Um, I know it's a habit of many to deny the relevence of the States in order to feel more secure about their own, but don't you think a Washington or Lincoln might be kinda relevent to the world we live in?
Considering the full scope of six thousand years of human history, the US has only had an effect on the last two hundred. While the population of the planet is larger that it has ever been, and the US holds the dominant role in world politics for the forseeable future, its effect on world history as a whole is extremely limited.
As such, while the United States would have been vastly different had someone like Oliver Cromwell been our first president, would the US have turned out much differently had Adams been our first pres? Or if Greene ended up leading the Continental Army?
Washington's greatest accomplishment was stepping down from the presidency after two terms, and I suspect that Adams would have done similarly. As for the Revolutionary War? The war was won once Gates won Saratoga. What happened at Yorktown was a forgone conclusion that could've happened to anyone else anywhere else, thanks to Saratoga.
As for Lincoln? What about him? The North and South were so economically dependent on each other (the South much more so than the North), and world attitudes on slavery so rapidly shifting, that even if the South had successfully seceded, they couldn't do business with the rest of the world. The Confederacy would've won European recognition, but Europe would've continued to boycott Southern cotton so long as the South used slave labor (and so long as India could fulfill Europe's cotton demand). As a result, the Confederacy would have remained economically wed to the Union, and reintegration would probably have happened eventually, albeit much more slowly and with much less pain and suffering to the South.
Edit: BTW, IIRC Washington was...#60something? Lincoln was unranked.
