The "what if' game is irresistible to all but the most meticulous
fact-checkers. Any grade school student can tell you that virtually any
historical event turns on sometimes minute, or even chance circumstances.
Some "what ifs" have simple answers:
What if Mark McGwire hadn't broken Roger
Maris' home run record in 1998?
Answer: Sammy Sosa would have done it!
Some open
up a veritable Pandora's Box of possibilities:
What if slavery in North America had proven to be
unprofitable?
Some offer tantalizing solutions to troubling twentieth century dilemmas:
What if Lincoln had not been assassinated and had instead been allowed to carry
out his proposed - and lenient -Reconstruction policies? .
Alternate history is not an original concept. English poet Sir John Collings
Squire brought out If it Had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary
History in 1931. One notable contribution was Winston Churchill's essay
describing the South's theoretical victory in the American Civil War. This subject was also on Mackinlay Kantor's mind in 1960 with his, If the South Had Won the Civil
War. This latter embodies two favorite themes of alternate history: the
power of the individual to change events, and an element of inevitability,
"having the South, the North, and the Republic of Texas move toward
reunification in the twentieth century."1 In fact, reversing
the outcome of major conflicts such as the Civil War or World War II is one of
the most popular subjects for practitioners of alternate history.
The enduring popularity of alternate history is exemplified in the September,
1999 issue of American Heritage Magazine which devoted nearly
thirty pages to the subject, and typically entitled the piece, "Lee Defeats
Grant". An internet search on "alternate history" yields at least 17 web sites
devoted exclusively to the subject - addressing "what ifs" from such diverse
topics as a "chronology of what might have resulted from an intimate encounter
between a16-year-old Prince and his teenaged bride one night in February, 1502"
to "building an alternate world/history in which, for better or worse, atomic
power replaced fossil fuels". 2
The topics considered here are no less cataclysmic, though we weigh primarily
subjects directly affecting the American West.
You won't find any answers here. Any solution
offered would provide merely one viewpoint and be purely speculative in any
case. But we are open to submissions if you would like to proffer a
logical result to the scenarios posed. Please document your research and
let us know who you are. Who knows? We may find them intriguing
enough to include with our puzzlers.
• Badger Clark • Calvin Coolidge • Custer and the Little Big Horn • Custer's Last Band • Gold in the Black Hills • Gutzon Borglum • Homestake Gold Mine • Lewis and Clark • Marias Pass • Peter Norbeck • Sitting Bull & Buffalo Bill • Teddy Roosevelt • Wounded Knee • United Nations •
1 Phil Patton, "Lee Defeats Grant" in American Heritage Magazine,
September, 1999. p.41.
2 Yahoo Browser Search
.
