Ok so all of these points are from the book "What If?" it looks at multiple points in the history and see what would have happened if very minor changes had happened, a lot of them count on luck, e.g. Fog allowing Washington to escape to Manhattan.
The following was written by Thomas Fleming, a distinguished author, ex-chairman of the American Revolution Round Table and former President of the American Centre of P.E.N, an international writer’s organisation. So please don’t give me crap saying what is below is rubbish or anti American. I have edited out some parts because I don’t want to type up all 30 pages of this essay.
“What if Samuel Adams had gotten his way after the Boston Massacre?
Basically what happened here is Sam Adams convinced a mob of 400 men that if they attacked the British soldiers in Boston that it would "terrify the royal army into a humiliating evacuation". What actually happened was the British shot at the mob when attacked a soldier knocking him down with a club, 5 dead 6 injured.
Now Sam Adams wanted to use this event to denounce the royal forces as murderers. How ever the political state back then would have meant that other colonies would see this as proof that Boston was in the hands of an anarchist mob thus excusing the British from resorting to these measures to restore order. Fortunately for Boston Sam’s cousin, John Adams saw that this would happen and because no lawyer would stand for the soldiers being afraid of being killed by the mob stood as lawyer for the soldiers on trial for murder. He got the soldiers off and managed to gain the support of people in other states as “worthy of their support”.
If John hadn’t done this there might never have been a Boston Tea Party.
What if the British plan had worked at Bunker Hill?
Two months later the embryo war could have gone either way at Bunker Hill. The mythical version of this battle has the British marching stupidly up the hill to get blasted by American marksmen. In fact the British had a sophisticated battle plan that could have ended the war if they had been able to execute it.
The field commander, Major General William Howe intended to outflank the exposed for on Breed’s Hill by sending a column of crack light infantry up the beach on the shore of the Mystic River and sealing off the narrow neck of the Charlestown Peninsula, trapping the Americans like insects in a bottle. Simultaneously, the other half of the British army was to assault the weakened American lines around Cambridge, where the rebels had most of their powder and ammunition.
Fortunately for the future of the yet unborn United States, Colonel John Stark, commander of the new Hampshire regiment spotted the deserted beach as a potentially fatal flaw of the American position. He ordered 200 of the best men there and took personal command of them. When Howe saw this checkmate, he asked the British admiral on the Boston station to send a sloop up the river to scatter Stark’s men with a few rounds of grapeshot. The admiral demurred, saying he had no charts of the river.
This ended in disaster for the British forces. If the British admiral had the energy or the brains to chart the river or if John Stark had failed to spot the importance of that beach Bunker Hill would have been a very different story.”
As you can see from these first two of Thirteen events the who future was based on the decisions of 1 or 2 people and anything can happen to change someone’s mind, as I am sure many of you have experienced before.
The following was written by Thomas Fleming, a distinguished author, ex-chairman of the American Revolution Round Table and former President of the American Centre of P.E.N, an international writer’s organisation. So please don’t give me crap saying what is below is rubbish or anti American. I have edited out some parts because I don’t want to type up all 30 pages of this essay.
“What if Samuel Adams had gotten his way after the Boston Massacre?
Basically what happened here is Sam Adams convinced a mob of 400 men that if they attacked the British soldiers in Boston that it would "terrify the royal army into a humiliating evacuation". What actually happened was the British shot at the mob when attacked a soldier knocking him down with a club, 5 dead 6 injured.
Now Sam Adams wanted to use this event to denounce the royal forces as murderers. How ever the political state back then would have meant that other colonies would see this as proof that Boston was in the hands of an anarchist mob thus excusing the British from resorting to these measures to restore order. Fortunately for Boston Sam’s cousin, John Adams saw that this would happen and because no lawyer would stand for the soldiers being afraid of being killed by the mob stood as lawyer for the soldiers on trial for murder. He got the soldiers off and managed to gain the support of people in other states as “worthy of their support”.
If John hadn’t done this there might never have been a Boston Tea Party.
What if the British plan had worked at Bunker Hill?
Two months later the embryo war could have gone either way at Bunker Hill. The mythical version of this battle has the British marching stupidly up the hill to get blasted by American marksmen. In fact the British had a sophisticated battle plan that could have ended the war if they had been able to execute it.
The field commander, Major General William Howe intended to outflank the exposed for on Breed’s Hill by sending a column of crack light infantry up the beach on the shore of the Mystic River and sealing off the narrow neck of the Charlestown Peninsula, trapping the Americans like insects in a bottle. Simultaneously, the other half of the British army was to assault the weakened American lines around Cambridge, where the rebels had most of their powder and ammunition.
Fortunately for the future of the yet unborn United States, Colonel John Stark, commander of the new Hampshire regiment spotted the deserted beach as a potentially fatal flaw of the American position. He ordered 200 of the best men there and took personal command of them. When Howe saw this checkmate, he asked the British admiral on the Boston station to send a sloop up the river to scatter Stark’s men with a few rounds of grapeshot. The admiral demurred, saying he had no charts of the river.
This ended in disaster for the British forces. If the British admiral had the energy or the brains to chart the river or if John Stark had failed to spot the importance of that beach Bunker Hill would have been a very different story.”
As you can see from these first two of Thirteen events the who future was based on the decisions of 1 or 2 people and anything can happen to change someone’s mind, as I am sure many of you have experienced before.