Bring the Jubilee

Bring the Jubilee is a 1953 alternate history novel by American writer Ward Moore.

The point of divergence occurs in July 1863 when the Confederate States of America wins the Battle of Gettysburg and subsequently declares victory in a conflict referred to within the book as the "War of Southron Independence" on July 4, 1864, after the surrender of the United States of America. The novel takes place in the impoverished rump United States in the mid-20th century as war looms between the Confederacy and its rival, the German Union. History takes an unexpected turn when the protagonist Hodge Backmaker, a historian, decides to travel back in time to witness the moment when the South won the war.

The phrase "Bring the Jubilee" is a reference to the chorus of the popular military song "Marching Through Georgia".

In the wake of Robert E. Lee's great victory at the Battle of Gettysburg and subsequent capture of Philadelphia, the United States was forced to recognize Confederate independence with the Treaty of Reading on July 4, 1864, which became known as Southron Independence Day. Lee succeeded Jefferson Davis to become the second Confederate President in 1865 (in reality, the Confederate Constitution set the end of Davis's term in early 1868). Although Lee tried to establish a benevolent national policy, and was able to free the slaves, his anti-imperialistic desires were thwarted by a Congress with increasingly imperialistic ambitions, which sent forces to invade Mexico and expanded southward in Latin America. The Confederacy thrived as cities like Washington-Baltimore (merged from those two cities plus Alexandria) and Leesburg (formerly Mexico City) became renowned international centers of culture and learning. The Confederacy stood as one of the world's two superpowers following the German Union's decisive victory in the Emperors' War (1914–1916) in Europe (analogous to World War I). The German Union (an apparent merger of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires) formed an alliance with a rejuvenated Spanish Empire. To maintain the balance of power, the Confederacy allied with the British Empire. Tensions grew between the CSA and the Germans up until the 1950s, and people around the world lived under constant threat of impending war, with the defenseless United States certain to be the battleground.

The Confederacy's living standards, economic growth, political influence, education standards, and military strength are reminiscent of the post-World War II United States. Although slavery has been abolished, to a large extent because of the efforts of men such as Robert E. Lee, conditions are still poor for ethnic minorities. Immigration is encouraged nevertheless, with immigrants being made subjects (not citizens) of the Confederacy, similar to the conquered Latin American population. Suffrage is limited to males whose ancestors were Confederate citizens on July 4, 1864. Technology developed along different lines, as the internal combustion engine, incandescent light bulb, and heavier-than-air flying craft were never created. Steam-powered "minibiles" and dirigibles are the primary powered means of transportation in wealthier nations; most people still ride horses for short distances or take trains for longer trips. All communication is done by letter or telegraphs, which by this point had become a fixture in all prosperous homes in much the way that telephones had in reality, and all children learned to understand telegraphy at an early age until the act became as common and as natural as reading. Film is also still developed, with sound being produced by a machine operated by compressed air.

In sharp contrast to the Confederacy's prosperity, the United States is depicted as a rump state trapped in perpetual recession, with unemployment and corruption rampant. The U.S. is so destitute that a transcontinental railroad is never constructed past Iowa, while the Confederacy built seven. The only community of Americans who are generally prosperous are the Mormons in the western State of Deseret, who still practice polygamy. Otherwise, only successful landowners and the few lucky winners of the highly popular national lottery are able to rise above the semi-destitute lives of average citizens; most able-bodied adults are reduced to "indenting" themselves to businesspeople in exchange for the meager economic security that such affords. U.S. citizens are more hostile to Blacks than Confederates, seeing them as a major cause of the Union's downfall, and unwanted competition over the few available jobs. Those blacks who have not left the U.S. for Africa are constantly derided, harassed, threatened, and sometimes mass-lynched by whites. The Republican and Democratic parties have faded away; a new two party system consists of the Confederate-influenced Whigs and the ineffectual Populists. (The narrator lists William Jennings Bryan, George Norris, and Norman Thomas among the most famous Populists and describes the election of Whig Thomas E. Dewey as President in 1940.) The U.S. military is practically nonexistent (apparently a provision of the 1864 treaty), with foreign powers frequently deploying troops unopposed across the U.S. in regions where their nationals have been attacked—a common occurrence, as many rural areas are poorly governed and lawlessness is rampant in them; highwaymen are a constant threat to the few travelers. The long-standing economic depression has led to a rather puritanical culture favoring late marriage and few children in each family. This, combined with a ban on immigration and the emigration of ambitious young people, has resulted in an overall declining population. Higher education is in a state of decay, being more concerned with status than education, with faculty members being constantly scrutinized and summarily fired if they demonstrate "abnormal ideas", reminiscent of McCarthyism.

The narrator of the novel is Hodgins "Hodge" McCormick Backmaker, who writes a diary of his life in our timeline, year 1877. Hodge was born in 1921 in the alternate timeline in Wappingers Falls, Dutchess County, New York. In 1938 at age 17, he travels to New York City, the largest city of the United States (and yet a backwater compared to some Confederate cities), in a desperate attempt to gain admittance to a college or university. After being robbed of his few possessions, he comes into contact with the "Grand Army", a nationalistic organization working to restore the United States to its former glory through acts of sabotage and terrorism. One of the Grand Army's operations involves counterfeiting Spanish currency, with the goal of provoking war between the Confederacy and the German Union in Spanish territories, sparing the U.S. from becoming the two superpowers' battlefield. Despite remaining critical of the organization's activities, Hodge accepts work and lodging with a Grand Army member who is using a bookstore as a front. Content to work for food and the opportunity to read at every waking hour, Hodge stays in the bookstore for six years. (Young Hodge's life is largely autobiographical of Ward Moore.) One friend he meets during this time is Consul Enfandin, an emissary of the Republic of Haiti, the only independent American republic south of the Mason–Dixon line.

Hodge leaves New York in 1944 for rural Pennsylvania, where his aspiration of becoming a historian, specializing in the war between North and South, becomes a reality when he is invited to join a co-operative society named Haggershaven. The society was founded by the children of a Confederate Major named Herbert Haggerwells, who settled after the war in the land he had helped defeat. He becomes acquainted with his recruiter Barbara Haggerwells, an emotionally disturbed research scientist on the verge of developing time travel. Many secondary characters with their own subplots are introduced during this part of the story, including some of the last few Asian-Americans alive (after a series of horrifying pogroms against their kind throughout North America) and a mysterious Spanish refugee woman who forms a love triangle with Hodge and Barbara. In 1952, the time machine has been perfected, and Hodge takes the opportunity to finally see in person the Battle of Gettysburg which was fought not far from Haggershaven. Wearing a special watch to keep track of the differences in time, he travels back in time to 1863, where he then inadvertently causes the death of Captain Herbert Haggerwells ("never to be Major now", remarks Hodge when he recognizes that the dead man was a younger version of the exalted portrait on Haggershaven's living room walls), who would have occupied Little Round Top for the South during the battle. In Hodge's timeline, Haggerwells' men held the hill so that the Confederates won the Battle of Gettysburg, paving the way for their victory over the Union in Philadelphia a year later; in the resultant timeline (our own), Union Colonel Strong Vincent's 83rd Pennsylvania Infantry and Colonel Joshua Chamberlain's 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment occupy the hill early on and successfully repel Confederate advances. In the novel, Hodge asserts that Little Round Top is the key to the battle, and thus the war. Hodge's actions have led to Union control of the hill, so events play out as they did in our timeline, much to the surprise of Hodge, who witnesses Pickett's Charge having a different outcome than he read about. The South loses the battle, and eventually the war.