What Would Have Happened?

Tomorrow is the 150st anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg.  A book review today of yet another book on this battle that I have studied and imagined about for at least 50 of my 60 years coincides with my reading of a WWII book, which I have also studied and imagined about for at least 55 of my 60 years.  There was no reluctance for parents to buy their kids plastic machine guns that made a rat-a-dat noise 15 years after Hitler's demise.  I had a lot of fun playing in the neighborhood fields with that gun.

But none of my prior reading and wondering coincided with this blog.  So the issue of the day is the unanswerable questions of what would have happened if my wife's 10th cousin 5x removed had directed a victory at Gettysburg.  Such a victory would have almost certainly caused the South to win the Civil War if General Lee had kept going North after Gettysburg.

When would the Confederacy have given up slavery?  Well into the 20th century no doubt and probably until cotton was no longer the dominate fiber.  Or perhaps until Medicine developed to the point where the slave population overwhelmed the economics of plantations.  What would that transition have looked like?

Would the capital of the North still be Washington D.C.?

Would the Confederacy and the North reconciled and reformed the United States once slavery ended?

How would the North American nations have responded to Hitler and the Japanese?  Would Pearl Harbor have happened?  Would the Soviet Union had to defeat Hitler by themselves.  I think they would have, but at what cost and over what time frame?  The implications of a victory by Hitler are too horrible to contemplate and I cannot even ask the questions here.  One thing for sure is that Israel would not exist and the world would not have to deal with the Palestinian issue in its current form.

I think economic development in the world would be lower.

How would college and professional athletics be spread across the two countries?  Would the SEC dominate football?

I guess that is enough wondering.  Thank goodness the North won the Battle of Gettysburg.