Books - Book Review - If the South Had Won the Civil War - MacKinlay Kantor

This was my first book for the Civil War Challenge. It was very short, because it was an article for Life magazine. 

I was able to borrow an older version from the library. I don't know whether the reissued version has the illustrations that the older one has.

I am not going to present all the of events that Kantor visualized but here are some that I thought were important:

1. Grant died, and Atlanta didn’t burn.
2. The Confederates won the Battle of Gettysburg.
3. Lincoln evacuated the White House in a wagon and spent time in a prison. He moved back to Illinois
4. The new capital of the United States was in Ohio; Columbus was renamed Columbia
5. Confederate States of America had 13 states.
6. Washington D.C. became Washington, District of Dixie.
7. Texas was a country for a long time.
8. The slaves in the south were freed in the 1880s, but it was a gradual process that there were no lynchings and discrimination.
9. Cuba became a state in the Confederacy and REL Stuart, Jeb Stuart’s son, was the hero of the Spanish American War, not Teddy Roosevelt.
10. Alaska remained a part of Russia .
11. Woodrow Wilson (CSA President) wanted the USA and Texas to be united, after they all fought in WWI. Teddy Roosevelt (US President) and Roy Smith ( Texas ) agreed but it didn’t become reality until the 1960. That’s when the Russians started its campaigns to take over the world. 
12. Washington became the capital of the new USA .

I enjoyed reading this book. One event, Grant's early death, could have really changed the course of history.

You do need some basic knowledge of American history to understand the implications of this alternate history, but you will enjoy reading what could have happened.