Critic’s Corner The South Won the War

By Stephen Davis · Originally published September-October 2025 · pp. 56–58

Critic’s o The South Won the War. r Now Read About It. n e r Q By Stephen Davis

uick: what do Winston Churchill (1874–1965), British prime minister, and Mackinlay Kantor (1904–1977), American novelist, have in common?

They both wrote counterfactual narratives about Confederate victory in the American Civil War.

Actually, this genre of counterfactualism goes back further than even the past century…even before the war itself. In 1836, a fifty-two-year-old law professor at William and Mary, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, produced The Partisan Leader, imagining the dire consequences of a fourth Van Buren administration. Set in 1849, a Southern Confederacy has been formed out of opposition to the federal government’s oppressive tariffs. Virginians in particular rise up to defeat Federal forces and win their independence. The Old Dominion’s victory, in turn, secures the South’s freedom. A generation later, another Virginian, militant secessionist Edmund Ruffin, wrote Anticipations of the Future, published in early September 1860, to warn Southerners about what would happen if the Republicans won the White House. In his story, Lincoln wins the presidential election, but serves a term without taking action against the South or slavery. But the Railsplitter’s moderation angers radical abolitionists to such an extent that they deny Lincoln a second nomination. Instead, they turn to William H. Seward as their presidential candidate in 1864. Once elected, he proves to be such a vengeful enemy of the South that in December 1867, six Deep South states secede. Seward sends an army into Virginia, which courageous Southerners soon whip. The Seward government flees to Albany, New York. The rest of the South secedes and a Confederacy is formed; a beaten Seward is forced to concede its sovereignty.1

Less well-known (in a genre that is admittedly rather obscure anyway) is a short story, “If Lincoln Had Yielded,” in Century Magazine’s issue of June 1926. Here, a New York sociology professor schools a British reporter on how Lincoln had wisely withdrawn Major Anderson’s garrison from Sumter, and let the wayward Southern states go their own ways in peace. “A most fortunate solution,” the Englishman observes. Afterward, the Confederate government finds a way to end slavery around 1900, and the South manages to maintain an aristocratic society that is the envy of Northerners. “We send our daughters to Southern finish-schools,” the professor explains; “wealthy men put their sons into Southern counting-houses to acquire manners.” Then Professor Maveety ponders a might-have-been: “If the secession of the South had been prevented by force, all that beautiful aristocracy might have been destroyed and the whole region from Virginia to the gulf, from the Carolinas to Texas, would probably be overrun with industrialism, Rotary Clubs and primary schools.” “It is a horrible thought,” shudders the visitor.2 A few years later, in December 1930, Winston Churchill (then a member of Parliament) published in Scribner’s Magazine a wry short story, “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.” Here, in the war’s decisive battle, on the third day Lee launches a massive assault by the divisions of Pickett, Pettigrew and Trimble that cracks the Federal line wide open and sends Meade’s soldiers fleeing. Stuart’s cavalry, having encircled the Union flank, swoops down upon the enemy’s rear and completes the rout of the Army of the Potomac. The Confederate army enters Washington three days later. General Lee then astounds the world by not only dictating peace terms, but also by proclaiming the emancipation of Southern slaves. This bold act deprives Northern radicals of their main motivation for war, abolition. It also encourages England to ally itself with the Confederacy. Without support at home and abroad, Lincoln has little choice but to sue for peace. The Treaty of Harpers Ferry is signed on Sept. 6, 1863.3

Confederate victory, I guess, can be a funny thing. At least the famed humorist James Thurber (think of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and its derivative film of 1947 starring Danny Kaye) thought so when he wrote his short story, “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox” (1930). In a hilarious use of imagination, Thurber figured out that the simplest way for the South to win was for General Grant to have been super-imbibing the night before meeting Lee in Wilmer McLean’s parlor. The besotted Union commander awakes on the morning of April 9 in such a fog that he forgets who is surrendering to whom. Thus, to an astonished Lee, he hands over his sword and slurs, “There you are, General. We dam’ near licked you. If I’d been feeling better we would of licked you.”4 Gettysburg is the focus for a lot of Confederate imaginary triumphs, as in a scenario created by Otto Eisenschiml and E.B. Long (the latter, co-author of The Civil War Day-byDay [1971]). The key is that here Lee had Stuart with him on July 1. There’s no accidental bumping into Buford’s cavalry at Gettysburg; rather, Lee concentrates his army in a strong position at Cashtown and forces Meade to attack him. The result is a series of Union assaults just as futile as those made seven months before at Fredericksburg, and which collectively come to be called “the Cashtown Slaughter.”5 President Lincoln is the central figure in another remote counterfactual, Oscar Lewis’ The Lost Years: A Biographical Fantasy (1951). Here the narrative, a collection of excerpted memoirs from contemporaries, informs us that at Ford’s Theatre Lincoln was shot and severely wounded. But he recovers and serves out his term, leaving office in 1869. By that time the president finds himself unpopular in the North because of his lenient Reconstruction policies (he even granted clemency to Booth’s associates, including Mrs. Surratt). In Northern newspapers he is embarrassed to read of his wife Mary lampooned because of her overwrought, typically nervous behavior. Lincoln is so upset that at one point he muses how his life might have turned out differently, “if only that fool actor had been a lot more accurate.” Lincoln dies in the fall of 1869 out in California.6 Another of the lesser-known staples of the victorious Confederate bookshelf is Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1952), a tasty little combination of science fiction and … Gettysburg. The novel begins with a defeated North sunk into social decay and economic chaos, while the triumphant Confederacy thrives as the cultural hub of the New World. After the Confederated States’ annexation of Mexico, for instance, Leesburg (formerly Mexico City) and its university become renowned for scholarly study of the Second American Revolution. Time machines are a fixture of sci-fi lit, and Moore employs one to send his protagonist, Hodgkins Backmaker, back to the battle of Gettysburg. Backmaker is a Civil War scholar, and is an expert on the battle of Gettysburg, which Lee had won so decisively that the Federals soon capitulated and recognized Confederate independence. Thanks to his machine, Backmaker plops down July 1 on the Hanover Road, in time to observe Confederate infantry marching toward the Round Tops, apparently intent on taking the high ground before the Yankees can.

But remember the foible about time travel?: how the traveler from the future shunting into the past has to strenuously guard against any interaction with the historical players that could in some way “change history”? Well, it happens here. The Southern soldiers see Backmaker and ask him if there are Yankees ahead. He knows, of course, that there are not. But something in his demeanor worries the Confederates, who mistakenly infer that the stranger knows there are indeed Yankees ahead at the Round Tops. “Hay! Damyanks up above. Goin to mow us down,” cries an officer. So the Southerners pull back. Thus Backmaker the time traveler has inadvertently changed history. Southern infantry do not end up taking the prominent hills on July 1, and Lee consequently loses the dramatic battle in Pennsylvania.7 In our time, the granddaddy of “What ifs” is Mackinlay Kantor’s If the South Had Won the Civil War. First published in a shorter form in LOOK Magazine on November 22, 1960, the piece appeared as a paperback the following year and has been republished in several editions since then. Kantor’s story has it all. In the spring of 1863, the Union army’s campaign against Vicksburg ends in disaster after Grant is killed in an equestrian accident. Across the continent, Lee’s attack at Gettysburg routs Meade’s army. Stuart’s cavalry captures thousands of Yankees. Confederate horsemen ride into Washington and nab Lincoln. A treaty of peace is signed that December.8 Even television figures in the counterfactual narrative. The same year that Kantor’s book came out, the hit show The Twilight Zone featured an episode that was written by the show’s host himself, Rod Serling. In “Still Valley” (aired Nov. 24, 1961), Confederate cavalry sergeant Joseph Paradine (played by Gary Merrill) comes upon Union troops in a small town. But they are motionless, frozen stiff. Paradine tries to snap them into motion, but fails. He comes upon an old man, Teague, who says he has conjured up witch powers to freeze the Yankees. Teague offers to immobilize the whole Northern army in order for the Confederacy to win. But the old man is dying, and hands over to Sgt. Paradine his book of magic, upon which the sergeant takes no action; he suspects deviltry, and wants no part of it.9 Civil War Times, the venerable magazine now kaput (1959–2024), has done its part in the conversation. In January 1985, editor John E. Stanchak imagined the counterfactual of guerrilla war, as proposed by Gen. Porter Alexander to Lee in the war’s last days. As Stanchak writes, following the spring of 1865, the Rebels’ guerrilla fighting succeeds in disintegrating the Union and bringing about something called the Republic of California, “populated largely by refugees from the poverty and anarchy east of the Rocky Mountains.” For good measure, the editor placed a speculative map on the issue’s back cover, showing the three republics ca. 1866. The Confederacy extends through the Deep South into what was once Mexico; the “Eastern United States” runs from Tennessee north into Canada, ending west at the Mississippi, from which the “Western States” reach to the Rockies. There, the Californian State begins, almost to the isthmus of Panama.10 As we have seen with Ward Moore’s Jubilee, science

fiction can offer antidotes to factual history. And as Moore employs time machines, so does Harry Turtledove in Guns of the South: A Novel of the Civil War (1992). Its front cover shows the fun to be had with this page-turner: General Lee stands confidently holding an AK-47, thanks to sympathetic South African whites who get the guns through with their time machine. The time-travelers arrive at Lee’s headquarters in April 1864, bringing with them thousands of machine guns plus plenty of ammo, and train Southern soldiers how to use them. After whipping Grant in the Wilderness, Confederate forces pursue to Washington. In a brilliant night attack, with their AK-47s and rifle grenades, they break through, storm into the Union capital, and even capture Lincoln. General Lee personally arranges the armistice that ends the war.11 Huddled beneath the shadow of Turtledove’s Guns is a handful of more recent, if ephemeral fiction: Douglas Lee Gibbony’s Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg (1996); Edward Aronoff’s Betrayal at Gettysburg (1998—Pickett’s Charge succeeds; the South wins the war); Robert W. Taylor’s Listening to Old Pete: A Historic Alternative (2000); Dennis P. Mcintire’s Lee at Chattanooga: A Novel of What Might Have Been (2002); James Capelli’s 1864: An Alternate History (2006). Then there’s Michael Loyd Gray’s Confederate Nation (2005), in which Confederates’ victory, after they capture Lincoln, takes a backseat to a “special appearance by Elvis Presley.” Peter G. Tsouras (1948–) is an accomplished counterfactuarian, author of such books as Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944 (1994) and Rising Sun Victorious: The Alternate History of How the Japanese Won the Pacific War (2001). In Dixie Victorious: An Alternate History of the Civil War (2004), Tsouras presents ten essays by various writers, including Andrew Uffindell’s “Hell on Earth: Anglo-French Intervention in the Civil War.” Here, diplomatic tensions between England and the Lincoln administration, plus violent incidents on the U.S.-Canadian border, lead to a war between the two countries, with France jumping in, too. Britain sends troops to Canada, and before long, Lincoln is fighting both the South and British North America. Things move quickly. Lee’s army with its French allies beat McClellan, the Confederates take Washington, and Maryland secedes. McClellan leads a coup, has Lincoln arrested, and then persuades the Russians (a U.S. ally) to arrange an armistice that leads to a peace treaty in August.12 The Confederacy’s “what if” takes an academic tone in Roger L. Ransom, The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (2005), asking such questions as how would a Confederate nation have fared economically, and when would it have abolished slavery, (and how)? His counterfactual imaginings include such events as the Confederate acquisition of Cuba.13 And the hits just keep coming. In Jeffrey Evan Brooks’ Shattered Nation (2013), President Davis retains Joe Johnston in command in Georgia, where he whips Sherman; McClellan defeats Lincoln in the election of 1864; England recognizes the Confederacy; and a peace treaty affirms the Confederate States.14

Given the Civil War’s centrality in the American experience, we will doubtless continue to muse about its “what ifs.” These are but a few. Endnotes: 1.

Edmund Ruffin, Anticipations of the Future, to Serve as Lessons for the Present Time (Richmond: J. W. Randolph, 1860); Stephen Davis, “Edmund Ruffin and the Great ‘What If?’,” Southern Partisan, vol. 7, no. 4 (Fall 1987-Winter 1988), 29-30. Webb Waldron, “If Lincoln Had Yielded,” Century Magazine, vol. 112, no. 2 (June 1926). Winston S. Churchill, “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg,” Scribner’s Magazine, December 1930, 587-97; Stephen Davis, “The Literature of Confederate Victory: Forays in Imaginary History,” Lincoln Herald, vol. 90, no. 2 (Summer 1988), 46-47. James Thurber, “If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox,” in The Thurber Carnival (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945), 140-42. Otto Eisenschiml and E. B. Long, As Luck Would Have It: Chance and Coincidence in the Civil War (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1948), 82-86. Oscar Lewis, The Lost Years: A Biographical Fantasy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951). Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952); Stephen Davis, “Always Tantalizing: What if South had won the war?,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 22, 1985. Mackinlay Kantor, If the South Had Won the Civil War (New York: Bantam Books, 1961). Marc Scott Zicree, The Twilight Zone Companion (New York: Bantam, 1982), 239-40. John E. Stanchak, “Behind the Lines,” Civil War Times Illustrated, vol. 23, no. 9 (January 1985), 49. Harry Turtledove, Guns of the South: A Novel of the Civil War (1992). Peter G. Tsouras, ed., Dixie Victorious: An Alternate History of the Civil War (London: Greenhill Books, 2004). Roger L. Ransom, The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005). Jeffrey Evan Brooks, Shattered Nation: An Alternate History Novel of the American Civil War (privately printed, 2013).

Stephen Davis has been writing about the Civil War

for a long time—“since Jesus was in third grade,” he contends. He is author of Texas Brigadier to the Fall

of Atlanta: John Bell Hood (2019) and Into Tennessee

& Failure: John Bell Hood (2020). With Bill Hendrick he wrote The Atlanta Intelligencer Covers the Civil War (2022). His next book, The National Tribune Remembers the Atlanta Campaign: Battles, Skirmishes, Marches and Camp Life as Recalled by the Union Veterans Themselves, is being published by Savas Beatie.