The Guns of the South
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| Author | Harry Turtledove |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Alternate history novel |
| Publisher | Ballantine |
| Released | 22 September 1992 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 561 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-345-37675-7, ISBN 0-345-38468-7 |
The Guns of the South (1992, ISBN 0-345-37675-7) is a novel by writer Harry Turtledove.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
An alternate history story set during the American Civil War, the story deals with a group of time-travelling Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (who conceal their true identities while restating their acronym as "America Will Break") members from 2014 who wish to alter the outcome of the Civil War and, as a result, insure the success of their own cause in the future. In order to do this, they provide the South with a large number of AK-47s. To all but a few Confederate leaders, who are told the truth, they are known as "Rivington men" after the (fictional) North Carolina town where they set up their base.
The Confederacy, starting to reel towards defeat in the late winter of 1863-64, welcomes the guns and other supplies. The armies of the Confederacy are trained in their use, and when the opposed armies break camp to fight the Battle of the Wilderness, there is an overwhelming Confederate victory rather than the inconclusive result in our timeline. Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army defeats the Union again near Bealeton, Virginia, crosses the Potomac, and in a daring night battle, captures Washington, DC. With parallel successes by Confederate troops on other fronts, U.S. President Lincoln has little choice but to sign an armistice, agreeing to the withdrawal of Union troops, and negotiations to determine a final border.
During those negotiations, the Confederacy abandons claims to West Virginia and Maryland, while the United States cedes the Indian Territory, with Kentucky and Missouri to hold state-wide referendum votes to determine which nation they will join. After the completion of the negotiations, voting, and political conversation—during which a minor incident occurs where two members of the AWB are caught by Union pickets attempting to smuggle AK-47s into the disputed states—referenda are held where Kentucky chooses to join the Confederacy while Missouri chooses to remain with the Union. General Lee returns to his duties in Virginia with the hope of finally settling down with his family, including his ailing wife, at their home, Arlington House, for the remainder of their days.
Such is not to be. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, makes clear his wish that Lee be the next man to hold the position. The AWB, whose goal from the beginning had been to maintain the Confederacy as a bastion of Black oppression, feel that Lee is too soft on the question of slavery and rally behind General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a member of the Confederate cavalry, in the hopes of electing him to office. A slave trader himself, Forrest is believed to be the perfect man for the job of maintaining the standard of white supremacy.
The AWB found the Patriot Party to support Forrest's campaign, which forces Lee and his political allies to form the Confederate Party. The election is hotly contested, both men heroes of the recent War and filled with charisma, but Lee emerges the victor despite the introduction of 20th and 21st century campaigning techniques by the AWB to bolster Forrest's one-note campaign to preserve slavery in the South. Several of the states which voted for Forrest begin to call for secession from the Confederacy and the creation of their own nation, echoing the original Southern secession after the election of Lincoln to the Union's presidency. However, Forrest feels that such an action would be nothing short of petulance and concedes defeat, offering his personal service in the Confederate Army if any states do attempt to secede.
Lee is presented with a stolen book from the future, proving that the Rivington men lied about the catastrophes which they claimed lay in wait for the South if it lost the war. He confronts Rhoodie. The AWB has no chance of influence over Lee, and, at the presidential inauguration, several of its members attempt to assassinate Lee. They attack now-President Lee armed with UZIs and shielded with kevlar vests (or a similar material, both still a mystery to the Confederacy) and manage to kill a number of prominent Confederates, including Lee's newly-inaugurated Vice President Albert Gallatin Brown and General Jubal Early. Lee survives the attempt on his life by nothing more than pure luck, though his wife is killed. The AWB forces in Richmond are attacked, and, after a fierce battle, are finally defeated. Their offices contain many items from the 21st century that are a mystery to the soldiers who discover them— gas-powered electrical generators, fluorescent lighting, and a Macintosh computer (which Lee calls a "QWERTY" for the keys) — but most importantly contains dozens of historical texts that reveal not only the AWB's true intentions, but that they had twisted the historical facts so as to present the South's defeat as far worse than it actually was. All of these are contained in a secure area at the AWB headquarters in Richmond, behind a safe-like door which the Confederates lack the technology to defeat, but eventually "outflank" (Instead of breaking down the door, they break through an outer wall of the building).
After the capture of the AWB's Richmond offices, Lee presents before the Confederate leadership all the historical documents that the men from the future used to inform themselves of the events of the present time. With the view of hindsight, which is always 20/20, they see how the issue of slavery is almost universally reviled in the future and that, where they had hoped to be vindicated for their actions by their descendants, practically the entirety of the world viewed the Civil War and Southern Secession to be little more than a crime against humanity itself. With this new information, Congress is more inclined to agree to Lee's plan to pass a bill for gradual emancipation of its entire slave population. The bill itself was modelled after a proposed act of legislation in slave-holding Brazil, though the real bill was not proposed until years after the setting of the novel, and Turtledove notes in an afterword that it is anachronistic.
Lee orders the Confederate army against the AWB. However, the AWB have managed to secure control over an area around Rivington, due largely to elements of their advanced technology which they have not shared with Lee's men (including mines, mortars, walkie-talkies, flak jackets, and so-called "endless repeaters", in reality belt-fed machine guns that prevented any form of massed advance on the AWB lines), and they manage to successfully repel all Confederate attempts to retake their territory. With the AWB resupplied from the future, the conflict appears to be a stalemate. With a newly reinstated Forrest in command, it is a brilliant strategy by Lt. Colonel Henry Pleasants, a former Union officer who remained in the South after he had been captured during the War, that finally allows the Confederates to breach the AWB perimeter. The Confederate forces manage to overcome the AWB's superior technology through sheer numbers and determination. The AWB combatants are eventually defeated, and those who are unable to escape in their time machine are captured. Rhoodie surrenders, but is killed by one of his slaves in retaliation for severe mistreatment. Most of the Rivington men kept their slaves under deplorable conditions and, despite years of tradition which demand the slave be put to death, even the Confederate soldiers believe Rhoodie deserved what he got, quickly ordering the slave to flee the area.
The surviving AWB members are held in a Confederate prison under constant guard. While all face a sentence of death, proceedings are on indefinite stay so long as those willing to cooperate assist in bridging the gaps in the information presented in the historical texts and technological items recovered following the AWB's defeat. Although some gaps would prove almost impossible to fill due to numerous generations of technological advancements—1870s technology would be far too immature to attempt to repair a 21st century computer at the component level, for example—most of the AWB survivors agree to cooperate much in the same way captured German scientists cooperated with their Soviet captors—they can cooperate or die.
[edit] Analysis
The story is told alternately from the third-person perspectives of General Lee himself and of First Sergeant Nate Caudell, an actual historical figure who served in the 47th North Carolina. This enables the reader to witness events from both "the top" and "the bottom", on the battlefield in the early part of the book and later in the civilian life of the post-war Confederacy. The realities of the situation gradually reveal themselves as Lee learns more about his dubious allies, while Caudell also hears increasingly disturbing rumors about the situation at Rivington - with the concluding explosive confrontation with the AWB again seen alternately from the two distinct viewpoints.
Turtledove used historical records of an actual Confederate Army unit, the 47th North Carolina, to flesh out his list of characters. All the characters in the book are mentioned with the actual ranks they held in the 47th - including Mollie Bean, who as a woman masqueraded as a male Confederate soldier for most of the War before being wounded and captured by Union forces - as well as their civilian employment if it is known.
[edit] Awards
The book won the John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction in 1993.
[edit] Trivia
- Dr. Turtledove has an entire (unrelated) book series, known among fans as Timeline-191, on an alternate history in which the Confederacy won the Civil War. Though this time, not through deus ex machina intervention by time travel. Instead the famous 'lost orders' are found by other Confederates, the Union does not learn of Lee's plans and a battle equivalent to the Battle of Antietam results in decisive Confederate victory.
- The idea of a time traveller bringing advanced weapons to Confederates is also the theme of Harry Harrison's book A Rebel In Time. The two treatments are, however, very different.
- Several of the characters, or at least South African people with the same name, appeared in S. M. Stirling's book Conquistador. They weren't very succesful there, either.
[edit] External links
| Series of Books by Harry Turtledove | ||
|---|---|---|
| Videssos Books | Videssos Cycle | The Misplaced Legion | An Emperor for the Legion | The Legion of Videssos | The Swords of the Legion |
| The Tale of Krispos Series | Krispos Rising | Krispos of Videssos | Krispos the Emperor | |
| Time of Troubles Series | The Stolen Throne | Hammer and Anvil | The Thousand Cities | Videssos Besieged | |
| The Bridge of the Separator | ||
| Worldwar & Colonization Series | Worldwar Tetralogy | In the Balance | Tilting the Balance | Upsetting the Balance | Striking the Balance |
| Colonization | Second Contact | Down to Earth | Aftershocks | |
| Homeward Bound | ||
| Southern Victory or Timeline-191 Books | How Few Remain | |
| The Great War Trilogy | American Front | Walk in Hell | Breakthroughs | |
| The American Empire Trilogy | Blood and Iron | The Center Cannot Hold | The Victorious Opposition | |
| The Settling Accounts Tetralogy | Return Engagement | Drive to the East | The Grapple | In at the Death | |
| Darkness Series | Into the Darkness | Darkness Descending | Through the Darkness | Rulers of the Darkness | Jaws of the Darkness | Out of the Darkness | |
| War Between the Provinces Series | Sentry Peak | Marching Through Peachtree | Advance and Retreat | |
| Hellenic Traders Series | Over the Wine Dark Sea | The Gryphon's Skull | The Sacred Land | Owls to Athens | |
| Crosstime Traffic Series | Gunpowder Empire | Curious Notions | In High Places | The Disunited States of America | The Gladiator | |
| Pacific War Series | Days of Infamy | End of the Beginning | |
| Scepter of Mercy Series | The Chernagor Pirates | The Bastard King | The Scepter's Return | |
| Other Books by Harry Turtledove | ||
| Agent of Byzantium | A Different Flesh | Noninterference | Kaleidoscope | A World Of Difference | Earthgrip | The Guns of the South | The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump | Departures | Down in the Bottomlands | The Two Georges | Thessalonica | Between the Rivers | Justinian | Household Gods | Counting Up, Counting Down | Ruled Britannia | In the Presence of Mine Enemies | Conan of Venarium | Every Inch a King | Fort Pillow | Beyond the Gap | The Battle of Teutoberg Forest | ||
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