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Lee had taken command of the Confederate Armies of Northern Virginia and shown everyone why he was the most esteemed general in the nation, the man Lincoln had once tried to hire. In less than thirty days, Lee had beaten two Union armies, one under George McClellan and the other under John Pope, and proceeded all the way up to the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Lee was on a roll. On the offensive for the first time in the war, he prepared to take on the North at Antietam and then march into Washington. Panic set in at the Northern capital, and citizens began to pack their bags. Who was going to stop the invincible Lee now?
    Fate intervened. Two Union soldiers, resting at a site where the Confederates had camped several days earlier, discovered a copy of Lee’s Special Orders #191 wrapped around three cigars, obviously lost by a careless Southern courier. In full detail, these orders presented a picture of Lee’s attack plan, allowing General McClellan to anticipate Lee’s moves. The advantage of the attacker—surprise—shifted from Lee to McClellan.
    The odds against this incredible piece of luck? At least a million to one.
    Several days later there occurred the three-day Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest of the war. McClellan, knowing what Lee was going to do, reorganized his forces and slugged it out with Lee, neither side able to win. His momentum blunted, Lee was forced to withdraw. Never again would hemount a sustained offensive or come close to Washington, D.C.
    What if the cigars had not been lost? The historian James McPherson outlines what might have happened if the cautious McClellan had had to cope with a massive Confederate army, whereabouts unknown. The Battle of Antietam would not have occurred. Instead, Lee, undetected by the Union, would have moved north into Pennsylvania to reprovision his army and settle in at Gettysburg. This time the result would not have been a draw, but a rout of the Army of the Potomac.
    The hypothetical repercussions would have been swift. In the Northern congressional elections, the Democrats were in control of the House of Representatives and voters expressed their desire for immediate peace, even if it meant giving the Confederates their independence. Britain and France, lurking in the wings for a sign of Confederate victory, immediately came forth and offered to mediate an end to the war. The British, eager to avenge their humiliation in the American Revolution, rejoiced at the prospect of a large land grab. Recognizing the sorry state of the Union Army, the will of the voters, and the prospect of European meddling, the North gave in and the United States ceased to exist as “one nation, indivisible.” The peace candidate, George McClellan, went on to win the 1864 presidential election. It didn’t happen, of course, only because the cigars fell into the wrong hands.

    Finally, there is World War II. Overconfidence breeds in people an inability to act on what they hear. In 1940 hardly anyone in America was concerned about a Japanese attack; most eyes were fixed on Europe. Said
Fortune
magazine in its August issue that year, “War with Japan is the only war for which the U.S. is prepared.” What
Fortune
really meant was that America was protected on the west side by a very large ocean.
    Sitting in front of the radar screen on a Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Joseph McDonald had a job to do: make sure the “Japs” weren’t coming. Up since 5:00 a.m. the previous day, McDonald stayed beyond his 6:00 a.m. departure so his colleagues (against regulations) could go get some breakfast. Exhausted and barely still awake at 7:20 a.m., waiting for his colleagues to come back from breakfast, he got a call from an outlying radar base at Opana reporting a large contingent of planes headed toward Pearl Harbor. He rushed into the next room and found Lt. Kermit Tyler, on his second day of training in his new post. It was nothing to worry about, Tyler told him.
    Upon calling