On the Confederate victory at Gettysburg: July 3, 1863

Little Round Top

Gettysburg battlefield, Pennsylvania
From http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_from_Little_Round_Top_over_Gettysburg_Battlefield.jpg

The destruction of Philadelphia by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on September 11, 1863 effectively ended the War of Secession. Fighting between Lee's forces and remnants of General Winfield Scott Hancock's Army of the Potomac would continue for another month, with minor skirmishes ranging across Pennsylvania. But the burning of the city where the Declaration of Independence had been signed triggered the final dissolution of the American union, four score and seven years after its birth. Five days after Philadelphia, word reached Washington that France and Britain had  extended official diplomatic recognition to the Confederate States of America. The Anglo-French decision had been reached prior to the Philadelphia catastrophe, but news of European recognition sealed the union's fate. On September 17, a delegation of Congressional leaders met with President Lincoln at the White House. Following that meeting, Lincoln announced his resignation from office. Vice-President Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was sworn in two hours later as the seventeenth President of the United States. It was Hamlin who signed the peace accords with Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia, on October 30, 1863. 

The consequences of Confederate independence continue to be felt. The territory of the former United States at the outbreak of war in 1861 is now home to twenty one independent nation-states. The old Confederacy is the least of them all. The secession of Florida in 1972 reduced the rump Confederate states to a shell of their former greatness, with only Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi remaining as members. Today the Pacific Republic, anchored by California and the Vancouver States and the alliance with Tokyo, contends with the Texas-led Concordium of the Central Republics for economic and military supremacy in North America. Pacific dominance in information technology is more than counter-balanced by the C.C.R.'s control of oil fields in its Mexican and Venezuelan territories.  

The autocratic empire of New York stands in glittering isolation from the other North American powers, its attention long since turned eastward across the Atlantic. The admirals, field marshals and industrial managers in Manhattan are content to supervise a thriving Bismarckian realm extending from Pittsburgh to Charleston. New York's alliance with the trans-European Kriegstadt, dating from the Great War of 1913-1922, remains strong on paper. Whether the troops and naval squadrons of New York will continue to participate in Berlin's counter-guerrilla operations against Russian insurgents remains a subject of fierce debate within the Alliance.  

The other shabby autocracies and principalities of North America fend for themselves as best they can. The Mormons have their Utopian theocracy in Deseret. The Dominion of New England recently withdrew from the British Commonwealth at last, but faces internal strife that could be its undoing.  Various separatist parties, having abandoned armed resistance in the 1980s, are now close to forming a coalition in the parliament at Boston. Meanwhile, the Great Lakes Confederation remains a squabbling hodge-podge of corrupt little cornfield republics. The Dixie Mountain states fight their endless, bloody wars for God and feudal rights. And so on. 

All of this because of what began on an April day in 1861 at Fort Sumter. Or perhaps it all started in the presidential election of 1860, which unexpectedly brought an obscure extremist party to power in Washington, led by an ill-prepared, mediocre lawyer from Illinois. Or perhaps today's North America first took shape at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which failed so completely to forge a durable, functioning political union of the newly independent colonies. 

Some novelists and film-makers, rather implausibly, trace today's situation to the Battle of Gettysburg, the enormous bloodletting across three days in July, 1863. The triumph at Gettysburg led to further victories for Robert E. Lee at the Susquehanna and Pottsville in August. And on to Philadelphia, the city where the Union ended and began. No one can deny that Lee's spectacular success in the summer of 1863 made him immortal. Military glory ensured his election as the second President of the Confederate States of America. It did not, however, save him from assassination in Birmingham on November 22, 1868. By then, Lee's brief presidency had already been a failure, as the great military conqueror proved unable to reconcile feuding delegations in the Confederate Congress. Two years later, the coup against President Longstreet by General Nathan Bedford Forest would signal the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. 

Its former antagonist in the North fared no better. The disputed presidential elections of 1868 and 1872 degenerated into open warfare among contending military factions. Commanders who fought alongside one another in the War for the Union now waged bitter, bloody combat in the farmlands and cities of the United States. General Custer's seizure of Washington on June 25, 1876, ended the fighting. His summary execution of Generals Grant and Sherman on the national centennial made another war -- and the final breakup of the Northern Union -- inevitable. 

From a certain simple point of view, the bitterness and squalor of the century and a half since 1863 might, conceivably, be traced to a few key moments in that fateful year. If Lee's daring decision to divide his forces at Chancellorsville had backfired, maybe the Confederate victory at Gettysburg two months later would not have happened. If Union General George Meade had not abandoned the left flank of his lines at Gettysburg on July 2, maybe Longstreet's Charge would not have swept Union forces from Cemetery Ridge on the following day. Perhaps Meade might have held the left flank on July 2 if not for the surrender of the 20th Maine at Little Round top that day. Maybe the destruction of the United States of America happened because a professor of rhetoric from Bowdoin College, one Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, found himself commanding men in battle at a critical moment in North American history. If Chamberlain had rallied his regiment at Little Round top, instead of surrendering, maybe everything afterward would have been different, as some writers of the Lost American Cause have insisted. Maybe Meade wouldn't have panicked when Confederate guns gained the summit of the hill Chamberlain lost. Maybe he wouldn't have ordered the withdrawals that led to Longstreet's Charge the next day. Maybe, if, only, might, would, should.

The urge to seek a single, decisive turning point in North American history is tempting. But turning points are the stuff of storytelling and myth. Historians are less apt to romanticize the course of human events. Their job is simply to seek explanation, by clearly defined chains of cause and effect. Unfortunately, events in the century and a half since the War of Secession (or the War for the Union, take your pick) do not easily yield to clear simple answers. The chains of cause and effect exist in an ocean of possibility and time. In the end, it's beyond our understanding, except in the most tentative of ways. 


We know that we are here, now. In this time and place. How this happened matters less than what we do today. For our descendants, it will be the same, looking back at the decisions we made. Mystic chords of memory will not offer simple understanding or solace. Only questions. We do the best we can, and go on. There is no other choice.

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Acknowledgments: 

I first encountered a depiction of "Longstreet's Charge," in an alternate Battle of Gettysburg, in the book Gettysburg: An Alternate History, by Peter G. Tsouras.  My use of that phrase is freely borrowed from that book, which portrays a very different outcome at Gettysburg than the one I sketched in this post. In Tsouras' account, Longstreet's Charge ends in an unspeakable catastrophe for the Army of Northern Virginia, on a scale far greater than the nightmare charge led by George Pickett in our universe. The bloody slaughter of Longstreet's men triggers a furious Union counterattack that breaks the Confederate Army, resulting in the capture of Robert E. Lee and the ending of the Civil War two years early. 


In the fiction of Harry Turtledove, I first pondered the idea of a Confederate victory in the American Civil War leading to German triumph in World War I. In Turtledove's alternate history and mine, there is no unified American republic to reinforce the exhausted Western Allies in 1917-1918. Thus, Kaiserine Germany succeeds in its bid for European hegemony. The Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of Hitler, and the Cold War never happen. The twentieth century world becomes a very different place. 


I owe my sketch of fratricidal warfare in North America in part to the novel The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. In that book, British inventor Charles Babbage builds a functioning computer in the 1830s, inaugurating a revolution in information technology during the Victorian Age. British technological supremacy leads to overwhelming global dominance, with Her Majesty's diplomats and generals successfully instigating the breakup of the fragile union of American states by the 1850s. 


Confederate victory in the Civil War is probably, along with Nazi conquest of the Western Allies, the most popular alternate history in fiction. Like all good fictional tropes, it is subject to endless, fascinating variation. It was fun to add one more version to the mix.

Future Histories Past

It won't be immediately obvious how this post relates to climate change and peak oil, but bear with me. While plodding through mindless paperwork today at my job, I noticed that tomorrow is August 4. That date struck the random chord of a childhood memory. That memory is of a war that never happened, which began -- in a universe that might have been -- on August 4.

The war in question was described in a certain book that scared the holy bejeebers out of me when I read it around age 11 (circa 1980):

This book, published in 1978, was written as if it were a non-fiction account, looking back from the year 1987 on a (mostly) conventional war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. You probably don't remember the Warsaw Pact. It was an alliance of East European countries dominated by the now-deceased Soviet Union during the Cold War. For decades the Warsaw Pact massed armored divisions of the USSR and its satellites along multiple European frontiers with their adversaries, which were the United States and its West European allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). I grew up in a time when a war between the two European alliances seemed very plausible. I had nightmares about it. In the book whose cover appears above, the nightmare comes true.

Much of this blog is about imagining a possible future, by exploring a history that has yet to happen. Future history, for me, is rooted in events that we can see, because they're happening now. For as long as I can remember, I've loved losing myself in imaginary futures. In worlds that might be, history still to come.

Some of the worlds I imagined when I was younger frightened me. Yet I couldn't tear myself out of them. Terrifying though it was, I devoured General Sir John Hackett's story of global war in a hypothetical 1985. For young me in the year 1980 or so, five years hence seemed infinitely far away. Yet in a way, I lived in that imaginary future as much as I did the present. If not more. I spent hours reading books about World War III, or playing board games that tried to simulate it. On many a Saturday afternoon, my friends and I took command of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, pushing little cardboard pieces representing armored divisions across a map grid of Western Europe, resolving bloodless battles with the non-thunderous clatter of rolling plastic dice. We blew up the world many times over, while gorging ourselves on Doritos and Coke.

 NATO defends West Germany, in the 1983 game NATO: The Next War in Europe

(image from Board Game Geek)

Fortunately, I found at least equal pleasure in visions of a future that was somewhat less ghastly. When brighter fancies possessed me, I imagined adventures on alien worlds, far out in the great galactic dark. There, humanity had ended war and injustice among its peoples, turning instead to battling adversity together, out among the stars. I can thank Star Trek for visions like that. In my fantasies of Trekian interstellar adventure, I charted new solar systems and saved humanity from extinction by fearsome aliens, escaping with only a bloody lip and a torn shirt.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is, other than to notice in my psyche a lifelong fascination with things yet to be. And preferring them, whether interplanetary romance or apocalyptic nightmare, to the mundane world of the everyday. When I was a kid, I fought World War III to avoid mowing the lawn. Today, reading about peak oil and climate change seem preferable to time spent on the job. Which, I think, is possibly quite weird.

Tomorrow marks the twenty fifth anniversary of General Sir John Hackett's Third World War that never was. Sounds like a reason to party, does it not?

A post-script follows, detailing how Mr. Hackett's war turned out. Because maybe you want to know.

* * * * *

The Third World War: August 1985
By General Sir John Winthrop Hackett, British Army of the Rhine. Et al.

The end of the Cold War begins with several months of tension in Central Europe. In this scenario, the Soviet leadership is portrayed as extremely nervous about increases in US defense spending by second term President Jimmy Carter. Carter's successor, elected in 1984, continues the rearmament policy. Meanwhile, Moscow confronts a Communist Yugoslav government that has too long challenged Soviet supremacy in the international socialist movement. With its military superiority in Europe waning, the Kremlin decides to move from a position of strength while it still can. Soviet divisions roll into Yugoslavia in early July, 1985. 

Unfortunately, Soviet leaders have miscalculated. The Americans respond by frantically deploying a battalion of United States Marines into Yugoslavia, as a signal to Moscow that its invasion will not be tolerated. The Americans intend this move as a deterrent, not a prelude to war. But within hours the Marines find themselves engaged in full-scale combat against an onrushing typhoon of Soviet armor. Dramatic news footage is beamed around the world, showing United States forces blowing Soviet tanks to fiery molten chunks. The images are, in more ways than one, explosive. The Warsaw Pact countries begin a full military mobilization, and NATO responds in kind. In ports along the American east coast, U.S. Navy convoys start loading munitions and troops. The United States Air Force initiates a round the clock airlift of men and materiel to Western Europe.

It's the guns of August, one more time. The Soviet leadership decides to go for broke. Warsaw Pact forces smash across the inter-German border (between East Germany and West) in the pre-dawn hours of August 4, 1985. For two weeks, they drive NATO ground forces back, overrunning the north German plain, pushing into the Netherlands, and threatening to break the back of a frayed Western alliance. General Hackett's book serves up harrowing descriptions of West German cities being bombed, chaotic hordes of refugees fleeing before advancing Soviet troops, and the cities of Western Europe in flames.

But NATO armies hold, aided by France's decision to intervene in the war in full force. The Soviet offensive stalls, and NATO launches a counter-attack in the northern sector of the German front. British and West German forces make headway, reinforced by the rapid influx of fresh U.S. and French troops, forcing their Soviet adversaries back to regroup and dig in. The men in the Kremlin grow nervous. Their aura of invincibility has been pierced. The momentum of the war is shifting. The fragile puppet regimes of Moscow's East European satellites might, they fear, begin to unravel. Something will have to be done.

To change the geopolitical dynamic and lay the groundwork for a series of ultimatums against the West, the Soviet Union launches a strategic nuclear missile strike on the city of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. The goal of the attack is to intimidate NATO and create a crisis of morale in Western militaries and populations, by raising the specter of Armageddon. Birmingham is annihilated in a sea of fire. The result, again, is not what the Soviets intended. An American retaliatory strike incinerates Minsk, in the Soviet republic of Byelorussia (today the independent country of Belarus).

And that leads to the end-game. Crowds begin to gather on the streets of East European cities, demonstrating against the war. And their governments. And their Soviet occupiers. Soviet troops in West Germany begin talking amongst themselves, glaring sullenly at their KGB enforcers. Some Soviet units on the German front roll to a stop, their guns going silent. Rumors begin to spread in the Soviet ranks of desertions, mutinies. The crowds in East European capitals multiply, sensing weakness, becoming an ocean of humanity, their chants thundering in the night. The phenomenon spreads within hours to the cities of the Soviet Union itself. In the streets of Kiev and Leningrad and elsewhere, gigantic teaming seas of human beings gather. They have glimpsed the end of the world and decided they will not let it happen and the time has come to pull their country back from the brink. The armed forces of the Soviet Union make no move to stop them. The officers and men sit and watch. Or they join the crowds.

The nations of the Warsaw Pact and the homeland of their Soviet masters are engulfed by the tide. What happened in 1789 and 1848 and 1871 and 1956 and 1968 is happening again. Whole populations in the streets, armies cowering as the storm gathers force. Revolution. How such a tumult will turn out isn't always clear. Except for 1789, the earlier revolutions ended in defeat when the ancien regime recovered, rallying its armies to cleanse the streets in blood. But in the revolution of 1985, the armies themselves see visions of  how their war will end -- in fires out of Hell, unleashed by the men who watch them every year from atop Lenin's tomb. And so the armies go home. Revolution wins the day. In the plains of Germany and around the world, guns go silent.

The Third World War ends with a cease-fire on August 20, 1985. The official dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics follow soon after that.

And the future awaits.