What If?—Coming Soon!

Who among us has not, in the course of his or her Civil War adventures, wondered, “What if…?” It’s a favorite angle of conversation among armchair generals: grab a beer, light up a cigar, and refight the war! I’ve spent many an entertaining evening swapping theories and stories and suppositions with my Civil War buddies, all sparked by a curious question or wild hypothetical.

What if….

The question can lead to serious discussion and insight, though. When done seriously, it demands critical thinking, rigid adherence to fact, and realism. It also requires a serious examination of the assumptions that underlie the questions themselves—which this book aims to do.

I love “What if” questions, and that’s why I’m especially excited about an upcoming project we have coming up this fall: The Great What Ifs of the American Civil War: Historians Tackle the Conflict’s Most Intriguing Possibilities, published by Savas Beatie and co-edited by me and award-winning historian Brian Matthew Jordan. Popular alternate historian Peter G. Tsouras was kind enough to write the book’s foreword.

For a peek at our cover and a run-down of our possibilities, take a look:

The cover photo, taken by ECW’s Chris Heisey, captures Oliver Otis Howard in a March blizzard on East Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg. (Howard was a Mainer–he should be used to such weather!)

Here’s a look at our table of contents:

• Foreword: “Paths Not Taken: Thoughts of an Alternate Historian” by Peter G. Tsouras
• Introduction by Chris Mackowski
• Chapter One: “‘Persistently Misunderstood’: The What-Ifs of Shiloh” by Timothy B. Smith
• Chapter Two: “The What Ifs of Antietam” by Kevin Pawlak
• Chapter Three: “What If Great Britain Had Intervened in the American Civil War?” by Dwight Hughes
• Chapter Four: “What If Stonewall Jackson Had Not Been Shot?” by Kristopher D. White
• Chapter Five: “To Go Around to the Right? Longstreet at Gettysburg” by Dan Welch 
• Chapter Six: “What If Jefferson Davis Hadn’t Been So Loyal to Braxton Bragg?” by Cecily Nelson Zander
• Chapter Seven: “What If Robert E. Lee had Struck a Blow at the North Anna River?” by Chris Mackowski
• Chapter Eight: “‘Rally the Loyal Men of Missouri’: What If the 1864 Missouri Expedition Had Been Successful?” by Kristen Trout
• Chapter Nine: “Why Didn’t General Robert E. Lee Wage a Guerrilla War with his Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865?” by Barton A. Myers
• Chapter Ten: “‘What If Lincoln lived? The Civil War’s Perennial Counterfactual Question” by Brian Matthew Jordan and Evan C. Rothera

These are NOT works of counterfactual history. Rather, we try to unpack the “What if” questions themselves. For instance, when someone asks “What if Stonewall Jackson hadn’t gotten shot?” they immediately put him in front of East Cemetery Hill on July 1, 1863. Kris White’s essay explains why that would’ve never happened.