In 1804, the escalating feud between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr culminates in a duel, held just outside the still-unfinished new capital of Washington, D.C., in which President Hamilton is fatally wounded. He will die the next day. Burr will be charged with murder, and although he is ultimately acquitted, his political career will be irretrievably damaged. Engaged in a contest for the governorship of New York at the time of the duel, Burr, tarred as the 'assassin of the President' and even as a 'regicide,' will lose that election so decisively that it will be clear he has no hope of ever again attaining any position of influence in the United States.

In 1803, President Alexander Hamilton learns that the 'Cicero letters' which have been appearing occasionally in various newspapers since April of the previous year are the work of his long-time rival Aaron Burr.

In an angry letter of his own, mailed to the editors of several of these papers, the President reveals the identity of 'Cicero' and demands that any future letters from him be refused publication as 'injurious to the dignity of the office which I now hold.'

When Burr learns of Hamilton's response, he lashes back: Not Cicero, he, but Caesar, whose dignity must not be affronted by criticism emanating from common mortals. Have the Congress chosen for us not a president but an emperor? He insists that he will continue to write, under his own name now that his disguise has been penetrated, and says he is confident that his charges against the President will stand on their own merits.

In 1804, newly installed Acting President Thomas Jefferson succeeds in persuading fellow Southerners in Congress to end their blocking of funds for transforming Columbia College into a national university. In doing so, he plays heavily on sympathy for the slain President Hamilton, choosing to gloss over his own differences with his predecessor.

In 1826, with Thomas Jefferson dead after more than twenty years in the White House, Congress meets to appoint a new President, and, as anticipated, chooses to retain Acting President James Madison in that position. However, he faces unexpectedly strong competition from Governor Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. Jackson, who has cultivated friends in the federal government in order to nurture policies beneficial to his home state, comes in second in the voting and is therefore made vice-president, despite the cultivated Madison`s personal distaste for 'that backwoodsman.'

In 1801, Congress finally elects a new President: Alexander Hamilton, who narrowly defeats Thomas Jefferson. Under the terms of the Constitution, Jefferson will become Hamilton's vice-president. It is an awkward arrangement. Hamilton is the leader of the dominant faction of the ruling Federalist Party, while Jefferson had actually co-founded the anti-Federalist Republican Party in opposition to the Constitution in the 1790s before reluctantly accepting the new charter. In addition, Hamilton is a Northerner and an outspoken advocate of the abolition of slavery, while Jefferson is a slaveholding Southerner.

In 1800, an exasperated John Adams declares he does not wish to be considered as a candidate for permanent elevation to the presidency. Repeating words he had uttered at the Continental Congress in 1776, he declares, "One useless man is called a shame, two are called a law firm, and three or more are called a Congress". He goes on: "Why should I wish to serve for the rest of my natural life dealing with a body which cannot even agree upon so basic a matter as when to hold an election for the office of supreme magistrate?".

In 1787, delegates from the thirteen United States of America meet in Philadelphia to hammer out reforms to the country's governing charter, the Articles of Confederation.

The convention quickly decides that the Articles cannot, in fact, be reformed, and begin work on an entirely new constitution. They conduct their debates in absolute secrecy, fearing the reaction if the public learns prematurely of how they have departed from the mission for which they were appointed.

One of the most contentious issues they consider is the role of the President. Under the Articles, the presidency is a minor office, first among equals in Congress, in which no person can serve more than one year in three. Under the influence of Alexander Hamilton, the presidency is greatly strengthened, becoming the chief officer of an entire separate executive branch of the government, among the powers of which is appointment of federal judges. There is fierce debate over the length of time a president should remain in office, though there is general agreement that the one-year-in-three rule in the Articles is far too restrictive.

One early proposal is for a lifetime presidency, whose occupant will be chosen by Congress. It is highly controversial; some delegates warn that it would establish an American monarchy. Proponents counter that Congress will retain primacy through its power to appoint the chief executive, especially since the legislative branch is also to have the power of the purse, enabling it to rein in the executive by controlling that branch's funding. Alternatives are suggested, including a single six-year term and a four-year term with the opportunity for reelection.

In 1836, U.S. President James Madison dies after a decade in the White House. Andrew Jackson becomes acting President. He is the first man from a state outside the original thirteen to hold the office.

In 1788, New Hampshire becomes the ninth state to ratify the new U.S. Constitution, placing it into effect. Congress schedules the presidential election for the first Tuesday in November. President of the Congress Cyrus Griffin will serve as acting president until the first Constitutional president is sworn in, which is expected to be sometime in the first week in March (Congress has not specified an exact date) to allow time for the new administration to be assembled and for its members to travel to New York, which is serving as a temporary capital.

It is generally expected that George Washington will be chosen president. That expectation proves true, as Washington receives a unanimous vote in the electoral college. Under the lifetime tenure provision of the Constitution, he will remain in office until his deaath in 1799.

In 1804, Congress meets to elect the President. The two main candidates are Vice-President Thomas Jefferson, who has been serving as acting President since Hamilton?s demise in July, and James Madison. Jefferson prevails, and Madison becomes vice-president. Jefferson will serve for more than twenty years, until his death on July 4, 1826.

In 1836, elections for Congress and state legislatures are held. Under the Constitution, however, the new Congress will convene in December of the following year, meaning that a lame-duck House and Senate will decide the fiercely disputed presidential contest. Reformers have urged for years that Congress establish a more reasonable date for convening, as the Constitution grants it the authority to do by legislation. Members, however, have refused to yield what amounts to a free extra year in power for incumbents defeated at the polls.

In 1837, Daniel Webster announces he is withdrawing from the presidential race, and asks his followers to support Acting President Andrew Jackson instead.

His stated reason is the need for Americans to 'stand united in this time of foreign invasion,' but political insiders believe that another, more potent reason is that the collapse of his political support among Southerners in Congress following his intemperate remarks of eight days earlier: he can now function only as a spoiler, whose continued presence in the contest will hand victory to the strongly pro-slavery Calhoun, whom he dislikes both politically and personally.

With Webster out of the running, a House vote is scheduled for the following day. It is now expected that Jackson will be confirmed as president for life.

Southern supporters of John Calhoun are furious, and accuse Webster of 'conspiring' with Jackson to defeat Calhoun. They vow to prevent the House from confirming Jackson as lifetime President.

In 1837, the Battle of Bangor: 10,000 British troops seize the strategically located Maine town, overwhelming 2,000 defenders.

The British have seized the opportunity presented by the presidential succession crisis in the United States following the death of President James Madison to launch a military expedition across the disputed U.S.-Canadian border.

In Washington, no one yet knows what has happened. Instead, everyone is preoccupied with the ongoing impasse in the House of Representatives over choosing a lifetime successor to Madison. The withdrawal of Daniel Webster from the race has failed to break the deadlock between the remaining candidate, Tennessee's Andrew Jackson and South Carolina's John Calhoun. Calhoun's supporters in the House of Representatives launch parliamentary maneuvers aimed at forestalling a Senate vote for the presidency. Although they have been successful in blocking the election of anyone else in the House, they fear that in the Senate their man's defeat is inevitable.

But although the actual capture of Bangor is not yet known to the U.S. government, reports that British troops have crossed the border and are constructing fortifications on the American side have arrived in the U.S. capital, prompting Acting President Jackson to summon the British ambassador to the presidential residence, where Jackson delivers an ultimatum: if the British do not remove their troops immediately upon the responsible authorities' receipt of this notice, a state of war between the United States and Great Britain will be considered to be in effect.

Ambassador Henry Fox's response borders on the contemptuous. I shall convey your words, he tells Jackson. However, the government and armed forces of Great Britain shall respond as they think best.

In 1837, word of the fall of Bangor and of other British advances in Maine reaches Washington just as the Senate, after weeks of infighting, is preparing to cast its vote for President. At once, partisans of Acting President Jackson raise the cry not to change presidents in the middle of what is beginning to look like a mortal threat to the Union.

Upon receiving the news, Acting President Jackson once more summons Ambassador Fox. We now see, it appears, Jackson says to the diplomat, what course of action your government thinks best in dealing with our protests as to their military incursion upon United States soil.

Perhaps, sir, you believed that I was not in earnest when I warned that refusal to remove these troops would mean war between our nations. I assure you now, any such belief was mistaken. Or perhaps you imagined that, were it to come to war, Britain would inevitably be the victor. One need only direct one?s attention to the history of relations between us to make clear that this, too, is mistaken.

Your government has attempted to take advantage of the present political disputes of this nation to launch a military assault upon us, in violation of all treaties between our nations. Accordingly, I advise you now that I shall request of Congress, before another day has passed, a formal declaration that a state of war exists between the British Empire and the United States of America, and that I anticipate with confidence that whatever their other disagreements they shall speedily provide that declaration.

I therefore request and require that you remove yourself and your staff and dependents from the soil of the United States within the next twenty-four hours. You are to consider that you, and they, are personae non gratae in this nation as of this moment.

Ambassador Fox does not waste time on bluster. He merely replies, As you wish, sir, and turns to go. He and the rest of the personnel of the Washington embassy will depart by ship the following morning, after burning all embassy papers they will be unable to take with them. It is the beginning of the third, and the bloodiest, war between Britain and the United States.

In 1837, with the U.S. formally at war with Great Britain for the third time following the British invasion of Maine, the Senate, for the first time in its history, meets to select a president.

There had been some hope that in the emergency the diehard supporters of Webster and Calhoun in the House would relent, allowing for a final conclusive vote in that body after all, but it has not happened.

The protracted succession crisis following the death of President Madison in June 1836 has strengthened the hand of those who have argued for years in favor of a less cumbersome method of choosing the chief executive. Some propose allowing the state legislatures to select delegates to an 'electoral college,' their number reflecting the state's representation in the House and Senate, to choose the president, a proposal considered and rejected at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. A smaller number call for direct election of the president by popular vote; this idea is widely considered impractical, due to primitive transportation and communications and, as well, to a feeling among influential people that 'the masses' are unfit to choose the nation's highest official.

One idea barely mentioned is imposing periodic elections for the presidency in place of the life term. Fifty years after the drafting of the Constitution, the lifetime presidential tenure has acquired the authority of tradition.