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Discuss this article by @moth here.
I have mixed feelings.
On one hand, some of the critical remarks are justified. On the other, some of them are quite unfair to the historical characters and to Turtledove as an author.
Chris
It's a matter of opinions Chris. Like I said above I haven't read the book myself, so I can't judge it, but I fully expect for different readers to come to different conclusions.
I will say, I am glad you phrased it as 'Turtledove as an author', because me and Monroe went back and forth with various revisions and one of the things we tried to get across was this a critique of writing choices, we did not want at any point to imply they felt Turtledove was himself a racist or that he was writing with an intentionally racist or lost cause agenda. Monroe felt as an author Turtledove had made decisions that had unfortunate implications that Turtledove as a man would never wish to imply.
So I am glad at least that it has come across as being unfair to Turtledove the author rather than Turtledove the man.
The truth, I think, is that there were a lot of people in the CSA and its army who thought slavery was right - and, also, a lot of people who signed up because they felt it was their duty to defend their state/country.
Yeah, but ...
This is a Lee who owned slaves and who pontificated about this being problematic while doing nothing about the slaves that he did own.
This is a Nathan B Forrest who is completely unrecognisable from the historical version. A man who experienced financial loss due to abolition, and reacted by violence and what would now be called terrorist tactics.
It's strange how in re-enacting circles and in Alternate History books about the period, the former are almost entirely non-existent among the central characters, and the latter are ubiquitous.
Turtledove chose to portray Lee (and Forrest, for crying out loud) as Noble, Chivalrous Men oozing nobility and etc.
Robert E Lee wrote in 1856: "The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race."
Uncle Tom's Cabin had been published 4 years earlier.
OTL, Lee never freed any slaves when he had the opportunity to. He was notoriously equivocal when it came to doing so - even to the point of not abiding by the terms of his father's will that the slaves be freed. On the one hand, we have a Lee who ignores his father's Will and keeps slaves; on the other hand, we have a Lee who chooses to free slaves because of what history says of him (and when said history practically deifies him).
OTL Nathan B Forrest and GOTS Nathan B Forrest are only connected by name. A politician loses a fair election and decides that this is a sign that he was wrong, not that the electors made a mistake? Not just a politician, but one who had a notoriously strong opinion on the subject?
Instead of just digging in again to yet again wind up defending monsters like the first major leader of the KKK have you considered you don't know anything about this subject and might need to try doing some readings and maybe consider reevaluating your perspective?Well, in this case (to be fair, again), GOTSForrest would have lost an election, seen AWB show a terrifying disregard for the rule of law (insofaras it existed within the CSA) by launching a terrorist attack against the President and his cabinet. It's quite reasonable for him to think 'OMG! WTF have I allied with? I must redeem myself by leading the war against them!" Or "OMG! I've been implicated! I must make a massive show of loyalty by leading the war against the b******s so no one can question me when the poop stops flying!"
The more serious point is this - the GOTS characters got a slap in the face from reality, their future, that oviously never happened in OTL.
And, from a writer's POV, historical reality often comes second to using names people will recognize (Lee and Forrest), presenting them as people who might legitimately have realized they were wrong, and generally trying to appeal to both AH fans (such as you and I) and the general public. From that POV, Turtledove did very well.
Chris
It seems a pretty firm-but-fair review by @moth, as the novel is still being read now.
The "Lost Cause" and mainstream acceptability of confederate symbols until relatively recently is something that has to be remembered, because the further we get from then the weirder it's going to seem to future generations. I have a friend in Georgia who was genuinely shaken at eighteen to read the primary sources for secession and saw they all mentioned slavery, because it went against everything he'd been told. I bet you in ten years time, another eighteen-year-old will find that unfathomable, "how could you not know?", because by then someone's probably used lasers to turn Stone Mountain into a Star Wars picture.