Quote Of Clarity

"I am firmly convinced that Southern independence would have meant NO consolidated power capable of launching imperial wars against Spain and the Philippines; no intervention into the Great War in 1917, which directly led to the rise of Lenin and Hitler; no follow-up to the Great War that ignited in 1939; and no communist rule over eastern Europe until 1990."

- Old Rebel at Rebellion Blog


Post in total:

Peter Gemma reviews works of fiction and scholarship that explore the possibilities of a Southern victory in 1865. He finds most of them slavishly dedicated to propping up the standard interpretation that anything but a total Northern victory would have been a disaster:

In his book, “Defending Dixie” (Foundation for American Education, 2006), Professor Clyde N. Wilson observed that when writing about the South’s War for Independence most contemporary historians (and fiction writers in this case), “… insist [on] the interpretation we must accept … they wish to obliterate even the recognition of the possibility that there was any other legitimate interpretation.”

“What if” books about a CSA victory can lead to Southern daydreams. Perhaps if more novels and alternative history books penetrate the mass market, real—non-partisan—historical studies will be published. Those should generate serious reflections on why the triumph of the Confederate States of America would define political, philosophical, and cultural progress.

I am firmly convinced that Southern independence would have meant NO consolidated power capable of launching imperial wars against Spain and the Philippines; no intervention into the Great War in 1917, which directly led to the rise of Lenin and Hitler; no follow-up to the Great War that ignited in 1939; and no communist rule over eastern Europe until 1990.