Alt history: No American Revolution, one path forward

This is an expansion of an alt-history answer I gave on Quora to the alt-history question of what would have happened to Texas without an American Revolution.

The base point? It would have remained part of Spain, then independent Mexico. The one wild card is Louisiana.

To extend this idea, let us assume Napoleon keeps Louisiana, with nobody else to sell to.

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, for loyalty in fighting France, Britain gives Spain the portion of Louisiana south of the Arkansas River and takes the rest for itself. That serves as an additional buffer.

THAT said, then assume that American Revolution-type conditions are realized in the War of 1812.

First, the American Revolution could have been prevented.

Give the colonies some token representation in Commons, like one member per colony. If they protest about not having more, bring up pocket boroughs and rotten boroughs and then, per Monty Python, if the colonialist protest, tell them to snuff it. Make some compromise on what is taxed and at what rate. Allow a select number of American ships to trade directly with the Caribbean, but only conditional on British inspections of cargo and manifest in the American ports.

At the same time, promulgate information about the Quebec Act in Ireland and maybe encourage bits of immigration as a counterweight. At the same time, write that act to look slightly less pro-Catholic in the U.S. Tell the colonials that the settlement restrictions are for their own good unless they want to pay more taxes for more British troops. Also, pass it earlier, and in a separate set of acts from the so-called Intolerable Acts. (None of this is unreasonable alt-history.)

Due to the 1774 Quebec Act, and Canadian population growing since 1774 (and Britain diverting more and more there as possible), let us say this Rebellion of 1819 ends with the original 13 colonies plus the “Old Southwest” in a new United States of America. Florida is Spain’s, as it had been. The Ohio Country remains part of British Canada, and of course, so does British Louisiana north of the Arkansas River.

Mexico secedes from Spain the next year, as in real history.

The weak new US, presumably under an Articles of Confederation government, isn’t strong enough to take the current state of Louisiana, or go across the Mississippi in general for another couple of decades. Plus, there’s no unity of government on such an idea under an Articles-type government and one that’s dominated by slave states.

Andrew Jackson, the George Washington of the new American republic, leads the calls for a new constitution, and is elected the first American president under it. New England, edgy about a new nation with a stronger constitution and just as pro-slavery as the post-1819 Articles government, rebels when Jackson makes a military play for Louisiana in 1833.

Britain, having just emancipated the Caribbean islands of slavery, sees a chance to muck around in American history and does so. New England is easy to supply from Canada as well as directly from the Home Islands, and seizing the eastern sliver of New York will provide the extra defense line of the Hudson River.

Britain also sells arms to Mexico, which Jackson cannot stop. Other independent Latin American nations support Mexico in various ways and Jackson fails.

A new Treaty of Ghent has Jackson agreeing that Britain has a right to guarantee the independence and inviolability of the new Latin American republics. He also agrees to accept the Mississippi and Ohio as boundaries and to accept the new Nation of New England’s independence.