. Those officers, mostly British, take a dim view of being presented with demands by someone they see as an inferior colonial ruffian, and forcibly expel him from the settlement, threatening to imprison him if he dares return.

Jackson, a proud man, is humiliated and enraged. On his return home, he informs the settlers' council which had sent him to Coxeboro of his treatment and demands that the British be made to realize that, "By God, we are as much men as they, and as much deserving of respect!".

In 1820, King George III of England dies at Windsor Castle.

His son George, Prince of Wales, who has been serving as the de facto monarch for the past ten years, will be crowned King George IV. The succession will be greeted with a sense of relief throughout the British Empire, for the old king had been ill for a decade, during which Prince George had served as regent.

And in the American colonies, the death of George III will be quietly celebrated, for many older Americans still remember with bitterness the exploitive economic measures he and his Parliament instituted beginning in the 1750s, which had led to the unsuccessful colonial revolt of the mid-1770s, and the repression which had followed the rebellion. The jackbooted, red-uniformed 'Order Police' established in the colonies after the uprising are still a feared and hated presence there, and it is quietly hoped that the new king may withdraw them.

In 1829, the 'Scotland Yard' headquarters of the new London Metropolitan Police Force opens for business following passage of the Metropolitan Police act as a result of strong lobbying by Home Secretary Robert Peel.

'The Yard' will open offices in Britain's American colonies over the next several years, gradually assuming many of the functions of the hated Order Police as well as conduction ordinary law enforcement.

In 1811, realizing that he is dangerously overextended now that other nations have begun taking England's side, Napoleon dispatches diplomatic envoys to a number of nations in search of allies of his own. In addition, he directs that agents be sent to Quebec and Louisiana to stir up pro-French sentiment and, if possible, rebellion.

The French emperor's efforts will be insufficient to ignote a full-scale rebellion, but his exploitation of simmering discontent among the French-speaking inhabitants of Quebec Province will lead to the creation in 1814 of the Front Nationale de Quebec, an underground political and paramilitary group. Continuing British military rule proves to be a powerful recruiting tool for the FNQ, which, although unable to mount a new full-scale rebellion, will embark on a campaign of murder, sabotage and intimidation against the British authorities - and their Quebecois collaborators, whom the Front labels 'traitors.'

In 1814, with the violence which had erupted in Tennessee following the so-called 'Fort Coxeboro Massacre' finally subsiding, the commander of the British garrison lifts martial law.

Military rule had been of only limited effectiveness anyway in the thinly-settled colony. The commander does, however, request a permanent increase in the number of troops allotted to his command.

Andrew Jackson, who as leader of the colonial delegation sent to Fort Coxeboro in May of 1813 to present a list of colonists' grievances to the colonial authorities had been first humiliated and then killed following the outbreak of fighting, has been memorialized among the settlers despite strong official disapproval. Colonial authorities fear that he will become a symbol around whom would-be rebels may rally in the future.

In 1832, the Sovereignty Crisis erupts in South Carolina over fears that abolitionists are gaining ground in Parliament and may finally succeed in outlawing slavery.

Riots rip through the colony, but are subdued by British troops. No other colony has followed South Carolina's lead, but the British response, which results in the burning of Charleston and the death of several hundred people, many of them women and children, stirs sentiment in favor of 'American sovereignty' throughout the South.

In 1838, the British Parliament passes the Slavery Act, outlawing involuntary servitude throughout the British Empire. Riots erupt in every Southern colony of British North America.

The violence is far worse than that of the Sovereignty Crisis of six years earlier, which, despite the efforts of zealots in South Carolina, had been limited to that colony.

In 1811, taking advantage of the overthrow of Spain's King Charles IV, Mexican independentistas publish the 'Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of North America.

The text reveals the influence of the British colonial expatriates in the rebel movement: much of it is copied from the never-ratified Philadelphia Declaration of 1776.

Moreover, although ostensibly a proclamation of Mexico's reasons for seeking independence, the document, beginning with its title, is worded to imply support for the independence of Britain?s North American holdings as well.

In 1844, Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel addresses the British Parliament regarding the Colonial Reform Act, startling his Conservative colleagues by offering support for it.

Arguing from his experiences in police reform, he observes that the ability of the government to maintain control without excessive use of physical force depends on public support, and "public support itself depends upon the public's sense that it has options for redress of grievances short of defying established authorities".

Peel observes that both the general colonial revolt of the 1770s and the Southern rebellion of 1838-'41 arose from a sense on the part of those involved that, without representation, they had no such options; as evidence, he reminds his listeners that one of the key slogans of the first rebellion was 'No taxation without representation.'

In 1844, after weeks of wrangling, the Colonial Reform Act is defeated in Parliament.

The final blow comes when Queen Victoria personally expresses opposition. A substitute measure proposes abolishing the hated Order Police, established after the first American rebellion, and dividing the OP's internal-security functions between Scotland Yard's colonial offices and the individual colonies' British garrisons.

In 1819, the former King Louis XVI of France dies in exile on the island of Elba, at the age of 65.

He has been an invalid for years, having never really recovered after being badly wounded during an unsuccessful attempt by French royalists to free him from his incarceraation in July of 1810.

In 1818, the last organized independentista force in Spanish Mexico surrenders, ending a rebellion which had begun in 1810 and which had been encouraged by expatriate survivors of the rebellion in the British colonies four decades earlier, including the notorious agitators John Adams, now living in exile in Cuba, and Thomas Jefferson, currently residing in Versailles.

To the frustration of the British authorities, who have had warrants against Adams and Jefferson since the days of the American rebellion in the mid-1770s, neither man will be punished for his role in the uprising. The brilliant and cultured Jefferson has become a favorite at the court of the Napoleon despite his political agitation, and he is able to persuade the Emperor to order his brother Joseph Bonaparte, who has served as the puppet ruler of Spain since 1810, to keep the Cuban colonial administration from acting against Adams.

Jefferson's continued efforts at political subversion in the name of 'liberty' will, however, cost him following the death of Napoleon and the crowning of his son ten-year-old son Napoleon Francois Joseph Charles Bonaparte, who will reign in name only for years under the regency of Klemens von Metternich, the first Napoleon's feared Prime Minister. Metternich will see to it that the privileges and wealth Jefferson had enjoyed are gradually stripped away, so that by the time of his death in 1826 he will be broke and hounded by creditors.

In 1845, Arthur MacArthur is born in Springfield, Massachusetts.

In the 1887 Anglo-Spanish War which follows the sinking of the HMS King George IV in the harbor at Santiago, Cuba, MacArthur, by then one of the youngest vice-admirals in the British Navy and the first American ever to hold that rank, will perform heroically, destroying the Spanish fleet at Manila in the Philippine Islands with minimal British loss of life.

He will be knighted in January 1888, following the Spanish surrender.

MacArthur's son Douglas will become a general and play a major role in the Second World War against the so-called 'Axis' nations of France, Germany, Italy and Japan.

In 1887, the British battleship HMS King George IV explodes and sinks in the harbor at Santiago de Cuba, killing all aboard.

In Britain and its American colonies, the incident ignites a fever for war with Spain.

Spanish protestations that it had nothing to do with what it calls with the 'naval accident' are not believed either in England or in America, and the tensions between London and Madrid are carefully nurtured by agents of French Emperor Napoleon III and Germany?s 'Iron Chancellor' Otto von Bismarck. The French and Germans, who have overcome traditional animosities to form an alliance, hope a war will weaken both England and Spain.

It will not work out that way. Britain will achieve a stunning victory over Spain, one even more decisive than that it had achieved in the conflict of the 1840s which followed the Veracruz Incident. The widely touted rearmament Spain had undertaken following its earlier defeat will turn out to have been largely a sham, riddled with corruption and incompetence, which had produced an impressive-looking but ineffectual military force. In the peace treaty, Spain will be forced to cede Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands and to pay an indemnity amounting to fifty million pounds sterling.

Spain's humiliation will play a role in the rise of ultranationalist political forces in that country which will come to fruition in the rise of the Falangists, who will come to power in the 1930s and make Madrid an ally, though not a formal member, of the so-called 'Axis.'

In 1845, the first reports reach London of a mysterious, devastating blight attacking the Irish potato crop.

Because wheat, beef and other farm products produced in Ireland are largely taken by absentee English landlords for sale in England, leaving the Irish dependent on the potato for much of their sustenance, there are grim forecasts of famine.

An exodus of Irish farmers to Britain's American colonies will follow.

Dissident political writer Karl Marx arrives in New York after being expelled from Belgium by that country's government. He had considered going to London, but had changed his mind after being advised by a friend that the colonies may be more receptive to his ideas.

In 1864, Arthur MacArthur enters the Howe Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Howe, founded in 1816 and named after Admiral Richard Howe, who had commanded the successful invasion of New York in mid-1776 during the abortive American bid for independence, has become the number-one naval training facility in North America.

MacArthur's decision to join the navy has been a point of contention between him and his father, also named Arthur MacArthur. The elder MacArthur, serving as attache to the royal governor of the Crown Colony of Cheyenne, had wanted his son to enter the army instead, believing that to be a better career move for a son he hopes will follow him into civil service.

On this day in 1847, the Treaty of Seville concluded, formally ending the war between England and Spain.

Under its terms, Britain will take possession of the Mexican territories of Texas, Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo Mexico and Alta California. Spain will pay an indemnity of 15 million pounds sterling. Spain will apologize for its seizure of British diplomats. The two nations will agree to resume normal diplomatic relations.

British holdings in North America now extend from coast to coast, encircling the remaining independent Indian Territories. Treaties with the native tribes strictly limit white settlement in the Territories, collectively known to the British as Indiana. However, the Queen's ministers, heeding entreaties from the American colonies, are advising her that these treaties should be amended to allow the construction of rail lines through Indiana and settlements around those lines.

In 1824, the Franco-British war ends in French defeat, as General Sir Arthur Wellesley accepts the surrender of the last of Napoleon II's armies at Compiegne. Wellesley will be granted a title, first Duke of Wellington, after the victory.

Under the terms of the peace treaty, France is forced to relinquish its claim to Spain - little more than a recognition of reality at this point, with Joseph Bonaparte cowering in Marseilles and Ferdinand VII now securely on the throne.

It is also obliged to recognize the independence of the Duchy of Warsaw and of the German principalities, including Hannover, seized by the first Napoleon. Napoleon II himself is to abdicate the throne in favor of the 39-year-old Louis Charles Bourbon, second son of King Louis XVI, and will be exiled to the island of Elba, off the coast of Italy.

In 1848, Gold is discovered in Coloma, Alta California, along the banks of the Rio Americano.

The find touches off a mad scramble of would-be prospectors. The gold-seekers' journey will be arduous.

The still-ongoing war with the Indiana tribes, who control a vast inland domain, makes a direct passage across the continent out of the question, requiring would-be exploiters of California's riches to take one of two less attractive routes: either through the newly acquired territories of Texas and Nuevo Mexico before swinging up into Alta California, a route soon christened the Golden Turn, or a perilous months-long sea voyage around the tip of South America and up to Alta California's western coast. The land route requires travelers to cross broad expanses of baking desert; the ocean trip exposes them to the risks of storms, accident and disease.