George K. reviewed The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been on + 10 more book reviews
Overall, I rate this a disappointing, though somewhat worthwhile read. Written by a history professor, the text has a very dry, academician feel to it. Fans of alternative history may find some of the statistical analysis used by the author to justify his projections of interest, but if you are looking for an exciting, "What If?" scenario, you won't find it here.
The author spends well over half the text regurgitating the actual history of the War Between the States to establish a baseline of what actually happened. This is all well and good for those who fell asleep during their American history class in high school, but it will irritate Civil War buffs who already know this history well. I found myself anxious for the author to "get on with it" and move into his counter-factual analysis and alternate history scenario and he simply took too long to do this.
The author's alternative history scenario, (when he FINALLY gets around to it!), starts off well enough with an alternate War for Southern Indendence wherein Confederate generals Albert Sidney Johnston and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson survive the wounds that killed them in the real timeline and wherein Confederate President Jefferson Davis makes some alternate decisions regarding various army commands. All of this leads to a stalemate more favorable to the Confederacy in 1864 causing the defeat of Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans in the 1864 elections and the elevation of a peace-platform Democrat who negotiates an armistice that leads to the independence of the CSA in 1865.
The post-war alternate timeline yields only one truly interesting development, which is the voluntary emancipation of the Confederacy's slaves by the CSA government in the 1880's as plantation economy based on "King Cotton" grows less profitable, leading to a deflation in the value of slave property, thus causing the planter class to agitate for government buy-outs of their slaves as part of a goverment sponsored manumission program.
On this point, I think the author has it spot-on right. Economics drove the expansion of slavery in the early 19th century and economics would have likewise have driven slavery out of existence in the late 19th century - all without the need for a bloody, expensive and wholly unconstitutional war by the Lincoln administration - if only the abolitionists kooks in New England could have cooled their jets for another 20 or 30 years instead of driving the country headlong toward fratricidal strife. A peaceful solution to the slavery question, by the way, is exactly what happened historically in Brazil, the last slaveholding republic in the Western Hemisphere, and was precisely the way all other Western nations ended the institution. Only in America did we have to endure a war that, to this day, remains the largest and bloodiest war ever fought in the Western hemisphere, due to anti-slavery extremism on the part of the idiots in New England.
The author's realistic analysis of how slavery in the South could have ended peacefully and through an orderly civil process by Southerners - acting without outside coercion, in and of itself, makes the book worth reading. It is about time that someone attempted to disabuse millions of Americans who've been brainwashed by generations of post-war, Yankee propaganda masquerading as "history," of the idiotic notion that the War Between the States was "inevitable" and "necessary" to end slavery. This was, and is, simply hogwash and nonsense and the author, who clearly subscribes to much of the traditional Northern-biased historiography of the war, does this fairly convincingly in this text.
Readers will enjoy the maps of the post-war world wherein the CSA takes it's place alongside the USA on the world map, but those who've read Harry Turtledove's multi-book alternative history of the War Between the States and the 81 year alternative history aftermath, will be disappointed by this author's lack of imagination and heavy borrowing from Turtledove's work at the end of the end of this book's alternative history timeline imagining. In it, the author imagines the CSA being re-absorbed by the USA in the wake of it's defeat in WW1. I seriously doubt that after over 50 years of political independence the South would so easily agree to being reincorporated into the Yankee Union and I further doubt that most Yankee's in the alternate timeline would have been very keen on bringing 16 hostile Confederate States forcibly back into their Union - which would only set the stage for yet another decades-long internal struggle for political power and independence by that conquered Southerners against their Yankee overlords.
Turtledove's resolution of the CSA's loss of the First World War to the USA was far more realistic in my view.
The author spends well over half the text regurgitating the actual history of the War Between the States to establish a baseline of what actually happened. This is all well and good for those who fell asleep during their American history class in high school, but it will irritate Civil War buffs who already know this history well. I found myself anxious for the author to "get on with it" and move into his counter-factual analysis and alternate history scenario and he simply took too long to do this.
The author's alternative history scenario, (when he FINALLY gets around to it!), starts off well enough with an alternate War for Southern Indendence wherein Confederate generals Albert Sidney Johnston and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson survive the wounds that killed them in the real timeline and wherein Confederate President Jefferson Davis makes some alternate decisions regarding various army commands. All of this leads to a stalemate more favorable to the Confederacy in 1864 causing the defeat of Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans in the 1864 elections and the elevation of a peace-platform Democrat who negotiates an armistice that leads to the independence of the CSA in 1865.
The post-war alternate timeline yields only one truly interesting development, which is the voluntary emancipation of the Confederacy's slaves by the CSA government in the 1880's as plantation economy based on "King Cotton" grows less profitable, leading to a deflation in the value of slave property, thus causing the planter class to agitate for government buy-outs of their slaves as part of a goverment sponsored manumission program.
On this point, I think the author has it spot-on right. Economics drove the expansion of slavery in the early 19th century and economics would have likewise have driven slavery out of existence in the late 19th century - all without the need for a bloody, expensive and wholly unconstitutional war by the Lincoln administration - if only the abolitionists kooks in New England could have cooled their jets for another 20 or 30 years instead of driving the country headlong toward fratricidal strife. A peaceful solution to the slavery question, by the way, is exactly what happened historically in Brazil, the last slaveholding republic in the Western Hemisphere, and was precisely the way all other Western nations ended the institution. Only in America did we have to endure a war that, to this day, remains the largest and bloodiest war ever fought in the Western hemisphere, due to anti-slavery extremism on the part of the idiots in New England.
The author's realistic analysis of how slavery in the South could have ended peacefully and through an orderly civil process by Southerners - acting without outside coercion, in and of itself, makes the book worth reading. It is about time that someone attempted to disabuse millions of Americans who've been brainwashed by generations of post-war, Yankee propaganda masquerading as "history," of the idiotic notion that the War Between the States was "inevitable" and "necessary" to end slavery. This was, and is, simply hogwash and nonsense and the author, who clearly subscribes to much of the traditional Northern-biased historiography of the war, does this fairly convincingly in this text.
Readers will enjoy the maps of the post-war world wherein the CSA takes it's place alongside the USA on the world map, but those who've read Harry Turtledove's multi-book alternative history of the War Between the States and the 81 year alternative history aftermath, will be disappointed by this author's lack of imagination and heavy borrowing from Turtledove's work at the end of the end of this book's alternative history timeline imagining. In it, the author imagines the CSA being re-absorbed by the USA in the wake of it's defeat in WW1. I seriously doubt that after over 50 years of political independence the South would so easily agree to being reincorporated into the Yankee Union and I further doubt that most Yankee's in the alternate timeline would have been very keen on bringing 16 hostile Confederate States forcibly back into their Union - which would only set the stage for yet another decades-long internal struggle for political power and independence by that conquered Southerners against their Yankee overlords.
Turtledove's resolution of the CSA's loss of the First World War to the USA was far more realistic in my view.
