A Thought Experiment
Posted by Yam on July 15th, 2007I enjoy reading alternative histories–”What if Hitler had won World War II”, or “What if the South had won the Civil War”? Mitt Romney’s campaign for president got me thinking–it’ll be interesting to see what happens if he wins, but what would the world have been like if he weren’t the first Mormon to win the presidency?
Suppose Joseph Smith had actually won the election of 1844… I know, it would’ve taken a major change in public opinion of the time. But is there any path through which it could’ve happened?
What would our world today look like, given that change in public opinion back then, setting a new course for our history? I imagine things might’ve gone differently with Native Americans… women’s rights might have come later… or earlier; I can make up stories in which it happens either way. The same with racial rights; perhaps we wouldn’t have had to wait so long, or perhaps the civil war would’ve happened earlier, the South would’ve won, and we’d still have slavery there.
Salt Lake City and environs probably wouldn’t exist at all; there might be a couple of minor towns, but nothing like what’s there now.
The church might’ve been strengthened, or for lack of the unifying experience of the exodus to Utah, it might have taken a lot longer to become as strong as it is today.
What do you think? What would be different? What would be the same?
(I wish I were talented enough as a writer to write the book… 
Someone email Orson Scott Card.
Comment # 1 left by Naiah Earhart on July 15th, 2007
I have never tried that ‘what if’. Hmmmm.
This is difficult to say, because we would even have to start from somewhere completely different to even begin.
Personally I think that we often overestimate what a President of the country can really do. There are limits to his power and influence. I think the results would represent a smaller change in history that the change we are imagining to get him into office in the first place.
Who knows? Maybe the second coming would come in 1890 when Smith was 85. Maybe the New Jerusalem would have been established in Jackson County, Missouri.
Quite a change, but I still think that the change in initial conditions would be greater than the changes that would result.
Comment # 2 left by Eric Nielson on July 15th, 2007
Naiah–Yeah!
Eric–I agree; it’d be a result of the change in initial conditions; being the president has limits, but if he’d managed to persuade enough people to get there, it’d be a very different world.
Comment # 3 left by Yam on July 16th, 2007
I did a little search under ‘Joseph Smith Presidential Campaign’, and found this in the wikipedia.
Apparently Joseph Smith had a political ‘vision’ - not necessarily revelation - that he termed theodemocracy. He apparently tried to set up such a system in Nauvoo with the short lived council of fifty.
Comment # 4 left by Eric Nielson on July 17th, 2007
I think you have to change things far more drastically for him to get elected President than him being elected President would change.
Comment # 5 left by Adam Greenwood on August 3rd, 2007