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Editor's note: This article was
originally published in The Charger in 1999.
Longtime readers of this column
will know that I enjoy Civil War alternative history, or "what-if,"
books. At their best, these books challenge our perceptions of the
war in intriguing ways, but remain historically plausible. These
books show us how things might have gone, for want of this nail or
that bullet. At their best, such books give us a good plot, solid
characterization and a few nifty twists on history as we know it.
Since (as you may have heard) the
Union defeated the Confederacy, a common tactic for Civil War
alternative history writers is to turn the tables and let the
Confederacy win. Harry Turtledove did just that in his intriguing
The Guns of the South
(Ballantine Books, N.Y. 1992). Once you
got over your initial suspension of disbelief, Turtledove had a good
story to tell. Now Turtledove has caught lightning in a bottle for a
second time in a fine new book, How Few Remain:
A Novel of the Second War Between the States
(Del Rey/Ballantine Books, N.Y. 1997).
The two books are quite different in concept and style, and How Few Remain is by no means a sequel.
The book begins on September 10, 1862,
outside Frederick, Maryland. A Confederate courier manages not to lose
Gen. Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191, wrapped around three cigars;
Gen. George McClellan thus remains ignorant of Lee's plans just
before the Battle of Antietam. The Army of the Potomac is badly
beaten there, and Lee pushes further north, decisively defeating
McClellan in the Battle of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River,
on October 1. The book then jumps forward to early 1881. The
Confederacy has had its independence for almost twenty years, helped
not in the least by a generation of Democratic presidents in
Washington who have benefited from the Northern public's longtime
revulsion with the Republican Party for losing the Civil War.
But at last the Republicans have
won back the White House, and a new administration led by James G.
Blaine of Maine (in our history, a presidential also-ran in 1876,
1880, 1884 and 1892) decides to finally stand up to the Confederacy.
When the Confederacy purchases the Mexican provinces of Sonora and
Chihuahua from the cash-needy Emperor Maximilian, extending the
C.S.A.'s western border all the way to the Pacific Ocean, President
Blaine decides to draw a line in the sand. In due time, as you might
expect, war breaks out again, twenty years after Fort Sumter.
All sorts of familiar names crop up
throughout the book. Samuel Clemens is a cynical newspaper editor in
San Francisco who clashes with Colonel William T. Sherman, commander of
U.S. troops in the city. George Armstrong Custer is still alive,
having apparently missed his appointment with destiny at the Little
Big Horn in 1876, and is just as dashing and headstrong as ever (be
warned, though: Turtledove is no admirer of Custer). Gen. William
Rosecrans is the overall Union commander, having come out of the
Civil War in late 1862 with his reputation intact. The young
Theodore Roosevelt, a rancher in the Montana Territory, raises a
regiment of volunteers (an obvious precursor to the Rough Riders) to
defend the Union's northern border when Britain and France enter the
war on the side of the Confederacy. James Longstreet is President of
the Confederacy, and Stonewall Jackson, spared an early death at
Chancellorsville, is his top general.
Frederick Douglass keeps fighting
the good fight in 1881, still laboring against racism in a truncated
United States which blames blacks for the Union's dissolution and
couldn't care less about slaves in the South. And Abraham Lincoln,
defeated in 1864, is widely hated for losing the war, but
nevertheless travels the country speaking on behalf of what we would
now call democratic socialism. Turtledove also gives us cameo
appearances by the Apache chief Geronimo, Alfred von Schlieffen,
Gen. John Pope and John Hay, among others. There are some
interesting omissions in the novel, as well: Lee is nowhere to be
seen, and is barely referred to in the Confederacy's postwar years,
a major difference from
The Guns of the South, in which he succeeds
Jefferson Davis as president. But, as in his earlier book,
Turtledove writes well and holds your interest throughout, and I
recommend the book.
But now I think it's time for a new
take on the Civil War alternative history novel, one in which the
Union wins, but in a different way than we know: perhaps Robert E.
Lee accepts Lincoln's offer to command the Federal forces and, with
his military genius, brings the war to a much earlier conclusion.
Maybe Meade decisively wins at Gettysburg, destroying Lee's army
soon after Pickett's Charge. What if Lincoln never issues the
Emancipation Proclamation at all, and the issue of slavery is still
unsettled when the guns fall silent? Or perhaps Lincoln sidesteps
fate at Ford's Theatre and proves a better leader during
Reconstruction than Andrew Johnson ever did.
Is alternative history unlikely?
Yes. Implausible? Maybe. Interesting? Undoubtedly.
Harry Turtledove has now made two
important contributions to the genre.
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