America's 250-Year Winning Streak

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died at the age of 35 — a fact that has prompted many lachrymose musicologists to wonder at what might have been. Were it not for the hand of Providence, the United States of America may well have suffered the same fate. Today, we tend to look back at the sundry threats and crises that have peppered America's history as inevitable waypoints on a long march toward glory. But this is a luxury that has been accorded to us by the sweat from others' brows. Had a few of the details changed in December of 1776, or in September of 1814, or in the summer of 1862, this country, as envisioned, could have been relegated to a curiosity of the past. Nor, in the last century, was our survival as a free republic guaranteed. The view from Hooverville was bleak indeed. So, until that auspicious glint of sunlight saved the day, was the outlook at Midway. During the Cold War, we avoided the predations of a millenarian cult that had promised to "bury" us — although, as Wellington had it after Waterloo, it, too, was "the nearest-run thing."