A What If Scenario

I don't tend to do a lot of 'thinking' over the 4th of July.   To me as a kid, it meant a day at valley in Tennessee, where you'd go for an afternoon of softball, stew, and gossip by local folks.  My dad made this a yearly activity when I was growing up in Alabama. 

In later years, you'd go to base events with an evening display of fireworks, and some musical entertainment. 

I doubt if in the 1776 era, folks sat around and discussed how the day would be marked or celebrated.  But this brings me to the odd topic of 'what-if', and if things had gone differently.

In this era of 1760, King George III was the guy who set the path for what we have today.....basically by screwing up and not grasping the mess at hand.

So, let us say that King George III woke up in 1760, and decreed that there would be representation in the House of Lords and the House of Commons for 13 'lands'.  Then let's suggest that he limited military personnel to be brought from England to America, and instead.....limited it to just 3,000 men to be spread around five key forts of America. 

The King might have then turned to the thirteen governors and say.....here, if you think you need soldiers for some reason to defend against Indians.....it's you who will form a militia, and it's you who will tax your own people for that militia, and it's you who will disband that militia when the threat is wrapped up.

Then an odd thing would have happened.  The revolution would have never occurred. George Washington would have likely be called up and been some Colonel of the Virginia Militia and never risen higher than that position.

The war of 1812?  It would have likely never occurred.

The Louisiana Purchase?  It would have likely never occurred. In fact, you could sit and draw a reasonable map of the US in 1820....which extended to the Mississippi River, and that was the basis of the entire country. 

France?  I think Napoleon would have gone to some idea of suggesting massive migration of French people into the Louisiana to Missouri region.  Thousands in the 1800 to 1820 period would have moved there and the European conflict would have been avoided.

Slavery?  I think the King would have slowly written up enough proclamations that no further slaves would have arrived after the 1810 period.  The bulk-cotton plantations would have been forced through various changes, and I think slavery would have likely ended by the 1840s.    No Civil War, and Lincoln would have never been 'delivered'.

WW I?  The King could have called upon the states (the eastern sector of the nation) to support the war-front, and we would have been there by late 1914.  By the end of 1915, the war would have ended because of the US participation in this war early on. Without the massive defeat of 1918.....Germany never goes through the bad years of the 1920s.

Somewhere in this 1920 to 1940 era.....like Australia, we would have gone to become our own nation, and likely forged some relationship with French-Mississippi region. 

Life would have been different.