The American Civil War Alternate History Genre
Brighton, MA
It is universally acknowledged among Americans that the Civil War was our bloodiest conflict. Mrs. O’Leary of Middletown High School once said, “More people died in that war than all of our other wars combined.” These sentiments were later reiterated by Robert Duvall in the behind-the-scenes section of the Gods and Generals DVD. It would be more correct to say that more Americans died in the Civil War than in all of our other wars combined.
Thoughts of, “What might have been” have been applied by writers to the war. One of these was Bevin Alexander.
Bevin Alexander
In his book, How The South Could Have Won the Civil War, he imagined alternate scenarios for battles. One of which was the seizure of Washington after the Battle of Manassas. Following the battle, Stonewall Jackson told President Davis, “Give me ten thousand men and I’ll be in Washington tomorrow.”
Other scenarios included Lee’s orders not getting lost at the Battle of Antietam and the Battle of Gettysburg ending differently. Alexander was of the opinion that the battle should not have happened; that the better strategy would of in fact have been to capture Harrisburg. All of his scenarios were based on the belief that the North would come to terms due to Southern victories, foreign intervention, or a combination of both. He also was a Jacksonian in his belief that General Jackson was the best hope for the Confederacy’s chance for independence. He did not cite Longstreet, however, who said of Lee, “He had Jackson at Sharpsburg, and that was even more blundering than Gettysburg.” The work also failed to acknowledge the Lincoln administration’s determination to keep the country together as well as the North’s ability to grow new armies.
Robert Conroy
Robert Conroy wrote two alternate history novels on the American Civil War. The first was 1862.
In it, the British declared war after the Trent Affair. This was done due to the designs of Prime Minister Palmerston who wished to see the United States permanently divided. 30,000 troops were sent across the pond.
Lord Cardigan, infamous for the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War, was given command of British forces in Canada. His strategy was to pursue a defensive posture. The Union blockade of Southern ports was broken; however, the Union ended up defeating the Royal Navy as well as Confederate and British armies by the end of the year. In Conroy’s alternate history, the Battle of Dundas Street in Ottawa spelled the end of the British army in Canada. This resulted in the occupation of Canada. Unlike Alexander, Conroy offered a blow-by-blow account of the alternate path. His work, however, failed to take into account that a war of conquest would have been necessary to subdue the Confederacy as well as British North America. In 1776, the British Empire was able to send 30,000 men to the upstart colonies. In reality, if war were declared in 1862, they would have been able to send considerably more.
His second book on the subject was The Day After Gettysburg.
In it, General Lee’s retreating army was trapped on the northern side of the Potomac due to flooding. Lee took a bold gamble and attacked Meade’s pursuing army, resulting in a great victory. The result was President Lincoln’s removal of Meade and elevation of Grant to the Army of the Potomac. In it, the Confederacy lost again-this time by the end of 1863. In this book as well, Conroy failed to realize that the subjugation of the Confederacy was a war of conquest. They would not have come to the table to surrender if they still held a large swath of territory. In reality, Grant realized that after Shiloh.
Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove dealt with the same subject in two books. His first was entitled How Few Remain.
In it, Lee’s orders to his division commanders were not lost prior to the Battle of Sharpsburg. The result was a victory resulting in Southern Independence. The book, however, offered no blow-by-blow account of the outcome as did Conroy’s. If Lee had won at Antietam, there was still a massive army garrisoning Washington, Grant’s army was still intact in Tennessee as was Butler’s in Louisiana.
Turtledove’s second book on the subject was entitled
The Guns of the South.
In it, time travelers from a future South Africa visited the Army of Northern Virginia just prior to the start of the 1864 Peninsula Campaign. They provided it with 100,000 AK-47s which resulted in the defeat of Grant’s Army and the capture of Washington along with President Lincoln himself. Despite possessing a scene-by-scene account, the book was the most outlandish of the genre by far.
Peter Tsouras
The most believable books on the subject were the series by Peter Tsouras, a former US Army officer and intelligence analyst. They were
Britannia’s Fist, A Rainbow of Blood, and Bayonets, Balloons, and Ironclads.
The trilogy began in July 1863 when the Union won twin victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. His assessment was much more realistic than the above mentioned:
Nevertheless, at a time when the armies of the Confederacy had fought the Union to a standstill, war with the British Empire and France would have been a momentous step. A betting man would not have given the United States decent odds. The population of the United Kingdom was equal to that of the Northern states while that of France was 50 percent larger.
From the Introduction to Britannia’s Fist
In them, a battle erupted between the US and Royal Navies in 1863 due to the escape of a British-built commerce raider. Admiral Milne’s and Viscount Wolseley’s war plan against the United States was enacted. Napoleon III of France eagerly joined the British. The alliance that worked so well for them in the Crimean War was put to the test in a war against the United States.
Unlike the books by other authors, Tsouras took into account the global geo-political situation at the time. His analysis of British war plans also made the scenarios much more realistic than those of Conroy or Turtledove. It took into account the indefensability of Canada, whose population at the time was 4 million compared to the Northern states 32 million.
The British struck first. Too weak to defend British North America, they struck simultaneously to seize Portland, Maine and Albany, New York by coup de main. Maine was vital to the survival of British North America. The only railroad that connected Canada with Britain ran from Halifax, Nova Scotia, down to Portland and then north to Quebec and beyond. Maine’s regiments from the Army of the Potomac were just detraining in Portland for recruiting duty as the British attacked. Led by Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, they saved the city, but the British patiently set siege.
It has been pointed out in works such as Ken Burns The Civil War that the industrial capacity of New York state alone was greater than that of the entire Confederacy. Tsouras had the British mold their war plans in accordance with this:
The objective of Albany had a different, though no less important strategic purpose. New York was the richest, most populous, and most industrialized state in the Union; it was vital to the American ability to wage war. From Albany, the British struck down the Hudson Valley, leaving a pall of smoke in their wake as they burned the river towns and terrified New York City, America’s great entrepot.
Unlike the other authors in the genre, Tsouras also took into account the civilian population, some of which were no friends to the Lincoln administration:
At the same time, the Copperheads, the violently anti-war, Lincoln-hating Democrats of the Midwest, rose in their planned revolt to take their states out of the Union and into the Confederacy with the aid of Confederate prisoners liberated from the POW camps in Indianapolis, Chicago, and Rock Island. Chicago, the nation’s second city, fell to this stab in the back.
Tsouras also appreciated the might which the Royal Navy would have brought into the war:
At the same time, the Royal Navy was preparing to descend on the coasts of North America to break the blockade of the South and to counterblockade the North.
It was at this moment that the Union could have cracked as the storms of foreign war and rebellion crashed and broke. But it held. It was now total war. The Union could no longer fight with one hand tied behind its back.
From the introduction to A Rainbow of Blood
The British and French alliance with the Confederacy led to the Union’s alliance with Russia. In the end, the United States proved to be on the winning side.
In conclusion, it must be said that writing is difficult. Writing fiction even more so. As Jeff Shaara is able to write military fiction convincingly, so too are the authors analyzed in this article, Bevin Alexander, Robert Conroy, Harry Turtledove, and Peter Tsouras, able to do so with alternate history. With whatever alternate history novels about the American Civil War are yet to come out, it is doubtful that anyone could do a better job than Tsouras. That, however, remains to be seen.
