DBWI: What if James K. Polk Had Not Declared War Against Britain?

We're all familiar with the circumstances. James K Polk and his supporters shouted "54 or fight!" and when the British refused to hand over the territory on the basis of that claim, he declared war.

But what if he hadn't? How would our world be different today?
 
then canada would have a wierd shaped joint sticking out of it. i mean look at it.
I assume you meant "wouldn't"?

Polk was one of the dumbest Presidents in American history, there was no way the US could have won the Oregon War, but we had to go and provoke England anyway... you know they didn't even claim the whole territory before the war, but only annexed it all afterward? There probably could have been some sort of agreement or something to split the territory, maybe continuing on the existing US-Canada border or a bit south of that to appease the British claims partially, though I don't remember where their initial southern border claim was.
 
If polk had'nt declared war the American would be in much better shape today, they would probably have annexed California and New Mexico as well as southern Oregon.

with more territory in the west the slave states would probably have been appeased and so the southern secession and the Kansas war probably would never have happened. Compromise with Britain would mean a peaceful and stable union probably even becoming a great power
 
*shrugs* the war wasn't much of a war... the blockade by the RN stifled the US so fast that the Brits scarcely had time to do a real invasion. They occupied Oregon painlessly; the US had no presence there. Sure, the Brits won the battles at Niagra and the Great Lakes, but unbelievably, the Brits tried to get some revenge for 1812, attacked New Orleans, and got whomped again! Hell, Lee was the only American military leader to come out of the war with a good reputation. And in the end, what did Britain gain... Oregon. Sure, the place has some nice ports, but the US has plenty of those in California. Oregon has a lot of trees, but the Brits never found oil or gold there (and stopped looking once they grabbed Alaska and found it there). Oregon has some decent farmland, but the US has better in the midwest. It would have been nice for the US to have another state in the northwest, but we've done fine without Oregon. The seven states we formed out of the spoils from the Mexican War were way more important than Oregon would ever have been... gold in CA, silver in NV, oil in Sonora.... hey, if you want a really significant POD, postulate no Oregon war, but a loss to Mexico.. that would have been really dire...
 
I think the butterflies would be huge. We all know that this "National Grievance" against the UK held the country together through the 1860s and 70s, so figure the phasing out of Slavery might not have happened as gracefully as it did.

With all of these tensions between the UK and the USA, the outcome really worked in favor of Germany--they cleaned up as a result of the rivalry. Figure that if the USA and UK were not stuck in a titanic cold war after the Venezuelan crisis, and stuck in major trench warfare in the Great War in North America, France might have held out against Germany.

Could the world have seen a US-UK bloc instead of a US-German bloc? If that switch had happened, it might be the United States and not Germany that rules the world.
 

recidivist

If the US had gained Oregon (etc?) then the astounding discovery of Sasquatch would have been made by Americans and not Canadians.
 
This might make a better WHAT-IF he had, than rather DBWI he hadn't. I can never get my head around DBWI's since everyone says something different and I kind of lose the point of it

Best Regards
Grye Wolf
 
You all appear to be contradicting yourselves. Figures.

OOC: yeah, the guy who posted right before me set up that the US never took the western lands from Mexico... as he was posting his, I was making my post where the US did just that. We 'crossed in the mail', so to speak...
 
We're all familiar with the circumstances. James K Polk and his supporters shouted "54 or fight!" and when the British refused to hand over the territory on the basis of that claim, he declared war.
But what if he hadn't? How would our world be different today?

If only that war had started a couple of years later, while the Brits were tied up in the Crimea.......
 
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