There’s a genre of fiction called Alternate History which examines other possible historic timelines like what might have happened if the South won the Civil War.

In this article, the Sunday Magazine looks at an alternate history where American states remained colonies of Great Britain, and the Fourth of July were known as Traitors’ Day. An article commemorating Traitors’ Day might start like this:

This date, the Fourth of July, recalls the Great Rebellion hatched on that day in 1776 from the egg of treason over which a band of unprincipled conspirators had so long been brooding. While the history of those evil days is familiar to every child, it is well for us, on this recurring date, to think upon the dangers that then menaced these colonies of his Majesty King George III., that we may more clearly appreciate the blessings of freedom and peace we now enjoy under the beneficent rule of our present beloved ruler, King George V…

History can show no more pitiably shameful spectacle than the figure of the aged Benjamin Franklin, whose early life had been so filled with worth and usefulness, standing in the felon’s dock at the Old Bailey, his white hairs bowed in dishonor, and his name attainted with treason, awaiting sentence that would swiftly rape him away before a sterner Judge.

Yet one even more shameful than Franklin! The traitor, Washington, the pet and protégé of the great Lord Fairfax, nurtured in his early manhood by the favors of nobility and the Crown, the wealthiest gentleman of his time in the colonies. He was sentenced to Tyburn and the hangman’s noose like a common felon, but, on account of his gross betrayal of Gen. Braddock, he was denied burial.

HOW THE WORLD WOULD BE TO-DAY “HAD HISTORY BEEN WRITTEN OTHERWISE”: A Pertinent Question That Suggests Various Possibilities in the Formation and Development of the United States. (PDF)

From June 11, 1911