[1] It is the first part of the Southern Victory saga, which depicts a world in which the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln ends up losing the 1864 presidential election to the Democratic candidate (whose identity is never mentioned in the series) in a landslide.
In 1881, Republican James G. Blaine has ridden a hardline platform of anti-Confederatism into the White House, having defeated Democratic incumbent Samuel J. Tilden in the 1880 presidential election.
Early on in the war, Confederate troops under Jeb Stuart capture a large quantity of gold and silver ore from a Union mining town after successfully occupying the newly purchased provinces.
Soon, the United Kingdom and France, both Confederate allies, blockade and bombard port cities such as Boston and New York, along with those on the Great Lakes.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is classified as an illegal political organization, and Mormonism loses all protection under the First Amendment and is banned.
William Rosecrans, the commander of the entire U.S. army, casually reveals at one point that there is no overall strategy for winning the war "whatsoever."
He envisions a vague idea of the opposing armies making counteroffensives back and forth against each other, which he feels the Union would assuredly win.
The only major U.S. victory in the war occurs by a young volunteer cavalry colonel, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Armstrong Custer routing a British and Canadian division under Charles Gordon invading Montana from Canada.
However, the British also invade northern Maine and annex it into the Canadian province of New Brunswick, which nullifies the Webster–Ashburton Treaty, which had solved the dispute.
The United States, learning the importance of strong allies, seek an alliance with the newly formed and powerful German Empire, and swear revenge against the Confederacy for the humiliating defeat.
As a result of the U.S. defeat in the Second Mexican War, Blaine loses the 1884 presidential election to an unknown Democratic candidate in a landslide and becomes the last Republican to hold the office of the presidency.
In effect, he concedes defeat in this war but sets the stage for the next one by instilling in U.S. citizens an ever-present desire for and expectation of revenge upon the Confederacy and the British Empire and embarking on an intensive program of systematic militarization on the German model, with the vision of making the United States a kind of second Prussia.
To continue to receive assistance from the United Kingdom and France, Confederate President Longstreet had to propose a constitutional amendment calling for the manumission of all country's slaves and making them resident aliens, but the free blacks do not have the same rights as whites, setting up an important conflict for succeeding volumes of the series.
After losing two wars within twenty years, the U.S. begins an alliance with the strengthening German Empire (formed in 1871), and it eventually starts to reform itself along Prussian lines.
[4] SF Site's review stated, "Alternate history runs the risk of sliding into propaganda, suggesting that an outcome which could have happened is one which should have.