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Drooling on the Pillow

Friday, February 18, 2005

Turtledove 

For the past month or so I've been wading through the books of Harry Turtledove, the foremost practitioner of the relatively new genre of Alternative History. His project is a rewriting of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries beginning with an historical 'What if?'.

[The following constitutes an extended spoiler of the first three or four books of the series, but as the books are more in the nature of argument than fiction and since it's pretty easy to see where he's going from about 500 pages away, I prefer to think of it more as a guide than a spoiler.]

On September 13, 1862 as McClellan sauntered over west of Washington D.C. to counter Lee's thrust up into Maryland, Alpheus Williams, a Union soldier camped in a spot occupied a few days earlier by Confederate troops found three cigars wrapped in paper. He snatched up the cigars and handed the paper to an officer. It turned out to be Lee's Special Order 191 and detailed Lee's orders for troop movement and his general campaign plans. Four days later the Battle of Antietam was fought nearby and McClellan defeated Lee, turning back the invasion, ending southern hopes for European recognition and prompting Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

What if when the Confederate courier dropped Special Order 191 on September 9th a sharp-eyed Rebel spotted it and alerted the courier? Perhaps McClellan would have reverted to his customary stumbling, cautious ways, Lee's brilliant plan would have swept him away, leaving Washington and the Eastern seaboard defenseless, Lee would have swung up through Pennsylvania a year early, over the Susquehanna and occupying Philadelphia. England and France would have rushed to recognize the Confederacy and the U.S. would have sued for peace and accepted the secession by the beginning of 1863.

Following these events Lincoln would have been hurled out of office in 1864 and been universally recognized as the worst President ever. The Confederacy now being allied with England and France, the U.S. would have been thrown into the arms of the nascent power of Germany and become a much more bureaucratic, regimented society than in the unalternative version. Lincoln, despised by much of the nation, leads the left wing of the Republican party into alliance with the Socialist party, making it the only effective counter to the Democrats.

War breaks out again in the 1880s and European support of the Confederacy comes at the price of a promise of manumission at the end of the conflict. The north, being effectively blockaded by England and France and attacked from Canada again is forced to concede.

Bitterness in the north, triumphalism in the south until 1914 when, due to alliances, the First World War is fought with even more savagery and loss of life on the American continent than on the European. A Marxist rebellion of blacks in the south is a factor in weakening the Confederacy. This time the U.S./German alliance triumphs. France is destroyed, England humbled, Quebec and Ireland set free, Kentucky, Oklahoma and large swathes of Canada annexed and the U.S. imposes a Versailles-type peace on the south.

The southern polity disintegrates, hyper-inflation seems irreversible, and fascist parties arise. In the north the Socialists seem poised to take power.

Whew! That's as far as I've gotten.

Couple problems. First, while the acquisition of Special Order 191 presented McClellan with a remarkable opportunity, he did almost nothing with it. He was pathologically cautious and circumspect in approaching the enemy. The unfightingest general in the army. He always believed he was vastly outnumbered when, in truth, he never was. The troops loved him, but he was a Copperhead and unwilling to crush the rebellion. He wanted a negotiated peace. He opposed the secession, but more strongly opposed emancipation. It could be argued that Special Order 191 enabled him to choose the battleground for Antietam, but even so, he waited until virtually all the southern troops were reassembled before offering battle. And after the battle he allowed the banged up, tattered and hungry Army of Northern Virginia to escape to fight again. If Grant or even Meade or even Joe Farookin' Hooker had had his opportunity the war would have been a lot shorter. Also, McClellan's talent was defensive and at that he was as good as anyone of his age. To say that, absent the loss of his battle plan, Lee would have swept up to Philadelphia is to say nothing at all, because as far as McClellan was concerned, it made almost no impact on his actions.

Secondly, to make the Socialist party a political power requires Lincoln to join them. These books portray him as a sort of John Brown of the Internationale. That's really hard to buy. Lincoln, after all, for most of his adult life was a corporate lawyer, representing the railroads and trusts the book has him attacking. I think it's a stretch to make him even a proto-red, but, then, if you can make an argument that he's gay, I guess its not that much further to make him Rosa Luxemburg.

Turtledove is not a good writer, but he's no worse than many best-sellers in the genre field. I do wish he would leave sex alone, though. Let's just say that in describing the act, it reads like he is accessing a non-personal database. And he does like to describe the act.

Having said all this . . .

I can't put it down. As I said it is more an argument and an entertainment than a novel. War and Peace it ain't. At the price of swallowing a few unlikely premises, you get to review and challenge all the historical forces that shaped the world we live in. The same characters run through all the books and, of course, show up at and guide focal points of history. If you disagree with the direction the plot takes, you're required to challenge it with your own knowledge of history. At the same time, while I might disagree that some of his conclusions are the most likely alternative to what actually happened, it's loaded with insight into the forces that shaped history. It's a pentimento of what we know or think we know about our past, and, as such, gives you a fresh look at history.

And I've still got about 75,000 pages to go.
Posted by: Sluggo / 10:21 AM
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