Between Hamilton and Madison, host T.J. Hall pauses the timeline to share why Liberty Rewritten exists in the first place.
A former English and debate teacher, Hall reflects on the question that has followed him since the classroom: Why do we study history?
This minisode explores the answer — not through battles or dates, but through curiosity, imagination, and the idea that history is still a rough draft we’re all helping to write.

Alexander Hamilton finally steps into the office he designed — and discovers that governing a nation built in your own image is the hardest kind of leadership.

In this alternate republic, the United States never loses a battle in the Revolution — and never looks back.
Hamilton’s presidency accelerates emancipation, rewires the economy, and transforms morality into public policy.
Factories hum beside churches. Freedmen become pioneers. Inspectors become priests of progress.

But perfection has a cost.
The same precision that frees a nation begins to strangle its spirit, and by 1808 the people quietly decide they want a heartbeat instead of a blueprint.
When Hamilton steps aside after two disciplined terms, James Madison’s victory doesn’t undo his legacy — it humanizes it.

This episode traces the rise, rule, and retirement of the most relentless mind in American history — a man who proved that order can build freedom… until freedom decides to rearrange it.

🎧 Listen as host T.J. Hall dissects the presidency history never got — and the republic that learned how to breathe without its architect.

John Adams steps into the presidency not as a revolutionary hero or a visionary architect — but as the man caught between titans.

In a United States that’s financially strong, morally ambitious, and diplomatically respected, Adams faces factional storms, ideological clashes, and the ticking clock of the Gradual Emancipation Act.

From the XYZ Affair and the Quasi-War to the Alien & Sedition Acts and emancipation enforcement, Adams governs like a man balancing on a tightrope while Hamilton and Jefferson build rival stages on either end.

And when 1800 comes, it’s not Adams in the spotlight — it’s the election the real world never saw: Hamilton vs. Jefferson, a clash of visions that will define the republic’s next era.

What happens when George Washington inherits a United States that won every single battle of the Revolution?

In this alternate history, Washington doesn’t tiptoe through a fragile republic—he builds a confident, ambitious one from the ground up.

From the creation of the Cabinet and Judiciary, to a federal Gradual Emancipation Act in 1790, Hamilton’s financial revolution, neutrality with a backbone, and a Jay Treaty signed from a position of strength, we follow Washington decision by decision as he lays down the political, moral, and financial architecture of a very different America.

It’s not destiny. It’s design.

Welcome to Liberty Rewritten, a podcast that asks: what if the United States didn’t just make different choices… but won different battles, avoided different scandals, and elected different leaders altogether?

In this extended introduction, host T.J. Hall lays out the six key divergences that will reshape the entire timeline—from the Revolutionary War to the modern era—and explains how each episode will blend narrative storytelling, historical analysis, and the actual writings of historical figures to explore this alternate America.

Think of this as the intellectual prologue to a very different republic: one where the Hamilton–Reynolds affair never happened, Watergate was a non-story, Trump never took office, and the Revolution never faltered. We’ll travel backward through these divergences, unraveling history before rewriting it—one presidency at a time.