Southern Victory

Timeline-191 is a fan name given to a series of Harry Turtledove alternate history novels.

TL-191 includes the novel How Few Remain, and the Great War, American Empire, and Settling Accounts series. It has run from 1862 to 1944.

This alternate history timeline is named after Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191, which detailed the Army of Northern Virginia's invasion of the Union in September 1862 during the American Civil War.

The First and Second Wars Between the States

1861–1862: An Independent South

File:How Few Remain Front Cover.jpg

The cover of How Few Remain, the first book in the Timeline-191 series

In our reality, before the Battle of Antietam, Federal troops recovered a copy of Special Order 191, which spelt out in detail Lee's plan for the invasion of Maryland. Using this intelligence, Federal forces, under George B. McClellan, moved north and forced battle at Antietam, ending the invasion.

In this alternate timeline, Lee's orders were recovered by trailing Confederate troops before they were allowed to fall into Union hands. The resulting Confederate advance caught McClellan and the U.S. by surprise. Instead of fighting at Antietam, General Lee forced McClellan into battle on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and destroyed the Army of the Potomac in the Battle of Camp Hill on October 1, 1862.

After the decisive Confederate victory, Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia moved northward to occupy Philadelphia. As a direct result, the Confederate States of America earned diplomatic recognition from Great Britain and France. Both European nations then forced mediation on the United States; this action resulted in independence for the Confederate States. After less than two years, the War of Secession had ended.

While considering the mediation offer, Abraham Lincoln mentioned to British ambassador Richard B. P. Lyons that he had in his desk drawer a proclamation that would have freed slaves in the rebellious Confederacy. Lincoln had discussed the proclamation's viability with his cabinet, but after the U.S. defeat at Camp Hill, he decided against issuing it. He was warned by Lyons that if the proclamation were issued, he would have been perceived as acting in desperation, since the U.S. was about to officially concede defeat and that issuing such an order would amount to nothing more than an attempt to raise insurrection inside what was now another country, and doing so would be seen as a directly hostile act.

1862–1881: American Changes

Shortly after the conclusion of Camp Hill, Confederate general Braxton Bragg completed the conquest of Kentucky; sometime after the U.S. agreed to mediation, Kentucky became the twelfth state to enter the Confederacy. In addition, the pro-Confederate Five Civilized Tribes of the Indian Territory were given territory of their own in the C.S., later to become the State of Sequoyah. The Caribbean island of Cuba was subsequently purchased by the Confederate States from Spain in 1876, becoming the 14th Confederate State.

Lincoln and his vice president Hannibal Hamlin were defeated in the 1864 elections, and another Republican president would not be elected until 1880. The Republicans were also sent to the minority in Congress, but in 1880 voters, tired of the Democrats' soft line against the Confederate States, opted to return the Republicans to the majority.

In the 1860s, Russia offered Alaska to the United States, with a purchase price of seven million dollars. However the U.S., financially drained from its losing war effort, did not have the necessary funding to complete the purchase. Since the U.S. could not buy Alaska, it remained a Russian colony.

The United States, probably in reaction to their defeat in the War of Secession, appeared to have sped up the conquest and settlement of the Great Plains relative to our timeline. George Armstrong Custer was still alive in 1881 because there were (presumably) no Sioux Indians around in 1876 to fight him at Little Bighorn. Prior to the Great War, Dakota itself entered the Union as a single state, possibly either as a result of the swiftness with which the Army (necessarily larger than in this timeline because of the Confederate threat) pacified the Territory and allowed settlers to move in, or that the population of Dakota was not sufficient enough to allow the territory to be split into two states.

In addition, the USA may have had no history of prolonged Indian Wars prior to the Second Mexican War, suggesting that massive firepower and a national need for some kind of martial victory propelled the United States to a much quicker and clearcut answer to their Native American question.

In the Presidential election of 1880, Republican James G. Blaine defeated incumbent Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Blaine ran on a hard-line platform, which ultimately precipitated another war against the Confederate States over the latter nation's purchase of the Mexican provinces Sonora and Chihuahua.

1881–1882: The Second War Between the States

• How Few Remain (1997)

Because of spectacular leadership from Confederate general Thomas Jackson against his counterpart William Rosecrans, and the assistance of Great Britain and France and their Canadian and Mexican proxies, the United States was once again defeated. The U.S. officially surrendered on April 22, 1882, ending the Second Mexican War. Longstreet, in an attempt to appear the conciliator, offered generous terms to end the war, limited only to the USA's acknowledgement of the Confederate acquisition of the two purchased Mexican provinces. The most humiliating term was the annexation of most of northern Maine to Canada, forced by the British as the cost of their participation in the war. Regardless of the generous nature of the Confederacy's terms, and most likely inspired by Britain's partial annexation of his home state, and the defeat overall, President Blaine took the end of the war hard.

Both American nations experienced major changes after the war. In the United States, many Republicans were voted out of Congress in the 1882 elections. Stung with the loss in the Second Mexican War, Blaine was ousted as president two years later. The elections of 1882 and 1884 began Democratic control over Congress and the White House, which would last 36 years.

In return for British and French assistance, Confederate President James Longstreet was obliged to propose the nominal manumission of the country's slaves, which proceeded throughout the 1880s.

The defeated United States, realizing it needed powerful allies to counter the Confederate alliances with Britain and France, began an alliance with the German Empire and adopted many of its military and economic practices.

One of the few victories for the United States in the war, a battle in the Montana Territory against the British, produced two American heroes who would be rivals for forty years: Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer and Theodore Roosevelt, colonel of the Unauthorized Regiment.

Witnessing the collapse of the Republican Party, former President Abraham Lincoln, now an orator, allied with American socialists and led left wing Republicans into their fledgling party. The Republicans soon began a long descent into the general obscurity of becoming a solely Midwestern regional party, never again winning the presidency or a Congressional majority, and losing many of their right-wing supporters to the Democrats.

Map of the world with the Participants in World War I. The Allies are depicted in green, the Central Powers in orange, and neutral countries in grey.

Great War

• The Great War Trilogy
  • American Front (1998)
  • Walk in Hell (1999)
  • Breakthroughs (2000)
• World War I

1882–1914: The Road to War

For the next thirty years, the Democratic Party dominated the politics of the United States. The Socialists eventually displaced the Republicans as the opposition party, but were nothing more than a minority in Congress. As the Socialists were becoming a left-wing party, the Democrats turned to a more conservative, nationalist ideology. As their following became smaller, the Republican Party devolved into a small regional party of the Midwest, electing only a handful of representatives to Congress.

The United States economy and military were reformed along Prussian lines: peacetime conscription and a naval buildup began, and resources such as coal, kerosene, and food products became subject to rationing. Large trusts held untrammeled power over the economy, with government encouragement, and labor rights were largely ignored.

The need for revenge on the Confederacy led the United States to begin a formal alliance with the German Empire. It joined the Quadruple Alliance, which also included Austria-Hungary and Italy. With Democratic control over politics, and especially under presidents such as Alfred Thayer Mahan and Thomas Brackett Reed, the nationalist ideology thrived under the concept of remembrance and American revenge for its two defeats at the hands of the C.S.A.

In the meantime, a racial caste system similar to our timeline's South African apartheid had been instituted in the C.S., where Negroes were defined as "residents" rather than citizens, and were prohibited from voting or even moving freely about the country without a passbook. Under the weight of this oppression, the socialist theories of Karl Marx had taken hold among southern Negroes.

On the government front, white politics were dominated by the Whigs, a conservative, mostly upper-class party of the Founding Fathers of the Confederacy. They were opposed, with limited success, by the Radical Liberals, a small opposition party that was popular in the fringes of the Confederacy, such as in Louisiana, Sequoyah (our timeline's state of Oklahoma), Sonora, Chihuahua, and the state of Cuba.

Canada seems less changed than the US from the one in our timeline. Still, feeling threatened by the US, it was driven to a militarization of its own, instituting universal conscription for the armed forces, heavily fortifying its southern border and building up a navy in both the Atlantic and the Great Lakes.

There was a far stronger feeling of Canadian patriotism and nationalism than in our timeline, a nationalism focused on regarding the United States as a threat and Canada's main enemy.

The Anglo-Quebecois rivalry was overshadowed by the fear of the United States, and there was a far weaker tendency than in our timeline to assert Canadian independence from Britain, with the Mother Country across the Atlantic perceived as Canada's main ally and source of support against "the Yankee threat". Previous Canadian history, especially the War of 1812 and the role of such national heroes as Laura Secord, was reinterpreted accordingly.

Overseas, little seems changed from our timeline, except that Japan, in addition to holding Chosun (Korea) and Formosa (Taiwan), had also seized the Philippines and Guam from Spain during the Hispano-Japanese War (c. 1905). As such, in this timeline the Spanish-American War, Philippine-American War, and Russo-Japanese War never occurred. Another difference in this timeline is that Russia still held on to Alaska, although the one of the characters did mention that in the past, Russia offered to sell Alaska.

Relations between the two American nations had been tense since the Second Mexican War of 1881-82. The Confederates joined their traditional allies Great Britain and France alongside the Russian Empire in the Quadruple Entente.

Incidents such as border raids and the Anglo-Confederate proposal for a Nicaragua Canal (ended with a threat of war from U.S. President Mahan) nearly brought the two alliances to war many times. But when the spark for war comes, it is not in North America, but in Europe: the distant Austro-Hungarian Empire.

1914: Declaration and Invasion

The Empire's Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed by a terrorist bomb while touring the town of Sarajevo in June 1914. The Austrian government quickly learned that a Serb group was responsible, and accused the government of nearby Serbia of colluding with the terrorists. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia backed Serbia, while Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany backed Austria-Hungary. The major powers of each system mobilized their militaries, effectively signifying their intent to go to war. In August 1914, the Great War began, initially pitting Great Britain, France, and Russia against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Across the Atlantic, Democratic President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the U.S. military to mobilize in late July, following Germany's lead. In response, Confederate President Woodrow Wilson ordered the C.S. military to do the same, and fighting soon broke out on their common border and the high seas.

The United States officially brought the war to North America when Roosevelt declared war on the Confederate States in early August 1914. Confederate President Wilson responded in kind, although he had hoped to avoid a war. Wilson's speech, given in a tightly-packed public square of Richmond, Virginia decorated with statues of southern war heroes George Washington and Albert Sidney Johnston, became particularly famous.

Hoping to emulate General Lee, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia launched a massive invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania in August, targeting the northern de facto capital of Philadelphia. The ANV quickly overran the de jure capital of Washington, D.C. and pushed on through Maryland.

The U.S. Army took a different approach, and ordered the First Army under Lieutenant General George Custer and the Second Army under Major General John Pershing to cross the Ohio River and invade Kentucky. Although Confederate resistance was high, especially from river gunboats modeled after the original USS Monitor, the U.S. succeeded in establishing a bridgehead on the southern bank.

A separate U.S. invasion of Sonora, intended to capture the Confederacy's sole Pacific port of Guaymas, soon bogged down. A young army captain named Irving Morrell was wounded in this venture, and spent much of the next six months in Tucson, New Mexico recuperating.

The U.S. also launched attacks on the British Dominion of Canada, specifically in Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. Perhaps the most successful maneuver during these early stages of war was the U.S. Navy's capture of the British base at Pearl Harbor in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in a surprise attack.

1915: Stalemate and Rebellion

Both American offensives soon stalled, however; the U.S. armies found it difficult to push south, and the Army of Northern Virginia was slowed by the winter of 1914-15. The Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania soon ground to a halt at the Susquehanna River; only 50 miles from Philadelphia. From that high-water mark, U.S. forces slowly started to push the Confederates back into Maryland.

Although the U.S. forces easily conquered the southern bank of the St. Lawrence River, crossing it proved another matter. The geography of the Niagara Peninsula soon bottlenecked the invading army. Though Winnipeg, Manitoba, a major rail junction, lay relatively close to the U.S. border, the War Department allocated too few troops to capture it.

Trench warfare became ubiquitous as each side dug in for protection from machine-gun fire. Troops huddled in these trenches as heavy artillery in their rear pounded the enemy lines night and day. They dreaded the order "Over the top!" which meant they would have to leave the safety of their lines to charge into No Man's Land, in the hope of capturing the enemy trenches on the other side. Far from the quick, glorious conquest each side had imagined, the Great War became a long, bloody stalemate.

Early in 1915, another front was opened when the Utah Mormons seceded from the United States and declared themselves the independent nation of Deseret. Mormon relations with the rest of the country had been hostile since the Utah War of the 1850s and the brief uprising during the Second Mexican War. They wrongly believed that the distracted U.S. government would be unable to subdue them. Utah sat on one of the major transcontinental rail lines and President Roosevelt stated the U.S. would not tolerate unlawful rebellion. The Mormon rebellion raged until mid-1916, when it was finally crushed and Salt Lake City captured. Utah was then placed under military rule by Roosevelt, under which it would remain until the 1930s.

In the autumn of 1915, with the armies of the Confederacy locked in mortal combat with those of the United States along the border regions, the CSA's blacks rose up in revolt. Bitter over their treatment by the whites, and fueled by a rhetoric of Marxism and the teachings of Abraham Lincoln, the blacks declared Red revolution in several areas across the CSA and established "socialist republics," while massacring whites and seeking justice against their former white masters; most trials were shams, however, and the executions brutal. These rebellions were gradually crushed by 1916, although white justice mellowed out a bit as thoughts were preoccupied with winning the war. Ironically, the Red revolt actually made white people start to believe in the military potential of blacks.

1916: Slaughter

Taking advantage of the Confederacy's plight, the U.S. First Army finished slogging through western Kentucky and marched into western Tennessee, while the C.S. Army of Northern Virginia was pushed south toward Washington. In mid-spring of 1916, a new armored technical advance called the "barrel" (referred to as a tank by the British) was introduced to combat for the first time by US forces operating in the Roanoke Valley.

In this case, as in our time line, the name of the vehicle comes from the cover name used. In Britain, those assembling the vehicle were told they were mobile water tanks; in this time line, they were coded 'barrel,' though there was some indication something called a 'barrel' was coming. Private Reginald Bartlett, escaping with a Confederate naval officer, heard U.S. soldiers singing a song, "Roll Out the Barrel." (not related to our timeline's Czech polka "Rosalinda," which became popular in 1938 and was given the English-language lyrics "Roll Out the Barrel.")

While in Tennessee, Lieutenant General Custer transformed his tactics for cavalry into a doctrine for the new barrels, but the War Department would hear none of it. When Custer's summer offensive began, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were lost attacking Confederate lines, and the new barrels, deployed singly in an infantry support role rather than massed as an armored fist, broke down in the hilly terrain to little effect.

The lack of British troops in Canada meant that the USA, while initially held back by Canadians, would slowly advance toward their triple objectives of Quebec City, Toronto, and Winnipeg. Largely thanks to the efforts of Irving Morrell, U.S. forces pushed up to Banff in the Canadian Rockies and cut off the second of three mountain passes that connected the Pacific coast to the rest of Canada.

At sea, the great Battle of the Three Navies between the USA on one side, and the United Kingdom and Japan on the other, prevented the Entente from recapturing the Sandwich Islands. With the Central Pacific in U.S. hands, a U.S. Navy flotilla made its way south toward the Cape of South America and the Atlantic on the other side, with the intent of cutting off Argentine grain and beef shipments to Great Britain.

On the Maryland front, the state was cleared of Confederate soldiers, save for those holding Washington, the nominal U.S. capital. In Tennessee that autumn, more attacks toward Nashville gained the USA nothing but a possible Democratic loss at the polls, with the possibility that a Socialist President would seek peace with the CSA and renounce all the bloody gains. Except for a local attack on the Roanoke Front that pushed the USA out of western Virginia, the Confederates stayed on the defensive that autumn and attempted to drain the USA dry, hoping to sicken the U.S. population of war.

Nevertheless, for all the wishes of the Socialist Party and the Confederates, Theodore Roosevelt was easily re-elected over Socialist Eugene V. Debs in the November election. In Richmond, however, the hopes of new President Gabriel Semmes (elected in 1915) and his Cabinet were dashed. The USA had another four years to crush the CSA, and the Confederates were running out of white men to fight. A bill, proposed by Semmes, was passed authorizing the training and arming of Negro troops who would serve in the lines, with civil rights (excepting interracial marriage) given after the war, including citizenship in the CSA.

In Europe, the war seemed little changed from our timeline, with the exception of Verdun's capture by the Germans, and an apparently heavier use of North African infantry by the French Army. In addition, Italy stayed neutral in the conflict and the Easter Rising in Dublin was not put down, spreading to the rest of Ireland.

1917: Breakthroughs

Lieutenant General Custer secretly developed a scheme to quickly end the war in the USA's favor, using a massed-barrel (tank) formation forbidden by the War Department. Disguising his true intentions to all but his adjutant, Major Abner Dowling, and Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell, and lying to President Roosevelt, Custer launched his Barrel Roll Offensive on Remembrance Day—April 22, 1917—and quickly broke through the Confederate trench lines north of the Tennessee capital of Nashville.

The Southerners withdrew to a line centered on Nashville, where Custer hit them again three weeks later by outflanking the city using a plan concocted by Morrell. Nashville soon fell, despite the best efforts of the newly formed C.S. colored regiments to stave off Custer's barrels, and the state capital became First Army headquarters.

From Nashville, in July, Custer attacked the C.S. lines in the direction of Murfreesboro. Near Nolensville the U.S. received a Confederate request for a local armistice. President Roosevelt assented, and peace on the North American front came to Tennessee a week before the rest of the U.S.-C.S. frontline. Custer was outraged at the halt, but Roosevelt explained that it would be difficult for the USA to defend the large salient into Tennessee it had captured, and at the same time, the southeastern chunk of Kentucky that still remained in Confederate hands would prove a nuisance in postwar years as Kentuckians elected to the Confederate Congress would constantly demand a new war against the USA to recapture lost territory in their state. Thus, Roosevelt's plan involved a bit of horse-trading whereby the USA would withdraw from the parts of Tennessee it had captured in exchange for all remaining parts of Kentucky.

At the same time, in Europe, mutinies in the French Army proved serious enough to lead to France's exit from the war. Russia collapsed into revolution and anarchy, leaving only the Confederate States and Great Britain to fight against the United States, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. Italy remained neutral and the Ottoman Empire joined the war on the side of the Central Powers. In South America, Brazil abandoned the neutrality it had held since the beginning of the war and allied with Chile (which supported the Central Powers) against Argentina (which supported the Allies), threatening the supply line to Britain.

On the same day the Barrel Roll Offensive began in Tennessee, the U.S. Army in northern Virginia attacked southward toward Manassas at the same time that U.S. troops entered occupied Washington DC. The de jure U.S. capital was recaptured after several days of intense street fighting, which leveled the city and its famous landmarks (such as the Washington Monument and the White House).

In northern Virginia, several U.S. attacks forced the C.S. Army of Northern Virginia to retreat south. In battles at Round Hill, Centreville, and Bull Run creek, rear-guard actions led by a few battered batteries of the First Richmond Howitzers prevented the complete destruction of the latest incarnation of Robert E. Lee's fabled army. However, it was obvious the war was on the verge of being lost; it was a notion that did not bode well with several Confederate soldiers, who reckoned the war was won only months before.

In Canada, Custer's barrel methods were used to break through the Anglo-Canadian lines south of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the provincial capital was taken in late May. The same strategy was used by U.S. forces battling their way into Toronto, Ontario, the fall of which precipitated a British Empire request for a cease-fire with the USA on all land fronts. The armistice was granted in early June, and, with U.S.-German naval operations (with help from Brazil) cutting off Great Britain from its Argentine and Australian food suppliers, the United Kingdom sued for peace later that summer; the UK was the last opponent of the Quadruple Alliance that was still in the war.

The Confederate States of America started sending peace feelers to Philadelphia as early as the fall of Nashville, but Theodore Roosevelt refused to grant a cease-fire until certain the CSA was severely hammered elsewhere. The last hammers on the Confederate Army came in late July, when fighting reached the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, which was only fifty miles from the Confederate States capital. With a cease-fire already in effect in Tennessee, Sequoyah overrun, and fighting out west in Texas and Arkansas sputtering down, the CSA agreed to a general armistice on land and at sea. For the first time since August 1914, the guns fell silent in North America.

At sea, however, the submarine CSS Bonefish, led by Confederate Navy man Roger Kimball, carried out a sneak attack on the USS Ericsson even though he was fully aware of the war's end. For a few years after the war, both the U.S. and C.S. believed that the ship's destruction was a work of the Royal Navy, as the war between the USA and the British Empire at sea had not yet ended.

The American Empire

• The American Empire Trilogy
  • Blood and Iron (2001)
  • The Center Cannot Hold (2002)
  • The Victorious Opposition (2003)

1918: Old Animosities Rekindled

The United States celebrated hard during 1918 as it reveled in the euphoria of having finally won revenge on the Confederate States, with parades and parties lasting well into the autumn. President Roosevelt and General Custer (General being his true rank now, as Roosevelt promoted the aging officer in Nashville as the war was ending) rode together in the Philadelphia Remembrance Day Parade, which was the biggest one to date. The tradition of showing the national flag upside-down to show distress was put aside to show that the USA had reversed the outcomes of both 1862 and 1882.

However, as the ramifications of war were beginning to be set, the U.S. and C.S. navies still had to deploy minesweepers to clear their harbors, which kept them busy through to the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Not everyone in the victorious United States celebrated hard, however. Returning veterans found scabs working for cheaper wages in the factories and mines they had worked at before the call to arms during the war. More veterans found themselves being put down by capitalists and factory owners, and went on strike in industrial centers like Pittsburgh and Toledo. The owners sicced the Pinkertons and police on the strikers, but were repulsed by the war veterans, who had faced far worse challenges in the trenches. The country seemed to be on the verge of revolution, and the Socialist Party capitalized on gains among the lower classes. In November 1918, they captured the House of Representatives for the first time, upsetting Theodore Roosevelt's plans for domestic and foreign affairs.

Citizens of the defeated and truncated Confederacy were hardly in a mood to celebrate. President Roosevelt had forced humiliating terms upon them in return for peace, and President Semmes had no choice but to agree to it. Kentucky had already been lost to the United States, having rejoined the Union in 1916. So was Sequoyah (which was placed under occupation), and western Texas, which the USA admitted into the Union in 1917 as the state of Houston, with its capital at Lubbock. Pieces of Arkansas, Sonora, and Virginia held by US troops at the armistice were also annexed into Missouri, New Mexico (a state that comprises our New Mexico and Arizona), and West Virginia respectively.

In addition, the C.S. Army and Navy were severely curtailed, and massive reparations had to be made to Philadelphia. These terms angered Confederates, but they had no choice. It was Roosevelt's peace or the war renewed, and they were in no condition to fight. Because of the payments being sent North, the Confederate dollar spiraled out of control, as hyperinflation ruined the CSA economy.

In reaction, hatred against the USA went up among the white population, and several reactionary political parties sprouted up across the Confederate States. One of these fringe groups was the Freedom Party, founded by Anthony Dresser in Richmond, Virginia, sometime after the end of the Great War. (Note: in our history, the original founder of the then-fringe German Nazi Party—later ousted by Hitler—was named Anton Drexler. Obviously, the odds against a person filling an equivalent role on another continent in another timeline having such a similar name are astronomical; Turtledove was evidently dropping a subtle hint to readers familiar with modern German history).

As for the British Empire, President Roosevelt forced London to recognize the Republic of Quebec (established in April 1917 as the war in Canada was drawing to a close) and the Republic of Ireland (including all of Ulster). Britain was also forced to relinquish claims to the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Sandwich Islands, and all of the Dominion of Canada.

In Canada, the Dominion government was declared an illegal assembly. The U.S. Army set up its occupation headquarters in Winnipeg and turned each province into a military district. Occupied Canada was declared to be US territory as part of the new American Empire, "stretching from the Gulf of California to the Arctic Ocean." In 1919, General George Custer requested and was granted the post of governor-general of Occupied Canada in retribution for what he perceived to be a Canadian "murder" of his brother Tom in the fighting of 1881.

1919–1924: American Blood & Iron

The Freedom Party was doing well for itself in Richmond. Its chief speaker — a vengeful, spiteful, and bitter ex-sergeant named Jake Featherston — harangued crowds at public meetings and squares on how the Confederacy had been "stabbed in the back" by the Whig Party, the War Department, and, most of all, the black minority, who had risen up in Red rebellion in 1915. Featherston's angry mannerisms connected him and his Party to the masses, and soon the Freedom Party became the white man's proto-version of the Socialists that were popular with Confederate blacks and Northerners in the USA. Everyone who knew better saw Featherston as the Party's true leader, and the "Sarge" won the Party's leadership in a power struggle against Dresser in mid-1919. Once he was comfortably settled in his new office, Featherston reorganized the Freedom Party into a political party revolving around his goals and ambitions, and white-shirted "stalwarts" were soon elected into the Confederate Congress, while their assault squads took on Featherston's enemies.

The victorious United States, with its American Empire, ignored political events occurring in the CSA. Most members of Congress paid no attention to the rise of the Freedom Party, save for Flora Hamburger, a worried Socialist Representative from New York City. Despite her calls for action, her party took no notice, instead focusing on voting President Roosevelt out of office in 1920. The Socialists succeeded, when their candidate Upton Sinclair defeated Roosevelt in the election that November—the first time since the election of 1880 that a Democrat lost a presidential race. Sinclair was inaugurated president of the United States on March 4, 1921 to much rejoicing from the Socialist party.

Later in 1921, Jake Featherston ran for office against Wade Hampton V of the Whigs and Ainsworth Layne of the Radical Liberals. Though he polled second over Layne, Featherston lost by a narrow margin to Hampton, but resolved to fight on. In 1923, Grady Calkins, a deranged Freedom Party stalwart, assassinated the new president at a Birmingham, Alabama rally. The Freedom Party immediately began to lose support, which hurt it a lot in the elections of 1923 and 1925. Another factor that limited the Freedom Party's chances for success was President Sinclair's lifting of the war reparations (requested by new president Burton Mitchel), which took meat out of the Freedom Party's platform. Featherston and his most ardent stalwarts had nothing to look forward to for the next several years.

In Canada, Governor-General Custer ruled the former dominion with an iron-felt glove, surviving several assassination attempts by Manitoban farmer Arthur McGregor. Custer killed McGregor in the farmer's final attempt as he was parading through McGregor's town of Rosenfeld, Manitoba. At that point, the war hero was retiring, having been forced out by the new Socialist administration. Sinclair wanted to shelve the USA's militarist-feel and go back to the days of peace, hoping that by treating its neighbors with respect there would never be another war. Sinclair was popular enough to win re-election in 1924—the same year the Freedom Party started involving its stalwarts in the Mexican Civil War, an action the USA did nothing to stop.

1925–1933: Fascist "Freedom Party" on the Brink of Power

The new medium of radio was now starting to reach the people. Jake Featherston was the first politician to realize its potential, and soon people sitting in their homes could hear his raspy, thundery voice shouting from their radio sets, telling them the "truth" about the Yankees, Whigs, and blacks. Even with this broadened appeal to the masses, the Freedom Party's hopes ebbed further with Featherston's defeat at the polls in 1927 against incumbent Burton Mitchel III. The Confederate people were just starting to enjoy the fruits of peace and prosperity, and the war and black uprisings were the mere past, despite Featherston and his stalwarts doing their utmost to remind them. It seemed nothing could change their fortunes. Then, beginning in early 1929, the world's stock markets crashed.

In the CSA, Burton Mitchel III was blamed. In the USA, which had come out of the 1920s with a booming economy and a Canadian revolt having been crushed in 1925, newly elected President Hosea Blackford took the heat, with shantytowns being named Blackfordburghs in imitation of our timeline's 'Hoovervilles'. Millions lost their jobs, and in Utah, occupied since 1916, Mormon fanatics gunned down Governor-General John Pershing. When Japan and the USA went to war in 1932 after Japan was caught smuggling weapons to the occupied Canadian province of British Columbia by the USS Remembrance, and Japanese bombers attacked Los Angeles, Blackford was easily turned out of office by the Democratic ticket of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. On January 5, 1933, Coolidge died before he could take office. Hoover assumed the presidency, under which he practiced Coolidge's campaign policy of government non-intervention in the economy.

Things were happening in the CSA as well. Whole cities echoed to the boot-steps of marching stalwart formations as the Freedom Party, whose ranks were flowing once more with the angry and the wrathful, prepared for Election Day 1933. Jake Featherston attacked the Mitchel Administration with the most vulgar venom and hate, blaming Mitchel for the crash, and condemning his ineffectual response to the floods that devastated the Mississippi River valley in 1927. Millions of Confederates lapped it up and shouted for more, which he had. When Featherston took the oath of office on March 4, 1934, the world held its breath: "Freedom" was on the march.

In Europe, the storm clouds were also beginning to gather. The final vestiges of the Bolshevik revolution were crushed by 1927; among the last holdouts was the Volga town of Tsaritsyn under the "Man of Steel" (Joseph Stalin) and his second in command "The Hammer" (Vyacheslav Molotov). Under Tsar Michael, Russia remained a primarily agricultural, backward country. Frequent anti-Semitic pogroms and foreign loans managed to deflect further restlessness, but the latter contributed to the Business Collapse in 1929 when Austria-Hungary demanded the repayment of a loan that Russia was unable to fulfill.

Austria-Hungary itself remained a united empire, but only the Austrians and Hungarians felt any loyalty to the Habsburg monarchs. In fact, the multi-ethnic federation seems to have been held together only by German aid and bayonets. The Ottoman Empire also appears to be in the same boat, undertaking the ethnic cleansing of its Armenian population. Despite strong censure from the United States, and more lukewarm protests from Berlin, the Turks continued the genocide until the Ottoman Empire was mostly devoid of any surviving Armenians.

Kaiser Wilhelm II ruled a strong Germany, and his troops continued to occupy Belgium, the Ukraine, and the puppet Kingdom of Poland, but post-war relations with the U.S. has soured to the point that many people on both sides of the Atlantic believed that Germany and the United States would someday be engaged in a full-fledged war. The Business Collapse put an end to that, however, and the old enemies reasserted themselves once more.

After the Collapse, France found itself under Action Française and its king Charles XI, who began making noises about the return of Alsace-Lorraine to French rule. In Britain, the Silver Shirts under Oswald Mosley held similar views, and supported Action Française, though they never became more than a minority in Parliament. Italy never came under Mussolini's rule; not much else is known about it.

In the Pacific, Japan was far from quiet. Prior to the Pacific War with the United States, Japan pressured both France and Holland to acquire Indochina and the East Indies respectively, with proper compensation. Great Britain feared that its Pacific colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, and Singapore, and possibly India would also be annexed by Japan; however, Japan showed no interest in doing so. Japan also gained much influence in China during this period, and seems to have established a puppet state of Manchukuo as well.

1934–1941: The Victorious Opposition

The Depression lingered on in the USA and Occupied Canada through 1934 and 1935, with millions of men out of work and productivity down. President Hoover's only highlight during this time was ending the war with Japan, but many people still questioned why it had been fought in the first place. In Congress, Flora Hamburger Blackford questioned why Hoover and the Democrats were allowing the Confederate States to enlarge its army in violation of the peace treaty. At the same time, Congress had to deal with several Freedom Party congressmen from the former Confederate states of Kentucky and Houston (formerly part of Texas), who disrupted Congressional sessions with calls for a plebiscite in their home states. When Socialist Al Smith was elected over Hoover in 1936, the Freedom Party's shouts started to get heeded.

The Freedom Party in the Confederate States had begun to turn the government into a one-party rule, with the Confederate Congress passing laws proposed by President Jake Featherston. He faced no opposition from the Confederate Supreme Court because he maneuvered the high court into making its position vulnerable, whereupon he merely extended executive power and abolished the judicial branch. Forced elections in 1935 and 1937 solidified and confirmed Freedom control of the House and Senate, with state legislatures and governorships captured as well. The Army was purged in 1936, and conscription renewed in 1938. The troublesome Vice President Willy Knight was removed from office after his attempt on Featherston's life later that year, and was soon imprisoned. The police was slowly padded with stalwarts, and soon, with a nod from the national administration and Attorney General Ferdinand Koenig, the states were installing correctional camps for "rioteous" and "unruly" Whigs and Radical Liberals.

Radical Liberal Louisiana was toppled by Freedom stalwarts, with Governor Huey Long's regime replaced, through his assassination in 1938, by an administration more agreeable with Featherston's interests. With black rebellion flare-ups popping up all over the CSA, Featherston had begun looking for quiet and suitable places to exact revenge for wrongs, real or (mostly) imagined, that the blacks had done. Louisiana was the perfect place to begin "reducing population."

In late 1940, Al Smith finally agreed to hear Jake Featherston's demands for the former Confederate states of Houston, Kentucky, and Sequoyah. In the resulting plebiscites of January 7, 1941, Kentucky and west Texas (Houston) voted to return to the CSA. Featherston promised not to remilitarize them, or to ask for Sequoyah (which had voted pro-USA) or other former CSA territory such as the annexed areas of Virginia, Arkansas, and Sonora. Within weeks, Featherston broke his promise and planted his modernized and expanded Confederate Army on the Ohio River, convincing Smith that the time to face Featherston down had finally come.

Tensions rose in Europe when Germany's longtime ruler died. The new Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm V refused to return the former French territory of Alsace-Lorraine that France's ruling party had demanded. Britain, France, and the CSA soon declared war on Germany, with Russia joining in days later.

With war breaking out in Europe, Jake Featherston felt it was time to have his revenge against his greatest enemy: the United States of America. On the first day of summer in 1941, he ordered Operation Blackbeard to begin. The next day—June 22, 1941—the Confederate States of America brought the war to North America with a surprise attack on Philadelphia and southern Ohio.

Settling Accounts

• The Settling Accounts Tetralogy
  • Return Engagement (2004)
  • Drive to the East (2005)
  • The Grapple (2006)
  • In at the Death (due for 2007)
• World War II

1941–1942: The Entente on the Attack

At 3:30 am on June 22, 1941, (the same time that Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in our real timeline), the North American war kicked off with massive bombing raids on Philadelphia and military installations all over southern Ohio. In an immediate joint session of Congress, President Smith called for—and received—a unanimous declaration of war against the Confederate States. Soon afterwards, Winston Churchill and the rest of the Entente announced hostilities against the USA.

Philadelphia had expected Featherston to strike in the east as the C.S. Army had done in the last war. Though Brigadier General Abner Dowling and Colonel Irving Morrell knew better and had prepared for the coming strike as best they could, U.S. forces in Ohio simply did not have the equipment or manpower that were needed to halt the Confederate army under George Patton.

Within two months, Sandusky on Lake Erie fell to Confederate soldiers, preventing raw materials in the west from reaching the factories of the east. (See Operation Blackbeard for a detailed description of the campaign.) Just before Sandusky fell, radical Mormons armed with Confederate weapons began a new drive for independence in Utah, capturing the settlement belt from Ogden in the north to Provo in the south. (See Utah Troubles.)

At sea, the U.S. fared little better although neither side won control of the sea lanes. In July, the Royal Navy lured the carriers USS Remembrance and Sandwich Islands away from Bermuda. The island, a strategically valuable submarine and air base, fell to a joint Anglo-Confederate task force as a result. The Bahamas were next to fall; the U.S. Marines were forced to fight island by island before surrendering.

Stalemate characterized the war in the Pacific throughout most of 1941. The first major clash between Japan and the U.S. came at the Battle of Midway (which took place, ironically, on a Sunday morning two and a half weeks before Christmas: December 7, 1941). During the battle the USS Remembrance, which had been transferred to the Pacific after the loss of Bermuda, was sunk and the island itself taken. Although Japan suffered one carrier sunk and another damaged, the U.S. Pacific Fleet was left devoid of carriers and reliant upon land-based air cover.

The war in Europe spawned early triumphs for the Entente. In the Ukraine, the local soldiers and population welcomed the arriving Russians as liberators, ensuring that most of the German satellite was lost. But elsewhere the manpower-swarming tactics of the Russians, unchanged from the last war, ensured that they suffered heavy losses for small gains. The Kaiser's army, particularly its panzers and 88 mm flak cannons, proved instrumental in preventing the loss of East Prussia and Poland.

In the West, the French Army swiftly recaptured Alsace-Lorraine (and possibly the Rhineland) and stood on the Rhine. Ireland was overrun by the British, while the Anglo-French thrust through the Low Countries succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. The Belgians welcomed the Entente as liberators. The Dutch, though more pro-German, were brushed aside, and some of the North German Plain was overrun.

Yet victory did not follow. The British end-run through Norway, made for unclear reasons—possibly for either Swedish iron-ore through Narvik or Norwegian naval bases (or both) —failed spectacularly. Churchill's bright idea did nothing more than drive the furious Norwegians into the Central Powers' camp. France proved unable to cross the Rhine and the Germans on that front soon rallied. Austria-Hungary, despite its clear weakness, remained united, and though Bulgaria wavered as a German ally she never abandoned Berlin entirely. Only the Low Countries campaign still showed promise by the end of 1941, but Hamburg still remained unconquered. By February 1942, the German Army felt confident enough to launch counter-offensives against the British outside Hamburg and the Russians in the Ukraine.

In North America, the post-Blackbeard season proved uninspiring for both sides. Shortly after Sandusky fell, Jake Featherston declared that he would make peace with the U.S. if his 'reasonable' demands were met. All the 'unredeemed territory' was to be handed back, the post-Great War reparations that had destroyed the C.S. economy were to be repaid and the Northern (but not Southern) side of the border was to be demilitarized. Smith replied that night with the heaviest air raid on Richmond yet, but not before announcing on the wireless "I have not yet begun to fight!"

Yet despite Smith's bravado, the situation for the U.S. seemed bleak into February 1942. A counter-attack in northern Virginia under Daniel MacArthur soon bogged down. With too many men sandwiched between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, the U.S. Army crossed the Rappahannock River but were held at the Rapidan line. A subsequent Confederate counter-attack under Patton failed to dislodge the U.S., and both sides settled in for the winter.

After the stalling of the Virginia front, Featherston realized that another knock-out blow was needed, and began planning for a drive eastwards for the spring of 1942. Ohio remained quiet, with nothing more than local offensives. The revolt in Utah showed no signs of ending; by Christmas 1941 American forces were stalled within Provo.

Neither side achieved a decisive advantage in the air war, which was characterized by Clarence Potter as a "duel with machine guns at a pace and a half." Both air forces soon resorted to night attacks only on the east coast, as flak and fighters made daylight raids too costly. Farther west, daytime raids still went on. On a tactical level, dive bombers proved effective at hitting ground targets and hideously vulnerable to fighters and flak; Confederate "Asskickers" suffered enormously from both. Neither American Wright-27's nor Confederate "Hound Dog" fighters had any great advantage over the other.

It was during this time that the "population reductions" in the South began in earnest. Any black man whose passbook was out of order was immediately arrested and shipped out to a camp; in the cities Negroes were used as war plant labor while suffering reprisals for black car bombs and other terrorist acts.

In the Louisiana camps, the slaughter had begun with submachine guns, a method that proved inefficient. The camps simmered at the edge of rebellion, while most guards could not stomach the job and some committed suicide. Soon gas was found to be easier, both for the guards' minds and for order in camps. Sealed trucks were ostensibly used to transfer blacks between camps; in practice the fumes would leave them dead and ready for disposal in mass graves.

Despite the Freedom Party's best efforts, news of the killings reached Philadelphia. Congresswoman Flora Blackford announced to the world Confederate crimes...only to receive scathing comparisons with Utah from the Entente and sympathetic but indifferent reactions from U.S. citizens.

In February 1942, Confederate bombers, which had been bombarding Philadelphia since the war's beginning, managed to hit the Powell House, destroying the building and its underground bunker. Al Smith was in the bunker during the bombing and was killed. His vice president Charles La Follette was sworn in as president shortly afterwards. In his first speech as president, La Follette vowed to continue the war and win it for the United States.

1942–1943: Under the Heel

The American determination to keep fighting, even after the Ohio campaign ended with the United States being cut in half, was a major setback to Confederate plans; the CSA had counted on a short war and quick victory. The Confederates decided to concentrate troops in Ohio for an attack into western Pennsylvania to capture Pittsburgh, a major industrial center for the United States. In order to have enough troops, the CSA was forced to pull troops off of other fronts and bring in under-equipped allied forces from the Empire of Mexico.

The campaign succeeded in reaching Pittsburgh but was unable to fully occupy the city. General Nathan Bedford Forrest III, the head of the Confederate military, advised that the fighting in Pittsburgh had achieved its strategic aim of destroying the city's industrial capacity and recommended pulling the Confederate troops out. However, President Featherston refused to allow any withdrawal. U.S. forces under Brigadier General Morrell next attacked and surrounded Pittsburgh, destroying the light Mexican screening force. Still, Featherston refused to allow the encircled forces to attempt a breakout. The Confederate Army was whittled down to a few ragged survivors by determined U.S. resistance and brutal house-to-house fighting. On February 2, 1943, the Confederates still inside Pittsburgh were forced to surrender. As a result of this defeat, General Forrest began to discuss with Clarence Potter the possibility of overthrowing Featherston.

In other plotlines, Flora Blackford became more hawkish on the war, opposing the administration's attempt to negotiate a settlement in Utah. She found herself frequently agreeing with Robert Taft, the Democratic Senator from Ohio.

The Utah uprising continued. When it became clear to the Mormons that they could not achieve a military victory, they began a series of suicide bombings throughout the United States, first with car bombs and then with humans strapped with explosives. Blacks in the CSA soon began imitating these attacks.

The extermination campaign against the CSA's black population continued and was expanded with Jefferson Pinkard remaining a pivotal figure. However, the Confederates worried when a diversionary attack, launched at the same time as the Pittsburgh campaign and led by Major General Dowling, threatened to capture the main extermination camp in Texas and expose its operations to the world.

There were no dramatic actions in the naval war. The Americans beat off a Japanese attack against the Sandwich Islands and achieved an advantage in the Pacific. In the Atlantic, the main activity was preventing British convoys from bringing supplies to the Canadian underground. A battle was fought between the Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet late in 1942, with both sides claiming victory.

Britain and France were still bogged down in western Germany, while in Confederate newspapers the Russians were reported to be driving on Warsaw. Partisan resistance was a large problem for both sides: Britain had to contend with Irish rebellion, Russia fought Jews, Finns, Chechnens and Azerbaijanis, while Austria-Hungary bled from (amongst others) Serb, Bosnian, and Romanian rebels.

By 1943 both the United States and the Confederacy, along with other countries, had initiated programs to develop atomic weapons. While no power had developed a weapon yet, it appeared that the United States and German programs were ahead of the Confederate one, with Germany the closest to completion. Around the turn of the New Year in 1943, the U.S. achieved its first sustaining chain reaction at its plant in Hanford, Washington. The British and the French were also rumored to be working on atomic weapons.

1943–1944: The Tide Turns

Following the defeat of the Confederate Army at Pittsburgh, the Confederate forces found themselves on the defensive in Ohio. Neither the U.S. nor the Confederate forces had adequate supplies for a major push; however, the U.S. position was getting stronger daily. After sufficient buildup, a massive invasion from Indiana crossed the Ohio River and entered Kentucky. General Morrell employed blitzkrieg-like tactics, surrounding and bypassing any center of Confederate resistance.

Meanwhile, the Mormon rebellion in Utah was finally suppressed. Mormons outside of the ruins of Salt Lake City surrendered to occupying U.S. troops. Plans were put forth in Congress to expel the rebels from Utah, possibly to the Sandwich Islands. These same soldiers were sent to put down the flames of revolt in Canada. In mid-1943, Winnipeg was surrounded and under siege by the U.S. and Quebecois armies.

Mexican Army forces began to be deployed to provide internal security in the Confederacy, replacing white Confederate soldiers who were sent to the front lines. Their efficiency was limited against experienced guerrilla bands, whose hit-and-run attacks became more and more brash.

To the surprise of the U.S. Navy, an assault on Midway Island revealed the Japanese had completely abandoned their garrison there. Many suspected the Japanese were concentrating their resources for an assault on British-held Malaya and Singapore. An amphibious assault on Wake Island some months later regained U.S. control of the island but also found no signs of the Japanese.

President Featherston demanded more production from the Confederate nuclear program, fearing that the U.S. would develop the weapon first. In an attempt to slow down the U.S. nuclear program, C.S. bombers flew a long-range mission to bomb the "uranium works" in Hanford, Washington. No serious damage was incurred, and the program continued under heightened security. A later U.S. bombing raid on the Confederate atomic program in Lexington, Virginia, killed several prominent Confederate nuclear physicists.

The American conquest of Baja California was undertaken soon after the lull in Pacific operations began. Marines landed midway down the peninsula and took Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip, while the U.S. Army pushed from San Diego deep into the territory, seizing control of the remainder of Baja. Harassment operations soon began against the Confederate forces in Guaymas and the Sonoran coast.

A seaborne operation led by the U.S. to re-recapture Bermuda from British and C.S. forces succeeded. The United States began running guns to Irish rebels in their fight against the British occupiers. As these operations were going on, the U.S. also sent arms to anti-Freedom Party rebels in Confederate Cuba.

General Dowling's Eleventh Army continued its pressure on Lubbock, Texas, the linchpin of the Confederate defenses in the west. After the capture of Lubbock, and the subsequent revival of the state of Houston, Brigade Leader Jefferson Pinkard destroyed records and gas chambers at Camp Determination before the Yankees broke through. Freedom Party Guard Units were deployed to slow down the U.S. advance, which delayed the capture of Camp Determination for a time. Pinkard was put in charge of Camp Humble, not far from Houston, Texas to continue population reductions. The United States used the mass graves at Camp Determination as a propaganda theme.

In Europe, the German Army drove British forces out of their territory and over the Dutch border. Subsequent operations were undertaken to free the Netherlands and "liberate" Belgium from Franco-British forces. In the east, German armored units dealt a decisive blow to Russian forces outside of Kiev, tightening German control in the area. Another thrust was aimed at the capital of Petrograd, which the Russians tried unsuccessfully to turn back. Russia was no longer able to mount offensive operations, now trying to defend their Motherland with a battered and wounded army. Austria-Hungary was wracked by terrorist attacks but continued reprisals against the Serbians.

Facing off against Confederate General Patton, Morrell ground down through Tennessee to capture the railroad junction of Chattanooga. In August 1943, United States airborne forces seized Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, overlooking Chattanooga, Tennessee, forcing the collapse of the Confederate defenses of the city; General Patton had planned to treat the city as a second Pittsburgh, forcing a bloody attrition battle on the U.S. Instead, Confederate forces were forced to retreat to northwest Georgia. After several more counterattacks by the ill-equipped Confederate forces, the United States was poised to capture Atlanta and cut the last major transportation hub still linking both halves of the Confederacy.

As the U.S. Army was moving through Tennessee (and even when that state was not even halfway occupied by the U.S.), plans were put forth in Congress to return Kentucky and Tennessee to the United States (under martial law), along with a revived Houston.

With the surprising success in its war effort, President La Follette, in a speech to Congress in fall 1943, demanded that President Featherston surrender unconditionally, with him and his inner circle being banished to a distant island. Paralleling Al Smith's refusal of a similar demand in 1941, Featherston refused this latest demand, responding to it by ordering two rockets to be fired into Philadelphia, proving to the United States that the he was unwilling to give up so easily.

See also

• Characters in the Southern Victory series
• Timeline 191's Common Characters
• Institutions in the Southern Victory (Timeline-191) series
• Second Mexican War
• World War I in Timeline-191
• Pacific War (Harry Turtledove)
• World War II in Timeline-191
• Freedom Party

External links

• TL-191 at the Harry Turtledove wiki
• http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Southern_Victory