Characters in the Southern Victory series
The Southern Victory series or Timeline-191 is a series of novels written by Harry Turtledove. They form an alternate history of events in the United States based on the premise that the Confederates won the Civil War and became an independent nation. The series covers events from 1862 to 1944 and features dozens of characters, some of them fictional and some of them analogues of real people.
Books in the series
- How Few Remain (1997) - HFR
- The Great War: American Front (1998) - GW:AF
- The Great War: Walk in Hell (1999) - GW:WH
- The Great War: Breakthroughs (2000) - GW:B
- American Empire: Blood and Iron (2001) - AE:BI
- American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (2002) - AE:CCH
- American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003) - AE:VO
- Settling Accounts: Return Engagement (2004) - SA:RE
- Settling Accounts: Drive to the East (2005) - SA:DE
- Settling Accounts: The Grapple (2006) - SA:G
- Settling Accounts: In at the Death (2007) - SA:ID
United States
Abell, John
(GW:AF-SA:ID)
John Abell is the archetypical General Staff officer. He served on the U.S. Army General Staff from the Great War, when he was a major, to the 1941 War, when he began that war as a colonel. Abell disliked many of the tactics and operations proposed by Irving Morrell, but the two men shared a hatred of the Confederacy and a wary respect for each other's abilities.
During the war, Abell was promoted twice: first to brigadier general, then to major general. After the war ended, it was his duty to inform General Abner Dowling of the possibility that Dowling retire.
Blackford, Hosea
(HFR, GW:B-AE:VO)
Hosea Blackford was first introduced in a train ride across the northern Great Plains at 1881, while talking with
former President Abraham Lincoln, in this world a founder of American
In 1920, he was asked by Upton Sinclair to be the Socialist party nominee to be the Vice President. The Socialists won the 1920 election, defeating Democrat Teddy Roosevelt. Upton Sinclair and Hosea Blackford were re-elected in 1924. Blackford described the job as being a "$12,000 a year hatrack."
In 1928 Blackford became the Socialist Party nominee for President and defeated Calvin Coolidge by a small margin. However, the economic panic and subsequent crash in mid-1929 was largely blamed on Blackford. Shantytowns of unemployed people in the United States become known as Blackfordburghs (see: Hooverville), in honor of the failure of the Blackford Presidency. In response he passed make-work legislation, but nothing helped. (Blackford does not seriously attempt anything resembling the New Deal policies implemented in our timeline by the non-Socialist FDR).
Things were made even worse for Blackford in 1932 when the USS Remembrance caught a disguised Japanese ship supplying weapons to Canada's resistance. The Japanese attacked the Remembrance. The Japanese responded by sneak attacking Los Angeles in a manner similar to the Pearl Harbor Attack of our timeline. This destroyed Blackford's hopes of reelection, and began the Pacific War.
Blackford was easily defeated by Calvin Coolidge for the Presidential spot in 1932. He retired to Dakota, and then returned to New York and Philadelphia with his wife, Flora, when she was elected to Congress in 1934 after a six-year absence. He died in 1937. He and Flora had one son, Joshua.
Bliss, Luther
(GW:WH-GW:B, AE:CCH, SA:RE, SA:G-SA:ID)
Luther Bliss was a Kentuckian who sided with the occupying US forces during the Great War. He became head of the Kentucky State Police (some would say the state's secret police force) and was instrumental in persuading a rump legislature to petition for re-entry into the United States. During the years before the war, Bliss used his power effectively and ruthlessly to crack down on black Marxists and Confederate saboteurs. He left when Kentucky voted to rejoin the Confederate States, but returned to Covington during the 1941 war to coordinate sabotage missions against Confederate armed forces. In 1943, with US forces approaching the Ohio River, he was in conference with Intelligence officers to coordinate a rising behind the Confederate lines and help the US invasion. At the end of the war, Bliss was still present in Covington, where he had one final run-in with Cincinnatus Driver, whom he did not trust.
Carsten, Sam
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:ID)
Sam Carsten was a member of a 5-inch gun crew on the battleship USS Dakota during the Great War. He took part in a landing party that overran the British seaborne defenses at Pearl Harbor, Sandwich Islands, as well as serving in the Battle of the Three Navies.
Getting in conversation with a friendly surfing Hawaiian native while on leave, Carsten suspected him of being a British spy and reported it - which got the Hawaiian executed, as the suspicion turned out to be correct, and got Carsten promoted for showing initiative, the first step towards a "Mustang" commission.
After the war, he was transferred to the aircraft carrier USS Remembrance, where he served as a gun captain in suppressing the pro-British rebellion in Ulster.
Carsten was selected to Officer Candidate School and was commissioned in 1924. He served as a damage-control officer aboard the Remembrance during the Pacific War, and remained with the ship until 1941, when it was sunk during the American defeat off Midway.
Carsten was then selected as commanding officer of the destroyer escort USS Josephus Daniels, which served a number of duties on the eastern coast of North America, including launching Marine Corps commando raids on the Confederate coast to capture a working Y-range (radar) station, similar to this timeline's commando raid by the British on Bruneval, France, and intercepting British attempts to land arms to Newfoundland rebels. After the success of these missions, Carsten's ship is chosen to run guns to rebels in Confederate Cuba by disguising his ship as a Confederate warship. His ship later takes part in a large Atlantic naval battle between the U.S. and British/French navies as a carrier escort. Later, he is charged with the task of smuggling arms into occupied Ireland.
During the final stages of the war, Carsten assisted in the transition of vital German superbomb research into American hands, and helped the liberation of Haiti. After the war ended, he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and given a job patrolling Confederate waters. During this time Sam absently scratches at a mole on his left hand, and notices that it is bleeding. Throughout his life, Sam Carsten has not reacted well to tropical climes due to his fair skin and a propensity to burn easily; these two facts suggest that he has developed skin cancer.
DeFrancis, Terry
(SA:G-ID)
Analogous to Curtis LeMay. Terry DeFrancis was a colonel in the US Army in 1943, specializing in aircraft. He was assigned to General Dowling's Eleventh Army in west Texas to support the drive on Camp Determination. He was very young to be a full colonel, and still very young when promoted to commander of the 11th Army after Dowling departed to attack Richmond again; this is similar to LeMay of our timeline, who was one of the youngest generals in history in charge of a bomb group in World War II, and whose theories regarding bombers and their operations and utilization proved invaluable in both the European and Pacific theaters, much as DeFrancis's use of fighter-bombers and heavy bombers proves key to providing Dowling the edge over the Confederates in west Texas, now the recreated US state of Houston.
Dowling, Abner
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:ID)
Abner Dowling was a major in the US Army in 1914, serving as Lieutenant General George Custer's adjutant. Physically overweight, Dowling was the butt of many of Custer's jokes, and his rather-good judgment on military matters overlooked or denounced as "stupid" by the 75-year old war hero, who used his First Army as a commander would use the obsolete cavalry: charge straight at the target and full steam ahead. Dowling recognized that strategy as costly and inefficient, but could only influence Custer indirectly.
After three years of brutal advancing through western Kentucky and into northern Tennessee, First Army stood in front of Nashville. Custer, following the advice of Colonel Irving Morrell, began to mass his armor, contrary to War Department doctrine. Dowling was coerced by Custer into faking reports to the War Department about how the general was allocating his armor (barrels in this timeline) and between them they convinced the General Staff - and President Roosevelt, who came in person - to believe these reports. Custer went on to win the USA's first major victory of the Great War: the Barrel Roll Offensive. The First Army then captured Nashville and was planning a march on Murfreesboro when the Confederates asked for an armistice.
Following the end of the Great War, Dowling was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and Custer to full general. After stewing like cabbages in War Department offices, Custer and Dowling were transferred to Winnipeg, Manitoba, which had been set up by the victorious Americans as the capital of Occupied Canada. Custer became governor-general and ruled with an iron fist, while Dowling typed his reports. Following several assassination attempts by a Canadian farmer named Arthur McGregor, Custer was forced to retire, and Dowling went to Philadelphia for his next assignment - which turned out to be the post of army-commandant of Salt Lake City with rank of colonel.
For years the Utah Troubles had been plaguing the US government, and Dowling was just another military bureaucrat to the Mormon citizens. Following the assassination of Governor-general John Pershing (the army-commandant of occupied Utah), Dowling became the military governor. After several more years of this harrowing job, military rule in the state was lifted and Dowling was reassigned once more. As his experience in Utah was unique among most of his peers, Dowling became the head of US military forces fighting Freedom Party rebels in Kentucky. After the Richmond Agreement of June 1940 between Presidents Smith and Featherston, a plebiscite took place and Kentucky voted for a return to the Confederacy. With war clouds between North and South looming, the now-brigadier general became commander of the Army of Ohio, in charge of defending the Midwest.
On June 22 1941, the Confederates began the 1941 War by invading Ohio with barrels and troops. Being unsupplied and unsupported by the War Department, the Army of Ohio was rolled back as the Confederates blitzed to Sandusky, Ohio, on the south shore of Lake Erie, cutting the USA in half. Dowling of course was blamed for the disaster, but with War Department assistance, he appeared before the Congressional Committee on the Joint Conduct of the War, and pointed out the budget cuts of the Sinclair and Blackford Administrations as a significant cause of the U.S. defeat. Instead of being cashiered in disgrace, he was placed under the command of Daniel MacArthur, who led an inept counterattack in northern Virginia. Dowling managed to prevent George Patton, his nemesis from the Ohio front, from striking MacArthur's rear, saving the Rappahannock front from destruction as MacArthur pushed south.
1942 found Brigadier General Dowling being promoted to Major General, then being put charge of the 11th Army headquartered in Clovis, New Mexico. The 11th Army began an offensive into West Texas to coincide with the U.S. counter-attack around Pittsburgh. Shortly after the fighting in Pittsburgh ended, Dowling and his army learned of the existence of Camp Determination through photographic evidence. This struck a nerve in Dowling, who then used whatever resources he can to advance through Texas and get to the camp. (Dowling reflected that his former mentor, George Armstrong Custer, would have approved of his methods). By the time Dowling could seize Amarillo and Snyder, the Confederates destroyed the camp and most of the evidence that was there. This did not stop Dowling from forcing prominent local citizens from touring the mass graves of several hundred thousand black victims of Featherston.
After the invasion of Texas was halted by limited resources and the vast amounts of empty land, Dowling was sent to command a division in the final attack on Virginia. In 1944, after the war ended, Dowling was approached by Major General John Abell and it was made clear that Dowling must retire to make room for younger officers. Abell noted that Dowling's work significantly changed the moral nature of the war from merely a defense of the United States to a moral crusade against Featherstone and his ideology.
Driver, Cincinnatus
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:ID)
Born in Covington, Confederate Kentucky, Cincinnatus worked as a delivery driver before the Great War, which in itself was suspicious to many whites, who did not want black men to drive. When Covington was overrun by U.S. forces, Cincinnatus found himself working for Lieutenant Straubing as a military driver, but also being a pawn in the intelligence game between Confederate, black Marxist and U.S. forces in Kentucky.
Following the Great War, Cincinnatus took the surname "Driver" (blacks in the Confederacy were not allowed surnames) and moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where he set up business as a hauler. He was briefly lured back to Kentucky by Luther Bliss and arrested by the Kentucky State Police head, but freed due to the legal efforts of attorney Clarence Darrow.
Driver returned to Kentucky in late 1940 to see to a family crisis, but was trapped behind the international border when the Confederates reoccupied the state. (He was hit by a car and partially crippled.) He and his father, Seneca Driver, were exchanged in 1942 and he returned to Des Moines, where he volunteered as a civilian auxiliary driver for the U.S. Army, this time being allowed to carry a weapon. After a brief interlude assisting in the planning of underground operations in Covington, Kentucky, with Bliss, Driver followed the Army into Tennessee and Georgia, enthusiastically seeing the reactions of Confederates to seeing a black man carry a weapon.
After the war, Driver returned to Covington one last time before returning home to Des Moines to see his daughter, Amanda, get married.
Engels Brothers
(AE:CCH, SA:RE-SA:ID)
The Engels Brothers are a common cultural icon in this timeline. They are analogous to this timeline's Marx Brothers, including characters that behave similarly to Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo Marx. They may actually be the same people - as their real names have not been mentioned, it is impossible to tell. Since the Socialist Party is a dominant party in the United States in this timeline, it is plausible they used the stage name of Engels to avoid offending Socialist audiences. They wear beards of different colors as props; Karl Engels wore a blue beard.
The Engels brothers apparently served in the Great War in the trenches (Chester Martin noted reflexes in their vaudeville act which indicated so), and then became a vaudeville act in the United States. They have appeared in movies and recorded an anti-Confederate number, "Featherston's Follies," which is analogous to Spike Jones and the City Slickers' "Der Fuehrer's Face."
Enos, George
(Viewpoint character GW:AF-GW:B)
George Enos was a fisherman from Boston, Massachusetts, on the F/V Ripple when the Great War began. He continued to fish until the Ripple was captured by a Confederate commerce raider, the CSS Swamp Fox, and was interned in North Carolina until exchanged. Enos joined the U.S. Navy shortly afterward to avoid conscription in the Army and to fight the Confederacy. He served on a Q-boat which sank a Confederate submarine, and in 1916 was transferred to the USS Punishment, a river monitor which fought on the Mississippi and Cumberland Rivers, until it was destroyed. (Enos had been ashore visiting a house of ill repute when his ship was attacked and sunk.) He was then transferred to the destroyer USS Ericsson, which was sunk illegally after the U.S.-C.S. armistice of 1917 by the CSS Bonefish, captained by Confederate Roger Kimball.
Enos, George Jr.
(GW:AF-AE:VO; Viewpoint character AE:VO-SA:ID)
George Enos Jr. was born in 1910 and was only 7 years old when his father, George Enos (q.v.), was killed when the USS Ericsson was torpedoed the day after the U.S.-C.S. armistice. He went to sea as a fisherman, married Connie McGillicuddy, and joined the U.S. Navy during the 1941 War, seeing action around the Sandwich Islands aboard the destroyer USS Townsend.
In 1943, the Townsend was sunk near Baja California in a direct hit by Confederate divebomber. Enos survived and was transferred to the Josephus Daniels, under the command of Sam Carsten. In 1944, Enos was transferred again, this time to the USS Oregon. With the intervention of Joe Kennedy, Enos was able to obtain his release from the Navy after the Second Great War concluded, after which he returned home to Boston.
Enos, Sylvia
(Viewpiont character, GW:AF-AE:VO)
Sylvia Enos, born in 1886, was the wife and widow of George Enos. After his death in 1917, she struggled to support her two children. In 1923, thanks to complex developments in Confederate politics surrounding resistance to the Freedom Party, she learned the identity of the Confederate naval officer who killed her husband on the USS Ericsson, Roger Kimball. Sylvia traveled to South Carolina and killed Kimball, then surrendered to authorities. She was spared legal retribution through the intervention of Anne Colleton, a political rival and estranged lover of Kimball's.
Following her return, she became a heroine. Local Democratic Party boss Joseph P. Kennedy exploited her fame for political uses and also tried and failed to seduce her. She ghost-wrote a book entitled I Sank Roger Kimball along with a frustrated writer named Ernie (widely recognized to be an analog of OTL literary giant Ernest Hemingway). Against the advice of her son, she began a romantic and sexual affair with Ernie, who had been wounded in his genitalia during the Great War. She was frightened by Ernie's dark mood swings but resisted her son's advice to break off the affair. This ultimately proved fatal when, in a very black melancholy, Ernie accidentally shot and killed Sylvia, then killed himself in remorse.
Grimes, Armstrong
(AE:BI-AE:VO; Viewpoint character AE:VO-SA:ID)
Armstrong Grimes (named for George Armstrong Custer) is the son of Merle Grimes and Edna Grimes and the grandson of Nellie Semphroch. He grew up in Washington, D.C. A lackluster student, he graduated high school in 1940. He spent the next year of his life looking for work with little success, and was then conscripted into the U.S. Army in 1941.
His basic training facility was attacked on the first day of the war as part of Operation Blackbeard, at which point he was awarded the rank of Private First Class. He took part in the initial, unsuccessful defense of Ohio under General Abner Dowling. When Sandusky fell, marking the conclusion of that operation, he was transferred to Utah, which had recently erupted into a Mormon uprising. There he befriended Yossel Reisen Jr., the nephew of Flora Hamburger. In Utah he was involved in both heavy fighting and terrorist attacks, eventually attaining the rank of sergeant.
After the Mormons surrendered in 1943, Grimes was transferred to Canada, where he was wounded. After recovery, he was sent to Tennessee to take part in the U.S. push into Georgia. Grimes ended the war in Alabama, and remained there as part of the U.S. occupying force in the state.
Hamburger, Flora (Blackford)
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:ID)
Flora Hamburger (in various parts of her life, an analogue of Rosa Luxemburg and of Eleanor Roosevelt) is the wife of President Hosea Blackford and a major political figure in her own right.
At the beginning of the series she is a Socialist Party grassroots activist and agitator in a working-class Jewish neighborhood of New York, a member of the party's left-wing who is opposed to the leadership's decision to vote credits for the just-started war (similar to the situation in the 1914 German Social Democratic Party). (Eugene V. Debs - in our timeline the radical leader of a marginal party who was imprisoned for outspoken opposition to the war - is here a far more mainstream figure, a Senator who leads the Party into voting for the war, though later making some criticism of its conduct.)
In 1916 (at that time, women still couldn't vote in most of the United States), Hamburger takes the quite daring decision to contest the race for the area's Congressional seat and wins, becoming one of the only two women in the House of Representatives (the other was a woman from Pennsylvania who had assumed her late husband's seat). On arrival in Philadelphia, the de-facto capital, she is welcomed by the experienced and far older Congressman Hosea Blackford (later Vice-President and finally President), member of the party's more moderate wing from the Mid-West. They develop a romantic relationship and finally marry.
Hamburger refuses an offer by General Leonard Wood to have her brother, David Hamburger, transferred out of the front line because her Socialist principles forbid her from accepting special favors; later, David loses a leg in battle.
She is often called the "Conscience of the Congress." She opposed the repression of the Mormons of Utah, for example, and she vainly tries to draw the attention of US public opinion to the plight of Blacks in the Confederacy, even before the rise of Jake Featherston.
During the 1930s, although her earlier belief in the inevitable revolution of the proletariat has been tempered somewhat by age and experience, she is seen as the only member of Congress who really seems to care about the revival of the CSA and the rise of the Freedom Party.
An independently active First Lady, she refuses to be sidelined after her husband was defeated in the 1932 election, fell to ill health, and died in 1937, leaving her with one son - Joshua. She quickly resumes her old seat and her Congressional career in 1934.
In 1941, she noticed a peculiar budget item appropriating a large amount of money for a project in western Washington State. (See atomic bomb). She used this to strike a deal with President Al Smith which forced the president to publicly condemn the Confederate atrocities against Southern blacks.
Throughout 1942 and 1943, Blackford found herself agreeing more with Democratic Senator Taft of Ohio about taking a hard line towards the war and towards the Mormon rebellion in Utah. Her son was drafted into the Army in 1943, and she felt some guilt after he was wounded in the closing days of the war.
Blackford was among the members of Congress to tour the site of the superbomb attack on Philadelphia in 1944. She spent much of the postwar 1944 campaigning for her re-election to Congress (which she won) and for Charles La Follete's election bid (which he lost). She gave a speech in Congress expressing thanks to the black guerilla Cassius for killing Jake Featherston, and was present at the inauguration of Tom Dewey in 1945.
The series ends on her viewpoint.
Jacobs, Hal
(GW:AF-AE:CCH)
Hal Jacobs was a cobbler in Washington, D.C., during the Great War. He was an agent for the spy ring for the U.S. run by Bill Reach, with Nellie Semphroch a fellow agent who reported to him. Jacobs was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his actions, despite being a civilian; it was one of the final acts in office of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1921. He married Nellie after the Great War, and died of smoking-induced lung cancer in 1933. He and Nellie Semphroch had a daughter, Clara.
Lavochkin, Boris
(SA:G - SA:ID)
Lieutenant Boris Lavochkin was assigned as a platoon leader to the infantry company Chester Martin served in as first sergeant. He was an aggressive, violent man who enjoyed leading raids across the lines and attacking both civilians and military targets in South Carolina. At times, he threatened his own men with violence if they did not cooperate, and he had to be threatened himself from leading a raid into Charleston when the unit was halted to allow a nuclear attack on the city.
There are indications Lavochkin was a sociopath, with no sympathies towards his fellow humans. However, he focused his desire to kill on Confederates and not U.S. soldiers; even Martin, whom he disliked.
MacArthur, Daniel
(GW:WH-GW:B, AE:VO-SA:DE, SE:ID)
Daniel MacArthur is the counterpart of Douglas MacArthur. Apart from being born a few years later, Daniel MacArthur is much the same as his real-life counterpart, down to his ego, the plainness of his uniform, and his trademark smoking habit, although he smokes a cigarette in a holder rather than a corncob pipe.
During World War I MacArthur became the youngest division commander in the history of the US Army and a newspaper hero. This achievement was overshadowed somewhat by his serving under First Army commander George Custer, also a publicity-conscious personality who ensured that MacArthur did not win any major victories. MacArthur was eclipsed still further when Lieutenant-Colonel Irving Morrell succeeded in using innovative tactics and barrels (tanks) to break the Confederate lines in early 1917.
MacArthur spent the 1930s as commandant of the new US state of Houston. Despite his best efforts he never entirely stopped the flow of Freedom Party men and weapons from Texas, but open rioting and revolt was ruthlessly crushed wherever it occurred. After Houston's return to the CSA and the subsequent outbreak of war in 1941, MacArthur was assigned to lead the US offensive in Virginia. MacArthur was not selected for his skills, however, but as a sop to Congress' Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. That may have had something to do with the slowness of the US Army to undertake its offensive, and the heavy autumn rainfall did not help either.
The assault on northern Virginia failed in its objective of seizing Richmond, though MacArthur did succeed in crossing the Rappahannock. Heavy casualties on both sides and a failed Confederate counter-attack out of the Appalachians resulted in stalemate by Christmas. MacArthur was still confident of victory, even colluding with Rear Admiral William Halsey, Jr. about the outlandish scheme of landing troops at the mouth of the James River and advancing on Richmond from the rear. His subordinate Abner Dowling managed to prevent an almost-certain disaster from occurring, leaving northern Virginia as of February 1942 in stalemate. This landing is reminiscent of the real MacArthur's landing at Inchon during the Korean War, a maneuver which was wildly successful; however, the Confederates were more motivated and better-led and equipped than the North Koreans, and would have been fighting for their homeland and capital.
Instead of forcing a repeat of the Peninsula Campaign, MacArthur launched two direct assaults into the heavily defended Confederate line at Fredericksburg, losing thousands of US soldiers to Confederate guns positioned on Marye's Heights above the town. The general was criticized heavily by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, by Brigadier General Dowling, and by the press for his senseless actions.
In 1944, General MacArthur finally succeeded in his drive into Richmond, after the Confederacy was exhausted and forced to fight on several fronts. He victoriously led an attack capturing most of Virginia. General Abner Dowling served as a commander under MacArthur in this phase.
Mantarakis, Paul
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-GW:WH)
Born in Philadelphia but proud of his Greek heritage, Paul Mantarakis was a private in the U.S. Army serving in the West with Gordon McSweeney during the early part of the Great War. He rose to sergeant in fighting against the Mormon rebels in 1915 up until the Mormons' surrender and Utah's placement under martial law (which would last until 1937). Mantarakis was killed during a U.S. invasion of Baja California in 1916.
Martin, Chester
(Viewpoint character: GW:AF-SA:ID)
Chester Martin was the son of Stephen Douglas Martin and a steelworker in Toledo, Ohio. Turtledove might have meant him and Jefferson Pinkard to be a kind of "twins": two steelworkers, one in the North and the other in the South, one moving leftwards politically as a result of the war and the other - rightwards. He served on the Roanoke (southwestern Virginia) front during the Great War and received a commendation for saving the life of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1917, as a sergeant, he briefly served as a company commander of B Company, 91st Infantry Regiment, taking part in the Remembrance Day offensive.
After the war, Martin returned to his civilian job in Toledo, Ohio, as a steelworker. He became a Socialist Party member and union organizer, taking part in strikes and fighting company police and strikebreakers, as well as the police, during the 1920s.
Martin married Rita Habicht, who had lost her first husband in the Great War, in 1926; their son, Carl, was born in 1936.
The Depression of 1929 saw Martin lose his job; he and his wife went to Southern California, where he began in construction work and became a union official. When the 1941 War started, Martin returned to the Army and served as a first sergeant in the infantry, fighting in Ohio and taking part in the successful counterattack against Confederate forces there. He is shown fighting at the front lines throughout Kentucky and Tennessee and eventually ends up commanding a platoon.
Throughout 1944, Martin was part of the drive to Savannah, and participated in the burning of Hardeeville, South Carolina and the murder of all its citizens. He was saved from being in Charleston when it was destroyed by a superbomb when his unit was ordered to halt several miles from the city. After the war ended, Martin was able to obtain his release from the Army and returned to Los Angeles, where he resumed negotiating labor contracts.
McSweeney, Gordon
(GW:AF-GW:WH; Viewpoint character, GW:WH-GW:B)
Gordon McSweeney was a U.S. Army soldier who served in Utah and Baja California with Paul Mantarakis, and later in Arkansas during the Great War. A hyper-Presbyterian, McSweeney saw himself as the instrument of God and he saw the enemy, whether they were Mormon, Mexican, or Confederates, as persons to be slaughtered without pity or mercy. He would use flamethrowers on enemy bunkers, for example, but also used them on trench patrols (to give the sinners a taste of hell beforehand.) McSweeney was as hard on his own soldiers as he was on himself and the enemy; despite this, his fighting skills were highly respected by his platoon and the Army as a whole. He was commissioned while serving in Arkansas, and won two Medals of Honor during the Great War, the second awarded for destroying a Confederate river gunboat single-handedly. McSweeney was killed by shellfire during the last days of the Great War.
Morrell, Irving
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:ID)
Irving Morrell is a fictional counterpart, in name, appearance and career, to the real Erwin Rommel.
Born in late 1891, Irving Morrell enlisted in the United States Army upon reaching adulthood and graduated West Point. At the outbreak of World War I he was a Captain on the southwest border. Leading his company against a Confederate farmhouse in Sonora in September 1914, Morrell was severely wounded in the thigh, and would permanently suffer from a slight limp. While in the hospital he and a doctor jointly proposed the idea of metal helmets after a conversation concerning head wounds.
Upon recovery in 1915 Morrell was dispatched to eastern Kentucky, where his aggressive tactics resulted in a posting to the General Staff. Morrell's star rose still further that year when President Theodore Roosevelt, after an informal talk about the ongoing Mormon uprising in Utah, 'persuaded' the War Department to adopt Morrell's more imaginative plans.
When the Mormons stalled the resulting US advance by doing the unexpected, General Leonard Wood protected the young officer by sending him to British Columbia to cut Canada's Pacific coast off from the interior. Morrell spent most of 1916 doing that, earning praise from observers Eduard Dietl of Austria-Hungary and Heinz Guderian of Germany.
In the final year of the war Morrell's innovative use of barrels ensured the seizure of Nashville, and the subsequent rupture of Confederate lines. Soon, General Custer's and Morrell's doctrine of massed barrel attacks was in use along every eastern front in North America.
When the war ended, Morrell was a Colonel, a national hero, and was given his choice of assignments. He decided to head Barrel Works in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and initially made great strides in designing the next generation of barrels.
While stationed in Leavenworth, Morrell met Agnes Hill, a widow who lost her husband early in the Great War. They married in 1921, and their daughter, Mildred, was born in 1925.
However, the cost-cutting of Upton Sinclair's Socialist administration ensured that Barrel Works was closed down in 1923. His subsequent posting to Philadelphia lasted only two years, with his outspoken criticism of America's foreign policy resulting in a transfer to occupation duty in Kamloops, British Columbia.
The next seven years proved largely uneventful, with Morrell handling a sullen but acquiescent region. He received a visit in 1926 from now-Lieutenant-Colonel Guderian, along with an unnamed German sergeant who's anti-Semitic, "kill everything" attitude and operatic gestures seem very familiar to the reader.
With the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1932, Morrell found himself back at Barrel Works, though he was soon transferred to occupation duty in Houston (his wife and daughter remained at Fort Leavenworth, as Morrell didn't want to risk their lives in the hostile state). With the plebiscite of 1940 came Houston's return to the CSA, and Morrell was assigned as barrel commander in Ohio under Brigadier General Abner Dowling.
When Confederate Operation Blackbeard was launched on June 22, 1941 Morrell found himself in an unenviable position. Despite his best efforts, the prewar shortage of soldiers and barrels ensured that General George Patton's armor succeeded in reaching Sandusky on Lake Erie by late August. With the United States cut in half, Morrell found his attempts to throw the Confederates back frustrated not only by CS sabotage in eastern Ohio but the War Department's focus on northern Virginia.
In January, 1942, Morrell was badly wounded by a Confederate would-be assassin. Upon recovery and a promotion to Brigadier General, he commanded the US forces in Ohio and Pennsylvania during Operation Coalscuttle. His victory at Pittsburgh in early 1943 was the beginning of the end for the CSA.
Morrell planned an assault on Kentucky and Tennessee. Knowing that the Confederates were familiar with the details of the 1917 attack, he used deception (including false armies, camouflage, and feints) to concentrate Confederate forces around Covington, but struck further west in a massive amphibious assault across the Ohio River in the summer of 1943. He drove past Bowling Green and moved into east Tennessee towards Chattanooga. In August, an airborne assault on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge prevented Chattanooga from becoming a Confederate Pittsburgh. Morrell's troops then moved towards Atlanta, the industrial heart of the Confederacy.
Morrell succeeded in taking Atlanta, and proceeded to head towards Savannah, cutting the Confederacy in two (paralleling Sherman's March to the Sea in our timeline). Morrell witnessed the superbomb attack on Philadelphia, during which a drop of radioactive liquid came into contact with his skin.
On July 14, 1944, Morrell arrived in Pineville, North Carolina to accept the surrender of the Confederate States from President Don Partridge. When the U.S. moved into the former Confederacy to occupy it, Morrell was made military governor of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida.
As military governor, Morrell made it clear that any attempt to rebel against the United States would result in the use of force; in addition, any attempt to stir up mob action against returned black concentration camp survivors would also be met by force. Morrell supervised the production of a pamphlet, Equality, which stated the U.S. position of total legal equality between black and white ex-Confederates, including marriage if both parties wanted it. This pamphlet was produced throughout the former Confederacy.
Moss, Jonathan
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:ID)
Jonathan Moss grew up in a well-to-do Chicago family, and enlisted as a U.S. fighter pilot out of college. Flying on
the southern Ontario front in the Great War, Moss established an antagonistic but oddly strong relationship with a Canadian
farmer named Laura Secord (descended from the Canadian patriot of the War of 1812). Moss studied law at Northwestern University
near Chicago after the War, pining after Secord all the while, and moved to Berlin,
Ontario in Occupied Canada to establish his career as an attorney in military occupation courts. He earned some fame as a
defender of Canadians' rights, though Moss readily admitted this only meant he lost less often than most of his peers, as the
legal system created by the occupiers was heavily weighted against the "
By patient wooing Moss eventually won the love of Laura Secord and married her; they had a daughter and had a happy married life. However, marrying an American, even a liberal one, made her a traitor in the eyes of Canadian nationalists, and she was suspected of having betrayed the rebellion of 1924. It is never explicitly stated if Moss - despite his sympathy for the Canadians - did actually warn the occupation authorities of the impending rebellion; though even if he didn't, Secord's telling him of it and leaving him the choice whether or not to pass on the information would in itself make her a traitor in Canadian eyes.
Fascinated by the new fighter planes which he sees, Moss persuades the authorities to let him take up part-time flying for the United States armed forces. This act, widely publicized in the press, acts as the final trigger causing Mary McGregor Pomeroy to send a package bomb which kills Moss' wife and daughter. Full of anger and bitterness, Moss turned his back upon Canada and rejoined the U.S. Army as a full-time fighter pilot. When World War II erupted he fought for approximately a year on the Ohio and Virginia fronts, was shot down over Virginia, and sent to Andersonville, Georgia as a POW. He escaped during a tornado along with Nick Cantarella, and the two joined a band of black guerrillas, led by Spartacus, fighting the Confederacy.
While fighting with the guerrilla band, Moss kills a young Confederate Navy officer leading the defense of Plains, Georgia. Although only named "Jimmy," the location and the fact that the character calls his mother "Miss Lillian," indicate that Jimmy Carter is intended. Throughout 1942 and 1943, he and the black guerrilla band continue to wage operations against the Confederate civilian population and the Mexican forces across rural Georgia. However, an attempt to steal a plane - with which Spartacus wants Moss to strafe the Confederates from the air while Moss himself hopes to use it to return to the US Army positions - leads the band into an ambush in which it is badly mauled.
In 1944, Moss was rescued by advancing U.S. forces, and was able to return to flying near the end of the war. He finished the Second Great War with three kills, after having been an ace in the Great War. His next duty was to travel to Houston, Texas to act as a defense lawyer for Jefferson Pinkard. Despite Moss' best efforts (which were hampered by Pinkard's refusal to admit wrongdoing), Pinkard was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. Moss was then offered a place on the Judge Advocate's staff, a position which he accepted.
O'Doull, Leonard
(GW:WH-AE:VO, Viewpoint character AE:VO-SA:ID)
Leonard O'Doull, M.D., was a surgeon who served in the U.S. Army on the Québec front in the Great War at a military hospital in Rivière-du-Loup. While stationed there, he met Nicole Galtier, the daughter of Lucien Galtier, upon whose land the hospital had been built. He married Nicole in 1917 and after the war he settled down to practice in Rivière-du-Loup in the Republic of Québec. The marriage produced one son, Lucien O'Doull, named for his maternal grandfather.
In his time in Riviere-du-Loup, O'Doull developed a fondness for the Quebecois people and culture, and became very close to his wife's family, especially his father-in-law. His French, fluent to start with, developed from "Parisian" into the quite distinct Quebecois dialect.
When the Second Great War began, O'Doull was encouraged by US authorities to rejoin the US Army. Despite his having grown very comfortable in the Republic of Quebec, he found his loyalties remained with the nation of his birth and rejoined the Army's Medical Service, where he was given the rank of major. He was stationed on the Virginia front, where he befriended Granville McDougald, and was transferred to the city of Pittsburgh when it was invaded by the Confederates. After the decisive U.S. victory in Pittsburgh, O'Doull found himself as a front line surgeon in an army rapidly advancing through Kentucky and Tennessee.
O'Doull remained with the Army through the end of the war, making lieutenant colonel, and the beginning of the occupation in Alabama; however, he was able to secure his discharge through the offices of the Quebecois government and returned to private practice in Rivière-du-Loup.
Pound, Michael
(AE:BI-SA:RE; Viewpoint character SA:DE-SA:ID)
Michael Pound was a U.S. Army sergeant who served under Colonel Irving Morrell's command. After Morrell's wounding in 1941, Pound was transferred to another unit. He was rash, loud, and outspoken towards senior officers, but an effective mentor to junior officers who served with him. He saw action in Ohio, despite having a tank shot out from under him, and in the Battle of Pittsburgh as gunner in a U.S. barrel. Because of Pound's experience in barrel development, he was proficient at judging distance, a trait he used to destroy many Confederate barrels that otherwise would have been out of range in Pittsburgh. He received a battlefield commission in 1943.
As a lieutenant, Pound commanded a platoon of five barrels in the attacks through Kentucky and Tennessee. He used deception to seize a key bridge in Kentucky, enabling the U.S. advance to go faster than planned. Pound eventually took part in the charge into Alabama, where he was burned when his barrel was attacked. After recovery, he was sent to Tallahassee, Florida to take part in the U.S. occupation there, where he helped defuse boycotts of services imposed by Confederate businesses.
Quigley, Jedediah
(GW:AF-AE:BI, SA:RE, SA:ID)
Lieutenant Colonel Jedediah Quigley, from New Hampshire, was the U.S. Army officer in charge of the military government of Rivière-du-Loup, Québec, during the Great War. He was a firm governor, seizing land from Luicien Galtier to build a military hospital in 1915; however, he agreed to pay back rent to the Galtiers when Galtier's attitude became more positive toward the U.S. After the Great War, he became the U.S. military representative to the Government of Québec. He returned to Quebec shortly after the outbreak of the 1941 War to persuade Leonard O'Doull to return to active duty as an Army doctor for U.S. forces fighting in Ohio. After the war, he appeared once more, in his seventies, to ask O'Doull to make a report on ways and means military medicine could be improved.
Reach, William
(GW:AF-GW:B)
William "Bill" Reach was a reporter for the Washington Evening Star before the Great War. Before that, although it is not clear, he is intimated that he was Nellie Semphroch's lover, maybe even her procurer, and perhaps the father of Edna Semphroch. He was in charge of the U.S. spy ring in Washington, D.C., to which Nellie Semphroch and Hal Jacobs reported. He was able to warn Jacobs and Semphroch of an artillery bombardment that killed Edna Semphroch's fiancé in 1916. The reader is again and again confronted with the contrast between his sterling patiotic duty and his nasty personal character. He was finally killed by Nellie Semphroch when he attempted to rape her during the Confederate withdrawal from Washington - a dark secret which haunted her for the rest of her life, having to listen again and again to mourning praises of his great service to the nation.
Reisen, Yossel Jr.
(GW:WH-AE:BI, AE:VO-SA:G)
Yossel Reisen Jr. is the nephew of Congresswoman Flora Blackford. He was born in 1915 during the Great War. Reisen never knew his father, who was killed in the war before he was born. By 1941, Reisen had been conscripted in the Army and served in the same regiment with Armstrong Grimes, taking part in fighting against the Mormon rebellion in Utah.
Semphroch, Edna (Grimes)
(GW:AF-AE:VO, SA:G)
Edna Semphroch, along with her mother Nellie, ran a coffee shop in Washington, D.C., before, during, and after the Confederate occupation of the city from 1914 to 1917. She was unaware of her mother's activities as a U.S. spy, and in fact was ready to marry a Confederate officer, Lieutenant Nicholas H. Kincaid, when shellfire from a U.S. cannon hit the church on H Street where the wedding was to be held, killing him. Edna received the Order of Remembrance, Second Class, from President Roosevelt after the Great War for her "services to the U.S," though Nellie believed that she had done nothing to deserve it. She married Merle Grimes, a government clerk, after the war to avoid any possible scandal. She gave birth to a son, Armstrong Grimes, and a daughter, Annie Grimes.
Semphroch, Nellie (Jacobs)
(HFR, Viewpoint character, GW:AF-AE:VO)
Nellie Semphroch was born in the mid-1870s in Washington, D.C., and underwent the Confederate bombardment of the city during the Second Mexican War (In 1881, German military observer Alfred von Schlieffen saw her walking along a road in Washington in between bombings and the subsequent evacuation of government personnel to Philadelphia). She apparently struggled as a young woman and supported herself as a prostitute. By 1914, however, she had managed to purchase a small restaurant in Washington. The restaurant became a popular place for Confederate officers to eat, and Nellie found herself involved gathering intelligence for a U.S. spy ring run by Hal Jacobs, a cobbler, who also gathered information on Confederate forces. Also, near the end of the war, she killed Bill Reach, a US spymaster, (and the person to whom Hal reported) when he tried to rape her. It would always haunt her when Hal Jacobs talked of him. It was also intimated that Bill Reach may have been Nellie's daughter's (Edna's) father.
Because her restaurant had been popular with the Confederates, she was initially arrested as a collaborator when the U.S. reoccupied the city in 1917. However, charges were dismissed and President Theodore Roosevelt awarded her with the Order of Remembrance, First Class.
After the Great War, Semphroch married Jacobs and continued to run her coffee shop, catering to both Washingtonians and Confederate businessmen who remembered her place affectionately. She did not reveal her role as a U.S. spy until the late 1930s. She died in 1937 of blood poisoning, not long after attending Al Smith's presidential inauguration.
Confederate States
Bartlett, Reginald
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-AE:CCH)
Reggie Bartlett was a pharmacist's assistant in Richmond, Virginia, when the Great War began in 1914. Shortly after being fired for skipping work to see Woodrow Wilson's declaration of war speech, he joined the Seventh Virginia Regiment of the Confederate Army, fast becoming a hardened veteran. He is captured by Chester Martin's unit - enabling the reader to suddenly observe Martin and his fellow soldiers, which were seen "from the inside" in many previous episodes, as seen through the eyes of an enemy to whose life they pose a direct and immediate threat. He eventually escapes from captivity, together with submarine commander Ralph Briggs (Briggs was later recaptured, by the same U.S. Navy sailor who had captured him before). He was severely wounded and captured again by U.S. forces and remained a prisoner of war hospital patient until the Armistice, there becoming friendly with a Black Confederate POW who might have been (though never admitting it openly) a former Marxist rebel. Returning to Richmond, Bartlett saw the rise of the Freedom Party and actively opposed it, supporting instead the Radical Liberals. He was gunned down by Freedom Party stalwarts in 1925, whose posters he had torn down.
Turtledove's killing off of Bartlett, arguably the most sympathetic of his white Southerners, seems to be a way of telling the reader that anti-racist Confederates are too weak to stop the Freedom Party on their own, and that like Hitler, Featherston would only succumb to an outside war.
Cassius
(GW:AF-GW:B)
Cassius (no last name) was the huntsman for the Marshlands Plantation in St. Matthews, South Carolina, owned by the Colleton family. He was also head of the Marxist underground in the area. When the Red Rebellion of 1915-16 broke out, Cassius became the leader of the Congaree Socialist Republic and was responsible for ordering the execution of many “enemies of the people,” both black and white. He escaped the crushing of the Republic in 1916 and with his female companion, Cherry, continued guerilla operations against the Confederacy, and in particular against Anne Colleton. Cassius was killed by Tom Colleton shortly after the Armistice of 1917.
Colleton, Anne
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:RE)
Anne Colleton, in 1914, was the owner of the Marshlands Plantation of St. Matthews, South Carolina, a supporter of the arts, including Marcel Duchamp, and a prominent political figure in the state. The Red rebellion of 1915 resulted in the loss of the mansion house at Marshlands, which was burned down by her chief hunter, Cassius, and the death of her brother, Jacob, who had been a soldier and was debilitated by gas. This started a personal vendetta between Colleton, whose political influence could raise the state militia, and Cassius and his female partner, Cherry, which lasted until Cassius was killed by her brother Tom shortly after the Armistice of 1917.
She was briefly involved in a romantic affair with Confederate Navy commander Roger Kimball during the Great War, but broke off the affair when Kimball became too involved in the Freedom Party. She was also intimately involved with Clarence Potter for a brief time, though their conflicting politics prevented them from establishing a long-term relationship.
During the period between the World Wars, Colleton became involved with the Freedom Party as a designer for mass-rallies, but stopped her support after a Freedom Party sniper killed President Wade Hampton V. However, as she realized that the Freedom Party was likely to win control of the nation, Colleton worked her way back into favor with Featherston.
Colleton was killed in a U.S. bombing raid on Charleston, South Carolina, in the early days of the Second Great War while in the city on Freedom Party business.
Colleton, Tom
(GW:AF-SA:RE, Viewpoint character SA:RE-SA:DE)
Tom Colleton was the brother of Anne Colleton. He served as a Confederate infantry officer during the war of 1914-1917, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, but left the Army after the war ended. He, and his sister, using South Carolina militia, ended up hunting down the last remnants of the Congaree Socialist Republic, and he personally killed their leader Cassius.
He was recalled to service in World War II, as a Lieutenant Colonel. Colleton's unit was involved in the invasion of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and was trapped in the Battle of Pittsburgh, where he was killed in late January 1943, just days before the Confederate pocket surrendered.
Colleton is presented as the archetypal "officer and gentleman", a member of the plantation aristocracy which dominated Confederate life until the rise of Featherston. He dislikes the Freedom Party but nevertheless goes out to fight in the Featherston-formented war, out of patriotism and hatred of the Yankees. Gradually he becomes infected with prevalent anti-Black racism, though never to a fanatic pitch. He is clearly meant to be viewed as the equivalent of the German Junker officers who despised Hitler but nevertheless fought for Germany in the Second World War.
The final chapter featuring this character, in which Colleton makes his last stand in Pittsburgh and is killed, bears considerable similarity to the last stand of the characters Trasone and Panfillo in Turtldove's "Darkness" series - both clearly modelled on the fate of the German soldiers in Stalingrad. In both series, this last scene is depicted with great symapthy to the respective viewpoint characters, who face approaching death with courage and fortitude - even though they fight for the side which in the overall view is the clear villain.
Dover, Jerry
(AE:CCH-SA:DE; Viewpoint character SA:G-SA:ID)
Jerry Dover was a frontline Great War veteran and the manager of Huntsman's Lodge in Augusta, Georgia and was Scipio's boss. He was known to protect his black workers from Freedom Party cleanouts, although this was more for the benefit of the Lodge than any anti-racist sentiment on his part. In 1942, Dover signed up for the Quartermasters Corps as a major, and was called to active duty later that year. Dover was known to work his men "like niggers" according to observers. When his commander went missing in 1943 (Colonel Travis W. W. Oliphant was seized in a raid by U.S. forces), Dover organized the supplies of the Confederate Army in Kentucky, falling back to Tennessee and Georgia. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
Dover's attitude was rude to anyone who stood in the way of his doing his job and he let people know how he felt in richly profane language (like many restaurant managers, observed a commanding general). However, he got the job done; even the U.S. Army recognized his organizational genius when they overran his supply depots in Kentucky.
Dover was promoted to lieutenant colonel when Colonel Oliphant was captured. He also received the Purple Heart for injuries sustained during a U.S. bombing raid. Although married, Dover also had a female friend, who blackmailed him for money and military information. The fact that Dover reported the blackmail first and was good at his job saved him from being arrested by the Confederate intelligence.
Dover was captured in Alabama and spent the rest of the War a prisoner. Returning to Augusta, he was offered the position of managing the Huntsman's Lodge once more.
Dresser, Anthony
(AE:BI)
Anthony Dresser is an analog to Anton Drexler, the founder of the Nazi Party. Dresser founded the Freedom Party in Richmond, Virginia presumably after the end of the Great War in 1917. The party consisted only of a few people and was only able to get fliers across war-ravaged Richmond because one of its members was a printer. Jake Featherston became interested in the party and soon became one of its few members. Anthony Dresser tried giving a speech at a campaign for the Confederate Congress and was nearly laughed off the stage until Featherston stepped up. Featherston began blaming the blacks and war department for the CSA's loss in the war which struck a chord with many Confederates. Featherston began a speaking tour to raise support for the party, and soon became the Freedom Party's Head of Propaganda.
With this new-found support for Featherston, Dresser became afraid for his position in the party and tried to have Featherston removed, stating Featherston had turned the party's message into one saying "Hang the generals and hang the niggers" and was giving people the wrong idea about the party. Though Dresser found some support amongst the rank-and-file Party members Featherston pointed out that he raised more than half of the party's funding and without him, the party would go back to being nothing. The motion to remove Featherston failed, and Featherston himself raised the motion to remove Dresser. The motion was carried out by a landslide and Featherston became head of the Freedom Party while Dresser faded into obscurity.
In all this, Dresser's career closely parallels that of the real-life Anton Drexler and his relations with Adolf Hitler.
Featherston, Jake
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It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article. (Discuss) |
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:ID)
Jake Featherston (1886-1944) is an analog to Adolf Hitler. He is physically very thin, raw-boned, and is often described as lanky, awkward and bony. He remained slender into his fifties, retaining his "dangerous" eyes, close-cropped brown hair, and a harsh, raspy voice. He was extremely petty and vindictive, taking the slightest mistake or remark as a personal affront and then vowing to take vengeance on the perpetrator, be it a single man, an entire race, or a whole country. Featherston also had the uncanny ability to vent his anger and frustration in a manner that captured the attention of his audience and holds it spellbound, enticing them to join him in his madness.
Born the son of an (ex-)slave overseer sometime in the 1880s somewhere near Richmond, Virginia, Featherston grew up in a poor household and joined the CS Army - i.e., a Poor White, member of the social layer often called derogatorily white trash (as a general is to call Featherston to his face in a later episode) who are caught precariously between the planter aristocracy above them and the Blacks below.
By 1914 he was a sergeant in the First Richmond Howitzers, under Captain Jeb Stuart III. As part of the Army of Northern Virginia, Featherston fought on the Susquehanna River and then fell back towards Maryland. During this time he reported his suspicions to an intelligence officer about Pompey, Captain Stuart's body servant, being a Marxist rebel. The accusation would have more influence on Featherston's life than he could ever have imagined at the time. Not only did Pompey, protected from investigation by his prominent master, turn out to be a real Red when the Negro uprisings broke out, but the intelligence officer in question was one Clarence Potter, whose destiny would be forevermore inextricable with Featherston's.
Interestingly, considering his future career, at this stage Featherston is far from being a rabid racist. He had a rather ambiguous relationship with the blacks who do menial work in his unit, not lacking in grudging respect - especially after one battle when the blacks help him operate the unit's artillery after a U.S. barrage killed the white gunners. On the eve of the uprising, the leader of the blacks, Perseus, actually comes to say goodbye to Featherston and warn him to "be careful for a while". (In Mein Kampf there is a passage where Hitler recalls a time when he was well-disposed towards Jews and considered the prejudice against them unjustified.)
As the uprisings petered out in early 1916, Jeb Stuart III, who had destroyed his career by protecting Pompey, intentionally got himself killed in combat. His father was General Jeb Stuart, Jr., who ensured that Featherston never made officer's rank despite his fitness for the post. Featherston - as noted, previously no more racist than other ordinary white Confederates - now burned with intense fury at blacks and aristocratic officers alike. His anger intensifies as the war starts to go badly for the Confederates. By the end of the war, Featherston had begun pouring out his hate on Gray Eagle scratchpads (what would later become his autobiographical "Over Open Sights)." When the ceasefire went into effect he vowed to Clarence Potter that he would have vengeance on the blacks and the aristocrats running the War Department.
During the aftermath of the war, Featherston drifted for a short while, before joining the newly created Freedom Party. Swiftly establishing himself as head propagandist, it was not long before Featherston, aided by Party member Ferdinand Koenig, became its leader. With his raw energy and humble origins, Featherston had little trouble whipping up support from much of the Confederate populace, and it seemed by the early 1920s that he would surely be leading the country. But with the assassination of President Wade Hampton V in 1923 by a Party stalwart, the Freedom Party suffered a sudden and near-total collapse as a political force.
The following years were spent by Featherston repairing what damage he could, and waiting for his next opportunity. The vital discovery of the power of wireless (radio) and his subsequent broadcasts did much to aid the Party's recovery. The damage caused by the Mississippi floods and the Business Collapse of the early 1930s ensured that the Freedom Party swept the elections in 1933.
Once he was legally elected President of the Confederacy, Featherston slowly and quietly twisted the
By 1941, Featherston was ready for war. He snaked the USA into giving him excuses to attack it, and initiated the 1941 war in North America with a surprise air raid on Philadelphia and the immense success of Operation Blackbeard, which cut the USA in half through central Ohio. His megalomaniacal mindset would prove to be his undoing, however, and his expectations of quick victory were quickly dashed when Al Smith rejected his 'generous' peace offer. His downfall began to unravel starting with his disastrous attempt to take Pittsburgh in the fall of 1942 and the subsequent loss of an entire army trapped in a pocket there, because Featherston defiantly refused to withdraw even when his generals realized it was the sensible thing to do.
Though he suffered more defeats in 1943, losing occupied Ohio, as well as Kentucky, Tennessee, and Camp Determination, Featherston refused to admit defeat. When U.S. President Charles La Follette demanded the Confederates surrender unconditionally, Featherston went on the wireless to refuse the demand, and quickly responded by firing two rockets into Philadelphia from Virginia to prove that he was not ready to end the war.
Despite his displays of defiance, Featherston continued to lose more ground into 1944, losing Georgia and large parts of South Carolina and Alabama. His confidence only began to break after a coup attempt by Nathan Bedford Forrest III shook his confidence in his men. Even then, he believed that he would be able to get his way through the use of superbombs, a technology he obtained with the help of British ambassador Lord Halifax. Shortly after Germany used the first superbomb in warfare, the only Confederate superbomb was set off in Philadelphia, by General Potter.
As Richmond was falling to U.S. forces under Daniel MacArthur, Featherston fled to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia to give a speech to what remained of the Confederate States. After leaving the radio station, he calmly watched Newport News explode as a U.S. superbomb attempting to assassinate him went off. Featherston was annoyed at the display of US power, but took it in stride, considering it was he who set off the first North American superbomb, that Newport News wasn't nearly as important a target as Philadelphia, and most importantly (if only to himself and the Confederacy), he was still alive.
Well into 1944, with the Confederate cause all but lost, Featherston attempted to flee the more populous northern areas with many core Freedom Party and CSA officials, including General Potter. He wanted to lead them into the woods so that they could begin guerilla action against the U.S., making occupation too hazardous for the Yankees to try. Ultimately, his plan was defeated by a guerilla fighter named Cassius (son of Scipio/Xerxes), who found the bedraggled party and killed Featherston. Upon his death, his vice president, Donald Partridge, quickly moved to end the war, and the Confederate States' existence, by surrendering to U.S. forces.
Featherston was a victim of his own megalomania, as he forces himself to attempt to accomplish increasingly dangerous goals in order to keep up the impression that he was "great." He expressed several times his opinion that without him the Confederate States of America would amount to nothing, and that without him race relations would rot the core of the Confederate Dream. He seemed to suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, where he perceived himself to be the center of his universe. Since he held the highest position of power ever achieved in North America, and worked hard to get to the top, that only worked to stoke the fire within him.
Some notable quotes:
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Trivia sections are discouraged under
Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
"I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth." -- The line he always uses to begin his radio broadcasts and speeches, usually filled with lies and propaganda.
"James McReynolds has made his decision, now let him enforce it!" -- Featherston on the radio, telling the country that he had just abolished the Supreme Court of the Confederate States after it struck down one of his laws.
"I haven't backed away from a fight yet. I don't aim to start now." -- Featherston to Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest III, chief of the Confederate General Staff, after the latter warned him about an impending US attack
"I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth. And the truth is, people of the USA and President La Follette, we aren't about to surrender. We've got no reason to. We're going to win this war, and you'll be laughing out the other side of your mouth pretty damn quick.
Philadelphia will get the message in just a few minutes. Philadelphia will get it twice, matter of fact. You wait, you watch, and you listen. Then you figure out who ought to be doing the surrendering. So long for now. You'll hear more from me soon." -- Jake Featherston's response to Charles La Follette's surrender demand in October 1943, followed by the firing of rockets into Philadelphia.
"Get us some motorcars, and-" -- Jake Featherston's last words; he was shot in mid-sentence.
Trivia
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Trivia sections are discouraged under
Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
- Jake Featherston had many formal and informal titles during his career. While he was formally the chairman of the Freedom Party, he was referred to as "the boss" or "the Sarge." As President, everyone under him was expected to refer to him as "Mr. President" -- though men that have been with him since the early days, such as Ferdinand Koenig, could call him by his Christian name.
- He often wore a white shirt and butternut trousers outfit while head of the Freedom Party, though he wore a plain sergeant's uniform to his inauguration and every day since then, except for Al Smith's state visit in 1940, in which he wore a simple Freedom Party Guard's uniform.
- Featherston was known for his lower class upbringing -- helping him connect with many of his followers. He traveled in a plain automobile (until an assassination attempt in 1938 forced him to travel in an armored car more armored than a normal military vehicle), slept in frugal settings, and never wore fancy outfits or attended high-class events. He also swore and cursed a lot -- except where his secretary could hear him. And he preferred beer or whiskey and other hard liquor to wine or champagne, though he normally smoked a Cuban cigar. These traits helped set him apart from the Whigs and traditional aristocrats that held power before him.
FitzBelmont, Henderson V.
(SA:RE-SA:ID)
Professor Henderson V. FitzBelmont was a physicist at Washington University in Lexington, Virginia. In 1941, he attempted to convince President Featherston to provide him with funding to begin work on an atomic bomb project. Featherston denied this request, and it wasn't until the next year when Confederate intelligence found that the United States was working on their own uranium enrichment project. Shortly after finding this out (a fact which was later confirmed by Clarence Potter), Featherston gave permission to FitzBelmont to begin work on his project. Partly because of Featherston's initial refusal, the U.S. nuclear program had a clear advantage over the Confederate one, a fact that was made clear by FitzBelmont after his second meeting with the President.
FitzBelmont was presumably murdered after the war in a U.S. attempt to keep the spread of uranium bomb knowledge to a minimum, on John Abell's orders.
Goldman, Saul
(AE:CCH-SA:ID)
Saul Goldman is a high-ranking member of the Freedom Party, and is this universe's working equivalent to Joseph Goebbels. The irony here is that a Jewish-Confederate is the analog to a man who hated Jews. However, his easy-going and gentle personality clashes starkly with Goebbels' crass demagoguery and spiteful attitude, and Goldman seems more than willing to live a simple life in a simple world that had gone mad. Goldman was possibly modelled as well, at least by similarity in name, from Samuel Goldwyn, one of the founders of our timeline's MGM studios.
Goldman was the director of the first radio network in Richmond in the 1920s when Jake Featherston of the Freedom Party found him. Being the first politician to recognize radio's full potential, the Freedom Party leader used Goldman's studio to broadcast speeches to the people of the Confederate States. Goldman wasn't turned away by the repulsive nature of the Freedom Party; rather, he was glad the Party went after blacks and not Jews, the way the Russians did in Poland.
In time, Featherston was elected Confederate president, and he gave Goldman the post of Director of Communications (the head of the Freedom Party's propaganda). Goldman consolidated the media networks and publishing companies of the CSA into one ministry under the Freedom Party's direction, and imposed near-totalitarian control over what the Confederate people read and heard. And while doing all this, Goldman remained the quiet, shy little guy that he was before he got involved in Freedom Party matters, never having become the balls-and-fists type of stalwart that the Freedom Party attracted in droves. Jake Featherston gave him credit for being the one man in the Party that "had more brains than balls."
In 1944, Goldman fled Richmond with Featherston and other important Confederate officials, but was captured after Featherston was killed. Along with Ferdinand Koenig, Goldman was tried by the USA for crimes against humanity and executed.
Hampton, Wade V
(AE:BI)
Wade Hampton V is a fictional descendant of Wade Hampton III and a prominent member of the Whigs. In 1921, Hampton V ran for President of the CSA and won election over both Jake Featherston (Freedom) and Ainsworth Layne (Radical Liberals). His presidency came to a premature end in June 1922 when he was assassinated by Freedom Party member Grady Calkins at a Birmingham rally. Hampton became the first president in the history of either the Confederate States or United States to be assassinated. His vice-president Burton Mitchel III was sworn in as president afterwards to finish the remainder of his six-year team.
Kimball, Roger
(GW:AF, Viewpoint character, GW:WH-AE:BI)
Lieutenant Commander Roger Kimball was a submarine commander in the Confederate States Navy during the Great War. He received a Confederate Navy Cross for sinking two US gunships during a daring raid in a Chesapeake Bay harbor. He later was given a promotion to Commander after another daring raid into New York harbor which ended with the sinking of two US Battleships. He resumed command of a submarine until receiving news of the Armistice in 1917, upon which he torpedoed the USS Ericsson after hostilities ended, killing, among others, Seaman George Enos.
Kimball was romantically involved with Anne Colleton in 1915. They resumed their relationship after the War, when both were involved in the Freedom Party's rise; however, Colleton broke off the relationship when the Party lost prestige following the assassination of Confederate President Wade Hampton V by a Freedom Party member. Shortly after their acrimonious breakup, Kimball was shot and killed by Sylvia Enos, widow of George Enos. His death probably saved him from sharing Willy Knight's fate, as Kimball had ambitions of succeeding Featherston after the latter's (presumably) one and only presidential term.
Knight, Willy
(AE:BI-SA:RE)
Willy Knight was the Vice-President of Jake Featherston's Confederate government, and is his world's analog to real-life Ernst Röhm. He was the head of Texas' Redemption League, which held similar goals to the Freedom Party, before his group was swallowed up by the Freedom Party. His name had its genesis most likely in the Willy's Knight automobile from the same time period.
After his attempted coup d'etat in 1939 against Jake Featherston after the amending of the Confederate Constitution which allowed Presidents to serve more than one-term in office, Knight was imprisoned in Louisiana's Camp Dependable, run by Jefferson Pinkard. He was executed in 1941.
Koenig, Ferdinand
(AE:BI-SA:ID)
Ferdinand Koenig is a high-ranking member of the Freedom Party and the CSA's Attorney General. His character appears to have been inspired by both Heinrich Himmler (in manner and function as executor of Featherston's plans) and Hermann Göring (in physical appearance and similarity in name).
Koenig began his career as Party secretary, where he was found by Jake Featherston and molded into his staunchest supporter - backing the former artillery sergeant in his bid for power at the top of the Freedom Party. Twice he ran on the Freedom ticket as vice president, but allowed the spot to go to Willy Knight in 1933. Instead of the useless position that had been given to Knight to shut him up, Featherston made Koenig attorney general of the Confederate States.
Once in office, Koenig searched for ways to disband the Supreme Court and increase Featherston's power. With the help of lawyers, he used the precedent of the CSA not having a Supreme Court for the first five years of its existence, and stated that the country can survive without one. Since the Confederate Constitution is nearly identical to the United States', it also does not contain explicit provisions for a federal court system (save state initiative to impeach judges) but rather that Congress may establish them. This being the case, the Confederate States would have required an alternate version of the Judiciary Act of 1789 to establish an inferior and superior court system. This act would have detailed everything from the judiciary's powers to the number of justices on the Supreme Court--seven in this case. When Chief Justice James Clark McReynolds struck down President Featherston's River and Dam Act, Koenig hit back hard, ordering the Supreme Court dissolved and the executive branch to assume supreme judicial powers on the basis that the country needed the dams constructed more than it needed the high court striking down laws and making trouble with the Featherston Administration.
Even after the Freedom Party won the reins of power in the election of 1933, the Whigs and Radical Liberals still stirred up opposition to the Freedom government. With a nod from Koenig and the Confederate States Justice Department, local police officials and state governments in states across the CSA arrested hundreds of Whig and Radical Liberal party members on false pretexts (such as "disturbing the peace," "public drunkenness," and "inciting to riot") and incarcerated them in prisons and later state correctional camps. Freedom Party stalwarts beat and insulted the anti-Freedom men until they were deemed ready to re-enter Confederate society. Some of the more vocal opponents were "shot while resisting arrest" - a euphemism for murder, while judges and district attorneys who refused to cooperate were coerced into resigning, explaining to the public that they were doing so for "reasons of health."
As the 1940s dawned, Featherston decided that the time had come to begin "population reductions" (i.e.: killing off the Confederacy's blacks). Koenig was tasked with overseeing this program, for which he ordered a number of camps established in Louisiana. Secrecy was aided by the recent seizure of that state by the Freedom Party from Radical Liberal Huey Long, and the subsequent roundup of "political prisoners."
Shipments of Negroes commenced in 1940, composed of men from Confederate jails or those arrested at roadblocks in the towns. Before long places such as Camp Dependable, outside of Alexandria, Louisiana, were filled to overflowing. Shortly before the outbreak of 1941 War, Koenig phoned Camp Dependable's commandant, Jefferson Pinkard, with the news that 2000 more blacks would arriving, along with an unspoken order to ensure there was sufficient room for them. Other camps received similar instructions, resulting in the first massacres.
The early killings were a limited success; although black men were continuously butchered the surviving prisoners simmered on the edge of revolt. Nor could some of the guards handle the work; suicides and transfer requests shot through the roof. In late 1941, Pinkard came up with a solution. Inspired by a camp guard's suicide, he invented a specially-fitted truck which enabled the driver to flood the rear compartment with exhaust gasses. Overnight, the "population reductions" became easier; blacks thought the trucks were shipping prisoners to other camps, and the guards didn't have to do anything save drive and dig. Featherston was delighted; he requisitioned whole fleets of trucks from the Confederate Army, regardless of the fact that there was a war on.
In early 1942, Koenig upped the ante. Entire portions of black districts in towns would be cleared out over the course of a single night, while Pinkard was given a new assignment: constructing an enormous camp out in Texas to handle the anticipated volume of black inmates. This was to become Camp Determination.
Even as the situation of the war grows obviously worse, Koenig rarely wavers in his belief that Confederates will win the war as Featherston promised. Evidently, his blind devotion to Featherston and his cause prevents him from making rational decisions in the better interest of the nation. Under Featherston's orders, he diverts badly needed resources from the war effort into the extermination program, which he believes takes priority to winning the conflict. He authorizes the building of Camp Humble when Camp Determination is overrun by U.S. troops.
In 1944, Koenig fled Richmond with Featherston and other important Confederate officials, but was captured after Featherston was killed. Along with Saul Goldman, Koenig was tried by the USA for crimes against humanity and executed.
Madison, Cassius
(AE:CCH-SA:DE; Viewpoint character SA:G-SA:ID)
Named for the late huntsman at the Marshlands Plantation (though never told so by his father), Cassius is the son of Scipio and Bathsheba. As he grew up in Augusta's Terry district, he developed a sense to strike back at the white "ofays" who oppressed him and his family.
In early 1943, Cassius told his father that he would not be attending church one Sunday, which meant that he escaped a cleanout of the Terry which took his father, his mother, and his sister Antoinette. For a time after leaving the Terry, Cassius looked for whatever work he could find, eventually joining a resistance group led by Gracchus.
After US forces occupied the part of Georgia he was operating in, Cassius became an auxiliary for the US Army in Madison, Georgia. While serving in this capacity in 1944, he came across Jake Featherston and other top Freedom officials walking down a road from Athens after their plane was shot down. Cassius shot Featherston several times, killing the President of the Confederate States, and taking the rest of the group prisoner. He became famous, was voted the thanks of the US Congress, given a cash reward and became a U.S. citizen, taking the last name of Madison after the town where he shot and killed Featherston. He attends the inauguration of Tom Dewey in February 1945 as a special guest.
Mattox, Lulu
(AE:BI-SA:ID)
Lulu Mattox is the personal secretary of Jake Featherston. She was hired by the Freedom party in the early 1920s to work for Featherston, though the Freedom Party leader had shown no interest in hiring a secretary. In later years, however, Featherston would credit Mattox for the Party's survival, especially after the anti-Freedom backlash resulting from the assassination of President Wade Hampton V.
Mattox presented herself as an obstacle to people who wished to meet with Featherston, especially those who weren't close associates with him, such as James Clark McReynolds. It was also obvious that she was, along with Ferdinand Koenig, one of the few people whose feelings mattered to Jake Featherston.
During Featherston's presidency she took care of her boss, making sure he ate and got enough sleep between meetings and events. That helped endear her to Jake Featherston, who gladly allowed her to mother him (whereas he wouldn't even let his own mother take care of him, or so he claimed) and develop one of the only close relationships he had since before the Great War, making her the only object and outlet for his affections that he knew of.
In 1944, she fled Virginia and North Carolina with her boss and several other Freedom Party officials. Attempting to flee South Carolina by plane, she was badly wounded when the group was shot down. She pleaded with Jake Featherston to shoot her before he makes his getaway, as she did not want to be taken by US forces and live the rest of her life in a world without Featherston. With great reluctance, her boss carried out her last wish, shooting her dead with his Colt .45.
Mitchel, Burton
(AE:BI-AE:CCH)
Burton Mitchel was vice president of the CSA when Wade Hampton V was assassinated at a rally in 1922, only three months after his inauguration. He is likely intended to be the fictional grandson of Charles Burton Mitchel.
Upon taking office, Mitchel asked U.S. President Upton Sinclair to repeal the reparations payments that had severely damaged the Confederate economy. In 1927, the C.S. Supreme Court ruled that Mitchel was eligible to run for a full six-year term, despite his serving more than four years of Hampton's term. He won election, but was burdened by the Business Collapse in 1929, which left many Confederate citizens homeless; as a result, many people set up in "Mitcheltowns" across the CSA (these were called "Blackfordburghs" in the U.S.; both were analogs to Hooverville). He left office in 1934 as the Freedom Party's control over the CSA began.
Partridge, Donald
(AE:VO-SA:ID)
Donald Partridge was the Freedom Party's replacement for the slot of the vice-presidency after Willy Knight's attempted coup. He was chosen because Jake Featherston reckoned him a useless, harmless idiot, unlike the ambitious Knight. Partridge spent his time in the vice-presidency thinking of dumb farm-girl jokes to tell Featherston, or in the company of various ladies in hotels here and there, according to secret Freedom Party guard reports. He also spent most of his time promoting the war effort, traveling from city to city across the CSA making speeches and imploring the Confederates to fight on.
After Featherston's death in 1944, Partridge became the 14th and last president of the CSA. He quickly and unconditionally surrendered to American forces, and as a result, the CSA was disbanded as a nation. Partridge was taken prisoner by Morrell; his subsequent fate is unknown.
His name is a play on former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle and seems to have been modeled on both Quayle and Woodrow Wilson's Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, who was known for being a paper-weight and making jokes.
Pinkard, Jefferson Davis
(Viewpoint character, GW:AF-SA:ID)
An Alabama native, Jefferson Pinkard was a steel man at the Sloss Works in Birmingham when the Great War broke out. Interestingly, considering his development in later books of the series, Pinkard as originally introduced to the reader - before being traumatized by the combination of war and personal crisis - is a highly sympathetic character. To begin with, he is singularly free of any racist taint, fully willing to accept a black fellow-worker and accord him the respect due to a skillful steel man in a dangerous and demanding job. (It should be noted that even Jake Featherston, who would later develop into a monstrous Hitler-like racist leader, does not initially display a noticeably higher level of anti-black racism than other Confederate characters).
The war affects Pinkard more fundamentally - and negatively - than many other characters in the series. Conscripted into the Confederate Army late in 1915, he received his baptism of fire against Red rebels in Georgia before being sent to west Texas, where he befriended Sonoran recruit Hipolito Rodriguez. Coming home on leave in 1917, he caught his wife Emily performing fellatio on his best friend and next-door neighbor, Bedford Cunningham. That, combined with the Confederacy's defeat that year, left him a bitter and vengeful man.
During the postwar years he found solace in the Freedom Party, becoming a regular attendee at Birmingham chapter meetings and joining other Freedom Party stalwarts in disrupting their opponents' rallies. At his steel works job he shocks the black fellow-worker with whom he was previously friendly by hurling the Freedom Party greeting at him - a watershed moment where Pinkard effectively says goodbye to his fairly liberal past and sets out on an ominous road.
Devotion to the party would pay dividends in later years, but costs him his marriage: though he tried to forget his wife's adultery, his increasing distance led to her being unfaithful once more. Catching Emily in the act, Pinkard threw her out into the street. Between the divorce and the Freedom Party's decline after Wade Hampton V's assassination, Pinkard decided to fight for the Imperialists in the Mexican Civil War.
Pinkard's stint in Mexico turned out to be an enormous blessing. He found himself almost by accident running a prisoner of war camp, an experience which proved to be a turning point in his life. Here again it should be noted that in this initial venture into the business of guarding prisoners, Pinkard actually tried to be humane, being appalled by the cruelty of the Imperialists to their captives. This proves, however, a step down a slippery slope which is described in detail from book to book in the series. After the Business Collapse, Pinkard, who had resumed his job at the Sloss Works, was laid off. The Freedom Party quickly set him up with a new occupation as a prison guard, and when the first camps for political prisoners were set up, Pinkard was offered a job as an assistant camp commandant at a Mississippi facility, and subsequently the head commandant at Louisiana's "Camp Dependable".
Pinkard at first was in charge of detaining white political prisoners, especially the followers of Louisiana governor Huey Long who was assassinated by Featherston. After Vice President Willy Knight attempted to assassinate President Jake Featherston, Knight became Pinkard's most notable prisoner. Soon many suspected black rebels were imprisoned as well.
Imperceptively, the shift is made from detaining black rebels, or those suspected of being such, to detaining blacks solely on the basis of their color. More and more blacks are being sent to the camp, and the government fails to supply food rations to feed them all. When Pinkard complains, he gets a phone call directly from Ferdinand Koenig (who under the innocuous title of "Attorney General" actually heads the analogue of the S.S.) who informs him that the solution should be found otherwise - i.e. by taking off many black inmates and ordering firing squads to shoot them, so as to "reduce their population". That is the final watershed, which once crossed makes Pinkard a mass murderer. Soon, he is not only obeying orders, but gives much "creative thought" to the improvement of the killing methods.
The shooting to death, where the killers must look their victims in the face is too much for many guards (which is what happened in the actual early Nazi killings, as noted in the minutes of the Wannsee Conference. A guard named Chick Blades (whose widow, Edith Blades, Pinkard would later marry) killed himself by venting gas into his car, giving Pinkard the idea to put blacks in trucks and gas them while simply driving to the burial sites, avoiding the need for the killers to actually witness what he was perpetrating. This was used to great effect, leading to his promotion to Brigade Leader (brigadier general in Army ranking).
Pinkard eventually was ordered to have Willy Knight shot, which he did. Pinkard married Chick Blades' widow and moved to a camp being constructed in Texas: Camp Determination, an analog of Auschwitz in our timeline. When Pinkard came up with an even more efficient way to "reduce population", i.e. gas chambers disguised as "bath houses', he was promoted to the rank of Group Leader (major general in Army ranking).
However, when it became clear that the U.S. was closing in on the capture of Camp Determination, Pinkard arranged to destroy as much evidence as possible, including blowing up bathhouses and destroying records, before evacuating, and set up "Camp Humble" in east Texas, with the killing facilities further "improved"; however, these improvements - crematoriums - malfunctioned on a regular basis.
The last year of the war proved disastrous for Pinkard, aside from the birth of his son Raymond Longstreet Pinkard. In 1944, before the Confederates surrendered, t