The US vs Napoleon: The Second War for Independence

In this episode, Mark discusses the Louisiana Purchase.  We start with an interlude and listen as the governor of the Louisiana territory prepares to transfer it to the US.  Next, Mark walks us through the international intrigue, high stakes diplomatic gambles, and plain American luck that lead Napolean to sell the territory to the scrappy, young USA. 

In our "what if" scenario, Mark details General Andres Jackson's war with the French, land deals with the Spanish, and rapid westward expansion, which takes unites the country from coast to coast.

Pless play, and let's take a trip. 

Transcript

Introduction
Hello, my name is Mark Bouffard. Welcome to What If World History?

Like you, I share a passion for civilizations, cultures, and stories of the past. This show looks at the epic events that sewed the fabric of our history and sculpted the world we now know. And it imagines: What If they happened a little bit differently?

Would it change the outcome? What might the “new history” look like? 

I invite you to explore the possibilities with me. 

Before we begin, I’d like to take a quick minute to ask you to drop a review on the podcast in whatever app you are listening. You can also follow What if World History? on Facebook and LinkedIn. We are @spin_history on Twitter, and hypothetical history on Instagram.

If this is your first time listening, we will explore events as they happened in our history, then we will envision an alternative timeline and show how it will shape a new future. Along the way, we will put you in the shoes of some of the key players through a series of Diaries. 

Let’s take a trip.

Our episode today is:
The US vs Napoleon: The Second War for Independence
In this episode we will look at the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States in 1803. And we will ponder a history where Louisiana is assimilated, not by treaty, purchase or annexation, but by force. And in the process the fledgling United States Army must fight the European powers on native soil to unite the country from coast-to-coast.


French Tears Greet American Cheers
Atticus Monteleone
Manservant to Pierre Clément de Laussat, Governor of Louisiana
New Orleans
December 20, 1803

Atticus Monteleone dressed in his best finery for the day’s historic events. Black velvet breeches, white hosiery, polished leather shoes, a fitted yellow cotton jacket, and a white, ruffled silk shirt. He looked proud and felt significant.

But his heart was filled with uneasiness and trepidation because he did not know what the next day would mean for his freedom. Monteleone was a “free person of color”. This meant he was neither a citizen of France, nor Spain, who had owned New Orleans a few years ago. It also, more significantly, meant he was not a slave.

Monteleone was paid quite well, including room and board, for being the manservant to the French Governor of the Louisiana Territory, Pierre Clément de Laussat. Today, he would be dressing the governor for the formal duties of turning over the territory to the United States. 

His mind was clouded with questions that did not have easy answers. What would the takeover mean for his freedom? He didn’t expect, nor necessarily want, to become a US citizen. But his limbo was dependent on the decrees and actions of the US government in the coming months. And by the way, the president, Thomas Jefferson, was a slaveholder.

He glided down the hall from the servant’s quarters into the main kitchen where a steaming cup of coffee was waiting for him. He took a few sips and grabbed the silver tray that had tea, eggs and bacon neatly arranged on fine china. He ascended the mansion stairs and quietly entered Laussat’s bedroom. 

Laussat, a nobleman who never betrayed his thoughts nor emotions, looked haggard and pale. It was obvious he had not slept last night. A few months ago he was secretly preparing for war with the United States, now, at Napoleon’s discretion, he was handing over the territory to a hostile nation.

Monteleone efficiently dressed the governor in blue breeches, a long blue coat, a red three-button vest and a flowing blue shirt. This formal outfit, in both color and fashion, represented the national colors of France. On this day, all formalities and international customs would be observed.

After a short carriage ride to the Place D’Armes, which served as the town’s main square, Monteleone helped Laussat from the carriage. The governor stood at rigid attention on the balcony overlooking the square as the tricolors were slowly lowered. Monteleone chanced a peek at the governor and saw he was openly weeping. The stars and stripes were raised and the Louisiana territory was in American hands.

A cacophony of cannon shots roared from nearby forts around the city. Americans in the square cried “Huzzah!” and waved their hats, while French and Spanish residents sulked in glum silence. What had begun with Laussat as silent weeping, turned into shoulder-shaking cries of anguish. 

Monteleone understood his boss’s grief, for this ceremony, although perfunctory and simple, represented the dawn of a new era in American power, and the dusk of the French empire. And for a person of color, this could also mean the dusk of his livelihood and his freedom.


Part 1: North America Divided
We think of the continental United States today, and imagine rolling plains, majestic mountains and sea-swept shores. But in the early 19th century, the United States was a small landowner that shared North America with Britain, Spain, France and Native Americans. The story of the Louisiana Purchase, as you will learn, is one of international intrigue, high stakes diplomatic gambles and pure American luck. 

After the Revolutionary War, the United States had rights to the land up to the Mississippi River in what is now Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi. Spain still owned Florida, the port access of New Orleans, and the coastline along Mississippi and Alabama. This meant only Eastern ports were freely accessible to commerce and trade, which was a crucial revenue issue for the fledgling country.

You may have noticed I used the word “rights” regarding the land, and that is an important historical connotation. The states and territories I just mentioned were not settled or inhabited in any significant way by United States citizens. Any population was a scattering of settlers and frontiersmen that had streamed into the valleys of the Cumberland, Tennessee and Ohio Rivers.

In fact, these areas were occupied for centuries by Native American tribes and coalitions that were connected to the land in a way that predates American history on the continent. 

It’s in this melting pot of European colonialism, American imperialism and indigenous ancestry that we look at the events that shaped the Louisiana Purchase. 

The “Louisiana Territory” was founded on April 9, 1682, when the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle erected a cross and column near the mouth of the Mississippi. In front of an audience of confused and amused Indians he took possession of the whole Mississippi River basin in honor of Louis XIV and named the land Louisiana.

Brittanica.com paints a detailed picture of the pre-Purchase territory: “For more than a century after La Salle took possession of it, the Louisiana Territory, with its scattered French, Spanish, Acadian and German settlements, along with those of Native Americans and American-born frontiersmen, was traded among European royalty at their whim.”

In 1718, French explorer Jean-Baptiste le Moyne founded a settlement near the site of La Salle’s proclamation, and named it New Orleans. At the start of the 19th Century, its population of whites, slaves of African origin and “free persons of color” was about 8,000, which was small for such an important city. New Orleans was situated at the mouth of the Mississippi River where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. It quickly created a thriving economy of agricultural exports to Europe, and regular trading with the Caribbean and South American colonies. 

Brittanica.com provides this surprising insight: “Concluding that the area was valueless, Louis XV gave the Louisiana territory to his Bourbon cousin Charles III of Spain in 1763.” 

In Jefferson’s America author Julie Fenster provides some insight into the European view of North American territories. She writes: “The Spanish who were governing the frontier had come to the sensible conclusion that without money, soldiers or people in abundance, a territory can’t be controlled. It can only be held, and rather gently. Another way was exploration, which could assert control through information.”

This became power over the territory. Local insight told you which tribes would trade or attack. It delivered maps of the streams and rivers for commerce. Mineral mining, logging, farming and settlement can all be initiated with the right information. Spain and England had invested in understanding their territories in this way,  even if they knew they couldn’t control them.

But in 1800, the region again changed hands, when Napoléon negotiated with Spain’s Charles IV. The treaty called for the return of the vast Louisiana territory to France in exchange for the small kingdom of Etruria in northern Italy, which Charles wanted for his daughter Louisetta.

As part of the deal, Napoleon had reassured, again and again, that the territory would never change hands to another country. But Napoleon was not concerned about diplomatic relations or promises made during negotiations. In fact, he would break this promise only a few years later in one of the largest real estate transactions in world history.


Part 2: You Will Die Like the British
Thomas Jefferson may have initiated the Louisiana Purchase, but it was made possible because of the military leadership of Francois-Dominique Toussaint Louverture. His name is unknown to most Americans, but I hope you will remember it. 

Toussaint was a general who led a slave revolt against the Spanish and French in the colony of Santo Domingo, in what is now Haiti. He will join this story in a few minutes, and you will see how important he will become to US history.

But at this moment in 1801, Napoleon was finalizing his “not so secret” deal to regain control of the Louisiana territory and amplify France’s presence in North America. Thomas Jefferson, who became the 3rd U.S. President in 1801, heard rumors of Napoleon’s deal, from Britain no less, and immediately saw the threat to America’s plans for Western expansion and its vital commercial access to the Gulf of Mexico through New Orleans.

Author Joseph Ellis, in American Creation, has some amazing insight into Jefferson’s thinking: “Jefferson made an extremely shrewd observation. On the face of it, war with France was a suicidal venture, given the enormous discrepancy in military and economic resources. But all such assessments were misleading, “for however greater her force, compared in the abstract, it is nothing compared to ours, when to be exerted on our own soil.” 

Ellis writes: “If Napoleon attempted to establish a French Empire in America by force of arms, he would encounter the same dilemma as the British in the War for Independence. Marching hither and yon among a hostile population over a space even more immense. The French were told that if they attempted to occupy the Louisiana Territory, they would suffer the same fate as the British, for space and numbers were both on the American side.

Ellis says: “Any European nation that threatened Napoleon in this fashion usually found itself defeated and occupied. But space--both the Atlantic Ocean and the sheer vastness of the American interior--was a priceless strategic asset that no European nation could match.”

 
Part 3: A Naked Napoleon Flexes
Britain and France happened to be in the midst of a negotiated two-year truce, but another war between the two was anticipated, if not scheduled. In Jefferson’s view, America’s strength depended on its patience to await that war.

The Smithsonian Magazine picks up the story: “The crunch came for Jefferson in October 1802. Spain’s King Charles IV finally got around to signing the royal decree officially transferring the territory to France. On October 16, the Spanish administrator in New Orleans arbitrarily ended the American right to deposit cargo in the city duty-free. This proclamation meant that American merchandise could no longer be stored in New Orleans warehouses. As a result, trappers’ pelts, agricultural produce and finished goods risked exposure and theft on open wharfs while awaiting shipment to the East Coast and beyond. The entire economy of America’s Western territories was in jeopardy.”

The article, written by Joseph Hariss, goes on to quote Jefferson: “There is, on the globe, one single spot,” Jefferson wrote, “the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market.” Jefferson’s concern was more than commercial. “He had a vision of America as an empire of liberty,” says Douglas Brinkley. “And he saw the Mississippi River not as the western edge of the country, but as the great spine that would hold the continent together.”

For Jefferson, this created one of the most significant crises since the American Revolution. He leaned on his ambassador in France, Robert Livingston to negotiate a stop to the treaty. Livingston, though a diplomatic neophyte, was an important, and largely unknown, figure in American history. He was one of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and in his role as Chancellor of New York, administered the first oath of office to President George Washington. In this international role, the success or failure of American history would sit on his shoulders.

He was blown off again and again by his French counterparts and made little headway in stopping the transfer of the territory to Napoleon's control. Brittanica.com has this: “Livingston had but one trump to play, and he played it with a flourish. He made it known that a rapprochement with Great Britain might, after all, best serve the interests of his country, and at that particular moment an Anglo-American rapprochement was about the least of Napoleon’s desires.” 

In need of more minds at the negotiating table, Jefferson sent James Monroe, his Secretary of State, to help Livingston in Paris. He was handed discretionary powers to spend $9M to secure New Orleans and parts of the Floridas. In financial straits at the time, Monroe sold his china and furniture to raise travel funds, asked a neighbor to manage his properties, and sailed for France in early 1803. Jefferson’s parting words were “The future destinies of this republic depended on your success.”

Napoleon was well into planning an invasion of Britain, and sent an expeditionary force of 40,000 to put down a revolution in Santo Domingo, led by Toussaint Louverture. Once that was quickly done, they would fortify a military presence in New Orleans, and set up France to be a colonial power in North America.

In American Creation, Ellis writes: the French Empire in North America would be a place where French debtors, criminals, and the derelicts could be shipped. Louisiana would become the granary or breadbasket for the highly lucrative French colonies in the Caribbean, chiefly Santo Domingo and Guadeloupe.”

Santo Domingo, with a population of more than 500,000, produced enough sugar, coffee, indigo, cotton and cocoa to fill 700 ships a year. As a result, Napoleon viewed it as France’s most important holding in the Western Hemisphere.

Ellis says: “Jefferson was prepared to run a high-stakes gamble, against the odds, that the French troops would get mired down in Santo Domingo and never make it to New Orleans. This proved to be an extraordinarily shrewd wager, but at the time it appeared to resemble a dangerous brand of wishful thinking.”

French General Leclerc, who led the expeditionary force, made a crucial mistake in his management of the Santo Domingo conflict. He initially befriended and supported Toussaint Louverture, then had him arrested and shipped off the island. Once the population saw enslavement was the French’s goal, all-out war ensued, and the French were doomed to lose, badly. With a population of 500,000, the French expeditionary force was outnumbered 10 to 1.

Ellis writes: “Leclerc could not believe it when hundreds of black prisoners strangled themselves to death rather than return to slavery. Women and children laughed at their executioners as they burned to death. Meanwhile, Leclerc’s army was virtually annihilated by a combination of reprisals, yellow fever, and malaria. In his last dispatch to Napoleon before his own death, Leclerc minced no words: “This colony is lost and you will never regain it. My letter will surprise you, but what general could calculate the mortality of four-fifths of his army.”

It was a catastrophe for the French army, which kept pouring troops into the breach and eventually suffered more than 60,000 casualties. For obvious reasons, no French expeditionary force ever made it to New Orleans. Jefferson’s gamble had paid off.

So it was a different situation when James Monroe arrived mid-year to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans. Napoleon recognized the annihilation of his expeditionary force had also annihilated his chance to establish a French empire in North America. 

Author Joseph Ellis writes: “He told his foreign minister: ‘I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, it is the whole colony without reservation. I know the price of what I abandon. I renounce it with the greatest regret.’ When warned by his advisors that his decision was likely to establish the foundation for a rising American empire, Napoleon dismissed the warning as too farsighted: “In two or three centuries the Americans may be found too powerful for Europe, but my foresight does not embrace such remote fears.’”

Thierry Lentz, a historian and director of the Foundation Napoléon in Paris, contends that, for Napoléon, “It was basically just a big real estate deal.  And he was in a hurry to get some money for the depleted French treasury. Napoleon managed to sell something that he didn’t really have any control over except on paper—there were few French settlers and no French administration over the territory.” As for Jefferson, notes historian Charles Cerami, “he actually wasn’t out to make this big a purchase. The whole thing came as a total surprise to him and his negotiating team in Paris, because it was, after all, Napoléon’s idea, not his.”

In the ultimate flex story, Napoleon was laying in his tub, sprinkled with cologne, when his two brothers came in and accused him of being impetuous. They promised to lead the opposition to him and the deal in French Parliament. Napoleon stood up naked in the tub and told them: “You will have no need to lead the opposition for I repeat there will be no debate. For the project has been conceived by me, negotiated by me, shall be ratified and executed by me, alone. Do you comprehend me?”

Part 4: American Imperialism
Jackson Turner, the founding father of western history, described the Purchase as the formative event in the national narrative: “Having taken the decisive stride across the Mississippi, the United States enlarged the horizon of her views, and marched steadily forward to the possession of the Pacific Ocean. From this event dates the rise of the United States into a position of world power.”

Joseph Ellis writes: “For $15 million--the rough equivalent of $260 million today-- the United States doubled its size, adding what is now the American midwest to the national domain. Without knowing it, the United States had acquired the most fertile tract of land of its size on the planet, making it self-sufficient in food in the nineteenth century and the agrarian super-power in the twentieth. If the Mississippi ends at New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, the story of the Purchase ends at the Pacific.”

“With the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, this is one of the three things that created the modern United States,” says Douglas Brinkley, director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies in New Orleans. 

Charles A. Cerami, author of Jefferson’s Great Gamble, agrees. “If we had not made this purchase, it would have pinched off the possibility of our becoming a continental power,” he says. “That, in turn, would have meant our ideas on freedom and democracy would have carried less weight with the rest of the world. This was the key to our international influence.”

For the young country, the Purchase opened a new chapter in American national security by removing, in one land transaction, all British and French imperial ambitions in North America. Although Jefferson never traveled further west than the Natural Bridge in the Shenandoah Valley, he shared with Washington the keen sense that Europe was the past and the American west was the future.


What If? Scenario
In part, the shrewdness and patience of Thomas Jefferson, and the inspiring military genius of Toussaint Louverture, had boxed Napoleon into making a deal. But what if the fortuitous cascade of events had not led to the annihilation of Napoleon’s expeditionary force and the need to sell the territory? What would Thomas Jefferson and the Americans do to seize the land they viewed as “the spine that would hold the country together.”

In our What If? scenario, the French force does not make a disastrous stop in Santo Domingo but instead lands in New Orleans in early 1803, where the prohibition of US goods from the port city has put their backs against the wall and led to calls for war.

In reality, the blockade had led for calls for war in Congress and in the firebrand press. The Smithsonian Magazine details: “the idea of war was taken up by lawmakers such as Senator James Ross of Pennsylvania, who drafted a resolution calling on Jefferson to form a 50,000-man army to take the city. Soon, the press joined the fray. The United States had the right, thundered the New York Evening Post, “to regulate the future destiny of North America,” while the Charleston Courier advocated “taking possession of the port . . . by force of arms.” As Secretary of State James Madison explained, “The Mississippi is to them everything. It is the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of the Atlantic States, formed into one stream.’”

In a series of widely read letters, Alexander Hamilton argued there were two options: Negotiate and endeavor to purchase, and if this fails, go to war. The other option was to seize the Floridas and New Orleans, and then negotiate with the French.

In our What If? scenario the United States Army, newly created by congress, will go to war with the French, who fight alongside displaced and angry Native Americans. At stake is nothing less than the future of the United States. And leading this new army will be Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson, future hero of the War of 1812, 7th President and leader in this Second War for Independence.


The Slaughter at Crooked Woods
General Andrew Jackson, United States Army
Arkansas Wilderness
January 25, 1804

The swamps of Louisiana had not been kind to either the French or United States armies. Bogs, mosquitos, crocodiles and disease had killed more soldiers than enemy bullets and cannon fire. Still, General Andrew Jackson could call on reinforcements from state militias. The French had no such luxury.

Both sides had Native American tribes fighting alongside them. In some cases, they were settling centuries-old blood feuds. In other instances, they were being paid handsomely to serve as guides, scouts and cavalry.

Sitting rigidly and stoically on his brown stallion, Jackson took in the site of the upcoming battle. He still bore the scar on his hand and head from the sword of a British officer, who had slashed him when he refused to clean his boots. He subconsciously rubbed the scar on his hand as he thought about his battle plan. 

Jackson loathed the English with a passion that matched the sweltering heat of the Louisiana swamps, but he had found a new enemy to hate: the French. They were imperious, prideful and ruthless. 

Jackson had fought them in a series of running battles over the last six months. And the tireless efforts of his men were beginning to show results. Unlike his French counterparts, his army regulars were dressed for the climate. Loose cotton clothing, waxed breaches and tall leather boots were much cooler and more waterproof than the heavy woolen uniforms of the French. 

Jackson had decided early in the campaign that guerilla tactics, hit-and-run raids, and midnight attacks on supply trains would debilitate the French over time. He knew that when they met on the field of battle, it would have to be on his terms or his army would be obliterated. 

Now, hundreds of miles away from the safety of New Orleans, in the sodden, red clay hills, the French marched towards him. Jackson was determined to end this war once and for all.

What had started out as an army of 40,000 French soldiers and 5,000 Native American fighters had dwindled to a fighting force of less than 10,000. The US Army had lost more than 20,000 troops. But on this field of battle, they held a three-to-one advantage with fresh replacements from Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Moving cannons through the hills and swamps had been tedious and treacherous. He lost hundreds of horses and donkeys to the effort. But standing atop the low hill overlooking the French troops, he was assured it would be the deciding factor that turned the battle. Over the last few days, his men had erected fresh-cut pine, oak and hickory trees into breastworks that gave superior cover against French muskets and Indian arrows. The French still were fighting in conventional European style of tight, well organized lines, while the US Army was spread out widely behind cover. Their folly would be Jackson’s triumph.

It was a slaughter. Jackson’s battery of 10 three-inch guns opened up on the French who were arrayed shoulder-to-shoulder in the valley below. His sharpshooters, behind the safety of chin-high cover, poured lead balls into their ranks. Sweating, red-faced French soldiers fell by the dozens as their lines marched on towards the wood fortifications.

Jackson admired the discipline and bravery of the French soldiers as they marched to their death in neat lines and tight rows. The few French guns that were behind the troops tried vainly to shatter the wood wall that kept the US Army protected, but the volleys did little to dislodge the Americans.

In less than an hour, what was left of the French, perhaps a few thousand battered troops, retreated back through the bogs towards New Orleans. With the French navy and army once again engaged with England, there were no reinforcements coming from France. 

By early June of 1804, all was hopeless for the French in North America. With defeat imminent, the French governor negotiated a peace that surrendered the Louisiana Territory to the Americans. A year ago, Thomas Jefferson had offered $10 million dollars for New Orleans, now he got the whole territory without emptying the US treasury. Andrew Jackson became a national hero and rode his fame to the presidency in 1828.



What If? Aftermath
In our What If? scenario the French are defeated and the Louisiana territory is ceded to the United States after a bloody Second War for Independence. 

Native American tribes who had sided with the Americans were given generous land grants in the Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas plains. While enemy tribes to the US cause were systematically relocated to fractional territories in what will become Montana and North Dakota.

But that victory over the French still left the Spanish empire as the primary protagonist to American expansion.

According to Joseph Ellis in American Creation: Spain remained the only European power blocking American expansion to the Pacific, and Spain was not so much a threatening power as a convenient presence, in effect a holding company awaiting an American takeover at the appropriate time. A colossal and fully continental American empire was now almost inevitable. 

A map of the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere in 1800 made Spain’s colonial empire appear gigantic, including Florida, the Gulf Coast, all the land west of the Mississippi to the Pacific, not to mention Mexico and much of South America. But the map was deceptive in its grandeur because Spain was a hollowed-out imperial power, in decline since the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Ellis writes: By 1800 the treasury in Madrid was empty, the Spanish Army and navy were harmless pretenders, and the once proud diplomatic corps was adept only at posturing. Jefferson’s only fear was that the Spanish Empire was so weak that it would abandon its American colonies “before our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece.” Spain was like an elderly mother hen, sitting in the nest until the Americans arrived to relieve her.

With the defeat of the French, Jefferson shrewdly utilizes Monroe and Livingston, now seasoned diplomats, to negotiate the purchase of the remaining Spanish lands in 1810. For the price he was willing to pay for the Louisiana Territory, about $12 million, Jefferson annexed land reaching the Pacific ocean, including Arizona, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and California. Texas would not be added until after its bloody battle for independence from Mexico in 1845.

From the beginning of his political career into his presidency, Jefferson knew Western frontier would not be conquered solely through military efforts. He viewed the greatest weapon of American imperialism to be the log cabin. It would house hearty and brave settlers willing to gamble everything for free land and opportunity in untamed lands.

In Jefferson’s view of American westward expansion, the wave of settlers would move gradually and steadily across the continent, reach the Mississippi River in one or two generations, then continue its march towards the Pacific. The process of “peopling” the far west would probably take another century. Once the population of the new territories reached the requisite size, the Constitution specified that Congress could approve their admission as new states in the union. The annexation and purchase of land over the last few years had altered these expectations by replacing a series of small waves into a tsunami.

Less than a quarter century from the time America declared and then earned its independence from England, it had defeated another European power, France, and fleeced a third, Spain. In the process, it created borders along the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, tripled in size, and seized the rights to untold riches in the form of mineral deposits, verdant farmlands and old growth lumber.

The American story was still in its early chapters, but thanks to the shrewdness of its leaders, the fortitude of its generals, and the heartiness of its settlers, it would be a story that could be told from coast to coast.


Conclusion
Thank you for joining me, Mark Bouffard on this trip. This show is produced by me, Mark Bouffard and Beto McQuade. It is mixed and edited by Beto McQuade. I’d like to thank my editors, including Clint Buehle, my twin brother Matt Bouffard, and my retired journalist uncle Kevin Bouffard. The music you hear is Shane Ivers of silvermansound.com.

Don’t forget to review, like and subscribe to this podcast. Check out our blogs on whatifworldhistory.com and follow us on your favorite social media channel.

This has been What If World History? In two weeks, in our next episode, we will look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. And we ponder a history in which Russian nuclear missiles are in fact planted 90 miles from US borders. Only a daring and dangerous midnight raid will stave off nuclear holocaust and a third world war.