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And That’s Where It All Went Wrong
World History has plenty of moments where a single decision — or a seemingly insignificant act — brought about enduring disaster that appears, in retrospect, to have been be tragically avoidable. The events of late summer of 1914 come to mind.
More obscurely, Winston Churchill famously regretted the monkey who bit King Alexander of Greece on the leg, which caused a fatal infection and set off a succession crisis in during the Greco-Turkish War, arguably leading to the deaths of a quarter million people.
I wonder if the history of the United States is unusually immune to such tipping points. Certainly, the central disaster of our history, the Civil War, happened due to an almost mathematical inevitability. On the other hand, you can point to the Great Depression or the War of 1812 as being all too unnecessary.
If you had a time machine and could undo just one act in history, what would it be? Let’s avoid the obvious; please limit yourself to U.S. history, or to the more obscure events of world history since 1492.
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Published in General
A lot of evil flowed from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.
The JFK assassination comes to mind. Too easy, sorry. But Reagan was nearly killed, and I doubt Bush 41 would have been any more successful in 1981 than he was later.
The friendly fire death of Stonewall Jackson. The survival of Robert E. Lee and W. T. Sherman, both of whom were nearly shot dead. The almost capture of U.S. Grant, mentioned in his memoirs, in late 1862 or early 1863.
The treaty ending the Mexican War, negotiated by Nicholas Trist, which didn’t match up with desires of the government to annex more or all of Mexico, but which was accepted anyway.
The occasion when only fog and the unpleasant memory of Bunker Hill saved Washington’s army from destruction by the British forces re-occupying New York. The occasion the US army almost conquered Quebec, which involved Benedict Arnold, leading to an entire new list of possible histories where he did not later commit treason. The bad English luck which resulted in temporary French control of the sea off Virginia, which prevented the evacuation of the English army trapped at Yorktown. The short-lived government of England that followed the collapse of the ministry led by Lord North after Yorktown, which was exceedingly generous towards the victorious colonies.
I’ll stop with that.
The speech given by BHO at the democratic convention in 2000.
Sorry to be pedantic, but you mean early summer, 1914.
You mean 2004!
The passage of the 16th amendment (among others) establishing the federal income tax. The decision in Wickard v. Filburn, which extended the reach of the commerce clause into inifinity. Tinkering with the original Constitution in general.
I just grabbed a cheap book off Amazon that examines small events that had a big impact on history. It’s called Napoleon’s Hemorrhoids. My daughter likes it so far.
I would point to Mulberry v Madison which grave rise to the notion that he Supreme Court was the final arbiter of what is and is not Constitutional. From that decision came the unraveling of our republic.
Mike Ditka deciding not to run for US Senate from Illinois in 2004. If he’d run, Obama wouldn’t have been able to run for President.
Robert Heinlein getting tuberculosis and being forced to leave the US Navy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_William_Proxmire
To take a leaf from Albert above, hate to be pedantic but it was “Marbury”. But yes, that was a dodgy decision, though the failure of the 1787 convention to clarify the scope of the power of the court.
Re comment #8, that should be “if he’d won”, not “if he’d run”
The birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Not sure about the bit where the civil war was a mathematical inevitability but it was certainly a man caused disaster:)
There were a dumber of incidents during the Revolutionary War when major Founders were very nearly killed or captured. Washington had a number of horses shot out from under him, Hamilton was nearly captured on several occasions, and Monroe was shot in the throat. The British might easily have captured Congress on a few occasions, and the Continentals would almost certainly have been smashed during the Battle of New York had it not been for a very lucky fog.
Teddy Roosevelt’s decision to run as a third party candidate — the Progressive Party — effectively taking votes from incumbent President Taft and handing the election to now infamous (that’s more than famous) Progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Instead of eliminating it, dueling in the Senate is declared mandatory.
Clearly, I should be biting more people on the leg.
Hey! This is Ditka we’re talking about.
I’m influenced by Winston Churchill (he keeps popping up, doesn’t he!) who called the U.S. Civil War one of the noblest and least-avoidable wars in history–which contrasts with the War of 1812, for which he had total contempt.
I read this book called What if? many years ago.
I don’t remember the arguments that well but I remember liking it.
http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Eminent-Historians-Imagine-Might/dp/0399152385/ref=sr_1_16?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413564838&sr=1-16&keywords=what+if
I’ve thought recently about incidents and accidents, nationally and internationally, that have shaped events today since I became old enough to vote in 1990. Since then I’ve voted in 6 presidential elections, only voting for the winner twice (Bush 2000, and 2004). One name comes to mind – Ross Perot. What would the world be like if that little ferret hadn’t run as a third party candidate in 1992. Would Bush 41 have been reelected, would Bill Clinton have run in 1996 after losing in 1992, and would we be facing a future with Hillary Clinton as president. (That woman so unappealing her voice reminds me of a combination of a British ambulance siren and a foghorn). Would the nation’s culture and temperament be healthier without the specter of the Clintons hovering over us like a dense fog? Could the road to Obama have been paved without the Clintons?
Seriously, what if the world had never heard of H. Ross Perot?
Wait–you used to be married to an ambulance siren and a foghorn?
40, 50 likes…
Churchill himself attributed his survival at Omdurman to a shoulder injury he suffered in India years before. Because of this affliction he was forced to lead a cavalry charge wielding a Mauser pistol instead of his saber. Encountering a Dervish horseman, he wrote that he would not likely have prevailed if he had been armed with his saber.
I would undo the birth of Vladimir Putin.
I’ve met many ordinary Russians, and they had so much hope after the fall of communism. One 17 year-old girl I spoke with worried that the old evil powers would rise again, and we’re seeing that in Putin.
One of our biggest mistakes was not fully embracing Russia after the fall of the USSR, both economically and culturally. We lost what could have been a great ally.
Man-Oh-Man, we need that fusion powered ‘Back-To-The-Future’ car to straighten this crazy world out.
will we make it, if we have to wait 10 to 100 years?
I agree with Randy, inasmuch as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is the easily preventable event that probably resulted in (not ’caused’) more evil than any other in history: WW1, the Bolshevik coup, the Nazi regime, WW2, the Cold War, and more.
The candidacy of this assassination is strengthened by the fact that, although it was intended, it was also made possible only by the Duke and Duchess being in the wrong place at the wrong time by accident. Oh to be there, and to have put a tripping foot in front of Mr Princip, or to have given the royal driver better directions.
The assassination was only the spark that lit the tinder box. If it wasn’t the death of the Archduke it would have been something else.
my pick would have been to assassinate Karl Marx before his trash could have been published. The single source of more death and misery from his time forward than anything else.
SEnkey: “The assassination was only the spark that lit the tinder box. If it wasn’t the death of the Archduke it would have been something else.”
Perhaps there would have been no spark, or perhaps the tinderbox would have been rained on before there was a spark. As a conservative, I avoid Marxist-style inevitalism when it comes to history and politics.
The first world war was an inevitability by the time that Gavrilo Princip took to the streets. It might have rolled out in a slightly different fashion, but maybe not. After all, the whole reason for invading France after an assassination in Sarajevo had to do with the German war plan, and only having a certain amount of time to win on the Western front before the Russians could mobilize.
The German chancellor (Bethmann-Hollweg) was bent on war to assert German superiority over the continent, notably because Germany was lacking Empire in the way that the other major countries had. The inevitability has nothing to do with a Marxist march of History and everything to do with the character of the German regime at the time.
Even Britain could not have remained out of it, because Germany by 1914 had built a Navy to rival the RN, and would have tried to press that advantage after dispatching with France and Russia.