The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been [Hardcover]

Roger L. Ransom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2005

What if Lee had avoided defeat at Gettysburg? What if a stalemate had developed along with anti-war sentiment? What if Lincoln had been defeated in the 1864 election and Britain had recognised the Confederacy? What would have happened to an independent Confederate States of America and a defeated United States? Here a master of historical analysis follows the consequences of the "what if" scenario and gives us the fascinating, convincing and insightful outcomes of his counterfactuals.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Roger L. Ransom is professor of history and economics at the University of California, Riverside. He is co-author of the groundbreaking work One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation. He lives in Riverside, California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (May 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393059677
• ISBN-13: 978-0393059670
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvelous Might-Have-Been, July 31, 2005

By 

Michael B. King (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (Hardcover)

Roger Ransom has written one of the most provocative efforts in the field of counterfactual speculation which I have had the chance to read. Taking as his challenge the well-plowed ground of the American Civil War, Professor Ransom has managed to offer a series of genuinely innovative insights into the possible result of a Confederate victory. Rather than picking one "point of divergence," Ransom instead opts for what one might call a "semi-chaotic collage" of mutually reinforcing changes, resulting in a military stalemate in 1864 that in turn produces a collapse of the North's political will to continue the fight. The changes hypothesized are plausible, and their "snowballing" effect makes a good case for Ransom's basic thesis that the South's best chance for victory lay in an improved performance by the Confederacy's Western and Eastern forces, combined. The true strength of Ransom's work, however, does not lie in its narrative describing the battlefield course of (yet another) alternate American Civil War. Rather, it is in the analysis of the possible consequences of a Southern victory, and particularly the international consequences of a division of the North American Continent between two rival American Unions, where this alternate history truly excels. Professor Ransom describes how the ensuing rivalry between USA and CSA would have affected the relationships between the Great Powers of Europe, as they are drawn into the USA-CSA rivalry, and for reasons of their own vital interests. Ransom also directly tackles the feel good notion that North and South would have quickly shaken off the bad feelings of a successful "War for Southern Independence" and developed a friendly relationship, allowing the two American Unions to operate virtually as one, in confronting the challenges of the 20th Century. (MacKinlay Kantor's Civil War Centennial piece for LIFE magazine on the subject is perhaps the best-known of the "Panglossian" takes on a Confederate victory.) Ransom persuasively argues that the divisions between North and South which ruptured into inter-regional war in 1861 reflected profoundly different approaches to basic questions of socio-economic organization and political order, and that these differences would have driven the two American Unions even further apart as each in the wake of Southern independence worked to define itself in contradistinction to the other. Professor Ransom also grapples insightfully with economic issues that alternate history writers tend for some reason to avoid, and the resulting analysis adds a crucial and genuinely illuminating dimension to his work (e.g., he addresses the international economic factors that would have shaped the post-Secession prospects for a "King Cotton" not overthrown by Northern arms). I am a lawyer by trade who has tried his hand at alternate history, and the venerable AH subject of a Southern victory has always held a special fascination for me. I confess to sharing Professor Ransom's view that a Southern victory would have proven a setback, both domestic and international, for the cause of human progress. But whatever one's point of view on that question, any serious student of the American Civil War, even those who generally scorn "What if?" as nothing more than a silly parlor game, would benefit from reading Professor Ransom's fine effort.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Facts and fiction, an intriguing mix., November 19, 2005

By 

Rampulla Gaetano Igor (Pisa, Tuscany, ITALY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (Hardcover)

When I first purchased this book I thought I was going to read yet another "what if" story of the South winning the American Civil War, maybe with some new idea but basically with the same pattern already seen in other such products.

Thus I was very satisfied when, page after page, I found solid facts in the first chapters concerning the "why" and the "how" the Civil War came to happen (together with a brief conduct of the real war itself), followed by the "story" of an alternate Civil War based on those same facts but ending with a Confederate victory. Most important, the author finally deals with the aftermath of a Confederate victory, both from a political and economical point of view (something not easily found in other such products) trying to draw conclusions based on various possible alternatives.

I found the presence of verifible figures and hard data very helpful to fully understand a chapter of American history that I, as an Italian reader, did not know but was eager to analyze.

I found the book very well written, easy to follow, and enough imaginative in the chapter concerning the "other war" to satisfy my anticipations, but most of all I found it indispensable to fill in my gaps about that part of world history that I could not study in Italy.

All in all a very good product, I would surely recommend it to all lovers of real and fictional history.

34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another "What If The South Had Won The Civil War" Book, May 13, 2005

By 

C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (Hardcover)

Roger Ransom has written an academic exercise showing how the South could had defeated the North during the Civil War (Stonewall Jackson surviving his wound and General Lee calling off Pickett's Charge, so that the war would be a stalemate for the 1864 elections).

The first half of the book is a basic primer on the background and events leading up to the Civil War. The more interesting section that follows is too short -- the alternative history of two nations (USA and CSA) co-existing in America up until 1918. For example, Mr. Ransom hypothesises that Woodrow Wilson of the CSA would have opposed Theodore Roosevelt of the USA during WW I.

This "what if" concept was done first and better by Harry Turtledove in his 8 volume series that currently stretches from 1862-1942 (begining with "How Few Remain"). Many of his historical assumptions seemed to be borrowed from the previous creations of Mr. Turtledove. The reader is also referred to "Dixie Victorious" edited by Peter Tsouras with ten essays by different authors on possible turning points for a Southern victory in the Civil War.