"Counterfactual history" are fighting words for historians. Some view "what ifs" as useless or even pernicious. Others, and I am among them, think they can be a useful way to deepen our understanding of the past and how we got here.
In a previous column, I looked at some specific lost opportunities for Phoenix. This time, I want to lay out some turning points that might have gone another way, with profound implications for Arizona and the nation.
1. William Henry Harrison lived and served out his term(s). As every schoolboy or schoolgirl should know, the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe was elected president in 1840. He delivered the longest inaugural address in history on a frigid March day with no hat or overcoat. He caught cold, which turned into pneumonia and pleurisy and he was dead in a month.
The consequences for American history were profound. Harrison led a Whig agenda (the "American System") that today would be considered progressive. His vice president, John Tyler, a former Democrat, abandoned it. Had the Whigs been able to enact their policies under this popular president and extend them with the election of another statesman, Henry Clay ("Harry of the West"), the power of the South would have been lessened and the Civil War might have been postponed for decades.
The Mexican War likely wouldn't have happened. An independent Texas Republic might have emerged and even joined the union. But what became Arizona would have remained part of Mexico. A weak and divided Mexico would have been unable to subdue the Apaches in the late 19th century. The result: Cal's dream of "sahuaros" as the largest population in a land of empty majesty.
2. The Gadsden Purchase didn't take place. When Mexico lost its war with the United States, it ceded land all the way to the Gila River. Washington approached Mexico City in the early 1850s about buying more — a deal which resulted in Arizona's current borders.
The purchase was not inevitable. It was driven by the desire for a southern transcontinental railroad route — what became the Southern Pacific's Sunset Route (shown above). But most Southerners, including the majority of their leaders, had no interest in the railroad or diversifying the economy beyond slave-based agriculture, especially cotton. James Gadsden, the ambassador who pushed through the agreement, was a slave holder but supported the railroad.
The opposition wasn't limited to the South. Anti-slavery northern lawmakers didn't favor it, fearful that it would extend the "peculiar institution" west. Mexicans resisted efforts to make the purchase include much more territory, including Baja California and Chihuahua. Santa Anna, president once again, felt pressured by Washington and asked for British help. London demurred.
In other words, several hinges of history might have turned the other way.
Without the Gadsden Purchase, Mexico would begin directly south of metropolitan Phoenix. Imagine Phoenix as a border town. Or a border city, as with San Diego.
3. The Confederacy won the Civil War. In May 1863, Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was killed by friendly fire after the Battle of Chancellorsville. Had Robert E. Lee been able to use his most effective lieutenant at Gettysburg two months later, the Army of Northern Virginia might well have prevailed.
Until Gettysburg, the union had lost most of its major battles against the South. Defeat in Pennsylvania could well have marked a turning point where northern enthusiasm for the bloody conflict, already wavering, collapsed. British and other European recognition of the CSA might have been forthcoming, followed by the defeat of Abraham Lincoln in 1864 by the peace-seeking former general George McClellan.
The immediate result would have been a border between the two countries that ran horizontally through what is now New Mexico and Arizona. The latter had a territorial delegate in the Confederate Congress. Whether the United States and Confederate States could have co-existed is the subject of much speculation, as well as several novels. But had Richmond enacted its version of the Newlands Act, the Salt River Valley would have become a cotton kingdom tilled by slave labor. Slaves also would have mined copper at Bisbee
If, on the other hand, state rights would have trumped a strong central government, Confederate Arizona might have remained a wild place of Apaches and adventurous Anglo miners in perpetuity. This would have been doubly so without a transcontinental railroad, which the South would have been unlikely to build.
4. No Newlands Act. Had the financial panics of the 1890s not abated, and had northern and Midwestern farmers realized that reclamation would use their tax dollars to subsidize crops to compete against them, the transformational water projects of the early 20th century might never have been funded. Phoenix would have remained a small, tenuous community for much longer.
5. No Barry Goldwater or Steve Shadegg. The 1952 senatorial campaign managed by Shadegg and showcasing the handsome young department-store owner only barely unseated Majority Leader Ernest McFarland. And that was with the deep unpopularity of Harry Truman and exhaustion of essentially 20 years of national Democratic control. Without those two individuals, Arizona would have remained a Democratic state far longer.
6. California prevails before the Supreme Court. If the Golden State had won the long-running Arizona v. California case, there would have been no Central Arizona Project and not enough water to encourage the vast population explosion from the 1960s onward.
7. Roy Elson won the 1964 senatorial election. Elson was the longtime aide to Sen. Carl Hayden. When Goldwater ran for the presidency, he left an open senate seat. Elson ran against Paul Fannin. Elson lost then and again in 1968, but had his best shot four years earlier in the LBJ landslide. An Elson victory would have short-circuited Fannin's career and retained a Democratic seat once Hayden retired in 1968.
7. Republican fratricide wrecks the party. John Conlin and Sam Steiger engaged in a bitter battle to succeed Paul Fannin in 1976. It tore the party so badly that Democrat Dennis DeConcini won the general election. By this time, the "big sort" of Republicans that had moved to Arizona might have made further gains by the other party difficult. But Arizona was still a competitive, two-party state. Much of today's reactionary inevitability might have been avoided had the GOP civil war continued.
8. Carolyn Warner is elected governor in 1986. A Democratic civil war split the party this year with developer Bill Schultz getting in, then out, then in again against Warner (and the reader should know she was one of my mother's best friends and reminds people that she has known me since I was "this tall" — lowering her hand). Warner was the most qualified, most capable candidate and would have made a fine governor. Instead, Arizona got Evan Mecham, followed by Fife Symington.
9. A more aggressive agriculture industry. Billions of dollars had been invested to create the citrus, produce and other farming sectors that dominated the economy of the Salt River Valley for decades. The CAP was sold as a way to insure the viability of agriculture and extend cultivation. But there was no will to retain agriculture, as has happened in much of California, or try imaginative methods to preserve pieces of it, such as the Japanese flower gardens, through agricultural trusts. The money was hot for sprawl and the notion of growth boundaries or agricultural preservation would have been equated with communism.
10. Sandra Day O'Connor votes to keep the Supreme Court out of a presidential election. Had the lionized daughter of Arizona followed the Constitution, Al Gore would have been president in 2000. No Iraq war. Plenty of action against climate change and for nation building at home. So when you see her face on the sidewalk by the old courthouse (WBIYB) light-rail stop, do step on it.
Get your local history fix in the Phoenix and Arizona history archive.
Rogue, you have introduced some very interesting twists to fate.
Two things come to mind; first is number 3 where you say, But had Richmond enacted its version of the Newlands Act, the Salt River Valley would have become a cotton kingdom tilled by slave labor. Slaves also would have mined copper at Bisbee.
I shake my head sadly and say to myself “Ah, but Jon, the cotton fields were tilled by slave labor and copper survives on slave labor. It’s Mexican Indian slave labor.”
Second, is my disappointment in Sandra Day O’Connor. She has said that she regrets her role in the Bush v. Gore mishap. I regret it tremendously as well.
Posted by: Suzanne | January 17, 2014 at 06:57 PM
Nice column Jon, interesting what ifs. I must say I think its all about money. The brown and black slaves still are under the thumb of the one percent but they have added the white slaves or as I prefer to call them pale face zombies. Tea Party type zombies fed insane crappola by those that think they need to be richer than just a billionaire. Maybe its true that he who has the gold rules. Or as I previously noted in a e-mail I got, “"Poor man is shoveling excrement against the tide."
As to O’Connor, a much more damaging act than Saint Janet’s traitorous conduct.
Definitely altered the course of history.
Posted by: cal Lash | January 17, 2014 at 10:31 PM
This is not a Phoenix 101 counterfactual, but I just ran into it and found it fascinating:
Evolving Without Darwin
(P.S. I get a little depressed every time I think of O'Connor - the tainted pride from her initial appointment.)
Posted by: Petro | January 18, 2014 at 12:24 PM
From a friend. "the tide ran toward greed and the progressive moments were just moments in a reactionary and greedy sea. after all goldwater's attack on big government was simply an attack on sharing and brotherhood. I did like the mention of the whigs. hell, if henry clay had been a president that would have been something. he was no bill clinton but vastly more gifted politically."
Posted by: cal lash | January 18, 2014 at 06:16 PM
Ray Stern had a good piece on Camelback Mountain and Echo Canyon in the New times recently.
Posted by: cal Lash | January 20, 2014 at 09:06 AM
Such are the moments that history pivots on, but there is no fore-telling whether it could have been better or worse. But here's my take any old ways:
1. Manifest Destiny pushes us into war down the historical road with Mexican anyway (that is if we survived the punches we would have thrown at British Canada -- TR was still waving his stick at in the 1890s!)
2. See No. 1
3. What a rat's nest! This splitting of the Union would have been a disaster not only for the USA but for the world, as the Imperial Powers rushed/meddled in to grab the American West. Mexico would be ruled by a Hapsburg Emperor.
4 and 6. Cal's dream comes true.
5. Would still eventually become Republican due to retirees, but the Conservative movement may have never got off the ground without Barry (not that he likes where it went), and Glen Canyon would be a riverine paradise and a national park
7. Don't know enough on this: no prediction.
8. An Arizona with good goverance in the 1990s! No Janet Napolitano and that guy Talton still works at the AZ Republic.
9. Agreed, but with aerospace mixed in.
10. O'Connor's legacy is assured; no Afganistan (INTERPOL runs down Al-Qeida (sic)); no Iraq; more blind allegiance to Israel and Saudia Arabia.
Posted by: eclecticdog | January 20, 2014 at 02:04 PM
I forgot to mention, no Rogue Columnist! Maybe a Mapstone blog (a pen dipped in organic Japanese Flower Garden nector).
Posted by: eclecticdog | January 20, 2014 at 04:36 PM
Why is Cal's high school graduation photo at the start of this thread?
Posted by: azreb | January 20, 2014 at 07:55 PM
Im famous for graduating last in my class and arresting insurance salesman.
Posted by: cal Lash | January 20, 2014 at 08:08 PM
Careful cal! In counterfactal history, insurance salesmen are Apache warriors.
Posted by: eclecticdog | January 20, 2014 at 09:31 PM
I knew his grandmother. Have something of hers.
Posted by: cal Lash | January 20, 2014 at 09:48 PM
larger than a lock of hair
Posted by: cal Lash | January 20, 2014 at 09:49 PM
I noted that I went to high school with Matt Drudge on your Facebook page. I now regret that I never befriended him and persuaded him to stop being such a bitter, closeted gay dude. He may have gone on to a better career than being a cheap right wing gossip hound. Perhaps we could have been spared all the Lewinsky nonsense.
Gore might have picked someone superior to Joe "Illicit Hummers Upset Me So!" Lieberman to be his running mate and might have won his own state of Tennessee, at least.
It is to sigh.
Posted by: Donna Gratehouse | January 20, 2014 at 11:15 PM
If the North hadn't prevailed in the Civil War, either due to losing or not engaging, the inevitability would have been a massive slave rebellion abetted, funded and armed by the abolitionist movement. There is no way they would have simply allowed the "peculiar institution" to continue as it was. Marcus Garvey may have become the first black president in North America.
Posted by: mark shipley | January 21, 2014 at 09:01 AM
Cal -- thanks so much for the kind word on my Camelback story.
Jon -- Very interesting piece. I hadn't thought of Carolyn Warner in years.
I'd like to make a few more What Ifs:
* What if President Rutherford B. Hayes had not rescinded an order to make the entire Valley an Indian Reservation for the Pima and Maricopa?
* What if the Gadsen Purchase had included a chunk of shoreline on the Gulf California, as originally had been intended?
* A joint project between Mexico and the US to build a desalination plant powered by a nuclear plant was proposed in the late 1960s. What if that project had been completed by the late 1980s, as considered?
* What if (after my parents found a good home here at a good price) developers were forced to adhere to strict land-use laws that limited development and mandated "green" housing communities?
Posted by: Ray Stern | January 21, 2014 at 09:05 AM
The Salt River Reservation really got the shaft. But happily, Camelback Mountain isn't off-limits like Red Mountain. That was a great Camelback series RS!
Posted by: eclecticdog | January 21, 2014 at 09:11 AM
I know I keep repeating myself about Malthus but
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-un-global-unemployment-20140120,0,2974558.story#axzz2qygLP4zw
there may be no solution since "Technology ruined the future."
Posted by: cal Lash | January 21, 2014 at 10:42 AM
A reader writes:
"What if Joe Arpaio wasn't elected sheriff, or re-elected in 1996, and Russell Pearce didn't rise to the level of legislative power he made it to before finally being impeached? Right off the bat there'd have been no SB1070. Secondly the law enforcement priorities of the state wouldn't have been rounding hop day workers on corners."
My reaction is that things were probably too far gone by the time Arpaio and Pearce came along. The reader says,
"I don't know? Joe sure paved the way thanks in large part to the pr skills of Lisa Allen and a weak local media."
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | January 21, 2014 at 10:57 AM
Arizonans made Joe famous.
Residences that dont get "A day without a Mexican" Arizonans that are easily scared by bullshit. Arizonans that think arresting an illegal Mexican dishwasher is more important than investigating homicides and the sexual molestation of young children or having a strong effective state agency to protect children and the elderly. Given the intensity of the anger created by these policies has caused wannabes to pull back into the shadows. Many in law enforcement in Arizona prefer to be as professional as possible. We need sensitive, caring professional law enforcement not gun slinging, militarized robocops.
Posted by: cal Lash | January 21, 2014 at 11:55 AM
SB1070 definitely sealed it for the GOP sweep in 2010. It was always going to be a tough year for Democrats due to the Tea Party racist rage wave going on that year but Goddard had been beating all GOP challengers in the polls until Brewer signed that bill, after which her approval rating, and election prospects, soared. That thing was a scam designed to usher in Republicans. The business community, which today likes to pretend it was blindsided by the bill and the ensuing boycotts and bad publicity, deliberately stood down on it after the AZ Chamber cut a deal with Russell Pearce to strip out employer enforcement language. Chamber President Glenn Hamer bragged about it to the Capitol Times (4/23/2010 edition). The Chamber went on to endorse every single GOP statewide candidate. Something that should be thrown in the faces of "business leaders" every time they whine about Arizona's bad government and
reputation.
Posted by: Donna Gratehouse | January 21, 2014 at 04:39 PM
Saw a guy downtown today doing fine civic duty by flogging a petition for marijuana legalization today.
Thing was, he was wearing an Anonymous (nee Guy Fawkes) mask, hipster porkpie... you know.
Downtown.
All of these people in business suits and business casual trucking by. He was hailed by a guy who wasn't registered to vote and just got out of the pen anyway so he couldn't be registered.
Love ya, man, but that's some dumb-assed marketing.
That dude's probably OK... I dress down, and like a hippie, all the time. But... context.
Posted by: Petro | January 21, 2014 at 05:52 PM
Reb:
Oh god, this killed me.
Posted by: Petro | January 21, 2014 at 05:54 PM
But most Arizona profitable business are owned by folks from the the Pearce "community" Of course they never use illegals!
Posted by: cal lash | January 21, 2014 at 05:54 PM
Petro, see if I loan ever you a book again
or give U a ride.
Its the lite rail for you buddy!
Posted by: cal lash | January 21, 2014 at 06:02 PM
Appears that Phxsunfan and Bill Gates have formed an Optimistic club for the world.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/bill-gates-annual-letter_n_4637379.html?ncid=webmail9
Posted by: cal Lash | January 22, 2014 at 08:47 AM
"Arizonans that think arresting an illegal Mexican dishwasher is more important than investigating homicides and the sexual molestation of young children or having a strong effective state agency to protect children and the elderly."
cal, that is spot on! Best one sentence explaination I've read on this.
Also, you forgot WBIYB after light rail in another post.
Posted by: eclecticdog | January 22, 2014 at 09:50 AM
cal, you made another mistake. That New Mexico Piñon coffee you gave me is frikkin' delicious. Should've kept that one for yourself. :)
Posted by: Petro | January 22, 2014 at 05:40 PM
I have more
plus Pinon chocolate
Posted by: cal Lash | January 22, 2014 at 06:35 PM
Good to know.
Posted by: Petro | January 22, 2014 at 07:00 PM
What If had legalized all drugs in 1933.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/global-war-on-drugs_n_4571117.html?ir=Politics&ref=topbar
Posted by: cal Lash | January 22, 2014 at 09:52 PM
I'm at Bratsky's way station? Yes No?
Emil where r u.
The train is about to leave.
Posted by: cal Lash | January 23, 2014 at 12:27 AM
What IF we had not?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-hidden-history-of-the-cias-prison-in-poland/2014/01/23/b77f6ea2-7c6f-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html
Posted by: cal Lash | January 23, 2014 at 11:24 AM