These author’s notes relate to Fixing History Chapter 10.

If you’re looking for a different chapter or footnote page, see the Fixing History series index link.

1.  The culvert where our travelers hid the time machine in Central Park exists in real life.  The Huddlestone Arch was built in 1866 to accommodate East Drive.  The borders of the park ended at 106th st until the 1860s, when it was extended north to 110th St in order to turn a marshy area into an additional water reservoir.  The location of the arch is noted as 107th Street on a Central Park website.  However, if you draw a line on the map from W 106th to E 106th, it will cross the arch.  I think it’s safe to say it would be on the edge of the park if the 1860s expansion never took place.  Since the park itself was designed for water reservoir for the city, and the arch was built for a road into the park, it is reasonable to suppose that it would have been built by the British in our fictional timeline as well. 

2.  If New York were still a colonial city in British America, you can bet that at least the upper classes would maintain a British accent.  Have you ever seen the 1961 version of Disney’s Parent Trap?  The British-sounding accent of upper crust Boston was an integral part of the plotline.  By the time Disney remade the movie in 1998, they had to have the second twin live in London to get the same level of credulity with the accent.

3.  Sunday laws are still a real thing in the UK.  Stores have strict rules about when and whether they can be open on Sunday.  The 2020 coronavirus caused renewed discussion about extending those hours to spur the economy.  Taken to its extremes by our imagined centuries of domination in British America, this storyline has the Sunday laws more closely resembling those from the early colonial days. (See number 7 on the previous link.)

4.  One method of control used by regimes of all sorts is to require a pass to prevent people from moving about the country freely.  Russia went so far as to bind serfs permanently to their landowners.

5.  Drinking laws were also a historical fact.  Don’t forget the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution that kicked off the Prohibition Era!  The UK also has laws against public intoxication.

6.  The knife self-defense move was demonstrated by my source who has a black belt in TaeKwonDo.  (See Footnotes 7, note #3.)

7.  “God loves you and so do I.”  I remember when the phrase was popularized on televised church in the 80s, but it does seem to encapsulate the heart of the gospel.  There’s another element, though, that we in modern America tend to forget: liberty.  Maybe that’s because our First Amendment rights are so ingrained in our DNA that we take them for granted.  But it’s been part of the Bible message from Old Testament times.

Isaiah 61:1 declares, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound…”  (Quoted by Jesus in Luke 4:18-21, followed by “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”)

Jesus also said in John 8:32 , “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” 

Paul repeated the theme in Galatians 5:1, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”

So when we say that America was built on Judeo-Christian values, let’s not forget the value of liberty, because it’s fundamental.  Historically, the church’s focus was the individual’s peace with God.  The Declaration of Independence took it a step further, applying the natural law of freedom in the political sphere.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That’s why, when our travelers canceled the Declaration, they canceled our political freedoms as well.  We would do well to safeguard them in our own timeline.