Best Civil War Alternate History?

Not Henry G.

Grey Wolf said:
I definitely enjoyed Gettysburg Redux by John R Stuart

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Is that one really good? The description on Amazon doesn't inspire confidence.

edgeworthy said:
The Gingrich & Forstchen one is very good, if it has any faults its that the last book of the trilogy has a bit of a problem with the writers having to write themselves out of the corner they have written themselves into.
(There's a bit of a rush to the conclusion, and the eventual outcome is at least as contrived as any alternative)
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The last book is a downgrade from the others. It feels like they were afraid to have the Confederates win the war (even though they spent two books setting up doing just that), that they just did whatever to have them lose.
But it could be a little worse, it could be "The Day After Gettysburg" by Robert Conroy. He was a great alternate history author, my favorite easily, but that one was a serous mistep
 

Betelgeuse

I seem to recall one that took place only a few years after the Confederacy won in a stalemate. It involved a Prophet harassing soldiers and hiding out along with a bunch of escaped slaves in a forest. Basically it was all about the South trying to survive. I only read a summary, but it was quite interesting. Sorry that it’s not altogether relevant - this thread just made me think of it.
 
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Worffan101

Worffan101

The closest to a good sold-for-profit Civil War AH I've read is ironically the Gingrich one (regardless of my opinions on Gingrich as a person, he did at least acknowledge realities of the War of Southern Aggression in his books).

Turtledove's Southern Victory/Tl-191 series starts pretty good if you ignore the specifics of the PoD, but the end of the Great War arc is meh, the interwar arc is a mess, and the GW2 arc is very clearly Turtledove writing solely to pay for his kids' rides through college. Featherston and the Freedom Party are quite frankly boring and just going Southern Nazis (complete with inexplicable Southern Barbarossa) is just bland and cliche, especially considering that Turtledove was very clearly setting up for the Union to be the Nazi expy in the GW1 arc, which would've been entertaining and creative. .

Guns of the South is a fairly rote ASB story but is loaded with cringey dated views on the CSA that don't come off well at all these days.

Most other Civil War stuff is just bland "Confederates win because One Southern Boy = 10 Damnyankee Wimps" wanking, which I find boring and not entertaining. What interests me more than "Confederates win", tbh, is how a different sequence of events during the war would affect the postwar period.
 
Ilúphatar

Ilúphatar

I take it that the question refers to the American Civil War specifically? Because there are plenty of interesting stories about English and British civil wars, alongside other nations.
 
Odinson

Odinson

the Imperium of Canada said:
Doesn't that have a ridiculously wanked CSA and a ridiculously screwed USA?

Like seriously why do people keep glorifying the oppressive slavocracy that was the Confederate States of America?
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PGSBHurricane said:
Yeah the wanking is ridiculous, no question. What inspired me to put it down is that it basically pioneered CSA victory scenarios (correct me if I’m wrong) and moreso that it wins at Gettysburg and declares victory from there. I think part of the wanking is because it’s from 1953 and thus a product of its time as there was less research available then. As a person I do not glorify the CSA as it was a slaveocracy OTL. Nevertheless, as a reader, it’s interesting to read about scenarios where the CSA wins and see how it affects the world.
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Sorry if its improper to quote posts this old, but Bring the Jubilee doesn't really glorify the CSA. (Yes, it does have the South control most of Latin America and is a major power). I think the major focus of the book is to have a humbled, defeated America. I always interpreted Ward's United States as an expy of Germany after the second world war. Post WWII Germany and BTJ's America are ruined nations whose population's lived in fear of another global war as their nation would be the battle ground between the two great super powers. The novel's German Union seems to be a loose analog of the Soviet Union and the imperialist CSA an analog for the USA. Maybe the annexation of the vast swaths of Latin America is a mirror of America's tendency to intervene in the region. Ward's America also has strong similarities to Pre-Communist China. The nation is powerless to stop other nations from deploying soldiers in its own lands, and has foreigners openly interfering/influencing the government.

So, to summarize my point; Ward's novel is more about America being more like immediate post Nazi Germany in terms of economics/infrastructure. Americans in the novel for the most part have an intense hatred for black people (both from the USA and those from outside the United States, such as the consul from Haiti) and from the descriptions, it seems the Yankees have developed their own "stabbed in the back myth," furthering the Germany analogy.
 
Aghasverov

Aghasverov

TheRockofChickamauga said:
I'm taking this as you saying that you do not like ACW Alt Histories.
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Yeah, no offense man, I just grew up around that kind of thing, never really bought into the obsession over it that some ppl have (not that I haven't worked out a few alt-scenarios of my own, of which I've found that none are that well-developed or particularly original...)

Maybe I just haven't read the right one(s) yet...
 
TheRockofChickamauga

TheRockofChickamauga

Aghasverov said:
Yeah, no offense man, I just grew up around that kind of thing, never really bought into the obsession over it that some ppl have (not that I haven't worked out a few alt-scenarios of my own, of which I've found that none are that well-developed or particularly original...)

Maybe I just haven't read the right one(s) yet...
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Yeah, I completely understand. Everyone has different tastes, and that is what makes the world great.
 

Lothar

Not Henry G. said:
Is that one really good? The description on Amazon doesn't inspire confidence.
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I bought it and it was a mistake. In my opinion you need a certain sense for the historical background, and the author seems as educated as a guy that only watched the movie Gettysburg. I mean maybe I am demanding too much, but creating a fictional regiment and calling it the "101 Virginia" albeit no southern state even came close to raising 100 regiments or seriously claiming that Pickett's division alone was 15,000 strong, arrived already on July 1 without earlier POD and is able to assemble in three waves on the top of freaking Big Round Top, this was too much to bear and I quit reading...
 

Letterman

Interesting thread.

I am curious if anyone has a favorite ACW novel in which the North wins a much bigger, more decisive victory earlier on than in OTL.

Offhand, the only one I can think of in that vein is Gettysburg: An Alternate History which is mentioned upthread. It is very heavily implied throughout the text that the South loses the war shortly after Gettysburg
the Battle of Gettysburg is different in this TL and Lee is captured after the battle

One of the cliches that annoys me the most about ACW alternate histories is too many of them are focused on the South winning.

There are many short stories and novellas whose authors take on the question of "What if the North wins earlier?" and some of them are very good.

Thoughts?
 
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EnglishCanuck

EnglishCanuck

Letterman said:
Interesting thread.

I am curious if anyone has a favorite ACW novel in which the North wins a much bigger, more decisive victory earlier on than in OTL.
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There aren't a lot of novels written with that premise, I know some of the short stories, but I can see why there aren't many novels written with the premise.

The reason is kinda simple IMO, ending the war earlier rarely produces anything interesting from a narrative perspective. Whereas an alternate outcome has many possibilities.

I think you can write an interesting alternate northern victory scenario, but it's not really going to be a 'more Radical Reconstruction success' story that a lot of people envision to make it interesting. Quite frankly, not enough people realize that you have to turn the United States into a psuedo-police state to make that idea work, and its kinda unpalatable. It's why Turtledove's story Must and Shall is a little depressing, but arguably more realistic in its outcome.
 
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