Are there books re: the South winning the Civil War or seceding for good?

[Wetzelbill]

I would be interested to see the interpretations of writers on what our country would be like today. I am interested in maybe writing a short story set in a world where we had both the United and Confederate States of America. I just think that would be interesting to explore.

[niyad]

1. a friend of mine in high school wrote a paper on that very subject, and it

was quite interesting. let us know how you are doing with it.

[Kool Kitty]

2. I think there is a series of books by a writer named

Harry Turtledove about that very subject. They are in the science fiction section.

[The Great Escape]

3. Here Is A Link To an Alternate History Web Directory...

http://www.alternatehistory.com/ahdirectory.html


The Civil War Links are listed a little more than halfway down under the 19th century subheading.

[Raydawg1234]

4. The US would probably be divided up like Europe........

The South, Northeast, Midwest, West. The north would probably split. And there would be further wars no doubt.

[Yupster]

10. I don't agree with that

The US talked of secession for its whole early history and it only happened once, and it took years of buildup for that. I don't see why there would be secession every crisis. There isn't any history showing that would happen.

I think also that there would be no reasons to have more wars. Both sides had bled themselves badly and the generals on each side had enormous respect for each other. I don't see why either side would want to go back to war.

I think it is 99 % certain that General Lee would have been the CSA's second president had the country survived and he certainly wouldn't have moved the country toward bad relations with the behmoth to the north.

I think the better example would have been the US and Canada who fought and then settled into a century plus long friendship.

[RoyGBiv]

5. What kind of books?

Academic or fantasy?

Academic "what-if's" of this variety are few and far between, and they generally are a small part of a larger work on the actual impact of historical events. If this is the route you wish to take, then what you really need to do is examine the effects of the war on politics and society, and that will take a lot of time.

Fantasy goes in all sorts of directions. As already mentioned, Turtledove is currently doing a series, separated into two trilogies with a standalone "prequel" on the possible shape of the world had the result of the Civil War been different. Turtledove is himself a historian, although one of more obscure, ancient topics, which means he understands the discipline and the method but is not necessarily intimately familiar with the details. His works are interesting -- I find them quite entertaining -- but they rely on a typical "all else being equal" device of alternate-history authors that reduces their utility in realistic explorations of what might have been. I say "all else being equal" reduces the utility of these works because from the moment you change a time-line in any direction at all, all else is not equal. When that change is so massively drastic as the outcome of the US Civil War, so many elements are not equal that it is absurd even to suggest that, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt actually becomes President at some point.

That said, Turtledove has done quite a bit of research into the actual effects of the war on not just American history but world history, in particular world history actually. For his single alternate history book _The Guns of the South_, to arrive at assumed election results after the war, he extrapolated actual election results using varying modifiers in statistical equations intended to show possible outcomes when those variables differ. For the series that begins with the prologue of _How Few Remain_, he went a different route, however, and not a great deal of what you will read beyond the introduction is based on anything but fanciful dreaming interspersed with alterations of actual historical events.

[HawkerHurricane]

7. The difference between...

Guns of the South and How Few Remain is that 'Guns' is Science Fiction: a time traveler goes back in time to provide the Confederacy the weapons (AK-47's, plus amunition) they need to defeat the Union. How Few Remain is Alternate History, with no messy time travelers but merely the exercise of imagination: "What If this happened instead of that".

[RoyGBiv]

8. Yes and no ...

The deus ex machina element of _Guns of the South_ is certainly a difference between the two books, but it's not the only difference.

Having studied Turtledove's work extensively, including some conversations with the man himself, I'm given to understand more detailed care was given toward making _Guns of the South_ more historically conceivable in its social and political aspects and is in fact more of an examination of those elements using the historical method. The use of the time travelers actually emphasizes this to a degree, suggesting rather directly that with the Southern victory, certain elements of modern societies would be more harsh than they are and would see little in the way of moral opposition. (This is something professional historians do take the time to explore when entertaining alternate scenarios, the notion that the end of slavery in the US was a forceful factor in the end of slavery in South America, leading eventually to a general, yet extremely slow advancement of racial attitudes. Without the result of the war, the circumstances could have been much worse.) One of the big issues at the time was apartheid in South Africa, the origin of those time travelers, and by focusing on that Turtledove intentionally takes issue with those who claim that slavery would have ended and racial oppression in the US would have been less severe had the South won on its own terms. He takes liberties, of course, magnifying out of proportion the moral struggle Lee faced in reality, but again I see this as a method of exploring the difficulty of imagining how the nation(s) develop with a different result to the war.

Having a narrow time focus aids Guns of the South as a "serious" work, I believe, as not so much of a variation in the development of the society is required for Guns as it is for _How Few Remain_ and the books based on the theme that have followed it. The latter takes actual events and changes a few circumstances, focusing pretty much on society as it did develop rather than how it might have, the only real change being the geographical location of the development of more extreme expression of nationalism. For this to work, it pretty much has to ignore the entirety of European history and assume US/Confederate history dictates what happens everywhere. There is no exploration of the role French and Russian cultures played in the development of anti-semitic attitudes or how that was exported to German culture, for example, since the focus of such racist philosophies was shifted to those of African decent on the American continent, particularly in the South. Occasional insights exist in the series about the difficulties Jews were facing in Europe are there, but no connective tissue exists that would help examine how world history had been shaped to form these philosophies.

I know it sound counterintuitive, but as outlandish as the mechanism of Guns was, I believe the examination of the world thus created is more realistic there than it is in the series that begins with _How Few Remain_.

[Yupster]

11. I'm a big Turtledove fan myself Roy

but I really can't stand his Civil War series though as a Turtledove junky I force myself to read them. The last one is particularly dreadful I thought. Couldn't be more predictable.

I don't see any imagination or ideas left. As soon as you see Pittsburgh, you say Stalingrad and know what's coming. Just dreadful IMO.

On the other hand the new Pearl Harbor series I think is well done, and I really do love the WWII series with the Race. To me some of his best ideas have been there.

His best book imo is by far "The Guns of the South," just for his depictions of army life and the meeting of historical figures.

[RoyGBiv]

15. I agree ...

I was in contact with Mr. Turtledove prior to _How Few Remain_ was released, and he teased me with it, using some of my personal interests with regard to certain figures and what he was doing with them as bait. So, I was all set up to like it sight unseen. I did like that book, although I had quibbles with it. Turtledove is not good at the military tactics of that era especially, for example, and the meeting between Frederick Douglass and Thomas Jackson was just a huge groaner. Overall, though, I thought it was pretty good.

But since then, I've grown increasingly disappointed in the series even though, like you, I feel compelled to read them. And, it's for the same reason. I knew Jake Featherston, for instance, was going to be the American version of Hitler a few pages into his initial description.

[Wetzelbill]

12. a bit of both

just looking at doing some research and formulating an idea or two to write about.

[Hardrada]

6. Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore

New York, Ballantine Books paperback, available on ABE or other used book websites.

[Yupster]

9. Oh there are so many of them

It is a topic that historians and science fiction and alternative historians have written forests of works on.

Harry Turtledove has a series on it, but in my opinion, it is his weakest work.

The starting book "Guns of the South" may be his best writing, but it's a completely fanciful work.

There's a short book called "If The South Won The Civil War," by MacKinlay Kantor which theorizes Grant falling off his horse and dying outside Vicksburg, and a federal disaster at Gettysburg leads to southern independance. The book ends with the nations uniting against Germany in World War I, which leads them back into union together.

A science fiction version is "The Fantastic Civil War" which is a half dozen or so short stories based on the idea of the south winning the Civil War.

There are just so many works on the subject.

My own opinion is that the world just wouldn't be very different today if the Confederacy had won its independance. Either the two nations would have rejoined, or would be peaceful neighbors like the US and Canada are. The governments would be similar too because all central governments gather power to themselves over time.

Here's an interesting fact that I bet not many people know. In the Civil War, the armies weren't very efficient with military staffs, especially the Confederates. In fact, even General Lee had only a handful of officers that tended to the armies staff needs. General Longstreet was the Leiutenant General in charge of Lee's First Corps. (Stonewall Jackson ran the Second Corps). In the war, only four or five officers acted as General Longstreet's staff where today a corps would have a staff of hundreds at least. One of those very few officers was Longstreet's Chief of Ordinance, who was a colonel who was wounded by a shell fragment at Chicamagua.

The unfortunate colonel survived the war. His name.

Payton Manning.

I often wonder how many other Payton Mannings are not around today because their great, great grandfathers were killed in the Civil War. How many inventions weren't invented, songs and books weren't written and home runs weren't hit. Six hundred thousand men in a country as small as ours was at the time, and it was often the best of the best who were killed.

Of all the adult men in the south in 1860, one quarter of them were killed in the war, and another quearter were wounded. The losses to our country's intellectual wealth had to have been severe.

[Hardrada]

13. Do you have any stats

on how many Southern philosophers or philologists were slain?

[Walt Starr]

17. Actually, guns of the South has nothing to do with the CW series

It's a stand alone book. In the Civil War series, the premise is that instead of Special Order 191 being lost and later recovered by the Union, thus leading to McClellan knowing Lee's order of battle for the first push into Pennsylvania which results in a victory at Antietem and the Emancipation Proclamation, guaranteeing the Brits and French would never enter the war on the side of the South; a Confederate private recovers the lost special Order 191 and returns it to the officer who drops it.

[yurbud]

14. One would be like a European country and the other would be

an English speaking Third World country.

[Walt Starr]

16. Harry Turtledove series in order

How Few Remain - The "Second Mexican War" which is actually the second war with teh CSA after the CSA wins due to Special Order 191 not being lost and ending up in McClellan's hands leading directly to the victory at Antietem.

The Great War: American Front - First in a three part series about how alliances with various powers in europe lead to a third conflict between the USA and the CSA.

the Great War: Walk in Hell

The Great War: Breakthroughs

American Empire: Blood and Iron - first in a three part series about the 20's and 30's after the Great War between the USA and CSA

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold

American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

Settling Accounts: Return Engagement First in a four part series about another war between the USA and the CSA during the forties. Brutal.

Settling Account: Drive to the East

Settling Accounts: The Grapple - due in 2006

Settling Accounts: In at the Death - due in 2007