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in: Literature (OTL), The Guns of the South, Southern Victory

If the South Had Won the Civil War

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Kantor1961

The original 1961 edition.

KantorTurtledove

The 2001 release edited by Harry Turtledove.

If the South Had Won the Civil War is a 1961 alternate history novella by MacKinlay Kantor. Originally published in the November 22, 1960 issue of Look magazine, it generated such a response that it was published in 1961 as a book.

The novella is written as a history text from an alternate 1961, describing the developments of the past century, in which the Confederate States of America has existed as a separate nation-state from the United States of America since the early 1860s. The novella has two stated points of divergence, both occurring in 1863. The first, in May, is General Ulysses S. Grant's accidental horse-riding death during the Siege of Vicksburg, and the second, in July, is poor decisions by the Army of the Potomac, which result in an Army of Northern Virginia victory at the Battle of Gettysburg. The novella includes numerous footnotes and quotations from various (fictional) sources, many of them purporting to be written after the Civil War by historical figures who did not survive the OTL war.

The book had a considerable influence on the development of the subgenre of American Civil War alternate histories, one of the two most frequent subjects of American alternate history. Later writers of such books, such as Harry Turtledove, explicitly stated Kantor's influence on their own work.

In 2001, Turtledove edited a rerelease of the novella, and wrote an introduction which contained a reference to his then-incomplete Southern Victory epic ("TL-191"). A specific item which Turtledove acknowledged cribbing for his series was the idea that in 1914, Theodore Roosevelt is President of the United States simultaneously with Woodrow Wilson's term President of the Confederate States, at the outbreak of war in 1914. Oddly, Turtledove fails to mention that this plot point was not original to Kantor. It had already been used nearly 30 years earlier, in the short fiction "If Lee had NOT won the Battle of Gettysburg" (1931), whose author Winston Churchill plays an ironic allohistorical role in TL-191.

Other similarities between Kantor's novella and TL-191 include the abolition of Confederate slavery occurring in the 1880s under President James Longstreet, Cuba annexed and incorporated into the CSA, a longer-lived Jeb Stuart having a fictional son who grew up to be powerful in the CS government, Alaska not purchased by the United States and remaining part of the Russian Empire, and Texas seceding from the CSA to become an independent Republic for the second time. However, the context of these events, and the overall tone of the authors' works, are quite different.

The Guns of the South has some ideas in common with Kantor's novella as well. E.g., General Robert E. Lee marches the Army of Northern Virginia into Washington City as a wise and generous victor, and is later elected as the second President of the Confederate States. The postwar world of Guns has a geopolitical situation closer to Kantor's work, with the USA and CSA settling into fairly friendly relations after the immediate aftermath of the initial war has passed, as opposed to TL-191's repeated and escalating grudge matches.

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Reggie Bartlett3† · Flora Blackford1 · Sam Carsten1 · Samuel Clemens0† · Anne Colleton4† · Tom Colleton6†  · George Armstrong Custer0† · Frederick Douglass0† · Jerry Dover6 · Abner Dowling1  · Cincinnatus Driver1 · George Enos2† · George Enos Jr.5 · Sylvia Enos3† · Jake Featherston1† · Lucien Galtier3† · Armstrong Grimes5 · Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson0† · Roger Kimball3† · Robert E. Lee2† · Abraham Lincoln0† · Lord Lyons2† · Cassius Madison6 · Paul Mantarakis2† · Chester Martin1 · Arthur McGregor3† · Gordon McSweeney2† · Irving Morrell1 · Jonathan Moss1 · Leonard O'Doull5 · Jefferson Pinkard1 · Mary McGregor Pomeroy5† · Michael Pound6 · Clarence Potter5 · Stephen Ramsay2† · Hipolito Rodriguez5† · Jorge Rodriguez6 · Theodore Roosevelt0† · Scipio4† · Alfred von Schlieffen0† · Nellie Semphroch3† · Jeb Stuart0† · Unnamed Lieutenant Carrying Special Order 1910†
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0=denotes a character who was a POV in How Few Remain only
1=denotes a character who was a POV from American Front through In at the Death
2=denotes a character who was a POV for all or part The Great War trilogy only
3=denotes a character who was a POV for The Great War and all or part of the American Empire trilogy

4=denotes a character who was a POV for the The Great War trilogy, the American Empire trilogy, and part of the Settling Accounts series
5=denotes a character who was a POV for the American Empire trilogy and the Settling Accounts series
6=denotes a character who was a POV for all or part of the Settling Accounts series only
† denotes a deceased character.

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