I’ve been an avid reader of history for most of my life, and I’ve long been fascinated by alternate history. It’s almost impossible to read history without wondering how much of the world would be different with a minor change or two.
For all that, I’ve only ever read The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (years ago). I thought it was okay, but not really what I wanted.
How Few Remain takes place in the early 1880s, during the presidency of James G. Blaine. In the real world, Blaine is the only Republican nominee between 1860 and 1914 who lost the presidential election (to Grover Cleveland). He was a prominent Republican nonetheless, and was a resolute Reformist who favored opening the US to foreign trade, and reforming the Civil Service to be less reliant on patronage. In How Few Remain, he’s only the second Republican to be president of the United States (after Lincoln), and he, too, is seen as a miserable failure.
The point of divergence for this book is the losing of Special Order 191 by Robert E. Lee’s army during the Maryland campaign. In the real world, the discovery of these orders by George McClellan’s army led to victory at Antietam. In this book, Lee’s army won, and went on to military victory in Pennsylvania. These victories led to Great Britain and France taking sides with the Confederacy in the war, which drove Abraham Lincoln concede defeat. The novel picks up twenty years later. Lincoln is disgraced after losing what became known as the War of Succession (rather than the Civil War), the US economy collapsed, and the Confederacy has pushed west with the acquisition of Sonora and Chihuahua from Mexico, giving the Confederacy a Pacific coast. This is too much of a threat to US dominance, and President Blaine declares war.
The events that play out here are plausible. Prior to the rise of Ulysses Grant, the North struggled against the Confederacy. McClellan and Lincoln were constantly at odds, with the former under facing stiff criticism from the latter for never doing enough with his army. Antietam was a victory for the North because it saw Lee abandon his invasion of the Union, though McClellan didn’t take full advantage of his position and allowed Lee to flee back to Virginia. His caution ended with his removal, by Lincoln, from command two months later. The discovery of Special Order 191 was a massive boon for McClellan, as it give him insight into Lee’s troop movements. Without those orders, it’s not hard to imagine a world where McClellan lost and Lee pushed to Philadelphia. Had that happened, Lincoln wouldn’t have released the Emancipation Proclamation, and France and Great Britain very likely would have given aid to Confederacy. We can’t say, obviously, that the Union would’ve lost the war – but it’s an interesting thought experiment.
And, obviously, the further removed we get from that divergent point, the less likely things become. But it also allows Turtledove a great deal more freedom.
Here, Abraham Lincoln, now a disgraced president, becomes a Socialist rabble rouser. Mark Twain, still Samuel Clemens, hasn’t become a famous writer. He’s the editor of a newspaper in San Francisco. Ulysses Grant only gets brief mention, but he doesn’t go on to find martial glory, and smells of alcohol.
I enjoyed the book, but the perhaps the most impressive part, for me, was that Turtledove ably captured the voices of some iconic American figures. Lincoln, Twain, and Frederick Douglass spoke with an authenticity that surprised me. I believed them. That’s no small feat.
This book is the first part in an 11-part series called the Southern Victory. While I can’t speak for the subsequent novels, I will say that this one didn’t ring as much of an indictment of the Confederacy. I did get the feeling that we were supposed to be rooting for the Union, but very disappointed in how things were playing out for them. Whenever I get around to reading the other books, it’ll be interesting to see how life in the Confederacy plays out for African Americans. In this book, that isn’t a subject that’s given much time.
