Conceptual Inkblot 2

"Because of the nail, the shoe was lost, because of the shoe the horse was lost, because of the horse the rider was lost ,because of the rider the dispatch was lost, because of the dispatch the skirmish was lost, because of the skirmish the battle was lost, because of the battle the war was lost, because of the war the king was lost, because of the king the kingdom was lost--and all because of a nail."

There is a chess-like reality to this children's chant; the loss of a pawn can doom a position or a game. In history it is a bit more dangerous an assumption, not because alternative histories can be imagined with one change--what if Albert Sydney Johnson had not died at Shiloh--but there are so many such possibilities, even within each supposition: What if the blockade runners had been stopped, what if the Enfields had never been delivered to the Confederates, what if Johnson had never fought the duel that impaired his leg's sensation....on and on and on. Some fantasy writers have begun to substitute alternative histories for alternative cultures and civilizations--instant creativity.

Nonetheless, in the absence of a response to my "Conceptual Inkblot", I bravely offer my own crucial moment in history (stimulated by "The History of Us") in the last 400 years: Tim Murphy's shooting of General Simon Frazier.