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THE IFS OF HISTORY
by
JOSEPH EDGAR CHAMBERLIN
Philadelphia
Henry Altemus Company
Copyright, 1907,
by
Howard E. Altemus
CONTENTS
I. IF THEMISTOCLES HAD NOT BEATEN
ARISTIDES IN AN ATHENIAN ELECTION 13
II. IF THE MOORS HAD WON THE
BATTLE OF TOURS 21
III. IF KING ETHELRED OF ENGLAND
HAD NOT MARRIED THE NORMAN
EMMA 30
IV. IF COLUMBUS HAD KEPT HIS
STRAIGHT COURSE WESTWARD 37
V. IF QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND
HAD LEFT A SON OR DAUGHTER 47
VI. IF THE PHILARMONIA HAD NOT
GIVEN CONCERTS AT VICENZA 56
VII. IF THE SPANISH ARMADA HAD
SAILED AT ITS APPOINTED TIME 64
VIII. IF CHAMPLAIN HAD TARRIED IN
PLYMOUTH BAY 71
IX. IF CHARLES II HAD ACCEPTED THE
KINGSHIP OF VIRGINIA 79
X. IF ADMIRAL PENN HAD PERSISTED IN
DISOWNING HIS SON WILLIAM 91
XI. IF THE BOY GEORGE WASHINGTON
HAD BECOME A BRITISH MIDSHIPMAN 99
XII. IF ALEXANDER HAMILTON HAD NOT
WRITTEN ABOUT THE HURRICANE 107
XIII. IF LAFAYETTE HAD HELD THE
FRENCH REIGN OF TERROR IN
CHECK 114
XIV. IF GILBERT LIVINGSTON HAD NOT
VOTED NEW YORK INTO THE
UNION 121
XV. IF THE PIRATE JEAN LAFITTE HAD
JOINED THE BRITISH AT NEW
ORLEANS 129
XVI. IF JAMES MACDONNEL HAD NOT
CLOSED THE GATES OF HUGOMONT
CASTLE 138
XVII. IF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S FATHER
HAD MOVED SOUTHWARD, NOT
NORTHWARD 150
XVIII. IF SKIPPER JENNINGS HAD NOT RESCUED
CERTAIN SHIPWRECKED
JAPANESE 160
XIX. IF ORSINI'S BOMB HAD NOT FAILED
TO DESTROY NAPOLEON III 170
XX. IF PRESIDENT JAMES BUCHANAN HAD
ENFORCED THE LAW IN NOVEMBER,
1860 176
XXI. IF THE CONFEDERATES HAD MARCHED
ON WASHINGTON AFTER BULL
RUN 185
XXII. IF THE CONFEDERATE STATES HAD
PURCHASED THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S
FLEET IN 1861 194
PREFACE
Whether or not we believe that events are consciously ordered before
their occurrence, we are compelled to admit the importance of
Contingency in human affairs.
If we believe in such an orderly and predetermined arrangement, the
small circumstance upon which a great event may hinge becomes, in our
view, but the instrumentality by means of which the great plan is
operated. It by no means sets aside the vital influence of chance to
assume that "all chance is but direction which we cannot see."
For instance, the believer in special providences regards as clearly
providential the flight of the flocks of birds which diverted the
course of Columbus from our shores to those of the West Indies; but it
is none the less true that this trivial circumstance caused the great
navigator to turn his prow.
Those who, on the other hand, reject the idea of special providences,
and treat history as a sequence of occurrences emerging mechanically
from the relations of men with one another, must admit that causes
forever contend with causes, and that the nice balance of action and
reaction may sometimes be influenced radically by even so small a
circumstance as the cackling of the geese of Rome. It is true that the
evolutionist is apt to become a believer in necessity to an extent which
appears unlikely to the mind of the other. Events, in his view, inhere
in the nature and character of men, these in their turn being the result
of the physical circumstances that differentiate the nations. This view
seems at first to reduce the probability that accident will at any time
sensibly alter the course of affairs.
But if we take historical action and reaction at their moments of
equilibrium, we see that the tide of affairs may sometimes appear to
follow the drift of a feather. Consider, for instance, the declaration
of the Duke of Wellington that the issue of the battle of Waterloo
turned upon the closing of the gates of Hugomont Castle by the hand of
one man. Wellington was certainly in a position to know if this was
true; and in the light of the tremendous events that depended upon the
trifling act, does it not appear that accident for one moment outweighed
in consequence any necessity that inhered in the character of the French
people or that of the nations arrayed against them at Waterloo? It may
be the function of Contingency to correct the overconfidence of the
evolutionist.
At all events, we cannot dismiss the "if"; there is, as Touchstone says,
much virtue in it.
J. E. C.
THE IFS OF HISTORY
CHAPTER I
IF THEMISTOCLES HAD NOT BEATEN ARISTIDES IN AN ATHENIAN ELECTION
Mithra instead of Jesus! The western world Zoroastrian, not Christian!
The Persian Redeemer, always called the Light of the World in their
scriptures; the helper of Ahura-Mazda, the Almighty, in his warfare with
Ahriman, or Satan; the intercessor for men with the Creator; the Saviour
of humanity; he, Mithra, might have been the central person of the
dominant religion of Europe and modern times, but for certain
developments in Athenian politics in the years between 490 and 480
B. C. For it is true that in the first three of four centuries of the
Christian era the western world seemed to hesitate between the religion
of Mithra and that of Christ; and if the Persians had completed the
conquest of Greece in the fifth century B. C., Mithra might have so
strengthened his hold upon Europe that the scale would have been turned
forever in his direction.
What was it that enabled the Greeks, in the crucial test, the ultimate
contingency, to turn back the Persians and maintain their independence?
History says that it was the result of the battles of Marathon and
Salamis, in which the Greeks were triumphant over the Persians. This is
true only in a limited sense. The battle of Marathon, in 490 B. C., did
not save Greece, for the Persians came back again more powerful than
ever. At Thermopylae, Leonidas and his band died vainly, for the hosts of
Xerxes overran all Greece north of the isthmus of Corinth. They took
Athens, and burned the temples on the Acropolis. They were triumphant on
the land.
But at Salamis, in the narrow channel between the horseshoe-shaped
island and the Attican mainland, Themistocles, on the 20th day of
September, 480 B. C., adroitly led the great Persian fleet of six
hundred vessels into a trap and defeated it in as heroic a fight as ever
the men of the West fought against the men of the East. Seated on his
"throne," or rather his silver-footed chair, on a hilltop overlooking
the scene, Xerxes, the master of the world, beheld the destruction of
his ships, one by one, by the leagued Greeks. When the battle was over
he saw that the escape of his victorious army from the mainland was
imperiled, and while there was yet time, he led his Persian horde in a
wild flight across his bridge of boats over the Hellespont. The field of
Plataea completed the check, and the Persian invasions of Europe were
over forever.
What was it that enabled Themistocles to win this decisive victory for
Greece after disastrous defeats on land? Simply his skill in the
politics of Athens. Themistocles was a Hellenic imperialist. He was
opposed by Aristides, who was a very just man, and an anti-imperialist
and "mugwump." Greece was at that time terribly menaced by the Persian
power, and threatened with "Medization," or absorption into the Persian
nationality. Themistocles saw that the country's only chance lay in a
union of all the Hellenes, and in the construction of a navy worth the
name. Aristides was a better orator than he, and at first won against
him in the Athenian elections. The Greek spirit was innately hostile to
anything like centralization or imperialism. But when Aegina, which was
the leading Grecian maritime state, and had some good ships, turned
against Athens and defeated it on the sea, the Athenians' eyes began to
open. Themistocles pushed his plan for the construction of a fleet of
two hundred vessels and the addition of twenty new ships every year to
this navy.
Squarely across his path stood Aristides, with his ridicule of the
attempt of little Athens to become a maritime power, and his warnings
against militarism. But Themistocles, by adroit politics, led the
Athenians to become sick of Aristides, and persuaded them to ostracize
or banish this just man. Aristides went to Aegina. Then Themistocles
rushed forward his plan of naval reform, and carried it through. The two
hundred ships were built, and not a moment too soon. It was this fleet,
brilliantly led by Themistocles and Eurybiades at Salamis, which
entangled the Persians in the narrow waters of Salamis and defeated
them, and saved Europe for the Europeans.
The victory saved it also for Christ, by keeping alive the worship of
the half-gods of Greece and Rome until a whole-god came from Judaea. The
Persians, too, had a whole-god. Idea for idea, principle for principle,
tenet for tenet, dream for dream, all of later Judaism and all of
medieval Christianity, except the person and story of Jesus, was in the
religion of Persia. Not only the central ideas of formal Christianity,
but many of its dependent and related principles, are found in
Mithraism, which was the translation of the fundamental philosophic
ideas of Zoroastrianism into terms of human life. The parallel is so
striking that many thinkers regard Christianity merely as Mithraism
bodied forth in a story invented by, or at least told to and believed
by, a circle of primitive and uneducated zealots who knew nothing of the
history of the doctrines they were embracing.
But notwithstanding the philosophic likeness, the acceptance of
Mithraism as it was held and practiced in Persia in Darius's time,
instead of Christianity, which may have been Mithraism first Judaized
and afterward Romanized, would have made a vast difference with the
western world. If Greece had been Persianized before the rise of Rome's
power, Rome, too, would have been Persianized. The influence of Hebrew
thought upon the western world would have been forestalled. Zoroastrian
rites would have prevailed. Over all would have spread the mysticism of
the East.
Our civilization might have risen as high as it has ever gone, in art,
in the grace of life; but instead of being inspired with the eager
desire of progress, by the restless Hellenic necessity of doing
something better and higher, or at least something other, something
new--instead of this, the spirit of peace and of satisfaction with old
ideals would have permeated our systems and our life.
Lord Mithra, too, would have been primarily the sun, primarily an
embodiment of the light shining down to us through the sky from that
central essence which alone can say, "I am that I am," and not, as in
the Lord Christ, a humble, suffering, poor and despised man lifted up
into Godhead.