Alternate Empires by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg

Author:Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg [Benford, Gregory & Greenberg, Martin H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0553278452
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1989-08-01T07:00:00+00:00

Universe3

March 22, 1884

New Orleans, Louisiana

Shock has followed shock: Even with Lee at last general-in-chief, the Confederate hopes ended in 1865. It’s as if God Almighty has decreed that it must happen just so in all worlds, all timelines, across the breadth of the manifold realities. Evidently the South cannot win, with Lee or without him. There are economic, social, and political reasons too vast for me to correct with so simple a plan.

Today, in a raging downpour, I witnessed the dedication of a handsome, brooding bronze statue of General Lee. The monument stands upon a column seventy feet above the traffic of St. Charles Avenue. Lee gazes resolutely northward, as if grimly contemplating the designs not only of the Union Army, but also of the subtle and guileful Yankee mind. It is a statue I have seen before, although in the world of my childhood the model was P. G. T. Beauregard, and not Robert E. Lee. I knew the area as Beauregard Place; here it has been newly named Lee Circle. In this timeline, of course, Lee is not the Great Traitor. He is idolized as a hero and the defender of the Southern way of life, despite the fact that it was his defeat that ended both the war and what is already being spoken of as the “Old South.” To me (and possibly to me alone), he is the Great Failure.

I see that I must begin again. If Lee is to be successful in Universe4, I must take a greater hand in arranging things. Perhaps Lincoln should die in 1862. Perhaps Jefferson Davis should also be removed, or at least be firmly persuaded to leave Beauregard with his command and to make better and timelier use of Lee’s abilities. I have the leisure to consider these matters, as I intend to make a few more jumps to evaluate the fate of the Negroes in this timeline before I return at last to T0.

On one hand, this world doesn’t know either the corruption of the Custer and Blaine administrations, or the abuses of Chase’s program of Reconciliation. On the other hand, it has suffered through the different though no less odious crookedness of Ulysses Grant’s two terms. I wonder where Grant came from. If he played any important part at all in the universe of my origin, I never read any reference to it. Yet here he emerged as a shrewd tactician, a victor, and a president. More important to me, though, is that he oversaw most of Reconstruction and permitted the wholesale rape of the South.

Reconstruction was a grotesque injustice inflicted on a conquered population. In my world, the brief Confederate Insurrection and Lee’s vigilance as president prevented Congress from exacting such harsh penalties on the South. Even the ancient Romans knew better than to impose tyrannical conditions on a defeated people.

Here in Universe3, almost twenty years after the war’s end, I see continued evidence of the South’s rage and indignation. The Southern attitude, shaped by the

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