The thing is that the idea that the North wanted to free the slaves was just Southern paranoia, all the vast majority of the North wanted was for the South to stop trying to force them to participate in Slavery. Because by the 1860's the perception existed - and it was a completely justified perception - that the South was going to use their dominance in the U.S. Government to shove Slavery down everyone's throats. To make it a National institution, not just a Southern one.
What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?
- Thread starter Silent Runner
- Start date
- Post-1900
The thing is that the idea that the North wanted to free the slaves was just Southern paranoia, all the vast majority of the North wanted was for the South to stop trying to force them to participate in Slavery. Because by the 1860's the perception existed - and it was a completely justified perception - that the South was going to use their dominance in the U.S. Government to shove Slavery down everyone's throats. To make it a National institution, not just a Southern one.
King Washington
Semi-Depressed Lurker
- Location
- Indiana
Has anyone brought up the greatest timeline ever made?
- Location
- East Coast
I believe so, actually. This thread's been going on for a while. I mean, we have a semiregular cycle of "Isn't Rumsfeldia crazy?"/"Queen Nixon is so awful!"/"When exactly did Stuart Slade go crazy?"/"Draka, man, Draka..."/"Hey, remember that Second American Civil War timeline..?" conversations here.
Terra Allias
World's only Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka fan
- Location
- Cheverly
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We could always add youtube alt history to the cycle
- Location
- the details
The US Civil War was awful (about 3 men were killed by disease for every one killed by accident, injury, and gunfire) and no other army of of the 1860s even had doctors that good.
The British were losing about 4-5 to disease at the time for every one they lost to wounds and injuries.
The British were losing about 4-5 to disease at the time for every one they lost to wounds and injuries.
ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Huh, I suppose it's hard to top Real Life for cringeworthiness at least looking at our medical techniques pre, uh, whenever sterilization and hand-washing became popular.
- Location
- the details
During the US Civil War an injured soldier had a roughly 80% chance of survival if they got the then primitive medical care.
While not great when compared to modern medicine, it was certainly among the best available back then.
bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
What you absolutely didn't want to be in the Civil War was a horse, because for a criminally long time the only veterinarians were privately contracted by individual officers and a lot of the rushed together cavalry arms had a twisted knack for running the life out of their poor haphazardly commandeered mounts. Ironically for all the massacres perpetrated by the tiny antebellum federal regiments, no one else in the Civil War armies came even close to the level of sheer amateur ineptitude present in the cavalry of the first couple years.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I imagine that was partly a predictable consequence of trying to vastly expand the cavalry units on both sides, without being able to take an extended period of time to train them and acclimate them to the cavalry roles.
Good cavalry have to be able to function more independently of the main body of the army, and in the Civil War era cavalry required most of the same skills the infantry needed plus additional sets involving riding and caring for horses. A bunch of hastily recruited troopers not being up to par doesn't entirely surprise me.
- Location
- USA
And not just that - it's also a massive violation of personal rights, too.
It can sometimes get lost in the shuffle, but the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was fucking wild. It made it a federal crime to assist runaway slaves. It held every single person in a Free State at the end of a legal bayonet if they did not act, of their own accord, as a constable in the enforcement of the institution of slavery. If you were a moderate abolitionist that didn't want to rock the boat by outright banning slavery but wanted nothing to do with helping it propagate or spread, you were shit out of luck, because Congress had just decided that your point of view was now illegal.
It was not popular, to put it mildly. People tend to react poorly when you order them to support an institution they despise or else get thrown in jail.
mouli
Terrible QM
- Location
- United States
Part of that might have been when and where the numbers are from? The US Civil War was fought in the same environment that the soldiers had been raised in for the most part, while the British Army was deployed everywhere from India to the West Indies to Canada. It's also fairly well-known that adjusting to the tropical diseases was a major thing for European troops and might inflate the British totals. Battlefield medicine is only part of things.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So can I vent about the SI trend on AH.com again. Because honestly the more I think about the genre the more it bugs me. Mainly because I've yet to see anyone do something really unique with it. Every SI is good and fairly virtuous, having a distinct Center-Left and or Monarchist bent like it's my freaking SB LP thread all over again. You don't see anyone do anything really different like suddenly everyone's really freaked out by the SI's drastic shift in personalty, or the SI turns out not to be the best person or they don't really know what they're doing or hell, they're gay and that's a bit of an issue when it's the 1920s and your now Joseph Stalin. It is a genre full of cowardliness.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
Honestly gay Stalin would be fine, all he has to do is not reinstate the ban on homosexuality
I'd read about gay Stalin, that sounds fun.
Coiler
ROURKE
I'd be surprised if they weren't, knowing how wish-fulfilly the "genre" is by nature.
Anchises
Leader of the Coconut Tree Fremen
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean I really enjoyed the SI where the author essentially ISOTed a Neonazi version of himself into Adolf Hitler precisely because of the reasons you mentioned. People might find that tasteless but at least it wasn't a fucking carbon copy of "within 20 years of SI we achieve global peace and luxury gay space communism". The author also made it sufficiently clear that he does not share that views and that the resulting world is a nightmare just to prevent any confusion.
I would really love to read an SI where (for example) someone wakes up as the last Tsar and nopes the fuck out because that is what I would realistically do. Sell the crown jewels, buy a ticket to America and buy a remote cabin to sit out the Spanish Flu. I am certainly not going to order millions of men to their death or get shot by the Reds just because some asshole ASB decided to fuck with me.
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- Location
- USA
I don't think I would, because that story would amount to 'wake up as important historical figure, then proceed to do nothing important or interesting'.
Like, maybe it'd be an interesting historical exercise - what if Tsar Nicolas disappeared abruptly before the Bolsheviks took over? - but reading that from the perspective of a person who does everything in their power to do nothing noteworthy for fear of getting killed would get boring quickly imo.
Anchises
Leader of the Coconut Tree Fremen
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean I never said interesting stuff wouldn't happened. Maybe just not the extremely selfless stuff we usually get to read. Maybe this SI Tsar uses his money to wisely invest into the US economy and get filthy reach while making sure that important technologies are discovered much earlier than IOTL.
And even if the SI Tsar just sits in his cabin all day while sipping champagne and eating caviar, a world that completely goes off the rails experienced by someone with knowledge about OTL seems like an interesting enough premise tbh.
- Pronouns
- It/Its
For me I feel like I would try to stay in power and expand my territory due to a combination of me being egotistical, and the freakout of becoming the Tzar. Depending on my competence I could get anything ranging from Communist superstate led by the Tzar (I would explain becoming communist somehow) or getting a worse death then the historical Tzar.
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
Personally, how I'd do it is have the first chapter be from the SI perspective and the rest of the story being the fallout plus SI interludes. Of course, if I were to do a history SI, it'd be as Au Sable rather than a historical figure. Then go and pull a Changing Destiny, because what else does one do if drop-kicked into the past and turned into a bote?
Anchises
Leader of the Coconut Tree Fremen
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah that seems like the most reasonable approach to telling that particular story.
Or you just SI more than one person. "All the leaders during the July Crisis are replaced by me and my closest friends and we all know about it" would be a MASSIVE shitfest tbh. The point is that there is a distinct lack of creativity when it comes to SIs.
Madam Carstein
Cheerful Middenlander Demoness
- Location
- Middenland
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Hers
Also like... just because the ISOT is relatively less proactive than some and chooses not to "play the game" as it were doesn't mean they can't be influential.
After all, if somebody wakes up one day in the body of the ruler of a past society that is extremely different than one's own. Not to mention, you know, being a father and husband to a wife and children one has only read about in history... I mean, that's a Hell of a thing to try and adjust to. And that's assuming one gets some degree of knowledge of the downtime society (i.e. if you don't know Russian, you magically know it).
It's actually probably more sensible to try and find a way to get out of power and hand things over to someone more competent. Nicholas II wasn't exactly remembered as a brilliant Tsar IOTL so I mean... why not hand things over to Mikhail Romanov rather than try to rule oneself or give the throne to a child with haemophilia. It's legitimately hard to do worse than historically.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Honestly if we're doing a mental replacement of Hitler. Have Hitler replaced with Albert Speer, specifically Post War Albert Speer. So you who is probably at least somewhat regretful of what they did but is more focus on saving their own ass, with the incredibly tempting fact that they know they now have all the power and influence Hitler had and a chance to do everything over. So what wins in that case, his regrets, his survival insitincts or his desire for power.
I did see one that adopted that approach but it was weird.
Rudolf will Reign, Dear. It features two people ISOTed into the bodies of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria and his wife Stéphanie of Belgium.
Those people are Reinhard Heydrich and Tennis player Maria Sharapova. So uh, yeah.
But multiple SIs is a concept that should be explored more. The Second Triumvirate being replaced by a number of college students would be hilarious.
- Location
- USA
Marc Antony was already a drunken frat boy with a ton of political power OTL, so that wouldn't even change much
Astrid Fornhoff
Perpetual Depressant
- Location
- 1632 Revello Drive, Sunnydale California
- Pronouns
- She/Her
SIs are stupid. There, I said it.