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Title: If The South Had Won The Civil War by Harry Turtledove, Dan Nance, MacKinlay Kantor ISBN: 0-312-86949-5 Publisher: Forge Pub. Date: 03 November, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The first "alternative history" of the American Civil War
Comment: Long before there were all these alternative histories of the Civil War like "Guns of the South" and "Stars & Stripes in Peril," historical novelist MacKinlay Kantor, best known for "Andersonville," wrote this little volume that sketches out what would have happened with a Confederate victory. The above title might be an exaggeration, but as far as I know this was the first alternative history of the Civil War to see print.
Kantor starts with a single, simple event: General Ulysses S. Grant is thrown from his horse and is killed on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. The Army of the Tennessee does not make a come back on the second day and is destroyed. That also means Grant does not come East to take charge of all the Union armies and use the Army of the Potomac to batter Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, take Richmond, and end the war. Instead, it is Washington, D.C. and President Lincoln that are captured by the Confederates, who achieve independence.
Kantor takes the long view of what happens next: Texas breaks away from the Confederacy, the three nations fight together in various wars, while various generals become presidents of their respective countries. Ultimately Kantor's focus is more on the future of these Americans than the specifics of how the South actually wins the war. As far as Kantor is concerned the road not taken still produces a unified United States in the end. Consequently, "If the South Had Won the Civil War" is more a personal rumination along these lines than a scholarly argument.
However, you have to appreciate his choice of the pivotal event, especially since he was writing at a time when it was pretty much gospel that the Confederacy's best chance was Pickett's Charge on the final day of Gettysburg. I concur with those who argue Lee had a better chance on the second day at Gettysburg and that his army was too battered to march on Washington, where they still would have been outnumbered and outgunned by the Union forces entrenched around the capital. Therefore, by 1863 the South was not going to win a military victory. Kantor sidesteps that conclusion by going back even farther.
"If the South Had Won the Civil War" is not really a novel, being more like a magazine or newspaper article in both length and style; my old paperback copy had drawings on every other page. At the heart of Kantor's speculation is the belief that no matter what happened, the nation would end up being unified (with Columbus, Ohio renamed "Columbia" and made the new national capital). An interesting little volume that should not be forgotten in the current "what if" craze.
Rating: 5
Summary: And this is what could have happened...
Comment: I can't believe that it's nearly 50 years since I read Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Andersonville"Somehow I missed this 'what if'when it came out in LOOK magazine and book form as well as all the hoopla it created.It is a short, but enjoyable speculation.How realistic the results could be is anybody's guess.I guess it is all in where one is coming from ,but the important thing is that Kantor's version is plausible and makes for good reading.It is an art, and not a science ,to look back in history to determine what and why things happened;and when one attempts to look to the future there are no constraints at all;so,anything is fair game.
Trying to speculate what would have happened if Kennedy was not killed in Dallas...heck,we're not even sure why, or even if, he was shot by Oswald.
The introduction by Harry Turtledove is excellent and has some very good points to make on alternate history writings.Kantor has whet my appetite for more.I am about to start on "What If", edited by Robert Cowley.I think one of the comments made about it by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "...history is not an inevitable march of dusty names,dates and places,but a precarious,careening ride that could have taken us to any number of destinations."
I guess that about says it all.
Rating: 4
Summary: Brief but clever alternate history
Comment: In this slim volume MacKinlay Kantor has produced an intelligent, readable history of North America if the Confederate States had won the Civil War. Written in the same style as Sobel's "For Want of a Nail", the action is presented in the form of a history text, rather than a novel in the traditional sense. So instead of characters, the reader gets footnotes and "historical" asides. It is a fascinating way to write a work of fiction, and Kantor did an admirable job of it in this instance.
He takes two near simultaneous events as his turning points: Grant's death in a horse accident prior to his capture of Vicksburg, and the rout of the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg. Going forward from that point, he posits Lincoln's flight from Washington, the establishment of the Republic of Texas, and a host of other events, large and small, that lend far more realism to his allohistorical world than one might expect out of a story of less than a hundred pages.
As it happens, I think that a Civil War ending in Confederate victory would have left far more acrimony than Kantor predicts. However, it is the beauty of good alternate history that one need not agree with the author's interpretations to enjoy it. So long as the author's conclusions are well researched, logical and well argued (and that is absolutely the case in this instance) one can't take issue with them. Moreover, half the fun is stacking up your conclusions of what might have happened against the author's, and seeing how you rate.
Don't let its size fool you; "If the South Had Won the Civil War" is an intelligent, engaging alternate history. Kantor makes some genuinely fascinating leaps, and his logic and conclusions are ironclad.
Enjoy!
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Title: Alternate Gettysburgs by Brian Thomsen, Martin H. Greenberg ISBN: 0425183777 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition by HARRY TURTLEDOVE ISBN: 034544423X Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 29 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg by Douglas Lee Gibboney, Burd Street Press ISBN: 1572493178 Publisher: Burd Street Press Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been by Robert Cowley, Stephen E. Ambrose, John Keegan ISBN: 0425176428 Publisher: Berkley Pub Group Pub. Date: 12 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: 1901 by ROBERT CONROY ISBN: 0891418431 Publisher: Presidio Press Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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