Snake Featherston
Banned
good analogy
except the North is more likely to prosper than the South in that scenario
I can respect wanting to preserve tradition and all, but the CS would be the laughing stock of the Americas. If the US continues its progress and industrialization, it will overtake the CS, and will have the upper hand in most of the conflicts that they go into.
btw, something that always bugged me... in How Few Remain, why does the US get totally pwned by the CS? I know that they didn't do so well in that history's war of secession, but they had some competent commanders like Grant and Sherman (yeah the big names, but it's true!). Turtledove takes the US incompetence up to 11, making them borderline retarded. I mean, if they couldn't beat the Confederates, then how come they were able to pull off a victory against the British of all people. It just seemed like he was pulling it out of his ass to have an excuse to put TR and Custer together. Actually, it would have been more interesting if Mark Twain was there as a war correspondant.
Basically Turtledove nerfed the USA. I mean really, Rosecrans only screwed up all of once in the US Civil War, the rest of his record was quite good. And in fact they not only had those two, they also had George Thomas, who is completely glossed over. I keep wondering what happened to Thomas as IATL he'd be one of the only successful US officers, but he'd also be Southern born.....Mill Springs alone should make him a Confederate Benedict Arnold type.
Not to mention the weird bit where Grant, despite his record in that ATL being an entirely unbroken string of successes and the only general on either side in the War of Secession to capture an enemy army goes into obscurity where Rosecrans, who while distinguished in success never had an independent command becomes General-in-chief.