What if Mexico had paid for and built a wall along its northern border in 1821? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Mexico
https://io9.gizmodo.com/a-map-of-the-u-s-if-there-had-never-been-a-mexican-am-1613264384
quote: “There was deep resistance to the Mexican War in the northeast, and concern by many that it was foisted upon the nation by expansionist southerners hungry for new territory. In other words, many Americans did not necessarily link national progress with geographic expansion. So it’s possible to conceive of a lesser America by positing the absence of the Mexican War. Along these lines, we could imagine an independent Mormon state of Deseret, and even a California that remained part of Mexico or gained its own independence after the gold rush.”
We would have defeated Mexico, wall or no wall.
There goes my blockbuster movie. I was imagining something like the Great Wall of China running along the 42nd parallel from southern Oregon - protecting California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Texas from U.S. invasion.
quote: “Thoreau’s essay, “Civil Disobedience,” emerged out of his experience opposing the Mexican-American War. He’d refused to pay a poll tax as a demonstration against what he felt to be an unjust, imperialistic war and a government waging it to expand slavery’s domain. He spent the night in jail before someone paid the tax to set him free.”