For God, Family and Republic

What might have been?
What if the Confederacy was not militarily extirpated in 1865, and the Union government conceded recognition of an independent Confederacy in the 1860s? This is all within the realm of the speculative—and the "what if?" So, what if the south had have won?

Myself, I have been interested in alternative history since I first heard of it, because it is tethered to history, which I love with a passion. It is the exercise of looking at the past and asking "what if?" What if some major historical event had gone differently? Alternative history as a genre of fiction has gained in popularity in recent years, though it may still go unnoticed in many quarters. Alternate history asks the question, "What if history had developed differently?" Fictional works in this unique genre are set in real historical contexts, and feature military, socio-economic, and geopolitical circumstances that developed in contrast to our history or at a different pace from our own timeline. Alternative history proper comprises fiction in which a change or point of divergence based on a real event happens and thereby causes history to diverge from our own timeline at some pivotal juncture in the past. Some skeptical historians dismiss it as counterfactual history, and an utter waste of time. Many are apt to dismiss it, simply because alternative history writers have simply made some poorly executed works with an implausible point of convergence, or a misguided recollection of a battle, war or event, making their speculations as utterly implausible.

Nonetheless, many people, historians included, embrace this realm of the speculative because of an inquisitive curiosity innate to man about what might have been.

Granted, some say that alternative history is an exercise in wishful thinking. Naturally, those antithetical to the Confederacy for ideological reasons chalk up the interest in alternate history to "Lost Cause" delusions of grandeur. Perhaps. And this may very well explain my utter lack of interest in dystopian alternative history where the United States goes communist or the Allies lose World War II. There are such books out there! Now, granted there are certain alternative history writers that have entertained the notion of the South winning the War are completely disparaging of the Confederacy, in their speculations of the future thereafter. I believe they fundamentally misunderstand history in their speculations, which are designed more to appeal to the ideological nostrums of the politically correctness in our time than historical plausibility. I haven't read every book on the subject, and I can gather from various book reviews which books in the genre are more prone to this tendency. For this reason, I neglect mentioning all alternative history books because they lack plausibility and/or are so biased that I must eschew recommending or even mentioning them.

Some books herein I present without active endorsement as well, but merely to bring such books to the attention of my readers.

Sid Meir's Civil War Collection
Many alternative history books that try and answer that "what if?" question. Likewise, there are computer games that entertain the notion of alternative history as well. PC gaming software such as Sid Meir's Civil War Collection allows gamers to rewrite history in replaying the pivotal battles of old-- testing new strategies, pressing an advantage not taken, or avoiding a mistake in the past. Hindsight is always 20/20 I grant. Gettysburg is one of those battles. Likewise, the inconclusive battle of Antietam is one as well. What would you have done different if you were the Confederate's at Cemetary Hill? Would the 1st Texas brigade avert their fate at Antietam, and still hold the ground defiantly? Here is where the gamer rewrites history.



1862: A Novel
Robert Conroy's 2006 gambit 1862: A Novel is the most recent endeavor in the alternate history genre concerning the late War between the States. Here is where the Empire Strikes Back repeating its city-burning shenanigans like in the War of 1812! (No pun intended.)

The point of divergence is the little known Trent Affair, which was a historical reality in our timeline. In an attempt to gain support for the Confederacy from European nations during the war, the Confederates dispatched two diplomats, James M. Mason of Virginia as minister to Britain and John Slidell of Louisiana as minister to France via RMS Trent, a British mail steamer. The Trent departed from Havana, Cuba, but was intercepted and stopped by Captain Charles Wilkes of the USS San Jacinto on November 8, 1861. The two Confederate diplomats and their secretaries were removed, over their protests and the protests of the Trent's British captain. The Trent was then allowed to resume its voyage. The news of this incident reached London on November 27, 1861. But diverging from our timeline, the British ultimatum was worded with a more powerful and vehement denunciation of the act of the Lincoln administration arriving in mid-December. The U.S. response would come in January leaving a British declaration of war being issued no earlier than early February 1862. This is in a nutshell is the backdrop for the plot of Robert Conroy's 1862: A Novel.

Only a few months after its initial release in February 2006, the book has already elicited some grumblings and disputes about its plausibility. The question essentially emanates around the likely magnitude of the commitment by the British in response to the Trent Affair if a state of war commenced between the British and the United States in the 1860s. Apparently, in Conroy's book the wherewithal of the British is lacking, though they do muster up a fight, as Grant spars with Lord Cardigan in Canada. One critical reviewer, S.M. Stirling, himself a fiction novelist quipped in criticism:

1862 was a disappointment. In actual fact, America would be fighting way, way out of its weight against Britain in 1862. ¶The UK had a larger population, a much larger GDP, and the advantage in the crucial areas (heavy industry, marine steam engines, heavy engineering) was even greater -- somewhere between six to one and eight to one. ¶In 1862 Britain was at its height as the nt manufacturing power, producing half or more of the entire world's output. ¶The Union had to extert every effort to defeat the Confederacy. Its prospects of defeating the UK and the CSA at the same time would be somewhere between zero and zip. ¶The US might make gains in Canada, but that would be irrelevant and they'd have to cough up at the peace conference; the war would be fought and won and lost at sea, and on the southern front. ¶Real results? A close blockade of the northern coasts, collapse of Federal government revenues, hyperinflation, defeats at the hands of the Confederate army, British-built gunboats ting the Mississippi.

One Amazon.com reviewer Michael Snyder counters this aforesaid contention in declaring,

The British Empire was the most powerful political entity in the world in 1862, but with responsibilities and challenges that matched that position. In Europe, tension was growing over the Danish and Prussian-Austro-Hungarian question of Schleswig-Holstein, that put the Kingdom of Hanover at risk. There was continuing tension between Prussia and Austro-Hungary... There was tension with the French over their clash with the new Italian government and a constant porblem in the Balkans and with the "Sick Man of Europe," the Ottoman Empire. The Russians had not forgiven the West their defeat in the Crimean War in 1854, and continued to push the limits of the treaty ended that conflict, especially in the Black Sea and in their expansion into Central Asia, pushing up aganist India.
¶In Africa, Asia and China, British forces were involved in or bringing to an end various interventions against local threats to British economic and political interests. Then there was the ing fear created by the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, which would tie down troops for years. ¶In 1860, the entire British Army numbered but 150,000 Regulars, voluntarily recruited. There were 75,000 Volunteers and Yeomanry, who might or might not volunteer for overseas service. The British were spread so thin, that during the Trent Affair, only 6,823 troops could be found to reinforce Canada, and two battalions of Guards had to be pulled into the Expeditionary force to reach that number. It took ten weeks for those troops to reach Canadian ports and another ten days to reach the frontier. By the end of 1862, there were all of 18,000 Regulars and 10,000 Militia in Lower and Upper Canada, a number which only reached 35,000 by the end of 1863. During the Antietam Campaign in 1862 and the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863, the state of New York alone was able to raise 35,000 armed, equipped, uniformed and organized Militia for 90 day duty. The British garrison in the Caribbean amounted to less than 8,000 troops, so that the total mobile force that the British could have committed to offensive ground operations in North America by the end of 1862 amounted to something less than 30,000 troops. And the means to sustain these troops were not available locally. Their supply lines would have stretched back across the Atlantic, vulnerable to weather and raiders.

Perhaps the one way of settling the question in your own mind would be to investigate Conroy's book and see for yourself.

Dixie Victorious
Dixie Victorious is a special venture into alternative history, because it is anthology of essays brought to you by several prominent historians and military strategists who speculate on alternative battles and different paths taken that may have made Dixie Victorious. Lawrance Bernabo, an Amazon.com reviwerer offers this telling review.

Dixie Victorious: An Alternative History of the Civil War is a collection of ten essays imagining how the South could have won the Civil War edited by Peter G. Tsouras, author of several alternative histories including "Gettysburg: An Alternative History." The title, of course, spoils the outcome off all of the essays, but then the appeal here is more argumentative than narrative and the question is whether each author can make a compelling case that tips the delicate balance between military success and failure the other way:

Andrew Uffindell, "'Hell on Earth': Anglo-French Intervention in the Civil War," has the "Trent" incident resulting in Great Britain declaring war against the Union and France following suit. Uffindell comes up with additional reasons for the two nations to fight the war that neither wanted in 1861 to force the North into fighting a war on all fronts.

Wade G. Dudley, "Ships of Iron and Wills of Steel: The Confederate Navy Triumphant," has Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory creating an ironclad navy. Consequently, when the "Monitor" shows up at Hampton Roads it faces not one Confederate ironclad but three and the historical stalemate becomes a decisive Rebel victory.

David M. Keithly, "'What Will the Country Say?': Maryland Destiny," turns Special Order No. 191, which fell into McClellan's hands before the Battle of Antietam, into a "ruse de guerre" as Lee baits a trap to destroy the Army of the Potomac. This one is an interesting twist on history and yet another opportunity to show Lee as being clever and McClellan incompetent, which is almost always fun.

Michael R. Hathaway, "When the Bottom Fell Out: The Crisis of 1862," revisits Lee's first invasion of the North and has the Confederate general avoiding hurting himself when he was thrown by his horse the day after the second battle of Manassas. Overall I tend to like the essays where the key change is rather simple, which is what Hathaway does by having Lee free from pain and clear headed during his first invasion of the North.

James R. Arnold, "'We Will Water our Horses in the Mississippi': A.S. Johnston vs. U.S. Grant," has Albert Sidney Johnston's life being saved by a tourniquet at the Battle of Shiloh. The South still loses on the second day, but Jefferson Davis is able to put Johnston back in command of Confederate forces in the West during the siege of Vicksburg. Clearly the idea here is insert Johnston back into the war in the western theater at the point where Davis most felt his loss, which explains why Shiloh remains a Confederate defeat.

Edward G. Longacre, "'Absolutely Essential to Victory': Stuart's Calvary in the Gettysburg-Pipe Creek Campaigns," has the Confederate cavalry keeping in contact with Lee during the second invasion of the North. The Battle of Pipe Creek replaces that of the historical Battle of Gettysburg. Those who have read the alternative history "Gettysburg" by Newt Gingrich and William R. Fortschen will find this essay of more than passing interest since it shares the belief that there was a Confederate victory to be had in Lee's second invasion of the North, but not at Gettysburg itself.

John D. Burtt, "Moves to Great Advantage: Longstreet vs. Grant in the West," finds Braxton Bragg being wounded and James Longstreet taking command of the Army of Tennessee and fighting Grant. Longstreet had agreed to go west so that he could have an independent command, and Burtt's essay argues out a best case scenario for what he could have accomplished, although his aggressiveness might strike many as being beyond his nature.

Peter G. Tsouras, "Confederate Black and Gray: A Revolution in the Minds of Men," has Jefferson Davis seizing the opportunity afforded by Major General Pat Cleburne's Manifesto to give the South's slaves an opportunity to earn their freedom by fighting for the Confederacy. This one has the advantage of taking actions the Confederacy was eventually compelled to do, and moving them forward to a time when it might have actually helped the Southern cause.

Cyril M. Lagvanec, "Decision in the West: Turning Point in the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy," has Kirby Smith taking back Arkansas and Missouri in 1864, as David Dixon Porter's Mississippi Squadron falls victim to its commander's greed for captured cotton. I had the most problems with this scenario because I am not inclined to think that the Union would have reduced its overwhelming number advantages in Virginia and Tennessee-Georgia to make up for setbacks in Louisiana, thereby setting up a domino of effects.

Kevin F. Kiley, "Terrible as an Army with Banners: Jubal Early in the Shenandoah Valley," basically has Phil Sheridan's ride failing to reverse the Union's fortunes after Early's attack in the Valley. Kiley also finds an opportunity to remove a major obstacle to a Southern victory with a single bullet, which I have to admit was a card I thought would be played more often in these essays.

In most of these essays the Confederacy does not win the war militarily, but rather a pivotal military victory (or combination of victories) tips the delicate balance and gives the South a political victory (e.g., McClellan defeats Lincoln in the 1864 election). All of these essays are presented as the work of military historians in an alternative reality. Each has footnotes documenting sources, with those from fictional sources noted with an * (Lagvanec is the farthest over the rainbow with all of his notes for his Trans-Mississippi essay having asterisks).

Readers will know exactly what they are getting with "Dixie Victorious," so those who are offended by "What If" stories in general and those in which the South wins the Civil War in particular can stay far away. The idea here is to be provocative and to come up with diverse scenarios for this to happen, and in that regard this collection is successful. Students of the Civil War will find a lot to argue about in these pages.

Gingrich on Gettysburg
Many people are not aware that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was not actually an attorney by training, but rather an historian. For several years, he has teamed up with William Forstchen to put together several alternate history books. I admittedly got one of his earliest ones in the 1990s, and was not moved by it, nor did I care for following up with the sequel. Though, Gingrich and Forstchen perhaps learned from flawed execution in earlier endeavors. A Baptist pastor I know as online acquitance, Lawrence Underwood (see my blogroll), recommends Gingrich's book. Essentially, the two authors have put together an alternate history trilogy emanating from a point of divergence at the battle of Gettysburg in which prospects bode well for the Confederates. There trilogy encompasses three novels Gettysburg, Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat : Lee and Grant: The Final Victory one of which just recently came out. Some speculate that had Jeb Stuart's calvary reconnected with Lee's army, or had the Confederates pushed aggressively for Cemetary Hill late at night at the very onset of the conflict, then it would have had a much different result. Perhaps. This is precisely what Gingrich and Forstchen speculate about in their trilogy.



The Guns of the South
The Guns of the South is not alternative history in the strictest sense, as it is where alternative history meets the realm of science fiction. The Confederates win the War with aid from South African time travelers in a "what-if" tale. The point of divergence in the Guns of the South is interesting. It is January of 1864, Lee's army is in short supply, in poor spirits after an abated invasion of the north. They are met with an offer they cannot refuse, as strange man and his cohorts offer them a most remarkable weapon—a repeater rifle. That repeater rifle is the fully-automatic Kalashnikov assault rifle, the infamous AK-47. Having used a time machine, Andries Rhoodie and Afrikaneers from A.D. 2014, travel back to 1864. It shouldn't come as a surprise that possessed of such a technological innovation and with the military genius characteristic of the Confederate Generals, the wily Gray Fox, Robert E. Lee pulls off a military victory. In the aftermath of Confederate victory, Lee pushes for emancipation. This surprises the strange time travelers possessed of bigoty, and naturally puts Lee in opposition to them.

All things considered, this book reflection upon Lee's sentiments and character is revealing, and very plausible particularly given Lee's statements during and after the war. And in reality, as historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel revealed in his groundbreaking historical research Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, if the Union had not attempted to forcibly coerce the seceding states back into the Union in 1861, irresistable economic and market forces coupled with a shared political sentiment would have extinguished slavery in the 1870s and no later than 1880s, and brought black freeman into the wage economy of free labor. In point of fact, less than one out of five southerners owned slaves, and the overwhelming majority of the slave population was concentrated in the hands of less than one in twenty southerners. Black freedman and Cherokees owned slaves as well.

Author Harry Turtledove offers other books in a similar series entitled The Great War, but with a different point of convergence and not tied to the storyline in The Guns of the South. In my humble opinion, Turtledove should have quit after he wrote the Guns of the South and How Few Remain. He made a Great War series that is not particularly great. For starters, everything in his scenario hedges on continual, almost endless conflict between the north and south, which crescendos into a world war. In this series, both the north and south are possessed of implausible quasi-fascistic ideological tendencies (with an underlying fervor of reactionary socialist ideology in the shadows.) Despite my recognition of war as a leaven for radical social change, I consider this non-sensical, implausible and ahistorical. An honest scholar Eugene Genovese, originally from the political Left, notes that the malignment of the conservative south as fascistic is a "charge by those who know nothing about southern conservatism or fascism. Those who study both honestly will be surprised by how little fascism and southern conservatism share." Indeed, the Fascist State is utterly repugnant to parochial minded southerners. Likewise, provincial southerners with their penchant for localism and republican self-government are repulsed by centralism and overbearing statism. As former Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens avowed,

If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity.

How true? So why should we entertain notions that correlate the South with an ideology rooted in totalitarianism and centralism? Though, in fairness, Turtledove conveys that the North is even more possessed of the blood and iron creed of imperialism and finds Bismarck's Germany as a natural ally in his unfolding scenario. In his historical fiction, the Union naturally turns its imperial ambitions into fighting Great Britain and conquering Canada. This somewhat fits Lincoln's rejection of self-determination and the principle of rule by the consent of the governed. After all, in our timeline, he inaugurated an invasion of the southern states to supress their secession. The Union's sheer bloodlust in Turtledove's scenario still defies the imagination. Also, in Turtledove's alternative scenario, Marxism embraced by the working class becomes an ideological leaven that threatens to undermine the order within an independent Confederacy in the decades following its independence. Lincoln too turns into a socialist demagogue in 1881. As much as I dislike Lincoln, and would like to see the radical socialist correlation with the North, I think this goes too far. Lincoln was a corrupt, pragmatic politician who had no problem with legal plunder to be sure, but he was not an ideological socialist. In reality, there were actually Union Generals such as Siegel that indoctrinated their men in the tenets of revolutionary socialism. Turtledove apparently sensed the radical impulse in the north, particularly amongst radical Reconstructionists, in making his speculations.

All things considered, I would only point the curious reader to How Few Remain if they want a history of a southern victory that is plausible and to The Guns of the South if they want something different, and again I emphasize that it has no sequel. I recommend against the Great War series. How Few Remain begins with a different point of divergence than the Guns of South, and the Confederates seize D.C. I don't quite aquiesce that Turtledove is the master of alternate history as the cover of his book proclaims by the way, but he is creative and imanginative to be sure. Plausibility is the measure of good alternative history, and to put it mildly, some of his speculations are implausible in his Great War series. Last I heard, he has written alternative history that centers around World War II coming to a screeching halt, because of a unified human opposition to alien invaders from outer space. What non-sense?!?



What would be the probable political landscape of an independent Confederacy?
One may speculate about the geopolitical landscape of an independent Confederacy. Undoubtedly, unless the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had accomplished the daunting feat of capturing Washington, D.C., it would be unlikely that they would have negotiated a favorable settlement that would have included recognition of all of her claimant states, such as the border states of Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky. Maryland, more than any of the three, had a heart and sentiment that put her in the South, and she fielded quite a few troops - volunteers no less - for the south. But as we know Lincoln abated her state legislature's attempt to convene a secession convention. One may speculate that perhaps one or more of the borders states might have split in two, particularly Missouri, which was known for its bitter fighting during the war, and gave rise to the aphorism, the Uncivil War. West Virginia as a Union state would have probably existed under Union control, albeit with considerably less territory than exists today (obviously ceding territory in the region bordering her mother state Virginia which was occupied by Confederates for a considerable time into the war.) It is highly probable, however, that an independent Confederacy could have encompassed Arizona and New Mexico as political sentiment allied her with the Confederacy. Incidentally, one or two southern political tinkerers may have conjured up the idea of the Confederacy acquiring territory in Mexico (likely by purchase rather than conquest) in the early 1860s, which makes it plausible but not necessarily an irresistable conclusion if the Confederacy had lived on as an independent nation. Less plausible, but tenable nonetheless, is the idea of the Confederacy acquiring Cuba from Spain by purchase. I think the Confederacy's sense of Manifest Destiny would have likely stopped at acquiring Mexican territory connecting it to the Pacific, which precludes Carribean possessions such as Cuba. The Confederates were no imperialists after all.