During the War of 1812 the British did issue the order, in the very words recorded here, to land and destroy property and take the lives of American civilians.
The United States Sharpshooting Corps were excellent shots. Enemy cannon were destroyed by them in the manner indicated here.
Jefferson Davis’s letter to the Governor of Louisiana is a matter of record.
There were over 22,000 soldiers killed at the Battle of Shiloh.
The battle between the Monitor and the Virginia was the first encounter by two iron ships in the history of warfare.
Lincoln’s words on slavery are true and taken from the records. John Stuart Mill’s views on liberty, on American democracy and the state of decay in Europe are quoted at length from his works.
The American War Between the States was the first modern war. Rapid-firing, breech-loading guns and rifles were introduced early in the hostilities.
One week after the battle between the Virginia and the Monitor the North began construction of twelve more Monitor-class ironclads. They were to be armed with incendiary shells that were “filled with an inflammable substance which, when the shell is exploded, burns for thirty minutes without the possibility of being quenched.”
Observation balloons used electric telegraphs to report troop movements, while the railroads played a vital role in moving armies and supplies.
When the Civil War ended the combined armies of the North and the South contained hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers. Not only could this combined force have destroyed a British invasion, but they could undoubtedly have won in battle against the combined armies of Europe — not defeating them one by one but could very well have defeated them even if they had united all of their forces.
Modern warfare began in the Civil War, although it took many years for the rest of the world to realize this.
Events, as depicted in this book, would have happened just as they are written here.
Harry Harrison
WINTER — 1862
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Abraham Lincoln President of the United States
Hannibal Hamlin Vice-President
William H. Seward Secretary of State
Edwin M. Stanton Secretary of War
Gideon of the Welles Secretary of the Navy
Salmon P. Chase Secretary of the Treasury
Gustavus Fox Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Edward Bates Attorney General
John Nicolay First Secretary to President Lincoln
John Hay Secretary to President Lincoln
William Parker Parrott Gunsmith
Charles Francis Adams U.S. Ambassador to Britain
John Ericsson Inventor of USS Monitor
Captain Worden Captain of USS Monitor
UNITED STATES ARMY
General William Tecumseh Sherman
General Ulysses S. Grant
General Henry W. Halleck
General George B. McClellan Commander Army of the Potomac
General Ramsay Head of Ordnance Department
Lieutenant General Winfield Scott Commander West Point
Colonel Hiram Berdan Commander U.S. Regiment of Sharpshooters
General Benjamin F. Butler
Colonel Appier Commander, 53rd Ohio
General John Pope Army of the Potomac
UNITED STATES NAVY
Commodore Goldsborough
Charles D. Wilkes Captain of USS San Jacinto
Lieutenant Fairfax First Officer of USS San Jacinto
David Glasgow Farragut Flag Officer, Mississippi Fleet
Lieutenant John Worden Commander USS Monitor
GREAT BRITAIN
Victoria Regina Queen of Great Britain and Ireland
Prince Albert Royal Consort, her husband
Lord Palmerston Prime Minister
Lord John Russell Foreign Secretary
William Gladstone Chancellor of the Exchequer
Lord Lyons British Ambassador to the United States
Lord Wellesley Duke of Wellington
Lady Kathleen Shiel Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen
BRITISH ARMY
Duke of Cambridge Commander-in-Chief
General Peter Champion Commander of British Invasion Forces
Major General Bullers Infantry Commander
Colonel Oliver Phipps-Hornby Commander 62nd Foot
Lieutenant Saxby Athelstane Cavalry officer
General Harcourt Garrison Commander of Quebec
BRITISH NAVY
Admiral Alexander Milne
Captain Nicholas Roland Commander of HMS Warrior
Commander Sydney Tredegar Royal Marines
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA
Jefferson Davis President
Judah P. Benjamin Secretary of State
Thomas Bragg Attorney General
James A. Seddon Secretary of War
Christopher G. Memminger Secretary of the Treasury
Stephen Mallory Secretary of the Navy
John H. Reagan Attorney General and Postmaster General
Stephen Murray Secretary of the Navy
John Slidell Confederate Commissioner to France
William Murray Mason Confederate Commissioner to England
CONFEDERATE ARMY
General Robert E. Lee Commander-in-Chief
General P.G.T. Beauregard
General Albert Sidney Johnston
CONFEDERATE NAVY
Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan Captain CSS Virginia
AN INTERVIEW WITH HARRY HARRISON
Harry Harrison’s career as a science fiction writer has virtually spanned the history of the genre. Born is Stamford, Connecticut, in 1925, he grew up reading Astounding Science Fiction in the Borough of Queens in New York City. Following WWII, in which he served as gunnery instructor in Laredo, Texas, volunteering every month for overseas service, Harrison attended a number of art schools, then worked for some years as a commercial artist and art director. From this he moved on to publishing and editing, sold articles and stories, and started his first novel. Finding New York City an impossible place in which to write, he and his wife, Joan, and unprotesting year-old son, Todd, moved to Mexico in 1956. From there to England in 1957. To Italy in 1958. After a quick visit to New York in 1959, where daughter Moira was born, the family moved to Denmark in 1959. The peripatetic Mr. Harrison, at present, resides in Ireland. He is the author of more than forty novels, among them The Stainless Steel Rat books, the acclaimed West of Eden trilogy, Make Room! Make Room! (made into the movie Soylent Green), and, most recently, Stars Stripes Forever, the first in a new alternate history series. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, including that perennial favorite, Esperanto. He received the Nebula Award in 1973.
We spoke with him recently about his distinguished career, his memories of the past and thoughts of the future, his long love affair with alternate history, and cannibalism.
Q: What was it like to be an SF writer in the ’40s and ’50s? The Hydra Club, John W. Campbell, Jr., and Astounding — was there a sense among the people involved that you were creating something special and important, making up the golden age as you went along?
A: I grew up as an SF fan in the golden age of the ’30s. The war interrupted. Back in NY after the war I was not sure if I wanted to draw or write. I chose art. But I was also deeply involved in SF. I drew comics, illustrated magazines, including SF, and did a cover for two Lewis Padgett novels for Marty Greenberg of Gnome Press. He took me to a meeting of the Hydra Club — the group of professional SF people in NY. I was right at home there. I did artwork for Damon Knight’s World Beyond, Horace Gold’s Galaxy, and Danny Keyes’s Marvel. (Danny went on to write Flowers for Algernon, among others.) I was so much at home with the SF professionals that I eventually became chairman of the club. I slid from illustrating comics to editing, writing for, and publishing, comics. When the comics died in the late ’40s, I slid sideways into editing SF and other pulps. These were the golden years of SF. Every writer either lived in NYC or came through there. We all knew each other, and there was plenty of cross-fertilization. The money wasn’t much, rates were low, but we were inventing a whole new world.