How Few Remain
Harry Turtledove
What if: the confederacy won the Civil War before the Emancipation Proclamation, before Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth had their fatal encounter, and before the war and its aftermath changed the lives of any number of the prominent people of the time? Whose life, and therefore biography, would be affected and how? Well, Lincoln's of course. An unpopular president who lost the war and left the country only half of its former self, who can't get elected dog catcher. What about George Custer? Would he still have a Little Big Horn in his future? And what if Samuel Clemens stayed a newspaperman in the West?
Add to this list of the movers and shakers of their time such names as Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, Frederic Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Geronimo and even General "Chinese Gordon, and you have a speculative free-for-all. One result is you learn a bit about people like Lincoln whose socialist leanings were eclipsed by the war and his assassination.
The basic plot is that the Confederate States of America have just purchased the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora from a peso strapped Emperor Maximilian, an acquisition which will allow the CSA to build a railroad all the way to the Pacific coast. The USA still smarting twenty or so years after the 1863 defeat by the CSA declares war and starts attacking. Ordered by CSA President Longstreet to hold onto territory but not cross into the US, Stonewall Jackson faces an inept US force at the Ohio River. Jeb Stuart is sent to establish CSA control of the new territories and spends some time harassing New Mexico Territory with the help of the Apaches. Frederic Douglass is hawkish for the war as the only means he sees likely to free CSA slaves. Lincoln, traveling the west to rabble rouse among labor, gets stuck in Utah when the Mormons decide to secede. Sam Clemens lives in San Francisco with his wife and two kids and writes editorials about how stupid the war is and how even stupider US President William Blaine is for starting it. perhaps most engaging is a 22-year old Theodore Roosevelt, a rancher in Montana who creates the "Unauthorized Volunteers", a civilian army and proves himself bully when it comes to leading them.
Turtledove tells one bully story, too, and had a lot of fun with speculating who would remain prominent and what course their lives would take if the "war of secession" had turned out differently. You will be thoroughly entertained by this book. I actually listened to the audio version of this novel, unabridged of course, so I had extra cause to enjoy it. The reader was terrific, putting in accents and personality.
It's more than a little fun to see which historical celebrity will show up next. it was a little embarrassing to be in on the marital sex scenes for Clemens, though not so much with Roosevelt and Custer.. I wonder why that was?
OK, I have one gripe. If you went by this novel women have no involvement in the making of history outside of wives who nag their famous husbands or the occasional whore who makes Teddy Roosevelt smile. C'mon, Harry, you could have thrown in an Emma Goldman when Lincoln joins the socialists or an Elizabeth Cady Stanton chiding Douglass for taking too many chances by travelling to the front. Maybe it's not your thing, but if history is, then all of history should be, in my humble opinion.
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