I’d go after William Henry Harrison on the eve of his inauguration.
I agree with you completely, on all points. 
Certainly it would be worth trying for.
But the Emancipation Proclamation was sold AIUI as a war fighting measure, and affected not one slave in any of the states not in rebellion, which included Maryland. Which is why I say that forcing things on a recalcitrant Congress and public would be harder without the impetus of the war giving the executive a boost for even unpopular programs.
Yanno… I’ve been thinking about the Civil War - is there any chance that Skald is asking things from experience? What might have happened had “Stonewall” Jackson not been shot by that over-eager North Carolina unit?
And who was the poor schmuck running from Alt-Skald who thought that “Stonewall” had to die?
I’d whack whoever it was that decided to dry tobacco leaves and then smoke them.
Bastard
That would be a large proportion of the native American population.
Wasn’t it just ceremonial for them? I don’t think a lot of Cherokee lit up after a bout of sex.
post deleted due to my own inability to read.
I dunno, all those musket factories…
Okay- out of left field- why not Queen Victoria? Her descendants (including Wilhem II) did not much good for a lot of people.
But then again, I think WW1 was going to happen regardless.
It’s one of the wars I would have liked to avoid by killing Fernando VII, so in a way I do share the hope. It’s only that I don’t think that killing Franco between the Alzamiento and the joining-in of the Carlistas would be particularly useful, the whole country was quite fucked-up at that time (based mostly on family accounts, I don’t trust revisions which do things like call my Republican grandfather a “volunteer” when he definitely wasn’t).
Give me a WayBack machine and Barrett .50 rifle, I’d hit Joseph P. Kennedy at a half-mile distance and never look back as I walked away…
Why?
Eliminating the head destoys the family, sparing all of us the annoyance/embarassment of Camelot, conspiracy theories and all of the Kennedy clan shenanigans.
Dealey Plaza? Just another Dallas intersection.
Sirhan Sirhan? Just another malcontent.
And an added plus bonus- Robert McNamara wouldn’t have been on board JFK’s administration and we *might not *have increased our involvment in Vietnam.
Oh, yeah. Nixon in the White House earlier - that’s the ticket.
I think you’ll need to replicate more than just a rifle & ammo. That one’s going to be much harder than Caesar or Pontius Pilate. Even with fake ids.
I’ll second John Wilkes Booth, if I could have a moment with Lincoln to point out that a lot of southerners hate him, and he might want to take precautions, perhaps creating an agency to protect presidents and other political figures.
Maybe Aaron Burr, before he killed Hamilton.
I’ll second Aaron Burr, not so much for killing Hamilton as for his overall dickery.
I don’t think you can persuade Lincoln. Booth & Company’s assasination plot seems idiotic by today’s standards because …
hmm. I was about to claim that violence against public figures was unthought at that time. Then I realized how awesomely stupid that claim was. given what happened to Charles Sumner. I may have to start a thread on why Lincoln was allowed to be in such jeopardy.
Funny thing is, they knew that Lincoln’s life was at risk. They brought him to DC after he won in 1860 in an armored railcar because there were threats against his life. To think that this would change because of the war, was pretty stupid.
Good points… I was thinking more of the gratification of assassinating a particularly hated individual than the grander plan of disrupting the historical currents in such a way as to make that individual’s existence less significant.
Although, from what I’ve read about Fernando VII, it sounds like he was a real bastard, and offing him would have been gratifying, as well.
I have to admit that it wasn’t until I read Beevor’s account of the Civil War that I realized how fucked up the Republican side was. I’d been more familiar with the heroic image of the noble Republicans fighting against the evil Fascists (Capa’s photographs are especially inspirational in this regard). I had no idea how much Comintern tried (with some success) to take over the Republican side, and to purge it of anyone who wasn’t sufficiently Stalinist in their opinion.* The Stalinist influence seems to show that the Loyalist side was too hopelessly divided to ever have stood up against the Nationalists–or, if they had forged a united front under the Stalinists, their hypothetical victory wouldn’t really have been a victory for the Republic, after all.
The only side to come out of it with any real credibility, IMO, were the CNT-FAI anarchists (who were ruthlessly persecuted by the Stalinists), and it’s anyone’s guess how effectively they would have run the … um, “government” isn’t the right word… revolutionary utopia?–had they the chance.
I’d love to hear more about your family’s experiences, Nava, in another thread…or have you already posted such a thread in the past? I’ll try my luck with the SDMB’s search function and see!
- It’s also frustrating that the Republicans were to some degree forced into their position by the lack of any international support other than that of Mexico and the Soviet Union–in contrast to the German/Italian support for the Nationalists. The Soviets seem to have really exploited that situation, to the detriment of the Republic.