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Irving Morrell
The Southern Victory series or Timeline-191 is a series of novels written by Harry Turtledove. They form an alternate history of events in the United States based on the premise that the Confederates won the Civil War and became an independent nation. The series covers events from 1862 to 1943 and features dozens of characters, some of them fictional and some of them based on real people.
Books in the series
- How Few Remain (1997) - HFR
- The Great War: American Front (1998) - GW:AF
- The Great War: Walk in Hell (1999) - GW:WH
- The Great War: Breakthroughs (2000) - GW:B
- American Empire: Blood and Iron (2001) - AE:BI
- American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (2002) - AE:CCH
- American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003) - AE:VO
- Settling Accounts: Return Engagement (2004) - SE:RE
- Settling Accounts: Drive to the East (2005) - SE:DE
- Settling Accounts: The Grapple (due for 2006)
- Settling Accounts: In at the Death (expected in 2007)
United States
John Abell
(GW:AF - RE:DE)
John Abell is the archetypical General Staff officer. He served on the U.S. Army General Staff from the Great War, when he was a major, to the 1941 War, when he was a brigadier general. Abell disliked many of the tactics and operations proposed by Irving Morrell, but the two men shared a hatred of the Confederacy and a wary respect for each other's abilities.
Hosea Blackford
(HFR, GW:WH - AE:VO)
Hosea Blackford was first introduced in a train ride across the northern Great Plains while talking with former President Abraham Lincoln in 1881.
Blackford re-entered the series in GW:WH where he is a Congressmen in the House of Representatives for the Socialist Party in Dakota. He was considered a more moderate Socialist than his counterparts.
In 1920, he was asked by Upton Sinclair to be the Socialist party nominee to be the Vice President. The Socialists won the 1920 election, defeating Democrat Teddy Roosevelt. Upton Sinclair and Hosea Blackford were re-elected in 1924. Blackford described the job as being an "$18,000 a year hatrack."
In 1928 Blackford became the Socialist Party nominee for President and defeated Calvin Coolidge by a small margin. However, the economic panic and subsequent crash in mid-1929 was largely blamed on Blackford. Shantytowns of unemployed people in the United States become known as Blackfordburghs (see: Hooverville), in honor of the failure of the Blackford Presidency. In response he passed make-work legislation, but nothing helped.
Things were made even worse for Blackford in 1932 when the USS Remembrance caught a disguised Japanese ship supplying weapons to Canada's resistance. The Japanese attacked the Remembrance, and the Pacific War began. The war destroyed Blackford's hopes of reelection, especially during a rally for Blackford in Los Angeles when the Japanese carry out a successful raid on the city.
Blackford was easily defeated by Calvin Coolidge for the Presidential spot. He retired to Dakota, and then returned to New York and Philadelphia with his wife, Flora, when she was elected to Congress. He died in 1937. He and Flora had one son, Joshua.
Luther Bliss
(GW:WH, GW:B, AE:CH, SA:RE)
Luther Bliss was a Kentuckian who became head of the Kentucky State Police (some would say the state's secret police force) during the Great War. He was instrumental in persuading a rump legislature to petition for re-entry into the United States. During the years before the war, Bliss used his power effectively and ruthlessly to crack down on black Marxists and Confederate supervisors. He left when Kentucky voted to rejoin the Confederate States, but returned to Covington during the 1941 war to coordinate sabotage missions against Confederate armed forces.
Sam Carsten
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:DE)
Sam Carsten was a member of a 5-inch gun crew on the battleship USS Dakota during the Great War. He took part in a landing party that overran the British seaborne defenses at Pearl Harbor, Sandwich Islands, as well as serving in the Battle of the Three Navies. After the war, he was transferred to the aircraft carrier USS Remembrance, where he served as a gun captain in suppressing the pro-British rebellion in Ulster.
Carsten was selected to Officer Candidate School and was commissioned in 1924. He served as a damage-control officer aboard the Remembrance during the Pacific War, and remained with the ship until 1941, when it was sunk during the American defeat at the Battle of Midway.
Carsten was then selected as commanding officer of the destroyer escort USS Josephus Daniels, which served a number of duties on the eastern coast of North America, including launching commando raids on the Confederate coast to capture a working Y-range (radar) station, similar to this timelines commando raid on Bruneval, France and intercepting British attempts to land arms to Newfoundland rebels.
Abner Dowling
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:DE)
Abner Dowling was a major in the US Army in 1914, serving as Lieutenant General George Custer's adjutant. Physically overweight, Dowling was the butt of many of Custer's jokes, and his rather-good judgment on military matters overlooked or denounced as "stupid" by the 75-year old war hero, who used his First Army as a commander would use the obsolete cavalry: charge straight at the target and full steam ahead. Dowling recognized that strategy as costly and inefficient, but could only influence Custer indirectly.
After three years of brutal advancing through western Kentucky and into northern Tennessee, First Army stood in front of Nashville (this is the situation at the beginning of GW:B). Custer, following the advice of Colonel Morrell, began to mass his armor, contrary to War Department doctrine. Dowling was coerced by Custer to faking reports to the War Department about how the general is allocating his armor (barrels in this timeline). Dowling and Custer convinced the General Staff--and President Roosevelt, who came in person--to believe and trust these reports, and Custer goes on to win the USA's first major victory of the Great War: the Barrel Roll Offensive. The First Army then captured Nashville, and were planning a march on Murfreesboro when the Confederates asked for an armistice.
Following the end of the Great War, Dowling was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and Custer to full general. After stewing like cabbages in War Department offices, Custer and Dowling are transferred to Winnipeg, Manitoba, which had been set up by the victorious Americans as the capital of Occupied Canada. Custer becomes governor-general and rules with an iron fist, while Dowling types his reports and goes out to eat with the old man. Following several assassination attempts by a Canadian farmer named Arthur MacGregor, Custer is retired and Dowling heads to Philadelphia for his next assignment - which turned out to be the post of army-commandant of Salt Lake City with rank of colonel.
For years the Utah Troubles had been plaguing the US government, and Dowling was just another military bureaucrat to the Mormon citizens. Following Governor-general John Pershing's (the army-commandant of occupied Utah) assassination, Dowling became the military governor. After several more years of this harrowing job, military rule in the state was lifted and Dowling was reassigned once more. As his experience in Utah unique among most of his peers, Dowling became the head of US military forces fighting Freedom Party rebels in Kentucky. After the Richmond Agreement of June 1940 between Presidents Smith and Featherston, a plebiscite took place and Kentucky voted for a return to the Confederacy. With war clouds between North and South looming, he became (by now he is a brigadier general) commander of the Army of Ohio - in charge of defending the Midwest.
On June 22, 1941, the Confederates began the 1941 War by invading Ohio with barrels and troops. Being unsupplied and unsupported by the War Department, the Army of Ohio was rolled back as the Confederates blitzed to Sandusky, Ohio, cutting the USA in half. Dowling, of course was blamed for the disaster, but with War Department assistance, appeared before the Congressional Committee to Investigate the Conduct of the War, and noted the budget cuts of the Sinclair and Blackford Administrations were a material cause of the U.S. defeat.. Instead of being cashiered in disgrace, however, he was placed under the command of Daniel MacArthur, who led an inept counterattack in northern Virginia. Dowling managed to prevent George Patton, his nemesis from the Ohio front, from striking MacArthur's rear, saving the Rappahannock front from destruction as MacArthur pushes south.
1942 found Brigadier General Dowling being promoted to Major General, then being put charge of the 11th Army headquartered in Clovis, New Mexico. The 11th Army began an offensive into West Texas to coincide with the U.S. counter-attack around Pittsburgh.
Cincinnatus Driver
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:DE)
Born in Covington, Confederate Kentucky, Cincinnatus worked as a delivery driver before the Great War, which in itself was suspicious to many whites, who did not want black men to drive. When Covington was overrun by U.S. forces, Cincinnatus found himself working for Lieutenant Straubing as a military driver, but also being a pawn in the intelligence game between Confederate, black Marxist and U.S. forces in Kentucky.
Following the Great War, Cincinnatus took the surname "Driver" (blacks in the Confederacy were not allowed surnames) and moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where he set up business as a hauler. He was briefly lured back to Kentucky and arrested by Kentucky State Police head Luther Bliss, but freed due to the legal efforts of attorney Clarence Darrow.
Driver returned to Kentucky in late 1940 to see to a family crisis, but was trapped behind the international frontier when the Confederates reoccupied the state. He was hit by a car and partially crippled. He and his father, Seneca Driver, were exchanged in 1942 and he returned to Des Moines, where he volunteered as a civilian auxiliary driver for the U.S. Army--this time being allowed to carry a weapon.
The Engels Brothers
(AE:CH, SA:RE)
The Engels brothers are never mentioned directly, but are a common cultural icon in this timeline. They are analogous to this timeline's Marx Brothers, including characters that behave similarly to Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx. Since the Socialist Party is a dominant party in the United States in this timeline, it is plausible that the Marx brothers changed their stage name to Engels to avoiding offending Socialist audiences. They wear beards of different colors as props.
The Engels brothers apparently served in the 1914-1917 war in the trenches (Chester Martin noted reflexes in their vaudeville act which indicated so), and then became a vaudeville act in the United States. They have appeared in movies and recorded an anti-Confederate number, "Featherston's Follies," which is analogous to Spike Jones and the City Slickers' "Der Fuehrer's Face."
Flora Hamburger Blackford
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:DE)
Flora Hamburger (an analogue of Rosa Luxemburg) is the wife of President Hosea Blackford. She was elected to Congress as a Socialist from New York in 1916, one of the only two women in the House of Representatives. That year, her brother, David Hamburger, lost a leg. (Hamburger refused an offer by General Leonard Wood to have her brother transferred out of the front line). She is often thought of as the "Conscience of the Congress." She opposed the repression of the Mormons of Utah, for example.
During the 1930's, although her earlier belief in the inevitable revolution of the proletariat has been tempered somewhat by age and experience, she is seen as the only member of Congress who really seemed to care about the revival of the CSA and the rise of the Freedom Party. She is an analog of Winston Churchill in this sense, though her gender may prove a barrier to the Presidency.
Flora's husband was many years older than her; following his defeat in the 1932 election, he quickly fell to ill health and died. She and Hosea had one son: Joshua.
In 1941, she noticed a peculiar budget item that is appropriating a large amount of money to project in Western Washington State (see atomic bomb). She used this to strike a deal with President Al Smith which will make the president condemn confederate atrocities on blacks.
Throughout 1942 and 1943, Blackford found herself agreeing more with Democratic Senator Taft of Ohio about taking a hard line towards the war, and towards the Mormon rebellion in Utah.
George Enos
(Viewpoint Character GW:AF-GW:B)
George Enos was a fisherman from Boston, Massachusetts, on the F/V Ripple when the Great War began. He continued to fish until the Ripple was captured by a Confederate commerce raider, the CSS Swamp Fox, and was interned in North Carolina until exchanged. Enos joined the U.S. Navy shortly after to avoid conscription in the Army and to fight the Confederacy. He served on a Q-boat which sank a Confederate submarine, and in 1916 was transferred to the USS Punishment, a river monitor which fought on the Mississippi and Cumberland Rivers, until it was destroyed. (Enos had been ashore visiting a house of ill repute.) He was then transferred to the USS Ericsson, a destroyer, which was sunk after the U.S.-C.S. armistice of 1917 by the CSS Bonefish.
George Enos, Jr.
(Viewpoint character AE:VO - RE:DE)
George Enos was born in 1910 and was only 7 years old when his father, George Enos (q.v.), was killed when the USS Ericsson was torpedoed the day after the U.S.-C.S. armistice. He went to sea as a fisherman, married, and joined the U.S. Navy during the 1941 War, seeing action around the Sandwich Islands aboard the destroyer USS Townsend.
Sylvia Enos
(Viewpiont Charactor, GW:AF-AE:VO)
Sylvia Enos was the wife and widow of George Enos. She struggled to support herself and her two children (Mary Jane Enos and George Enos, Jr.), until she learned the identity of the Confederate naval officer who killed her husband on the USS Ericsson, Roger Kimball. In 1923, Sylvia traveled to South Carolina and killed Kimball, then surrendered to authorities. Because Kimball had been active in the Freedom Party, which was then at its nadir following the assassination of Wade Hampton V, and because of pressure by the U.S. government, she was released from custody and expelled to the United States.
Following her return, she became a heroine, and appeared at several Democratic Party rallies. She wrote a book, I Sank Roger Kimball, with her ghost-writer, Ernest (Hemingway), and was involved in an affair with Ernest, who accidentally killed her while attempting to kill himself.
Armstrong Grimes
(Viewpoint character AE:VO to SA:DE)
Armstrong Grimes was the son of Merle Grimes and Edna Grimes (Nellie Semphroch's grandson) of Washington, D.C. He graduated high school and was conscripted into the U.S. Army in 1941. His basic training was interrupted by the Confederate invasion, but Grimes survived and became a sergeant, being sent to suppress the second Mormon insurrection in Utah, in which time he was promoted to sergeant after a Mormon suicide bomb.
He is named for George Armstrong Custer.
Edna Semphroch Grimes
Edna Semphroch, with her mother Nellie, ran a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., during the Confederate occupation of the city from 1914 to 1917. She was unaware of her mother's activities as a U.S. spy, and in fact was ready to marry a Confederate officer, Lieutenant Nicholas H. Kincaid, when shellfire from a U.S. cannon hit the church on H Street where the wedding was to be held. Edna received the Order of Remembrance, Second Class, from President Roosevelt after the Great War for her "services to the U.S." She married Merle Grimes, a government clerk, shortly thereafter to avoid any possible scandal.
Hal Jacobs
Hal Jacobs was a cobbler in Washington, D.C., during the Great War. He was an agent for the spy ring for the U.S. run by Bill Reach, with Nellie Semphroch a fellow agent who reported to him. Jacobs was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his actions, despite being a civilian; it was one of the final acts in office of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1924. He married Nellie after the Great War, and died of smoking-induced lung cancer in early 1934. He and Nellie Semphroch had a daughter, Clara.
Nellie Semphroch Jacobs
Nellie Semphroch was born in the 1870s in Washington, D.C., and underwent the Confederate bombardment of the city during the Second Mexican War. She apparently struggled as a young woman and supported herself as a prostitute. By 1914, however, she had managed to purchase a small restaurant in Washington. The restaurant became a popular place for Confederate officers to eat, and Nellie found herself involved gathering intelligence for a U.S. spy ring run by Hal Jacobs, a cobbler, who also gathered information on Confederate forces. Also near the end of the war, killed Bill Reach, US spymaster when he tried to rape her. It would always haunt her when Hal Jacobs talked of him.
Because her restaurant had been popular with the Confederates, she was initially arrested as a collaborator when the U.S. reoccupied the city in 1917. However, charges were dismissed and President Theodore Roosevelt awarded her with the Order of Remembrance.
After the Great War, Semproch married Jacobs and continued to run her coffee shop, catering to both Washingtonians and Confederate businessmen who remembered her place affectionately. She did not reveal her role as a U.S. spy until the late 1930s.
Daniel MacArthur
(GW:WH - GW:B, AE:VO - SA:DE)
Daniel MacArthur is the counterpart of Douglas MacArthur. Apart from being born a few years later, Daniel MacArthur is much the same as his real-life counterpart, down to his ego and trademark cigarette holder.
During World War I MacArthur became the youngest division commander in the history of the US Army and a newspaper hero. This achievement was overshadowed somewhat by his serving under First Army commander George Custer, also a publicity-conscious personality who ensured that MacArthur did not win any major victories. MacArthur was eclipsed still further when Lieutenant-Colonel Irving Morrell succeeded in using innovative tactics and barrels (tanks) to break the Confederate lines in early 1917.
MacArthur spent the 1930s as commandant of the new US state of Houston. Despite his best efforts he never entirely stopped the flow of Freedom Party men and weapons from Texas, but open rioting and revolt was ruthlessly crushed wherever it occurred. After Houston's return to the CSA and the subsequent outbreak of war in 1941, MacArthur was assigned to lead the US offensive in Virginia. MacArthur was not selected for his skills, however, but as a sop to Congress' Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. That may have had something to do with the slowness of the US Army to undertake its offensive, and the heavy autumn rainfall did not help either.
The assault on northern Virginia failed in its objective of seizing Richmond, though MacArthur did succeed in crossing the Rappahannock. Heavy casualties on both sides and a failed Confederate counter-attack out of the Appalachians resulted in stalemate by Christmas. MacArthur was still confident of victory, even colluding with Rear Admiral Halsey about the outlandish scheme of landing troops at the mouth of the James River and advancing on Richmond from the rear. His subordinate Abner Dowling managed to prevent an almost-certain disaster from occurring, leaving northern Virginia as of February 1942 in stalemate. This landing is reminiscent of the real MacArthur's landing at Inchon during the Korean War, a maneuver which was wildly successful; however, the Confederates were more motivated and better-led and equipped than the North Koreans, and would have been fighting for their homeland and capital.
Instead of forcing a repeat of the Peninsula Campaign, MacArthur launched two direct assaults into the heavily defended Confederate line at Fredericksburg, losing thousands of US soldiers to Confederate guns positioned on Marye's Heights above the town. The general was criticized heavily by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, by Brigadier General Dowling, and by the press for his senseless actions.
Quotes:
"Thin their lines against me, will they? I'm going to bury those Confederates--bury them, I tell you. There's no doubt in my mind."--MacArthur to Br. General Abner Dowling, when informed about Confederate troop withdrawals to the Ohio front.
Paul Mantarakis
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF and GW:WH)
Paul Mantarakis was a private in the U.S. Army serving in the West with Gordon McSweeney during the Great War. He rose to sergeant in fighting against the Mormon rebels in 1915, but was killed invading Baja California in 1916.
Chester Martin
(Viewpoint character: GW:AF-SA:DE)
Chester Martin was the son of Stephen Douglas Martin and a steelworker in Toledo, Ohio. He served on the Roanoke (southwestern Virginia) front during the Great War and received a commendation for saving the life of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1917, as a sergeant, he briefly served as a company commander of B Company, 91st Infantry Regiment, taking part in the Remembrance Day offensive.
After the war, Martin returned to his civilian job in Toledo, Ohio, as a steelworker. He became a Socialist Party member and union organizer, taking part in strikes and fighting company police and strikebreakers, as well as the police, during the 1920s.
The Depression of 1929 saw Martin lose his job; he and his wife went to Southern California, where he began in construction work and became a union official. When the 1941 War started, Martin returned to the Army and served as a first sergeant in the infantry, fighting in Ohio and taking part in the successful counterattack against Confederate forces there.
Gordon McSweeney
(Viewpoint character, GW:WH and GW:B)
Gordon McSweeney was a U.S. Army soldier who served in Utah and Baja California with Paul Mantarakis, and later in Arkansas during the Great War. A hyper-Calvinist, McSweeney saw himself as the instrument of God and he saw the enemy, whether they were Mormon, Mexican, or Confederates, as persons to be slaughtered without pity or mercy. He would use flamethrowers on enemy bunkers, for example, but also used them on trench patrols. McSweeney was as hard on his own soldiers as he was on himself and the enemy; despite this, his fighting skills were highly respected by his platoon and the Army as a whole. He was commissioned whilst serving in Arkansas, and won two Medals of Honor during the Great War, the second awarded for destroying a Confederate river gunboat single-handedly. McSweeney was killed by shellfire in the later months of the Great War.
Quotes:
"Don't blaspheme." --line he uses in about every other sentence, generally in response to a vulgar comment or remark said by some soldier.
Irving Morrell
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:DE)
Irving Morrell is a fictional counterpart, in name, appearance and career, to the real Erwin Rommel.
Born in late 1891, Irving Morrell enlisted in the United States Army upon reaching adulthood and graduated West Point. At the outbreak of World War I he was a Captain on the southwest border. Leading his company against a Confederate farmhouse in Sonora in September 1914, Morrell was severely wounded in the thigh, and was to permanently suffer from a slight limp. While in the hospital he and a doctor jointly proposed the idea of metal helmets after a conversation concerning head wounds.
Upon recovery in 1915 Morrell was dispatched to eastern Kentucky, where his aggressive tactics resulted in a posting to the General Staff. Morrell's star rose still further that year when President Theodore Roosevelt, after an informal talk about the ongoing Mormon uprising in Utah, 'persuaded' the War Department to adopt Morrell's more imaginative plans.
When the Mormons stalled the resulting US advance by doing the unexpected, General Leonard Wood protected the young officer by sending him to British Columbia to cut Canada's Pacific coast off from the interior. Morrell spent most of 1916 doing that, earning praise from observers Eduard Dietl of Austria-Hungary and Heinz Guderian of Germany.
In the final year of the war Morrell's innovative use of barrels ensured the seizure of Nashville, and the subsequent rupture of Confederate lines. Soon, General Custer's and Morrell's doctrine of massed barrel attacks was in use along every eastern front in North America.
When the war ended, Morrell was a Colonel, a national hero and given his choice of assignments. He decided to head Barrel Works and initially made great strides in designing the next generation of barrels. But the cost-cutting of Upton Sinclair's Socialist administration ensured that Barrel Works was closed down in 1923. His subsequent posting to Philadelphia lasted only two years, with his outspoken criticism of America's foreign policy resulting in a transfer to occupation duty in Kamloops, British Columbia.
The next seven years proved largely uneventful, with Morrell handling a sullen but acquiescent region. He received a visit in 1926 from now-Lieutenant-Colonel Guderian, along with an unnamed German sergeant whose anti-Semitic, "kill everything" attitude and operatic gestures seem very familiar to the reader...
With the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1932 Morrell found himself back at Barrel Works, though he was soon transferred to occupation duty in Houston. With the plebiscite of 1940 came Houston's return to the CSA, and Morrel was assigned as barrel commander to Ohio under Brigadier General Abner Dowling.
When Operation Blackbeard was launched on June 22, 1941 Morrell found himself in an unenviable position. Despite his best efforts, the prewar shortage of soldiers and barrels ensured that General George Patton's amour succeeded in reaching Sandusky on Lake Erie by late August. With the United States cut in half, Morrell found his attempts to throw the Confederates back frustrated not only by CS sabotage in eastern Ohio but the War Department's focus on northern Virginia.
In January 1942 Morrell was badly wounded by a Confederate would-be assassin. Upon recovery and a promotion to Brigadier General, he commanded the US forces in Ohio and Pennsylvania during Operation Coalscuttle. His victory at Pittsburgh in late 1942 was the beginning of the end for the CSA.
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:DE)
A U.S. fighter pilot in the Great War, Moss studied law in Chicago after the War and moved to Berlin, Ontario, Occupied Canada, where he earned popularity as a defense attorney. He married Laura Secord (named after the Canadian patriot of the War of 1812 and had a daughter. When his wife and daughter were killed by Mary McGregor Pomeroy, Moss rejoined the U.S. Army as a fighter pilot. He fought in the early stages of this timeline's 1941 War, was shot down, and sent to Andersonville, Georgia, as a POW. He escaped during a tornado and joined Black guerrillas fighting the Confederacy.
While fighting with the Black guerrillas, Moss was present at the death of a young Confederate Navy officer, home on leave, who led the defense of Plains, Georgia during a guerrilla attack. Although only named "Jimmy", the location and the fact that the character calls his mother "Miss Lillian", indicate that Jimmy Carter is intended.
Leonard O'Doull
(GW:WH - AE:VO, viewpoint character AE:VO - SA:DE)
Leonard O'Doull, M.D., was a surgeon who served in the U.S. Army on the Québec front in the Great War at a military hospital in Rivière-du-Loup. While stationed there, he met Nicole Galtier, the daughter of Lucien Galtier, upon whose land the hospital had been built. He married Nicole in 1917 and settled down to practice in Rivière-du-Loup in the Republic of Québec. Dr. O'Doull was recalled to active duty in 1941 following the Confederate invasion and served on the Ohio front and in the Battle of Pittsburgh.
Michael Pound
(AE:CCH-SA:RE; Viewpoint character in SA:DE)
Michael Pound was a U.S. Army sergeant who served under Colonel Irving Morrell's command. After Morrell's wounding in 1941, Pound was transferred to another unit. He was rash, loud and outspoken towards senior officers, but an effective mentor to junior officers who served with him. He saw action in Ohio, despite having a tank shot out from under him, and in the Battle of Pittsburgh as gunnery officer in a U.S. barrel. He was proficient at judging distance, a trait he used to destroy many Confederate barrels that otherwise would have been out of range in Pittsburgh.
Jeddiah Quigley
(GW:AF-AE:BI)
Lieutenant Colonel Jeddiah Quigley, from New Hampshire, was the U.S. Army officer in charge of the military government of Rivière-du-Loup, Québec, during the Great War. He was a firm governor, seizing land from Luicien Galtier to build a military hospital in 1915; however, he agreed to pay back rent to the Galtiers when Galtier's attitude changed to the U.S. After the Great War, he became the U.S. military representative to the Government of Québec.
William Reach
(GW:AF-GW:B)
"Bill" Reach was a reporter for the Washington Evening Star before the Great War; before that, although it is not clear, he was Nellie Semphroch's lover and perhaps her procurer. He was in charge of the U.S. spy ring in Washington, D.C., to which Nellie Semphroch and Hal Jacobs reported. He was able to warn Jacobs and Semphroch of an artillery bombardment that killed Edna Semphroch's fiance in 1916. Nellie Semphroch despised him and took the opportunity during the recapture of Washington to kill Reach.
Confederate States
Reginald Bartlett
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - AE:CH)
Reggie Bartlett was a pharmacist's assistant in Richmond, Virginia, when the Great War began in 1914. He joined the Seventh Virginia Regiment of the Confederate Army, was captured, and with submarine commander Ralph Briggs, escaped (Briggs was later recaptured, by the same U.S. Navy sailor who had captured him before). He was severely wounded and captured again by U.S. forces and remained a prisoner of war hospital patient until the Armistice. Returning to Richmond, Bartlett saw the rise of the Freedom Party and passively opposed it. He was gunned down by Freedom Party stalwarts in 1925 while leaving his workplace.
Cassius
Cassius (no last name) was the huntsman for the Marshlands Plantation in St. Matthews, South Carolina, owned by the Colleton family. He was also head of the Marxist underground in the area. When the Red Rebellion of 1915-16 broke out, Cassius became the leader of the Congaree Socialist Republic and was responsible for ordering the execution of many “enemies of the people,” both black and white. He escaped the crushing of the Republic in 1916 and with his companion, Cherry, continued guerilla operations against the Confederacy, and in particular against Anne Colleton. Cassius was killed by Tom Colleton shortly after the Armistice of 1917.
Anne Colleton
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:RE)
Anne Colleton, in 1914, was the owner of the Marshlands Plantation of St. Mathews, South Carolina, a supporter of the arts, including Marcel Duchamp, and a prominent political figure in the State. The Red rebellion of 1915 resulted in the loss of the mansion house at Marshlands, which was burned down by her chief hunter, Cassius, and the death of her brother, Jacob, who had been a soldier invalided by gas. This started a personal vendetta between Colleton, whose political influence could raise the state militia, and Cassius and his partner, Cherry, which lasted until Cassius was killed shortly after the Armistice of 1917.
She was briefly involved in a romantic affair with Confederate Navy commander Roger Kimball during the Great War, but broke off the affair when Kimball became too involved in the Freedom Party.
During the period between the World Wars, Colleton became involved with the Freedom Party as a designer for mass-rallies, but stopped her support after a Freedom Party sniper killed President Wade Hampton V. However, as she realized that the Freedom Party was likely to win control of the nation, Colleton worked her way back into favor with Featherston.
Colleton was killed in a U.S. bombing raid on Charleston, South Carolina, in the early days of the 1941 War.
Tom Colleton
(GW:AF - SA:RE, viewpoint character SA:RE-SA:DE)
Tom Colleton was the brother of Anne Colleton. He served as a Confederate infantry officer during the war of 1914-1917, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, but left the Army after the war ended. He, and his sister, using South Carolina militia, ended up hunting down the last remnants of the Congaree Socialist Republic. He was recalled to service in the 1941 War, as Lieutenant Colonel. Colleton's unit was involved in the invasion of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and was trapped in the Battle of Pittsburgh, where he was killed in January 1943.
Anthony Dresser
(AE:BI)
Founder of the Freedom Party. An analog to Anton Drexler, the founder of the Nazi Party.
Anthony Dresser founded the Freedom Party in Richmond, Virginia presumably after the end of the Great War in 1917. The party consisted only of a few people and was only able to get fliers across war-ravaged Richmond because one of its members was a printer. Jake Featherston became interested in the party and soon became one of its few members. Anthony Dresser tried giving a speech a campaign for the Confederate Congress and was nearly laughed off the stage until Featherston stepped up. Featherston began blaming the blacks and war department for the CSA's loss in the war which struck a chord with many Confederates. Featherston began a speaking tour, raising support for the party and soon becoming the Freedom Party's Head of Propaganda.
With this new-found support for Featherston, Dresser became afraid for his position in the party and tried to have Featherston removed, stating Featherston had turned the party's message into one saying "Hang the generals and hang the niggers" and was giving people the wrong idea about the party. Though Dresser found some support amongst the rank-and-file Party members Featherston pointed out that he raised more then half of the party's funding and without him, the party would go back to being nothing. The motion to remove Featherston failed, and Featherston himself raised the motion to remove Dresser. The motion was carried out by a landslide and Featherston became head of the Freedom Party while Dresser faded into obscurity.
Jake Featherston
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:DE)
Jake Featherston is a fictional Confederate counterpart of Adolf Hitler. Physically Featherston is a "raw-boned" man who remains slender into his fifties, with "dangerous" eyes, lanky brown hair that he combs straight down, and a harsh, rasping voice. He is extremely petty and vindictive, taking the slightest mistake or remark as a personal affront and then vowing to take vengeance on the perpetrator, be it a single man or an entire race or country. Featherston also has the uncanny ability to vent out his anger and frustration in a manner that captures the attention of his audience and hold it spellbound, enticing them to join him in his madness.
Born the son of an (ex-)slave overseer sometime in the 1880s, Featherston grew up in a poor household and joined the CS Army. By 1914 he was a sergeant in the First Richmond Howitzers, under Captain Jeb Stuart III. As part of the Army of Northern Virginia, Featherston fought on the Susquehanna River and then fell back towards Maryland. During this time he reported his suspicions to an intelligence officer about Pompey, Captain Stuart's body servant, being a Marxist rebel. Though made more out of dislike than any real conviction, the accusation would have more influence on Featherston's life than he imagined possible at the time. Not only did Pompey, protected from investigation by his master, turn out to be a real Red when the Negro uprisings broke out, but the intelligence officer in question was one Clarence Potter, whose destiny would be forevermore inextricable with Featherston's.
As the uprisings petered out in early 1916, Jeb Stuart III, who had destroyed his career by protecting Pompey, got himself killed in combat. His father was General Jeb Stuart, Jr., who ensured that Featherston never made officer's rank despite his fitness for the post. Previously no more racist than other ordinary white Confederates, Featherston now burned with intense fury at blacks and aristocratic officers alike. By the end of the war, Featherston had begun pouring out his hate on Gray Eagle scratchpads (what would become Over Open Sights), and when the ceasefire went into effect vowed to Clarence Potter that he would have vengeance.
During the aftermath of the war, Featherston drifted for a short while, before joining the newly created Freedom Party. Swiftly establishing himself as head propagandist, it was not long before Featherston, aided by Party member Ferdinand Koenig, became its leader. With his raw energy and humble origins, Featherston had little trouble whipping up support from much of the Confederate populace, and it seemed by the early 1920s that he would surely be leading the country. But with the assassination of President Wade Hampton V in 1923 by a Party stalwart came the Freedom Party's sudden and near-total collapse as a political force.
The following years were spent by Featherston repairing what damage he could, and waiting for his next opportunity. The vital discovery of the power of wireless (radio) and his subsequent broadcasts did much to aid the Party's recovery. The damage caused by the Mississippi floods and the Business Collapse of the early 1930s ensured that the Freedom Party swept the elections in 1933.
Once he was elected leader using legal methods, Featherston slowly and quietly twisted the Confederate Constitution into giving him more power. He maneuvered the Supreme Court into striking itself out of existence, provoked the black minority toward rebellion with race riots, created farm machinery to root them out of their livelihoods so he could incarcerate them in camps, and amended the single-term limit by repealing it so he could run multiple times. In the meantime, the black rebellions gave the CSA a plausible excuse to reinstitute conscription and arm its airplanes. By 1941, Featherston was ready for war. He snaked the USA into giving him excuses to attack it, and inaugurated 1941 War in North America with a surprise air raid on Philadelphia and the immense success of Operation Blackbeard. His megalomaniacal mindset would prove to be his undoing, however, and his expectations of quick victory were quickly dashed when Al Smith rejected his 'generous' peace offer. His downfall began to unravel starting with his disastrous attempt to take Pittsburgh in the fall of 1942 and the subsequent loss of an entire army trapped in a pocket there.
Psychology
Featherston is a victim of his own megalomania, as he forces himself to attempt to accomplish increasingly dangerous goals in order to keep up the impression that he is "great." He expressed several times his opinion that without him the Confederate States of America would amount to nothing, and that without him race relations would rot the core of the Confederate Dream. He seems to be a sufferer of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, where he perceives himself to be the center of his universe. Since he holds the highest position of power ever achieved in North America, and worked hard to get to the top, that only works to stoke the fire within him.
Some notable quotes:
"I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth." --line he always uses to begin his radio broadcasts and speeches.
"I haven't backed away from a fight yet. I don't aim to start now." --Featherston to Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest III, chief of the Confederate General Staff, after the latter warned him about an impending US attack.
"You torpedoed my river bill. No telling how much more damage you'll cause me in the future, so good bye. I don't fool around with people who make trouble for me, Mr. Chief Justice. I kill 'em." --President Featherston to Chief Justice McReynolds on why he was dissolving the CS Supreme Court.
"No, it's not, on account of I imagined it. And what I imagine, I do." --Featherston's response after the Chief Justice called his act of abolishing the CS Supreme Court "unimaginable".
"I want your opinion on how to run my business, you can bet I'll ask for it. Till I do, you can damn well keep your mouth shut about it." --Featherston's response to Brigadier General Clarence Potter's advice that the Confederate States make peace while there is still time.
Saul Goldman
(AE:CH - SA:DE)
A high-ranking member of the Freedom Party. He is this universe's working equivalent to Joseph Goebbels
Saul Goldman was the director of the first radio network in Richmond in the 1920s when Jake Featherston of the Freedom Party found him. Being the first politician to recognize radio's full potential, the Freedom Party leader used Goldman's studio to broadcast speeches to the Confederate States people. Goldman wasn't turned away by the repulsive nature of the Freedom Party; rather, he was glad the Party went after blacks and not Jews, the way the Russians did in Poland. In time, Featherston was elected Confederate president, and he gave Goldman the post of Director of Communications - the head of the Freedom Party's propaganda, in other words. Goldman consolidated the media networks and publishing companies of the CSA into one ministry under the Freedom Party's direction, and imposed near-totalitarian control over what the Confederate people read and heard. And while doing all this, Goldman remained the quiet, shy little guy that he was before he got involved in Freedom Party matters, never having become the balls-and-fists type of stalwart that the Freedom Party attracted in droves. Jake Featherston gave him credit for being the one man in the Party that "had more brains than balls."
Saul Goldman could easily be the analog to Doctor Joseph Goebbels, the head of propaganda in Nazi Germany. However, his easy-going and gentle personality clashes starkly with Goebbels' crass demagoguery and spiteful attitude, and seems more than willing to live a simple life in a simple world that had gone mad.
Roger Kimball
(GW:AF, viewpoint character, GW:WH - AE:BI)
Lieutenant Commander Roger Kimball was a submarine commander in the Confederate States Navy during the Great War. He received a Confederate Navy Cross for sinking two US battleships in New York's harbor. He resumed command of a submarine until receiving news of the Armistice in 1917, upon which he torpedoed the USS Ericsson after hostilities ended, killing, among others, Seaman George Enos.
Kimball was romantically involved with Anne Colleton in 1915. They resumed their relationship after the War, when both were involved in the Freedom Party's rise; however, Colleton broke off the relationship when the Party lost prestige following the assassination of Confederate President Wade Hampton V. Shortly after their acrimonious breakup, Kimball was shot and killed by Sylvia Enos, widow of George Enos. His death probably saved him from sharing Willy Knight's fate, as Kimball had ambitions of succeeding Featherston after the latter's (presumably) one and only presidency.
Willy Knight
(AE:BI - SA:RE)
Willy Knight was the Vice-President of Jake Featherston's Confederate government, and is his world's analog to real-life Ernst Rohm. He was the head of the Redemption League, which held similar goals to the Freedom Party, before his group was swallowed by the Freedom Party. His name had its genesis most likely in the Willy's Knight automobile from the same time period.
After an attempted coup d'etat in 1939 against Jake Featherston after the amending of the Confederate Constitution which allowed Presidents to serve more than one-term in office, Knight is imprisoned in Camp Dependable, run by Jefferson Pinkard. He is executed in 1941.
Ferdinand Koenig
(AE:BI - SA:DE)
A high-ranking member of the Freedom Party, in Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 series of fiction books. The character of Ferdinand Koenig appears to have been inspired by both Heinrich Himmler (in manner and function as executor of Featherston's plans) and Hermann Göring (in physical appearance and similarity in name).
Koenig began his career as Party secretary, where he was found by Jake Featherston and molded into his staunchest supporter - backing the former artillery sergeant in his bid for power at the top of the Party. Twice he ran on the Freedom ticket as vice president, but allowed the spot to go to Willy Knight in 1933. Instead of the useless position that had been given to Knight to shut him up, Featherston made Koenig attorney general of the Confederate States.
Once in office, Koenig searched for ways to destroy the Supreme Court and increase Featherston's power. With the help of lawyers, he used the precedent of the CSA not having a Supreme Court for the first five years of its existence, and that the country can survive without one. When Chief Justice James Clark McReynolds struck down President Featherston's River and Dam Act, Koenig hit back hard, ordering the Supreme Court dissolved and the executive branch to assume supreme judicial powers on the basis that the country needed the dams constructed more than it needed the high court striking down laws and making trouble with the Featherston Administration.
Even after the Freedom Party won the reins of power in the election of 1933, the Whigs and Radical Liberals still stirred up opposition to the Freedom government. With a nod from Koenig and the Confederate States Justice Department, local police officials and state governments in states across the CSA arrested hundreds of Whig and Radical Liberal party members on false pretexts (such as "disturbing the peace," "public drunkenness" and "inciting to riot") and incarcerated them in prisons and later state correctional camps. Freedom Party stalwarts beat and insulted the anti-Freedom men until they were deemed ready to re-enter Confederate society. Some of the more vocal opponents were "shot while resisting arrest" - a euphemism for murder, while judges and district attorneys who refused to cooperate were coerced into resigning, explaining to the public that they were doing so for "reasons of health."
As the 1940s dawned, Featherston decided that the time had come to begin "population reductions" i.e. killing off the Confederacy's blacks. Koenig was tasked with overseeing this program, for which he ordered a number of camps established in Louisiana. Secrecy was aided by the recent seizure of that state by the Freedom Party from Radical Liberal Huey Long, and subsequent roundup of political prisoners.
Shipments of Negroes commenced in 1940, men from Confederate jails or those arrested at roadblocks in the towns. Before long places such as Camp Dependable, outside of Alexandria, Louisiana, were filled to overflowing. Shortly before the outbreak of 1941 War, Koenig phoned Camp Dependable's commandant, Jefferson Pinkard, with the news that 2000 more blacks would arriving, along with an unspoken order to ensure there was sufficient room for them. Other camps received similar instructions, resulting in the first massacres.
The early killings were a limited success; although black men were continuously butchered the surviving prisoners simmered on the edge of revolt. Nor could some of the guards handle the work; suicides and transfer requests shot through the roof. In late 1941, Pinkard came up with a solution. Inspired by a camp guard's suicide, he invented a specially-fitted truck which enabled the driver to flood the rear compartment with gas. Overnight, the "population reductions" became easier; blacks thought the trucks were shipping prisoners to other camps, and the guards didn't have to do anything save drive and dig. Featherston was delighted; he requisitioned whole fleets of trucks from the Confederate Army, regardless of the fact that there was a war on.
In early 1942, Koenig upped the ante. Entire portions of black districts in towns would be cleared out over the course of a single night, while Pinkard was given a new assignment: constructing an enormous camp out in Texas to handle the anticipated volume of black inmates. This was to become Camp Determination.
Quotes:
"Say that he died of natural causes. His heart stopped, didn't it?" --Koenig to Jefferson Pinkard, after the latter asked him how to report the murder of Willy Knight.
Donald Partridge
(AE:VO-SA:DE)
Donald Partridge was the Freedom Party's replacement for the slot of the vice-presidency after Willy Knight's attemped coup. Chosen because Jake Featherston reckoned him a useless, harmless idiot, unlike the ambitious Knight. Partridge spends his time in the vice presidency thinking of dumb farm-girl jokes to tell Featherston, or in the company of various ladies in hotels here and there, according to secret Freedom Party guard reports. His name is a play on former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle.
Quotes:
"I got a joke for you!" --Partridge's greeting.
Jefferson Davis Pinkard
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF - SA:DE)
An Alabaman native, Jefferson Pinkard was a steel man at the Sloss Works in Birmingham when the Great War broke out. Conscripted into the Confederate Army late in 1915, he received his baptism of fire against Red rebels in Georgia before being sent to west Texas, where he befriended Sonoran recruit Hipolito Rodriguez. Coming home on leave in 1917, he caught his wife Emily having sex with his best friend and next-door neighbor. That, combined with the Confederacy's defeat that year, left him a bitter and vengeful man.
During the postwar years he found solace in the Freedom Party, becoming a regular attendee at Birmingham chapter meetings and joining other Freedom Party stalwarts in disrupting their opponent's rallies. That devotion would pay dividends in later years but cost him his marriage: though he tried to forget his wife's adultery, his increasing distance led to her being unfaithful once more. Catching Emily in the act, Pinkard threw her onto the street. Between the divorce and the Freedom Party's decline after Wade Hampton V's assassination, Pinkard decided to fight for the Imperialists in the Mexican Civil War.
Pinkard's stint in Mexico turned out to be an enormous blessing. He found himself almost by accident running a prisoner of war camp, an experience which proved to be a turning point in his life. After the Business Collapse, Pinkard, who had resumed his job at the Sloss Works, was laid off. The Party quickly set him up with a new occupation as a prison guard, and when the first camps for political prisoners were set up, Pinkard was offered a job as a camp commandant at Camp Dependable, Louisiana.
Pinkard at first was in charge of detaining political prisoners. However after Vice President Willy Knight attempted to assassinate President Jake Featherston, Knight became a prisoner. Soon many suspected black rebels were imprisoned.
Pinkard had to kill off many black inmates by ordering a firing squad to shoot them. However this became too much for many guards. A guard named Chick Blades killed himself by venting gas into his car, giving Pinkard the idea to put blacks in trucks and gas them. This was used to great effect.
Pinkard eventually was ordered to have Willy Knight shot, which he did. Pinkard married Chick Blades' widow and moved to a camp being constructed in Texas: Camp Determination. When Pinkard came up with an even more efficient way to reduce population, he was promoted to the rank of Brigade Leader (brigadier general in Army ranking). He could be a counterpart to numerous architects of the Nazi death camp system, including Adolf Eichmann and Rudolf Hoess.
Clarence Potter
(GW:AF - AE:BI, viewpoint character AE:CH - SA:DE)
Clarence Potter, along with Tom Colleton, is an analogue of the Wehrmacht officers who despised Hitler but faithfully served Germany. In Potter's case, he appears to be based on Wilhelm Canaris.
Potter was from Richmond, Virginia and seems to have originated from a middle-class background. Before the Great War, he attended college at Yale, leaving him with a permanent half-Yankee accent that sometimes earns him suspicious looks from other Confederates. Potter's time there also gave him a greater understanding of the USA than most of his compatriots.
During the Great War Potter was a CS Army major assigned to Army of Northern Virginia intelligence. It was in 1915 that his path first crossed with that of Jake Featherston, then an artillery sergeant. When attempting to dig out Marxist Negro cells within the army, Featherston mentioned his suspicions about his commanding officer's body servant Pompey. That CO was Jeb Stuart III, son of General Jeb Stuart, Jr., a mighty power in Richmond and the man who quashed the investigation.
Unfortunately for all involved, Pompey was revealed to be a leader in the Red Rebellion of 1915-16. Disgraced, Jeb III threw his life away in combat and neither Potter nor Featherston ever saw a promotion for the rest of the war. The latter turned into a bitter, vengeful man; Potter was the only officer he had any respect for - and not much at that. The two men both hung tight while the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia fell to pieces during the summer of 1917, and shared a whiskey when the cease-fire went into effect.
Their uneasy relationship fell apart after the war. Featherston moved to Richmond and began his rise within the Freedom Party. Potter, discharged from the army, made his living as a private detective while becoming increasingly involved in Whig Party activities. During the postwar years he and ex-submariner Roger Kimball attempted to get hold of Featherston once the former sergeant became a public figure. His half-hearted intentions of influencing Featherston were dashed when the Freedom Party leader sent a dismissive telegram in reply. Kimball became one of Featherston's right-hand men until his death in 1923; Potter sought to contain the damage by working with the Whigs, including briefly with Anne Colleton. He had little success, as his fellow party members remained mired in anachronistic thinking and procedures.
After Featherston became president in 1934, Potter believed that it was only a matter of time before he found himself in a camp for political prisoners. Instead, he resolved to rid the Confederacy of what he was convinced was a leader who would bring ruin upon his country. Potter traveled to Richmond for the 1936 Olympics and took a seat in the swimming stadium, intending to kill Featherston. Fate intervened when a black frankfurter seller with the same idea pulled out a submachine gun and sprayed bullets around so recklessly Potter had to shoot him in self-defense.
With Potter an overnight hero, Featherston decided that rather than dispose of him, the former Whig would be a greater asset elsewhere. Despite his feelings for the Freedom Party, Potter's patriotic sentiments won out, and he duly accepted a colonel's commission and a posting to Intelligence.
An outsider in Confederate Intelligence (being neither part of the old guard nor a fanatical Freedom Party supporter), Potter nonetheless distinguished himself in the years before the 1941 War. He was the first to seriously consider not just what Confederate agents could do to the US but also the havoc that American spies could wring. When Featherston read Potter's conclusions, he promoted his old enemy to Brigadier General and allowed Potter to manage operations against the US.
Prior to Operation Blackbeard in June 1941, Potter and his agents were instrumental in keeping the US off-guard while ascertaining American strength and doctrine. Though Featherston acted too rashly for Potter's comfort - he was convinced that had his advice been acted on the invasion would have been a strategic as well as tactical surprise - Potter's competent organization of pro-Confederate saboteurs helped George Patton's army reach Lake Erie by August. Further sabotage prevented the American barrel (tank) commander Irving Morrell from doing any serious damage to the Confederate corridor for the rest of the year.
After Blackbeard's initial success, Potter concentrated upon ferreting out spies within the Confederacy and keeping Generals Nathan Bedford Forrest III and Patton appraised of US movements in north Virginia. After the disaterous Confederate defeat at Pittsburgh, Potter has joined with General Forrest and other Confederate officers in a possible plot to overthrow Jake Featherston.
Stephen Ramsay
(Viewpoint character GW:AF)
Stephen Ramsay was a corporal in the Confederate Army serving in Sequoyah at the beginning of the Great War. He was seconded to the Creek Nation Army of the Five Civilized Tribes as an officer, and was killed charging an American trench in 1915.
Hipolito Rodriguez
(GW:WH - GW:B, viewpoint character AE:CH - SA:DE)
Hipolito Rodriguez is a farmer from Bayoreca, Sonora, which in Timeline-191 is part of the Confederate States. His firs
Timeline-191Timeline-191 is a fan name given to a series of Harry Turtledove alternate history novels.
TL-191 includes the novel How Few Remain, and the Great War, American Empire, and Settling Accounts series. It has run from 1862 to 1943, and is likely to continue after the 1940s.
It is named after Robert E. Lee's Special Order No. 191, detailing the Army of Northern Virginia's invasion of the Union in September 1862 during the American Civil War. In reality the orders were lost and recovered by a Union soldier, allowing General George B. McClellan to surprise Lee and force the Battle of Antietam.
The Wars between States
In TL-191 Lee's orders were never found by Union troops and McClellan was caught by surprise. Lee forced him into battle on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and destroyed the Army of the Potomac in the Battle of Camp Hill. Lee went on to capture Philadelphia, winning the Confederate States of America diplomatic recognition from Great Britain and France, and eventually winning the war.
Abraham Lincoln was defeated in the 1864 elections, and another Republican president would not be elected until 1880. James Blaine was a hard-liner who precipitated a war against the Confederate States over the purchase of the Mexican provinces Sonora and Chihuahua.
Due to spectacular leadership from Confederate general Thomas Jackson against his counterpart William Rosecrans and the assistance of Great Britain and France, the United States was once again defeated and the Republicans turned out in the 1882 elections. In return for British and French assistance, Confederate President James Longstreet was obliged to propose the nominal manumission of the country's slaves, which proceeded throughout the 1880s. The defeated United States, realizing it needed powerful allies to counter the Confederate alliances with Britain and France, begins to accept the assistance of the German Empire.
A battle in the Montana Territory against the British produced two American heroes who would be rivals for forty years: General George Armstrong Custer and Theodore Roosevelt, colonel of the Unauthorized Regiment.
Witnessing the collapse of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, now an orator, allied with American socialists and led left wing Republicans into this new party.
- How Few Remain (1997)
Great War
- The Great War Trilogy
- American Front (1998)
- Walk in Hell (1999)
- Breakthroughs (2000)
The Road to War
For the next thirty years, the Democratic Party dominated the politics of the United States. The Socialists eventually displaced the Republicans as the opposition party, and the GOP devolved into a small regional party of the Midwest. The United States economy and military were reformed along Prussian lines: peacetime conscription and a naval buildup began, and resources such as coal, kerosene, and food products became subject to rationing. Large trusts held untrammeled power over the economy, with government encouragement, and labor rights largely ignored. The US eventually formally allied with the German Empire and joined the Quadruple Alliance.
A racial caste system similar to apartheid had been instituted in the CS, where Negroes were defined as "residents" rather then citizens, and who could not vote or even move freely about the country. Under the weight of this oppression the socialist theories of Karl Marx had taken hold among southern Negroes. White politics, meanwhile, was dominated by the Whigs, a conservative, mostly upper-class party, opposed by the Radical Liberals, a small opposition party which was popular in the fringes of the Confederacy, such as in Louisiana, State of Sequoyah, Sonora, Chihuahua, and the state of Cuba.
Canada was largely unchanged, except for the Anglo-Quebecois rivalry being overshadowed by fear of the United States, and universal conscription for the armed forces.
Overseas little seems changed, except that Japan, in addition to holding Chosen and Formosa (Korea and Taiwan, respectively), had also seized the Philippines from Spain during the Hispano-Japanese War (c. 1905). There was no Russo-Japanese War. Alaska was - for understandable reasons - never bought by the USA, and remained a Russian colony.
Relations between the two American nations had been tense since the Second Mexican War of 1881–1882. The Confederates joined their traditional allies Britain and France alongside the Russian Empire in the Quadruple Entente. Incidents such as border raids and the Anglo-Confederate proposal for a Nicaragua Canal nearly brought the two alliances to war many times. But when the spark for war comes, it is not in America but in the distant Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1914: Declaration and Invasion
The Empire's Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and his family were killed by a terrorist bomb while touring the town of Sarajevo in June 1914. The Austrian government quickly learned that a Serb group was responsible, and accused the government of nearby Serbia of colluding with the terrorists. The Russian Tsar Nicholas II backed Serbia, and German Kaiser Wilhelm II backed Austria-Hungary, and the major powers of each system mobilized their militaries, effectively signifying their intent to go to war. The Great War began in August 1914, initially pitting Britain, France, and Russia against Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Across the Atlantic, Democratic President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the US military to mobilize in late July, following Germany's lead. In response Confederate President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Confederate military to do the same, and fighting soon broke out on their common border and the high seas. The United States began the war in North America by officially declaring war in early August. President Wilson responded in kind, although he had hoped to avoid a war. Wilson's speech, given in a tightly-packed public square of Richmond, Virginia decorated with statues of southern war heroes George Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston, became particularly famous.
Hoping to emulate General Lee, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia launched a massive invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania in August, targeting the northern capital of Philadelphia. The ANV quickly overran the old capital of Washington, D.C. and pushed on through Maryland.
The US Army took a different approach, and ordered First Army under Lieutenant General George Custer and Second Army under Major General John Pershing to cross the Ohio River and invade Kentucky. Although Confederate resistance was high, especially from river gunboats modeled after the original Monitor, they succeeded in establishing a bridgehead on the southern bank. A US invasion of Sonora, intended to capture the Confederacy's sole Pacific port of Guaymas soon bogged down. A young army captain named Irving Morrell was wounded in this venture, and spent much of the next six months in Tucson, New Mexico Territory recuperating.
The US also launched attacks on the British dominion of Canada, specifically in Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. Perhaps the most successful maneuver during these early stages was the US Navy's capture of the British base at Pearl Harbor in the Sandwich Islands in a surprise attack.
1915: Stalemate
These offensives soon stalled, however; the US armies found it difficult to push south, and the ANV was slowed by the 1914–15 winter and the invasion of Pennsylvania ground to a halt at the Susquehanna River, only a dozen miles from Philadelphia. From that high-water mark, US forces slowly pushed them back into Maryland.
Although the US forces easily conquered the southern bank of the St. Lawrence River, crossing it proved another matter. The geography of the Niagara Peninsula soon bottlenecked the invading army, and though Winnipeg, Manitoba, a major rail junction, lay relatively close to the US border, the War Department allocated too few troops to capture it.
Trench warfare became ubiquitous as each side dug in for protection from machine-gun fire. Troops huddled in these trenches as heavy artillery in their rear pounded the enemy lines night and day. They dreaded the order "Over the top!" which meant they would have to leave the safety of their lines to charge into No Man's Land, in the hope of capturing the enemy trenches on the other side. Far from the quick, glorious conquest each side had imagined, the Great War became a long, bloody stalemate.
Early in 1915, another front was opened when the Utah Mormons seceded from the US and declared themselves the independent nation Deseret. Mormon relations with the rest of the country had been hostile since the Utah War of the 1850s and the brief uprising during the Second Mexican War, and they believed the distracted US government would be unable to subdue them. They were wrong; Utah sat on one of the major transcontinental rail lines, and President Roosevelt stated the US would not tolerate unlawful rebellion. The Mormon rebellion raged until mid-1916, when it was finally crushed and Salt Lake City captured.
In the autumn of 1915, with the armies of the Confederacy locked in mortal combat with those of the USA along the border regions, the CSA's blacks rose up in revolt. Bitter over their treatment by the whites, and fueled by rhetoric of Marxism and the teachings of Abraham Lincoln, the blacks declared Red revolution in several areas across the CSA and established "socialist republics", while massacring whites and seeking justice against their former white masters, although most trials were shams, and the executions brutal. These rebellions were gradually crushed by 1916, although white justice mellowed out a bit as thoughts were preoccupied with winning the war. Ironically, this revolt actually made white people start to believe in the military potential of blacks.
1916: Slaughter
Taking advantage of the Confederacy's plight, the US First Army finished slogging through western Kentucky and marched into western Tennessee, while the CS Army of Northern Virginia was pushed south toward Washington. In mid-spring of 1916, a new armored technical advance called the "barrel" (called a tank by the British) was introduced to combat for the first time by US forces operating in the Roanoke Valley. In Tennessee, General Custer transformed his tactics for cavalry into a doctrine for the new barrels, but the War Department would hear none of it. When Custer's summer offensive opened that summer, tens of thousands of US soldiers were lost attacking Confederate lines, and the new barrels broke down in the hilly terrain, not being used the way Custer thought they should be.
The lack of British troops in Canada meant that the USA, while initially held back by Canadians, would slowly advance toward their triple objectives of Quebec City, Toronto, and Winnipeg. Largely thanks to the efforts of Irving Morrell, US forces pushed up to Banff in the Canadian Rockies and cut the Pacific coast off from the rest of the country. At sea, the great Battle of the Three Navies between the USA one one side, and UK and Japan on the other, prevented the Entente from recapturing the Sandwich Islands. With the Central Pacific in US hands, a US Navy flotilla made its way south toward the Cape of South America and the Atlantic on the other side, with the intent of cutting off Argentine grain and beef shipments to the UK.
On the Maryland front, the state was cleared of Confederate soldiers save for those holding Washington, the nominal US capital. In Tennessee that autumn, more attacks toward Nashville gained the USA nothing but a possible Democratic loss at the polls, with the possiblity a Socialist President would seek peace with the CSA and renounce all the bloody gains. Save for a local attack on the Roanoke Front that pushed the USA out of western Virginia, the Confederates stayed on the defensive that autumn and attempted to drain the USA dry, hoping to sicken the US population of war.
Nevertheless, for all the wishes of the Socialist Party and the Confederates, Theodore Roosevelt was re-elected. In Richmond, the hopes of President Gabriel Semmes and his Cabinet were dashed. The USA had another four years to crush the CSA, and the Confederates were already running out of white men to fight. A bill was passed authorizing the training and arming of Negro troops who would serve in the lines, with civil rights given after the war.
In Europe, the war seemed little changed from our world, with the exception of Verdun's capture by the Germans, and an apparantly heavier use of African infantry by the French Army. Also, Italy stayed neutral in the conflict.
1917: Breakthroughs
General Custer secretly developed a scheme to quickly end the war in the USA's favor, using a massed-barrel (tank) formation forbidden by the War Department. Disguising his true intentions to all but Lieutenant-Colonel Morrell and his adjutant, Major Abner Dowling, and lying to the president, Custer launched his Barrel Roll Offensive on Remembrance Day—April 22, 1917—and quickly broke through the Confederate trench lines north of the Tennessee capital. The Southerners withdrew to a line centered on Nashville, where Custer hit them again three weeks later by outflanking the city using a plan concocted by Morrell. Nashville fell, despite the best efforts of the newly formed CS colored regiments to stave off Custer's barrels, and the state capitol became First Army headquarters. From there, in July, Custer attacked in the direction of Murfreesboro, and near Nolensville received a Confederate request for a local armistice. President Roosevelt assented, and peace on the North American front came to Tennessee a week before the rest of the US-CS frontline. At the same time, mutinies in the French Army led to that country's exit from the war, while Russia collapsed into revolution and anarchy.
On the same day the Barrel Roll Offensive began in Tennessee, the US Army in northern Virginia attacked southward toward Manassas at the same time as US troops entered occupied Washington DC. The de jure US capital was recaptured after several days of intense street fighting, which leveled the city and its famous landmarks. In northern Virginia, US attack after US attack forced the CS Army of Northern Virginia to retreat south. In battles at Round Hill, Centreville, and Bull Run creek, rear-guard actions led by a few battered batteries of the First Richmond Howitzers prevented the complete destruction of Robert E. Lee's fabled army, but it was obvious the war was on the verge of being lost—a notion that did not bode well with several Confederate soldiers, who reckoned the war was won only months before.
In Canada, Custer's methods were used to break through the Anglo-Canadian lines south of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the provincial capital was taken in late May. The same strategy was used by US forces battling their way into Toronto, Ontario, the fall of which precipitated a British Empire request for a cease-fire with the USA on all land fronts. The armistice was granted in early June, and, with US-German naval operations cutting off Great Britain from its Argentine and Australasian food suppliers, the United Kingdom sued for peace later that summer—the last opponent of the Quadruple Alliance still in the war.
The Confederate States of America started sending peace feelers to Philadelphia as early as the fall of Nashville, but Theodore Roosevelt refused to grant a cease-fire until certain the CSA was severely hammered elsewhere. The last hammers on the Confederate Army came in late July, when fighting reached the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, which was only fifty miles from the Confederate States capital. With a cease-fire already in effect in Tennessee, Sequoyah overrun, and fighting out west in Texas and Arkansas sputtering down, the CSA agreed to a general armistice on land and at sea. For the first time since August 1914, the guns fell silent in North America.
At sea, however, the submarine CSS Bonefish, led by Confederate Navy man Roger Kimball, carried out a sneak attack on the USS Ericsson even though he was fully aware of the war's end. For a long time after the war, both North and South believed the ship's destruction was a work of the Royal Navy, as the war between the USA and the British Empire at sea had not yet ended.
The American Empire
- The American Empire Trilogy
- Blood and Iron (2001)
- The Center Cannot Hold (2002)
- The Victorious Opposition (2003)
1918: Old Animosities Rekindled
The United States celebrated hard during 1918 as it reveled in the euphoria of having won revenge on the Confederate States, with parades and parties lasting well into the autumn. President Roosevelt and General Custer (general being his true rank now, as Roosevelt promoted the aging officer in Nashville as the war was ending) rode together in the Philadelphia Remembrance Day Parade—the biggest one to date. The tradition of showing the national flag upside-down to show distress was put aside to show the USA had reversed the outcome of 1882.
But, the U.S. and C.S. navies still had to deploy minesweepers to clear their harbors, which kept them busy until the end of the American Empire trilogy.
Not everyone celebrated hard, however. Returning veterans found scabs working for cheaper wages in the factories and mines they had worked at before the call to arms during the war. More veterans found themselves being put down by capitalists and factory owners, and went on strike in industrial centers like Pittsburgh and Toledo. The owners sicced the Pinkertons and police on the strikers, but were repulsed by the war veterans, having faced far worse challenges in the trenches. The country seemed to be on the verge of revolution, and the Socialist Party capitalized on gains among the lower classes. In November 1918, they captured the House of Representatives for the first time, upsetting Theodore Roosevelt's plans for domestic and foreign affairs.
Citizens of the defeated and truncated Confederacy were hardly in a mood to celebrate. President Roosevelt had forced humiliating terms upon them in return for peace, and President Semmes had no choice but to agree to it. Kentucky was lost to the United States. So was Sequoyah, and western Texas—which the USA admitted into the Union as the state of Houston, with its capital at Lubbock. Pieces of Arkansas, Sonora and Virginia held by US troops at the armistice were also admitted into respective US states. The CS Army and Navy were severely curtailed, and massive reparations had to be made to Philadelphia. These terms angered Confederates, but they had no choice. It was Roosevelt's peace or the war renewed, and they were in no condition to fight. Due to the payments being sent North, the Confederate dollar spiraled out of control, as hyperinflation ruined the CSA economy. In reaction, hatred against the USA went up among the white population, with several reactionary political parties sprouted up across the South. One of these fringe groups was the Freedom Party, founded by Anthony Dresser in Richmond, Virginia.
As for the British Empire, the Dominion of Canada included, President Roosevelt forced recognition of the Republic of Quebec (established in April 1917 as the war in Canada was drawing to a close) and the Republic of Ireland out of London, along with relinquishing claims to the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Sandwich Islands, and all of Canada. The Dominion government was made an illegal assembly, with US Army authorities setting up occupation headquarters in Winnipeg and turned each province into a military district. Occupied Canada was declared to be US territory as part of the new American Empire, "stretching from the Gulf of California to the Arctic Ocean." In 1919, General George Custer requested and was granted the post of governor-general of Occupied Canada in retribution for what he perceived to be a Canadian "murder" of his brother Tom in the fighting of 1881.
1919-1924: American Blood & Iron
The Freedom Party was doing well for itself in Richmond. Its chief speaker—vengeful, spiteful and bitter ex-sergeant named Jake Featherston—harangued crowds at public meetings and squares on how the Confederacy had been "stabbed in the back" by the Whig Party, the War Department, and, most of all, the black minority, who had risen up in Red rebellion in 1915. His angry mannerisms connected him and his Party to the masses, and soon the Freedom Party became the white man's proto-version of the Socialists popular with Confederate blacks and Northerners in the USA. Everyone who knew better saw Featherston as the Party's true leader, and the "Sarge" won leadership in a power struggle against Dresser in mid-1919. Once he was comfortably settled in his new office, Featherston reorganized the Party into a political party revolving around his goals and ambitions, and white-shirted "stalwarts" were soon elected into the Confederate Congress, while their assault squads took on Featherston's enemies.
The victorious United States, with its American Empire, ignored political events occurring down south, save for a worried Representative from New York City named Flora Hamburger. Despite her calls for action, her party took no notice, preferring on ousting President Roosevelt out of office in 1920—which it did, when Upton Sinclair becoming president of the United States on March 4, 1921. That same year, Jake Featherston ran for office against Wade Hampton V of the Whigs and Ainsworth Layne of the Radical Liberals. He lost by a narrow margin but resolved to fight on. In the meantime, a deranged stalwart assassinated the new president in Alabama, and the Freedom Party immediately began to lose support—which hurt the Party a lot in the elections of 1923 and 1925. Another factor that limited the Freedom Party's chances for success was President Sinclair's lifting of the war reparations, which took meat out of the Freedom Party's platform. Featherston and his most ardent stalwarts had nothing to look forward to for the next several years.
In Canada, Governor-General Custer ruled the former dominion with an iron-felt glove, surviving several assassination attempts by Manitoban farmer Arthur McGregor, whom he killed in the farmer's final attempt as Custer was parading through his town. At that point, the war hero was retiring, having been forced out by the new Socialist administration, who wanted to shelve the USA's militarist-feel and go back to the days of peace, hoping that by treating its neighbors with respect there would never be another war. Sinclair was popular enough to win re-election in 1924—the same year the Freedom Party started involving stalwarts in the Mexican Civil War, an action the USA did nothing to stop.
1925-1933: Freedom on the Brink of Power
Radio had just been discovered, and was now starting to reach the people. Jake Featherston was the first politician to realize its potential, and soon people sitting in their homes could hear his raspy, thundery voice shouting from their radio sets, telling them the "truth" about the Yankees, Whigs, and blacks. Even with this broadened appeal to the masses, the Freedom Party's hopes ebbed further with Featherston's defeat at the polls in 1927 against incumbent Burton Mitchel III. The Confederate people were just starting to enjoy the fruits of peace and prosperity, and the war and black uprisings were the mere past—despite Featherston and his stalwarts doing their utmost to remind them. It seemed nothing could change the fortunes, then in 1929 the world's stock markets crashed.
In the CSA, Burton Mitchel III was blamed. In the USA—having come out of the 1920s with a booming economy and a Canadian revolt having been crushed in 1925—newly elected President Hosea Blackford took the heat. Millions lost their jobs, and in Utah, occupied since 1916, Mormon fanatics gunned down Governor-General John Pershing. When Japan and the USA went to war in 1932 after Japan was caught smuggling weapons to Canada by the USS Remembrance, and Japanese bombers attacked Los Angeles, Blackford was turned out of office by Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. Coolidge died before he could hold office, and Hoover installed his platform policy of government non-intervention in the economy.
Things were happening in the CSA, however. Whole cities echoed to the boot-steps of marching stalwart formations as the Freedom Party, whose ranks were flowing once more with the angry and the wrathful, prepared for Election Day 1933. Jake Featherston attacked the Mitchel Administration with the most vulgar venom and hate, blaming Mitchel for the crash and his response to the floods that devastated the Mississippi. Millions of Confederates lapped it up and shouted for more, which he had. When he took the oath of office on March 4, 1934, the world held its breath. "Freedom" was on the march.
In Europe the storm clouds were also beginning to gather. The final vestiges of Bolshevik revolution were crushed by 1927; among the last holdouts was the Volga town of Tsaritsyn under Joseph Stalin and his second in command the Hammer (Molotov). Under Tsar Michael Russia remained a primarily agricultural, backward country. Frequent anti-Semitic pogroms and foreign loans managed to deflect further restlessness, but the latter contributed to the Business Collapse in 1929 when Austria-Hungary demanded the repayment of a loan Russia was unable to fulfill.
Austria-Hungary itself remained a united empire, but only the Austrians and Hungarians felt any loyalty to the Habsburg monarchs. In fact, the multi-ethnic federation seems to have been held together only by German aid and bayonets. The Ottoman Empire also appears to be in the same boat, undertaking the ethnic cleansing of its Armenian population. Despite strong censure from the US and more lukewarm protests from Berlin, the killings continued until there were hardly any surviving Armenians.
Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled a strong Germany, and his troops continued to occupy Belgium, the Ukraine and the puppet Kingdom of Poland, but post-war relations with the US was such many on both sides of the Atlantic believed that the two countries would come to blows someday. The Collapse put an end to that, however, and the old enemies reasserted themselves once more.
After the Collapse, France found itself under Action Française and its king Charles XI, who began making noises about the return of Alsace-Lorraine to French rule. In Britain the Silver Shirts under Oswald Mosley held similar views and popular support of Action Francaise, though they never became more than a minority in Parliament. Italy never came under Mussolini's rule; not much else is known about it.
Japan did not remain quiet either. Prior to the Pacific War with the US, she persuaded France and Holland to hand over Indochina and the East Indies. Though there were British fears Hong Kong and Malaya would also be annexed this way, Japan showed no interest in doing so. Japan also gained much influence in China during this period, and seems to have annexed Manchuria as well.
1934-1941: The Victorious Opposition
The Depression lingered on in the USA and Occupied Canada through 1934 and 1935, with millions of men out of work and productivity down. President Hoover's only highlight during this time was ending the war with Japan, but many people still questioned why it had been fought in the first place. In Congress, Flora Hamburger Blackford questioned why Hoover and the Democrats were allowing the Confederate States to enlarge its army in violation of the peace treaty. At the same time, she had to deal with several Freedom Party congressmen from the former Confederate states of Kentucky and Houston (formerly part of Texas), who stalled Congressional sessions with calls for a plebiscite in their home states. When Socialist Al Smith was elected over Hoover in 1936, the Freedom Party's shouts started to get heeded.
The Freedom Party in the Confederate States had already turned the government into a one-party rule, with the Confederate Congress passing laws proposed by President Jake Featherston. He faced no opposition from the Confederate Supreme Court because he maneuvered the high court into making its position vulnerable, whereupon he merely extended executive power and abolished the judicial branch. Forced-elections in 1935 and 1937 solidified and confirmed Freedom control of the House and Senate, while state legislatures and governorships were captured. The Army had been purged in 1936, and conscription renewed in 1938. The troublesome Vice President Willy Knight was removed from office after his attempt on Featherston's life later that year, and was soon imprisoned. The police was slowly padded with stalwarts, and soon, with a nod from the national administration and Attorney General Ferdinand Koenig, the states were installing correctional camps for "rioteous" and "unruly" Whigs and Radical Liberals. Radical Liberal Louisiana was toppled by Freedom stalwarts, with Huey Long's regime replaced by a more agreeable administration with Featherston's interests in mind. And, with black rebellion flare-ups popping up all over the CSA, the president had begun looking for quiet and suitable places to exact revenge for wrongs, real or (mostly) imagined, that the blacks had done. Louisiana was the perfect place to begin "reducing population."
Al Smith finally agreed to hear Jake Featherston's demands for the former Confederate states. In the resulting plebiscites of January 7, 1941, Kentucky and west Texas voted to return to the CSA, with promises from Featherston to not remilitarize them, or to ask for Seqouyah (which had voted pro-USA) or any other former CSA territory. Within weeks, Featherston broke his promise and planted his modernized and expanded Confederate Army on the Ohio River, convincing Smith that the time to face Featherston down had finally come. When Germany's longtime ruler died, tensions rose in Europe. The new Kaiser Friedrich I refused to return French territory that France's ruling party had demanded. Britain, France and the CSA soon declared war on Germany, with Russia joining in days later. With war breaking out in Europe, Jake Featherston felt it was time to have his revenge against his greatest enemy: the United States of America. On the first day of summer in 1941, he ordered Operation Blackbeard to begin. The Confederates opened the 1941 War in North America with a surprise attack on Philadelphia and Ohio the next day, June 22, 1941.
Settling Accounts
- The Settling Accounts Tetralogy
- Return Engagement (2004)
- Drive to the East (2005)
- The Grapple (due for 2006)
- In at the Death (due for 2007)
1941-1942: From Columbus to Kiev
At 3:30 am on June 22, 1941, the North American war kicked off with massive bombing raids on Philadelphia and military installations all over Ohio. In an immediate joint session of Congress, President Smith called for - and received - a unanimous declaration of war against the Confederate States. Soon afterwards Churchill and the rest of the Entente announced hostilities against the USA.
Philadelphia had expected Featherston to strike in the east as the CS Army had done in the last war. Though Brig. General Abner Dowling and Colonel Irving Morrell knew better and had prepared for the coming strike as best they could, US forces in Ohio simply did not have the equipment or manpower that were needed to halt the Confederate army under George Patton. Within two months Sandusky on Lake Erie fell to CS soldiers, preventing raw materials in the west from reaching the factories of the east (See Operation Blackbeard for a detailed description of the campaign). Just before Sandusky fell, radical Mormons armed with Confederate weapons began a new drive for independence in Utah, capturing the settlement belt from Ogden in the north to Provo in the south (see Utah Troubles).
At sea the US fared little better although neither side won control of the sea lanes. In July the Royal Navy lured the carriers USS Remembrance and Sandwich Islands away from Bermuda. The island, a strategically valuable submarine and air base, fell to a joint Anglo-CS task force as a result. The Bahamas soon followed, the US Marines fighting island by island before surrendering. Stalemate characterised the war in the Pacific, until December 1941. At the Battle of Midway the Remembrance, sent around the Horn earlier that year, was sunk and the island itself taken. Although Japan also lost a carrier and had another one damaged, the US Pacific Fleet was left devoid of carriers and reliant upon land-based air cover.
The war in Europe spawned less triumph for the Entente. In the Ukraine, the local soldiers and population welcomed the arriving Russians as liberators, ensuring that most of the German satellite was lost. But elsewhere the manpower-swarming tactics of the Russians, unchanged from the last war, ensured that they suffered heavy losses for small gains. The Kaiser's army, particularly its panzers and 88 mm gun flak cannons, proved instrumental in preventing the loss of East Prussia and Poland.
In the West the French Army swiftly recaptured Alsace-Lorraine and stood on the Rhine. Ireland was overrun by the British, while the Anglo-French thrust through the Low Countries succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. The Belgians welcomed the Entente as liberators. The Dutch, though more pro-German, were brushed aside, and some of the North German Plain was overrun.
Yet victory did not follow. The British end-run through Norway, made for unclear reasons (Swedish iron-ore through Narvik? Naval bases? Both?) failed spectacularly. Churchill's bright idea did nothing more than drive the furious Norwegians into the Central Powers' camp. France proved unable to cross the Rhine and the Germans on that front soon rallied. Austria-Hungary, despite its clear weakness, remained united, and though Bulgaria wavered as a German ally she never abandoned Berlin entirely. Only the Low Countries campaign still showed promise by the end of 1941, but Hamburg still remained unconquered. By February 1942 the German Army felt confident enough to launch counter-offensives against the British outside Hamburg and the Russians in the Ukraine.
In North America the post-Blackbeard season proved uninspiring for both sides. Shortly after Sandusky fell, Jake Featherston declared that he would make peace with the US if his 'reasonable' demands were met. All the 'unredeemed territory' was to be handed back, the post-WWI reparations that had destroyed the CS economy were to be repaid and the Northern (but not Southern) side of the border was to be demilitarized. Smith replied that night with the heaviest air raid on Richmond yet, before announcing on the wireless "I have not yet begun to fight!".
Yet despite his bravado, the situation for the US seemed bleak into February 1942. The counter-attack in northern Virginia under Daniel MacArthur soon bogged down. With too many men sandwiched between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, the US Army crossed the Rappahannock River but were held at the Rapidan line. A subsequent Confederate counter-attack under Patton failed to dislodge the Americans, and both sides settled in for the winter. Featherston realised that another knock-out blow was needed, and began planning for a drive eastwards for the spring of 1942. Ohio remained quiet, with nothing more than local offensives. The revolt in Utah showed no signs of ending; by Christmas American forces were stalled within Provo.
Neither side achieved a decisive advantage in the air war. Characterized by Clarence Potter as a "duel with machine guns at a pace and a half", both air forces soon resorted to night attacks only on the east coast, as flak and fighters made daylight raids too costly. Farther west, daytime raids still went on. On a tactical level, dive bombers proved damned effective at hitting ground targets and hideously vulnerable to fighters and flak; Confederate 'Asskickers' suffered enormously from both. Neither American Wright-27's nor Confederate 'Hound Dog' fighters had any great advantage over the other.
It was during this time that the 'population reductions' in the South began in earnest. Any black man whose passbook was out of order was immediately arrested and shipped out to a camp; in the cities Negroes were used as war plant labor while suffering reprisals for black car bombs and other terrorist acts. In the Lousisiana camps the slaughter had begun with submachine guns, a method that proved inefficient. The camps simmered at the edge of rebellion, while most guards couldn't stomach the job and some committed suicide. Soon gas was found to be easier, both for the guards' minds and for order in camps. Sealed trucks were ostensibly used to transfer blacks between camps; in practice the fumes would leave them dead and ready for disposal in mass graves.
Despite the Freedom Party's best efforts, news of the killings reached Philadelphia. Congresswoman Flora Blackford announced to the world Confederate crimes...only to receive scathing comparisons with Utah from the Entente and sympathetic but indifferent reactions from US citizens.
In February 1942, Confederate bombers, bombarding Philadelphia since the war's beginning, managed to hit the Powell House. Al Smith at the time was in the building and was killed. His vice president Charles La Follette was sworn in as president. La Follette vowed to continue the war and win it for the United States.
1942-1943: Under the Heel
The American determination to keep fighting after the Ohio campaign ended with the United States cut in two was a major setback to Confederate plans which had counted on a short war and quick victory. The Confederates decided to concentrate troops in Ohio for an attack into western Pennsylvania to capture Pittsburgh, a major industrial center for the United States. To find these troops, the CSA was forced to pull troops off of other fronts and to bring in under-equipped allied forces from the Empire of Mexico.
The campaign succeeded in reaching Pittsburgh but was unable to fully occupy the city. General Forrest, the head of the Confederate military, advised that the fighting in Pittsburgh had achieved its strategic aim of destroying the city's industrial capacity and recommended pulling the Confederate troops out. President Featherston refused to allow any withdrawal. American forces under General Morrell attacked and surrounded Pittsburgh, destroying the light Mexican screening force. Featherston refused to allow the encircled forces to attempt a breakout. The Confederate Army was whittled down to a few ragged survivors by determined U.S. resistance and brutal house-to-house fighting. The Confederates inside Pittsburgh were forced to surrender. As a result of this defeat, General Forrest began to discuss with Clarence Potter the possibility of overthrowing Featherston.
In other plotlines, Flora Blackford became more hawkish on the war, opposing the administration's attempt to negotiate a settlement in Utah. She found herself frequently agreeing with Robert Taft, the Democratic Senator from Ohio.
The Utah uprising continued. When it became clear to the Mormons that they cannot achieve a military victory, they began a series of suicide bombings throughout the United States - first with car bombs and then with humans strapped with explosives. Blacks in the CSA soon began imitating these attacks.
The extermination campaign against the CSA's black population continued and was expanded with Jefferson Pinkard remaining a pivotal figure. However, the Confederates worried when a diversionary attack launched at the same time as the Pittsburgh campaign and led by General Dowling, threatened to capture the main extermination camp in Texas and expose its operations to the world.
There were no dramatic actions in the naval war. The Americans beat off a Japanese attack against the Sandwich Islands and achieved an advantage in the Pacific. In the Atlantic, the main activity was preventing British convoys from bringing supplies to the Canadian underground. A battle was fought between the Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet late in 1942, but both sides claimed victory.
Britain and France were still bogged down in western Germany, while in Confederate newspapers the Russians were reported to be driving on Warsaw. Partisan resistance was a large problem for both sides: Britain had to contend with Irish rebellion, Russia fought Jews, Finns, Chechnens and Azerbaijanis, while Austria-Hungary bled from (amongst others) Serb, Bosnian and Romanian rebels.
Both the United States and the Confederacy, along with other countries, had initiated programs to develop atomic weapons. While no power had developed a weapon yet, it appeared that the American and German programs were ahead of the Confederate one. The British and the French were also rumored to be working on atomic weapons.
See also
- Characters in the Southern Victory series
- Timeline 191's Common Characters
- Institutions in the Southern Victory (Timeline-191) series
Category:Timeline-191
Category:Fictional universes
Category:Alternate history timelines
Harry Turtledove in Glasgow]]
Harry Norman Turtledove (born June 14 1949), is a historian and prolific novelist who has written historical fiction, fantasy, and science fiction works. He is probably the best-known and most popular author of the genre of alternate history.
Life of Harry Turtledove
Turtledove was born in Los Angeles, California to a Jewish family. After flunking out of his freshman year at Caltech, he attended UCLA, where he received a Ph.D. in Byzantine history in 1977. His dissertation was on The Immediate Successors of Justinian: A Study of the Persian Problem and of Continuity and Change in Internal Secular Affairs in the Later Roman Empire During the Reigns of Justin II and Tiberius II Constantine (AD 565–582).
In 1979, Turtledove published his first two novels, Wereblood and Werenight, under the pseudonym "Eric G. Iverson." Turtledove later explained that his editor at Belmont Tower did not think people would believe the author's real name was "Turtledove" and came up with something more Nordic. He continued to use the "Iverson" name until 1985, when he published his "Herbig-Haro" and "And So to Bed" under his real name. Another early pseudonym was "Mark Gordian." Turtledove has recently begun publishing historical novels under the pseudonym "H.N. Turteltaub" (taube means dove in German).
Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Turtledove worked as a technical writer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education. In 1991, he left the LACOE and turned to writing full time. From 1986–1987, he served as the Treasurer for the Science Fiction Writers of America.
He is married to mystery and SF writer Laura Frankos. His brother-in-law is fantasy author Steven Frankos. Turtledove won the Homer Award for Short Story in 1990 for "Designated Hitter," the John Esten Cook Award for Southern Fiction in 1993 for The Guns of the South, the Hugo Award for Novella in 1994 for "Down in the Bottomlands." "Must and Shall" was nominated for the 1996 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the 1996 Nebula Award for Best Novelette and received an honorable mention for the 1995 Sidewise Award for Alternate History. The Two Georges also received an honorable mention for the 1995 Sidewise Award for Alternate History. The Worldwar series received a Sidewise Award for Alternate History Honorable Mention in 1996. In 1998, the novel How Few Remain won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He won his second Sidewise Award in 2003 for the novel Ruled Britannia. On August 1, 1998, Turtledove was named honorary Kentucky Colonel while Guest of Honor at Rivercon XXIII in Louisville, Kentucky.
Turtledove served as the toastmaster for Chicon 2000, the 58th World Science Fiction Convention.
He has three daughers: Alison, Rachel and Rebecca.
List of Books and Series
- Wereblood (1979) - using Eric Iverson pseudonym
- Werenight (1979) - using Eric Iverson pseudonym
- Prince of the North (1994)
- King of the North (1996)
- Fox and Empire (1998)
Fantasy series about a world that is analogous to the Byzantine Empire.
- The Legion Series
- The Misplaced Legion (1987)
- An Emperor for the Legion (1987)
- The Legion of Videssos (1987)
- The Swords of the Legion (1987)
- The Tale of Krispos Series
- Krispos Rising (1991)
- Krispos of Videssos (1991)
- Krispos the Emperor (1994)
- The Time of Troubles Series
- The Stolen Throne (1995)
- Hammer and Anvil (1996)
- The Thousand Cities (1997)
- Videssos Besieged (1998)
Sci-Fi/Alternate History — Aliens invade in the middle of World War II
- Worldwar Tetralogy
- In the Balance (1994)
- Tilting the Balance (1995)
- Upsetting the Balance (1996)
- Striking the Balance (1996)
- Colonization Trilogy
- Second Contact (1999)
- Down to Earth (2000)
- Aftershocks (2001)
- Homeward Bound (2004)
Alternate History — The South have won the US Civil War, what would then happen over the next century. (The series consists of several smaller series and has no official title)
- How Few Rem | | |
