# What person who died young would have changed history the most had they lived longer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 21, 2011, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485 "2011-01-21T19:37:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![brocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@brocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brocks)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/41 "2011-01-23T20:38:19Z")
I’m not saying France would be speaking English today, I’m saying history would have been different. I’ve read several authorities who think that the loss of England’s French territories was the best thing that could have happened for England, as it ended the constant drain of foreign wars. Who knows, maybe if Henry had lived, England would be speaking French today. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/42 "2011-01-23T21:20:17Z")
Abel. If he had not been murdered by Cain, everything would be different. Or so many people believe. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/43 "2011-01-23T21:24:04Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > He died before his time, and more importantly he died before he could implement his vision for reconciliation with the South. Assuming he would have done what he had planned, and actually been able to pull it off, I think things would have been a lot different than they played out historically, especially with how blacks were treated in both the North and South. We might have had a substantial Civil Rights movement at the turn of the century instead of in the 60’s. Blacks might have been service in numbers in the military before WWI (as combat troops instead of just as stewards and support troops). > > Lincoln might have died within a few years anyway (he looked pretty old and used up in the last few pictures we have of him), but had he lived long enough to put in place his vision of the post war reconciliation it might have made a big difference. It certainly would have been different, as his successor did things differently than Lincoln planned to do them. > > -XT Well, I read in [_What Lincoln Believed,_](http://www.amazon.com/What-Lincoln-Believed-Convictions-President/dp/1400030730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295816750&sr=1-1) by Michael Lind, that Lincoln remained a colonizationist almost to the end of his life – that is, like all white Americans of his time except the most radical wing of the Abolitionists, he believed that blacks were not really equal to whites by heredity, and that they were just too **different** to share the same republican society with whites on an equal basis. Therefore, on emancipation, they (and the already-free blacks) should be deported _en masse_ to a new homeland in Africa or the Caribbean or Latin America, like Liberia on a larger scale, where Lincoln fully expected them to set up a free and flourishing and civilized republican state. Late in the war he assigned General McClellan to study this problem; McClellan reported that not all the naval and merchant-marine resources of the U.S. could possibly deport the blacks “half so fast as Negro children shall be born here.” After that Lincoln lost interest in the idea and began to think of on what terms blacks should be accommodated as permanent residents. He proposed giving the vote to the “more intelligent” of them (without suggesting any intelligence or knowledge tests for white voters); that was as far as he thought of going. Now, in view of all that, how do you think Reconstruction would have gone if Lincoln had run it? In our timeline, Reconstruction was run by the Radical Republicans (who were limited in what they could do as they still had to deal with Andrew Johnson, who did not think like them). They never pursued the “40 acres and a mule” idea, but they insisted on full political equality for African-Americans right away, and the blacks voted (as did many **newly** enfranchised whites), and many blacks got into state government, and it is a myth that they were extraordinarily ignorant, incompetent or (by the standards of the time) corrupt there. Reconstruction failed only because there was a white-supremacist political backlash that ultimately succeeded (finally getting the federal government’s nose out in the Compromise of 1877). One thing I’ll put on the Lincoln-would-have-done-it-better side: From the beginning of his political life in the Whigs, Lincoln was a big “internal improvements” man – he saw transportation infrastructure as the thing America needed most and he favored massive government funding to develop it. If he ran Reconstruction, he might have made sure the South got a new-and-improved system of highways, railroads and canals, which could only have helped its economic recovery and prospects for long-term prosperity. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/44 "2011-01-23T21:47:06Z")
> [@brocks](#): > > I’m not saying France would be speaking English today, I’m saying history would have been different. I’ve read several authorities who think that the loss of England’s French territories was the best thing that could have happened for England, as it ended the constant drain of foreign wars. Who knows, maybe if Henry had lived, England would be speaking French today. Possibly. In fact, Henry might well have moved his government, and his empire’s political center of gravity, from London to Paris, as James I & VI moved his from Edinburgh to London. Certainly he would have run his court in French. But, I don’t think France was too big a country for “England,” that is, Henry, to conquer under the circumstances. The 100 Years’ War was not about the idea that England and France were really one country, or should be one country, or that they would be better off under one king than two, or that the English should be a conquering race over the French; it was about the Plantagenets’ arguable dynastic claim to the French throne. Conversely, the French resistance to the English was not “nationalist” resistance as we now understand the term. (Maybe to Joan of Arc, but not to anybody else.) I think Henry V could have stabilized the situation if he had lived. And then things everywhere get a lot more French. ---
**Author:** ![fuzzypickles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9d8465/32.png) [@fuzzypickles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuzzypickles)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/45 "2011-01-23T21:49:53Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Abel. If he had not been murdered by Cain, everything would be different. But that would’ve only happened if Cain’s younger brother wasn’t, umm, “able” to satisfy the Lord. (Oh, I slay myself…) ---
**Author:** ![Capitaine\_Zombie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@Capitaine\_Zombie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capitaine_Zombie)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/46 "2011-01-23T22:02:27Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Possibly. In fact, Henry might well have moved his government, and his empire’s political center of gravity, from London to Paris, as James I & VI moved his from Edinburgh to London. Certainly he would have run his court in French. But, I don’t think France was too big a country for “England,” that is, Henry, to conquer under the circumstances. The 100 Years’ War was not about the idea that England and France were really one country, or should be one country, or that they would be better off under one king than two, or that the English should be a conquering race over the French; it was about the Plantagenets’ arguable dynastic claim to the French throne. Conversely, the French resistance to the English was not “nationalist” resistance as we now understand the term. (Maybe to Joan of Arc, but not to anybody else.) I think Henry V could have stabilized the situation if he had lived. And then things everywhere get a lot more French. It wasnt at first. It certainly started as a purely dynastic war, although quite a big one. But it did end up with constructing both England and France as nations, not just mere kings’ possessions. I still think it was too big a piece to chew for England. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2011, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/47 "2011-01-23T22:03:36Z")
I should add, Henry spoke French quite as well as Princess Katherine, and the scene in _Henry V_ where he struggles to speak it to her is Shakespeare’s nationalist-propaganda bullshit, in keeping with the theme of the whole play. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/48 "2011-01-24T01:17:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > it was about the Plantagenets’ arguable dynastic claim to the French throne. > [@Capitaine\_Zombie](#): > > It certainly started as a purely dynastic war, although quite a big one. Actually it wasn’t even that. Edward III does not seem to have _seriously_ considered displacing the Valois. Rather at least until Henry V it was mostly a legalistic argument used for negotiating leverage and an additional casus belli. The real proximate cause was Aquitaine and the nature of English rule there vis-a-vis obligations to the French crown. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/49 "2011-01-24T02:07:53Z")
MLK jr. I think he would’ve turned his attention more against imperialism and economic injustice, and maybe that would’ve had a counterweight against the attitudes that prevailed during the 1980s which embraced those attitudes. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/50 "2011-01-24T04:10:51Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > I’d agree. As a close 2nd I’d nominate Bobby Kennedy. Had Bobby lived, I believe he could have beaten Hubert Humphrey for the Dem nomination, and possibly Nixon that November. In his book The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate, which was published in 1970, Ben Wattenburg said that during the 1968 primary Hubert Humphrey was always ahead of Robert Kenendy and Eugene MacCarthy in the polls. This was not more apparent because Humphrey entered the primary too late to run in the primaries. Wattenburg also said that Richard Nixon was usually ahead in the polls, and that Humphrey was the only Democrat candidate that was ever ahead of him. We should also consider the popularity of George Wallace. 1968 was the year the New Deal coalition broke up. Humphrey may have been elected president, but there would have been little support for a conditional surrender to North Vietnam, and that was the only way to end the War in Vietnam. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/51 "2011-01-24T04:14:29Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > MLK jr. I think he would’ve turned his attention more against imperialism and economic injustice, and maybe that would’ve had a counterweight against the attitudes that prevailed during the 1980s which embraced those attitudes. If Martin Luther King Jr. had lived he would have been given leadership of the anti war movement. There were prominent members of the anti-war movement, but none had the commanding presence of King. He may have been able to prevent the anti war movement from becoming self destructive with violent and disruptive tactics. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/52 "2011-01-24T04:26:38Z")
The 1997 UK parliamentary election was pretty much a Labour guarantee, but John Smith might have led the party in a different direction than Tony Blair did. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/53 "2011-01-24T04:58:57Z")
When Huey Long was gunned down he was preparing to challenge Roosevelt from the left in the 1936 presidential primaries. That might have produced some interesting alternative history, even if he had lost. Roosevelt might have been weakened by a nasty primary. Would World War II have played out the same way without Roosevelt in office? ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/54 "2011-01-24T05:01:27Z")
> [@godix](#): > > In US history, Abraham Lincoln. Had he not been shot, the reformation period probably would have been very different which, perhaps, would have changed the entire tone of race relations all the way up to the civil rights movement. > > OTOH, by modern standards, Lincoln was quite the racist. So maybe not. So was just about everybody else in those days. I don’t think that Lincoln’s views would have gotten in the way of the amount of social and political progress that could realistically have been made during the Reconstruction generation (i.e. short of full equality, but a damnsight better than the actual outcome of Reconstruction). ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/55 "2011-01-24T22:58:16Z")
Lenin would be another person, since he died at 53. He didn’t want Stalin in charge, and the leadership of the USSR would’ve been different had he survived another 20-30 years. He probably would’ve limited Stalin’s power and possibly eventually had him imprisoned or killed. No purges of the military and no famines. Plus the USSR may have been more able to resist the Nazis w/o the decimation of the officers under Stalin. I don’t know what a USSR under Lenin would be like, but I know it’d be different. Many of the severe abuses stopped after Stalin died. Plus if Trotsky was put in instead of Stalin, I think Trotsky was more imperialist and wanted more communism in western europe. So who knows, maybe the nazis would’ve been steamrolled and the USSR would’ve conquered most of continential europe. Either way had Lenin not died young the world would be different. The USSR, world communism and WW2 would have all been different ---
**Author:** ![NCDane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecccb3/32.png) [@NCDane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NCDane)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2011, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/56 "2011-01-24T23:26:31Z")
The death of Frederick III of Germany was right up there. Although he was one of the foremost military commanders of the time F3 was a thorough political liberal, and would surely have done all he could to make Germany a parliamentary Democracy along the lines of the UK. The monarch and the military would subsequently have been subject to the real authority of the legislature rather than semi-independent operators as they were under the unamended constituion. There would also have been a much more pronounced anglophilia, since the Emperor’s wife was Victoria’s first-born, and both husband and wife shared a love of the UK without the emotions of competitive jealousy which so corrupted the attitude of their oldest son, the future notorious Kaiser Wilhelm II. Sadly F3 died of cancer after a reign of only 99 days, only aged 56. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/57 "2011-01-25T06:15:59Z")
Germanicus. Had he not died age 34/35, he would have become the Roman Emperor instead of his son Caligula, and the reigns of his brother Claudius & grandson Nero probably would not have been the same, or might not have happened at all. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/58 "2011-01-25T06:43:52Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Alexander the Great- … No one else. The bio-waste others claim as legitimate determinants of history, like english royal trash and the like, are all irrelevant. Alexander could have kept the flow of scientific knowledge flowing among the ancient societies for hundreds of more years, had he lived only a couple more decades. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/59 "2011-01-25T07:30:21Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > Alexander could have kept the flow of scientific knowledge flowing among the ancient societies for hundreds of more years, had he lived only a couple more decades. How could he have done that? And why? Could you elaborate a little? ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485/60 "2011-01-25T08:04:45Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > How could he have done that? And why? Could you elaborate a little? His empire crumbled in several pieces governed by irrelevant and ineffectual people who had no interest or awareness of anything past their immediate gratification, except possibly of Ptolemaios, the ruler of Egypt. If Alexander had lived past his unfortunate death at 32 years old, his empire would very likely have been kept cohesive, and the flow of knowledge from the ancient Greeks would have more chance to spread to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, his death indirectly put the Greek scientific and philosophical knowledge into a suspended state, which was severely disemboweled by the advent of the three Abrahamic religions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-person-who-died-young-would-have-changed-history-the-most-had-they-lived-longer/568485.md?page=4)