Damned Turtledove

Elfwine, I am now writing the American Civil War section in detail. I chose to not have a glorious Confederate storming of the US Capitol, as I read a thread on this very forum that made me realize that the CSA had as much chances of succeeding as Germany did with Sealion.

Yay.

I think a Confederate capture of Washington might be possible (more so than Sealion), but not in any circumstances that ever came up.

But the idea of a sweeping Confederate win is still interesting, so looking forward to seeing this.
 
Of course, AH is a literary genre, not a sincere means of predicting what could have been. Turtledove could have been more strict with the butterflies and not had TR and Wilson as Presidents and exact analogues for WWII, but he did so deliberately because he knew those would be selling points for his book.

People here tend to expect a deeper level of counterfactual speculation than Turtledove's intended audience, but the fact that you had some of the same ideas as him shows that you at least know what people want to read. Don't be discouraged by people having more historical knowledge than you here, use them as a mine of information while you write! I don't think there's a person here whose initial efforts here don't look a little embarrassing to them now.

Yeah, I have an abiding dread of the search function. If you go slow, read more than you right, and keep your head down outside your areas of expertise, it will all work out. So long as you aren't rude or possessed of thoughtcrime - if you naturally tend to either banning is a question of timing only.
 
Back to OP...

You had problems with Turtledove? I was writing something from 1979 to 1988 and was ready to get it ready for an agent, when I read some of Harry Harrison's stuff. Embarrassing.:eek:
 
You had problems with Turtledove? I was writing something from 1979 to 1988 and was ready to get it ready for an agent, when I read some of Harry Harrison's stuff. Embarrassing.:eek:

Yeah.
Probably best to try something different like, say, ISOTing a Roman Legion to Byzantine-like world or aliens arriving in WW2...
 
Yay.

I think a Confederate capture of Washington might be possible (more so than Sealion), but not in any circumstances that ever came up.

But the idea of a sweeping Confederate win is still interesting, so looking forward to seeing this.

If the Battle of Monocacy is "The Battle That Rescued Washington" then what if it had been a Confederate victory?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
If the Battle of Monocacy is "The Battle That Rescued Washington" then what if it had been a Confederate victory?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

It was a Confederate victory. It being fought delayed Early and exhausted his men, which is about as far as it went to "save" Washington.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
That's a very good POD, as it's likely to mean the CSA can thereby avoid the significant mistakes that went so far as to make Antietam a Missed Moment of Awesome for the Union, while being able to use more Magruder theatrics to give McClellan more excuses to delay his fighting than he'd already do.

You do know that Magruder's ruse was seen for exactly what it was?
 
You do know that Magruder's ruse was seen for exactly what it was?

Which is why with 130,000 men McClellan didn't bother breaking through 13,000? If John Sedgwick could do that, surely it was not impossible for the all-knowing and all-capable George McClellan to do the same. :rolleyes:
 
Which is why with 130,000 men McClellan didn't bother breaking through 13,000? If John Sedgwick could do that, surely it was not impossible for the all-knowing and all-capable George McClellan to do the same. :rolleyes:

The question also has to be asked why Magruder would have used such a ruse if he had a position that was so secure that McClellan's 30,000 men would have been attacking 50,000 rebels being fortifications that resemble Constantinople's or something.

At best McClellan based his plans on the worst possibility. At worst, McClellan could have been persuaded to stop if Magruder had sent him a detailed description of the defenses and the number of men garrisoning them and informed him that he was about to have to send reinforcements elsewhere.

...note to self, that would be an interesting trick to play.
 
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