WASHINGTON (By Adam
Goodheart, NYTimes) July 4, 2006 — It's a
badly kept secret among scholars of American history
that nothing much really happened on Thursday, July 4,
1776.
Although
this date is emblazoned on the Declaration, the Colonies
had actually voted for independence two days earlier;
the document wasn't signed until a month later. When
John Adams predicted that the "great anniversary
festival" would be celebrated forever, from one end of
the continent to the other, he was talking about July 2.
Indeed, the dates that
truly made a difference aren't always the ones we know
by heart; frequently, they've languished in dusty
oblivion. The 10 days that follow — obscure as some are
— changed American history. (In some cases, they are
notable for what didn't happen rather than what did.)
This list is quirky
rather than comprehensive, and readers may want to
continue the parlor game on their own. But while
historians may argue endlessly about causes and effects
— many even question the idea that any single day can
alter the course of human events — these examples show
that destiny can turn on a slender pivot, and that
history often occurs when nobody is watching.
Anyway, happy Second of
July.
JUNE 8, 1610: A
Lord's Landfall
Three years after its
founding, the Virginia Colony was a failure. A few dozen
starving settlers packed some meager possessions and
sailed from Jamestown on June 7, headed back toward
England. The next morning, to their surprise, they
spotted a fleet coming toward them, carrying a new
governor, Lord De La Warr, and a year's worth of
supplies.
If not for his
appearance, Virginia might have gone the way of so many
lost colonies. What is now the Southeastern United
States could well have ended up in the French or Dutch
empires. Tobacco might never have become a cash crop,
and the first African slaves would not have arrived in
1619.
OCT. 17, 1777:
Victory Along the Hudson
If one date should
truly get credit for securing America's independence, it
is when the British general John Burgoyne surrendered at
Saratoga.
The battle's
significance was more diplomatic than military: shortly
after news reached Paris, the French king decided to
enter the war on the American side. "If the French
alliance and funding hadn't come through at that moment,
it's hard to say how much longer we could have held
out," says Stacy Schiff, author of "A Great
Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of
America." The American Revolution might have gone down
in history as a brief provincial uprising, and the
Declaration of Independence as a nice idea.
JUNE 20, 1790:
Jefferson's Dinner Party
On this evening, Thomas
Jefferson invited Alexander Hamilton and James Madison
to dinner at his rented house on Maiden Lane in Lower
Manhattan. In the course of the night, Jefferson
recalled, they brokered one of the great political deals
in American history. Under the terms of the arrangement,
the national capital would be situated on the Potomac,
and the federal government would agree to take on the
enormous war debts of the 13 states.
Had that meal never
taken place, New York might still be the nation's
capital. But even more important, the primacy of the
central government might never have been established,
says Ron Chernow, the Hamilton biographer. "The
assumption of state debts was the most powerful bonding
mechanism of the new Union," he says. "Without it, we
would have had a far more decentralized federal system."
APRIL 19, 1802:
Mosquitos Win the West
Events that change
America don't always occur within our borders. Consider
the spring of 1802. Napoleon had sent a formidable army
under his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc, to
quell the rebellion of former slaves in Haiti.
On April 19, Leclerc
reported to Napoleon that the rainy season had arrived,
and his troops were falling ill. By the end of the year,
almost the whole French force, including Leclerc
himself, were dead of mosquito-borne yellow fever.
When Napoleon realized
his reconquest had failed, he abandoned hopes of a New
World empire, and decided to sell the Louisiana
Territory to the United States.
"Across a huge section
of the American heartland, from New Orleans up through
Montana, they ought to build statues to Toussaint
L'Ouverture and the other heroes of the Haitian
Revolution," says Ted Widmer, director of the John
Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
JAN. 12, 1848:
An Ill-Advised Speech
His timing couldn't
have been worse: With the Mexican War almost won, a
freshman congressman rose to deliver a blistering attack
on President Polk and his "half-insane" aggressive
militarism. Almost from the moment he sat down again,
the political career of Representative Abraham Lincoln
seemed doomed by the antiwar stand he had taken just
when most Americans were preparing their victory
celebrations.
Yet that speech saved Lincoln.
"It cast him into the political
wilderness," says Joshua Wolf
Shenk, the author of "Lincoln's
Melancholy." This insulated him
during the politically
treacherous years of the early
1850's — when Americans divided
bitterly over slavery — and
positioned him to emerge as a
national leader on the eve of
the Civil War. Lincoln's early
faux pas also taught him to be a
pragmatist, not just a moralist.
"If he had been successful in
the 1840's, the Lincoln of
history — the Lincoln who saved
the Union — would never have
existed," Mr. Shenk says.
APRIL 16, 1902:
The Movies
Motion pictures seemed destined
to become a passing fad. Only a
few years after Edison's first
crude newsreels were screened —
mostly in penny arcades,
alongside carnival games and
other cheap attractions, the
novelty had worn off, and
Americans were flocking back to
live vaudeville.
Then, in spring 1902, Thomas L.
Tally opened his Electric
Theater in Los Angeles, a
radical new venture devoted to
movies and other high-tech
devices of the era, like audio
recordings.
"Tally was the first person to
offer a modern multimedia
entertainment experience to the
American public," says the film
historian Marc Wanamaker. Before
long, his successful movie
palace produced imitators
nationally, which would become
known as "nickelodeons."
America's love affair with the
moving image — from the silver
screen to YouTube — would endure
after all.
FEB. 15, 1933:
The Wobbly Chair
It
should have been an easy shot:
five rounds at 25 feet. But the
gunman, Giuseppe Zangara, an
anarchist, lost his balance atop
a wobbly chair, and instead of
hitting President-elect Franklin
D. Roosevelt, he fatally wounded
the mayor of Chicago, who was
shaking hands with F.D.R.
Had Roosevelt been assassinated,
his conservative Texas running
mate, John Nance Garner, would
most likely have come to power.
"The New Deal, the move toward
internationalism — these would
never have happened," says Alan
Brinkley of Columbia University.
"It would have changed the
history of the world in the 20th
century. I don't think the
Kennedy assassination changed
things as much as Roosevelt's
would have."
MARCH 2, 1955: Almost a Heroine
When a brave young
African-American woman was
arrested for refusing to give up
her seat on a Montgomery, Ala.,
bus, local and national civil
rights leaders rallied to her
cause. Claudette Colvin, 15,
seemed poised to become an icon
of the struggle against
segregation. But then, shortly
after her March 2 arrest, she
became pregnant. The movement's
leaders decided that an unwed
teenage mother would not make a
suitable symbol, so they pursued
a legal case with another
volunteer: Rosa Parks.
That switch, says the historian
Douglas Brinkley, created a
delay that allowed Martin Luther
King Jr. to emerge as a leader.
He most likely would not have
led the bus boycott if it had
occurred in the spring instead
of the following winter. "He
might have ended up as just
another Montgomery preacher,"
Professor Brinkley says.
SEPT. 18, 1957: Revolt of the
Nerds
Fed up with their boss, eight
lab workers walked off the job
on this day in Mountain View,
Calif. Their employer, William
Shockley, had decided not to
continue research into
silicon-based semiconductors;
frustrated, they decided to
undertake the work on their own.
The researchers — who would
become known as "the traitorous
eight" — went on to invent the
microprocessor (and to found
Intel, among other companies).
"Sept. 18 was the birth date of
Silicon Valley, of the
electronics industry and of the
entire digital age," says Mr.
Shockley's biographer, Joel
Shurkin.
AUG. 20, 1998:
Just Missed
With most Americans absorbed by
the Monica Lewinsky affair,
relatively few paid much
attention when the United States
fired some 60 cruise missiles at
Qaeda training camps in
Afghanistan. Most public debate
centered on whether President
Clinton had ordered the strike
to deflect attention from his
domestic troubles.
Although the details of that day
remain in dispute, some accounts
suggest that the attack may have
missed killing Osama bin Laden
by as little as an hour. How
that would have changed America
— and the world — may be
revealed, in time, by the
history that is still unfolding.
Adam Goodheart is director of
the C.V. Starr Center for the
Study of the American Experience
at Washington College.
