Must and Shall

"Must and Shall" is a short story which first appeared in Asimov's in November 1995. It is an alternate history story which is set in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1942, 78 years after the point of divergence. It was nominated for both the Sidewise Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette.

In the story, Abraham Lincoln was killed by a sniper on July 12, 1864 while inspecting the ramparts at Fort Stevens north of Washington, D.C.. He was succeeded by Hannibal Hamlin, who promised retribution in his inaugural speech on July 21.

By the time the story takes place, the South has been seething under oppression as an occupied territory for nearly eighty years. Neil Michaels has been sent down from the North to investigate rumors of a possible uprising. Shortly after his arrival in New Orleans, his contact, Pierre Ducange was murdered and Michaels was brought in for questioning. After explaining the situation, he worked with Morrie Harris to discover who was behind the uprising, which appeared to be funded by the Nazis.

With Ducange dead, Michaels's leads appeared to have dried up, until he received a notice to be at the Original Absinthe House for the late late show. Upon arriving, he found himself at a burlesque show. One of the dancers, Lucy told him to seek out Colquit Reynolds, a hearse driver. Before he could make contact with Reynolds, however, the Original Absinthe House was torched as a warning, killing everyone inside.

Once Michaels and Harris found Reynolds, and used Lucy and Pierre's names as a vouchsafe, Reynolds led them to the Old Girod Cemetery, where he claimed the weapons supplied by the Germans were being stored in the mausoleums. Facing off against a mob angry at the possiblity of the cemetery being disturbed, Reynolds and his federal troops broke into the mausoleums and discovered a horde of weapons, which were seized, averting the uprising.

This, however, is merely a temporaty reprieve; the basic situation remains, in which the South is for all intents and purposes an Occupied Territory. In effect, though the Southern Confederacy was destroyed as a political and military entity, it still has an underground existance as a focus of loyalty of the Southern Whites, and the Federal Government can count in the South only on the support of the Black population. This unresolved prroblem would continue to bedevil Americans on this timeline for decades to come.

The story makes no reference to how this impacted the world situation; clearly, however, a United States which cannot rely on its southern half in an external war effort and indeed must constantly guard against that half breaking out in rebellion would be greatly hampered in going to war against Nazi Germany or any other foe.