Want a NOOK? Explore Now
From the master of alternate history comes an epic of the second Civil War. It was an epoch of glory and success, of disaster and despair. . . .
1881: A generation after the South won the Civil War, America writhed once more in the bloody throes of battle. Furious over the annexation of key Mexican territory, the United States declared total war against the Confederate States of America in 1881.
But this was a new kind of war, fought on a lawless frontier where the blue and gray battled not only each other but the Apache, the outlaw, the French, and the English. As Confederate General Stonewall Jackson again demonstrated his military expertise, the North struggled to find a leader who could prove his equal. In the Second War Between the States, the times, the stakes, and the battle lines had changed—and so would history. . .
Excerpt: Chapter One: 1881
Buffalo bones littered the prairie south of Fort Dodge, Kansas. Colonel George Custer gave them only the briefest glance. They seemed as natural a part of the landscape as had the buffalo themselves a decade before. Custer had killed his share of buffalo and more. Now he was after more dangerous game.
He raised the Springfield carbine to his shoulder and fired at one of the Kiowas fleeing before him. The Indian, one of the rearmost of Satanta's raiding party, did not fall.
Custer loaded another cartridge into the carbine's breech and fired again. Again, the shot was useless. The Kiowa turned on his pony for a Parthian shot. Fire and smoke belched from the muzzle of his rifle. The bullet kicked up a puff of dust ten or fifteen yards in front of Custer.
He fired again, and so did the Kiowa. The Indian's Tredegar Works carbine, a close copy of the British Martini-Henry, had about the same performance as his own weapon. Both men missed once more. The Kiowa gave all his attention back to riding, bending low over his pony's neck and coaxing from the animal every bit of speed it had.
"They're gaining on us, the blackhearted savages!" Custer shouted to his troopers, inhibited in language by the pledge his wife, Libbie, had finally succeeded in extracting from him.
"Let me and a couple of the other boys with the fastest horses get out ahead of the troop and make 'em fight us till the rest of you can catch up," his brother suggested.
"No, Tom. Wouldn't work, I'm afraid. They wouldn't fight—they'd just scatter like a covey of quail."
"Damned cowards," Major Tom Custer growled. He was a younger, less flamboyant version of his brother, but no less ferocious in the field. "They bushwhack our farmers, then they run. If they want to come up into Kansas, let 'em fight like men once they're here."
"They don't much want to fight," Custer said. "All they want to do is kill and burn and loot. That's easier, safer, and more profitable, too."
"Give me the Sioux any day, up in Minnesota and Dakota and Wyoming," Tom Custer said. "They fought hard, and only a few of them ran away into Canada once we'd licked them."
"And the Canadians disarmed the ones who did," Custer added. "I'll be—dashed if I like the Canadians, mind you, but they play the game the way it's supposed to be played."
"It's cricket," Tom said, and Custer nodded. His younger brother pointed south. "We aren't going to catch them on our side of the line, Autie."
"I can see that." George Custer scowled—at fate, not at the family nickname. After a moment, the scowl became a fierce grin. "All right, by jingo, maybe we won't catch them on our side of the line. We'll just have to catch them on theirs."
Tom looked startled. "Are you sure?"
"You'd best believe I'm sure." The excitement of the pursuit ran through Custer in a hot tide. Whatever consequences came from extending the pursuit, he'd worry about them later. Now all he wanted to do was teach the Kiowas a lesson even that sneaky old devil Satanta wouldn't forget any time soon. He shouted over to the regimental bugler: "Blow Pursuit."
"Sir?" the bugler said, as surprised as Tom Custer had been. Then he grinned. "Yes, sir!" He raised the bugle to his lips. The bold and martial notes rang out across the plain. The men of the Fifth Cavalry Regiment needed a moment to grasp what that call implied. Then they howled like wolves. Some of them waved their broad-brimmed black felt hats in the air.
From long experience, the Kiowas understood U.S. horn calls as well as any cavalry trooper. Their heads went up, as if they were game fear-ing it would be flushed from cover. That's what they are, all right, Custer thought.
As often happened, Tom's thoughts ran in the same track as his own. "They won't duck back into their lair this time," his younger brother said. Now that the decision was made, Tom was all for it.
They pounded past a farmhouse the Kiowas had burned in a raid a couple of years earlier. Custer recognized those ruins; they meant he was less than a mile from the border with the Indian Territory. Up ahead, the Kiowas squeezed still more from their ponies. Custer smiled savagely. That might get them over the line, but even those tough animals would start wearing down soon. "And then," he told the wind blowing tears from his eyes, "then they're mine, sure as McClellan belonged to Lee twenty years ago."
He fired again at the Kiowas, and shouted in exultation as one of them slid from his horse's back and thudded to the ground, where, after rolling a couple of times, he lay still. "Good shot," his brother said. "Hell of a good shot."
"We've got 'em now," Custer said. The first Kiowas had to be over the line. He didn't care. "We won't let 'em get away. Every last redskin in that band is ours." How his men cheered!
And then all of Custer's ferocious joy turned to ashes. Tom pointed off to the east, from which direction a squadron of cavalry was approaching at a fast trot. All the Kiowas were over the line by then. They reined in, whooping in their incomprehensible language. They knew they were safe.
Custer knew it, too. Chasing the Kiowas into Indian Territory, punishing them, and then riding back into Kansas with no one but the Indians the wiser, was one thing. Doing it under the watchful eyes of that other cavalry squadron was something else again. Hating those horsemen, hating himself, Custer held his hand high to halt his men. They stopped on the Kansas side of the line.
The approaching cavalrymen wore hats and blouses of a cut not much different from those of Custer's troopers. Theirs, though, were gray, not the various shades of blue the U.S. cavalry used. And a couple of their officers, Custer saw, were in the new dirt-brown uniforms the Confederate States had adopted from the British. The limeys called that color khaki; to the Rebs, it was butternut.
One of those Confederate officers rode toward Custer, waving as he moved forward. Custer waved back: come ahead. The Rebel captain proved to be a fresh-faced fellow in his twenties; he would have been wearing short pants during the War of Secession. Seeing him made Custer feel every one of his forty-one years.
"Good mornin' to you, Colonel," the captain drawled, nodding in a way that looked friendly enough. "You weren't planning on riding over the international border by any chance, were you?"
"If I was, you'll never prove it, Captain—" Custer tried for cool detachment. What came out was a frustrated snarl.
By the way the Confederate cavalryman smiled, he heard that frustration—heard it and relished it. He bowed in the saddle. The Rebs were always polite as cats ... and always ready to claw, too. "I'm Jethro Weathers, Colonel," he said. "And you're right—I'll never prove it. But you and the United States would have been embarrassed if I'd come along half an hour later and found your men inside the territory of the Confederate States."
He sounded disappointed he and his troopers hadn't caught Custer in flagrante delicto. Custer's frustration boiled into fury: "If your government would keep those murdering redskinned savages on your side of the border, we wouldn't want to go over yonder"—he waved south, into Indian Territory—"and give 'em what they deserve."
"Why, Colonel," Captain Weathers said, amusement in his voice, "I have no proof at all those Kiowas ever entered the territory of the United States. As far as I can see, you were leading an unprovoked punitive expedition into a foreign country. Richmond would see things the same way, I'm sure. So would London. So would Paris."
Tom Custer spoke up: "There's a dead Kiowa, maybe half a mile north of here."
That didn't faze Weathers a bit: "For all I know, you've already been into the Confederate States, murdered the poor fellow, and then hauled him back into the USA to justify raiding Confederate soil."
A flush spread up Custer's face; his ears went hot at the sheer effrontery of that. "You—dashed Rebs will pay one day for giving the redskins guns and letting them come up and raid white men's farms whenever it strikes their fancy."
"This is our territory, Colonel," Captain Weathers said, amused no more. "We shall defend it against the incursion of a foreign power—by which I mean the United States. And you have no call—none, sir, none whatever—to get up on your high horse and tell me what my country ought and ought not to be doing, especially since the United States harbor swarms of Comanches in New Mexico and turn them loose against west Texas whenever it strikes your fancy."
"We didn't start that until those outrages in Kansas grew too oppressive to ignore," Custer answered. "Why, on this very raid—this raid you have the gall to deny—the savages made two white women minister to their animal lusts, then cut their throats and worked other dreadful indignities upon their bare and abused bodies."
"You think the Comanches don't do that in Texas?" Captain Weathers returned. "And the way I heard it, Colonel, they started doing it there first."
Custer scowled. "We killed off the buffalo to deny the Kiowas a livelihood, and you gave them cattle to take up the slack."
"The Comanches are herding cattle these days, too." Weathers made as if to go back to his troopers, who waited inside Confederate territory. "I see no point to continuing this discussion. Good day, sir."
"Wait," Custer said, and the Confederate captain, polite still, waited. Breathing heavily, Custer went on, "When our two nations separated, I had a great deal of sympathy and friendship for many of the men who found high rank in the Army of the Confederate States. I hoped and believed that, even though we were two, we could share this continent in peace."
"And so we have," Jethro Weathers said. "There is no war between my country and yours, Colonel."
"Not now," Custer agreed. "Not yet. But you will force one upon us if you continue with this arrogant policy of yours here in the West. The irritations will grow too great, and then—"
"Don't speak to me of arrogance," Weathers broke in. "Don't speak to me of irritation, not when you Yankees have finally gone and put another one of those God-damned Black Republicans in the White House."
"Blaine's only been in office a month, but he's already shown he's not nearly so bad as Lincoln was," Custer answered, "and he's not your business anyhow, any more than Longstreet's ours."
"Blaine talks big," the Confederate captain answered. "People who talk big get to thinking they can act big. You talked about war, Colonel. If your James G. Blaine thinks you Yankees can lick us now when you couldn't do it twenty years ago, he'd better think twice. And if you think you can ride over the line into Indian Territory whenever it strikes your fancy, you'd better think twice, too, Colonel."
When Weathers moved to ride back to his squadron this time, Custer said not a word. He stared after the Indians whom Weathers' timely arrival had saved. His right hand folded into a fist inside its leather gauntlet. He pounded it down on his thigh, hard, once, twice, three times. His lips shaped a silent word. It might have been dash. It might not.
Anonymous
Posted March 12, 2013
Offers a great look at what could have been.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Darthrevan07
Posted June 15, 2012
I Also Recommend:
Very well told story by my personal opinion, yes some parts are a little drawn out for my attention span, I am going to have to go back and reread the book again to get things I might have missed. But all in all I highly recommend this book to those who 1 like Harry Turtledove, and 2 love to read Alternate histories.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted November 14, 2011
If you liked harry turtledove great war, american empire, and settling accounts series here is your chance to read about the seconed mexican war talked about several times during the series.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.8331637
Posted July 31, 2011
It stats off a great series of something that might have happened. Highly recommended.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted April 1, 2010
This book is about an alternate history book that takes place during the Civil War.An alternate history is a book about a change from the past or present and what exactly it did. about the Civil war, how the union didn't find the south's battle plans and that has an effect of the world and the war. This affect causes the battle to have a different outcome.I thought this book was pretty good. I would recommend this book to people who like alternate history books. The only thing I disliked about this book was the fact that it takes a while for the story to actually pick up in the book.This book was really good. I would have people at the age of 12-30.This book takes a while to get the story out but once it does it starts to get better.This is a really detailed book! I recommend this book for the ages of 12-30 because you have to be interested in the subject.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This book is not a good prequel, read all of the other 10 books! This prequel is boring and I quickly lost interest. This is Harry Turtledove's worst book.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.The plot moves very slow, and ponderous. I managed to get through the whole book, in the hopes that it would pick up toward the end. Maybe it did somewhat, but by then I was bored to tears.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted March 1, 2006
I like the whole book in general. Turtledove's work is interesting on how he twisted the whole story line from 1862 onward. I wonder how the heck the US even elected Blaine when they did hate Republicans, normal political propaganda it seems. I would have given the book a 5 if it wasn't for the many sex scenes I seen in the book, seriously, even a few of the romance novels I read didn't have that much in there
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted May 14, 2004
How Few Remain is an excellent book written by the master of Alternative History, Harry Turtledove. The book is the first in the series that includes A Walk in Hell, Breakthrough, and The Center Cannot Hold, etc. The whole series is great and a must read for any and all fans of Alternative History or those who have wondered what may have happened if the South won the Civil War.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted September 27, 2003
Harry Turtledove has made me a Alternate History Fan after reading this great book. the book sucks you into a harsh world of feuding powers and constant action. this book got me hooked and i bought the remaining books of the series the next day. this book goes into the three book series called The Great War, which is followed by the three book series American Empire, and i have heard another three book series will follow that called: Settling Accounts.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted July 30, 2003
I have always enjoyed Turtledove's alternative history novels but there has been something that has been bothering me. When McKinley Kantor wrote his alternative history of the Civil War in Look magazine back in the 1960's, the defeated Union states moved the capitol of the USA to another city. In that case it was Columbus, Ohio (renamed Columbia). It was felt that the seat of government would be safer and more secure further removed from the victorious Confederacy. Besides, Maryland's sucession made this even more necessay. It just doen't make sense for the national capitol to remain on the border of an overtly hositile adversary. Also, Turteldove really never identifies the numbers of troops involved in any specific scene. You have to figure it out for yourself. Personally, I like a frame of reference. This was a problem in this book but also the Alien invasion series.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 2, 2003
I usually don't read a lot of alternative history because I find actual history fascinating enough, but I picked up this book because I loved Guns of the South and thought it would be interesting. Although I found the beginning of the book a bit surreal (I don't think the whole war hinged on the cigars like Turtledove seemed to think...Little Mac hardly used the information he received as effectively as he could have), the rest of the book was fascinating. It was interesting to see what may have happened had the South won - Jackson, Lincoln, and Stuart would still be alive, Roosevelt never would have been in the Texas Rangers, and the countries in North America would be significantly different. Altogether it was a good book, and very readable.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted February 11, 2002
A great novel by Harry Turtledove. This is the first book of his that I read, and I fell in love with it. Being a history buff, especially Civil War, this book was a great read. I look foreward to reading all of Mr. Turtledove's books. So, if you are a Civil War fan, and/or sympathize with the South, read this book, and see the what happens in the second war between the states.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 3, 2001
Having studied the Civil War more than passingly, I found How Few Remain to be an excellent book. While some might say that the North should have had more military prowess, the truth is that most of the truly great military minds and leaders were on the Confederate side. From a strictly strategic standpoint the South was far superior. This plays that out well, especially given the state of the political scene in Turtledove's north (James G. Blaine can be described as a fairly extreme person, and it is perfectly logical to portray him as being extremely bitter over the first defeat). I thoroughly enjoyed this book. And I think it is an excellent read for anybody who likes to think of how things could have been or should have been rather than just how things are. This is not apologism. Turtledove doesn't claim that the South should have won, or that the South as he plays it out is an idyllic society. He's just giving you a well-researched prediction of what life might have been like had things been different (I would point out that Turtledove launches this work from a single twist - that the North never found Lee's orders on those cigars prior to Gettysburg). While the book doesn't really end conclusively, that only serves to add to the realism. Time never ends and where an author is trying to write a book that plays as a history, there is no real ending. But the lack of tidy conclusions does not detract from the strength of the book.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 29, 2001
I find Turtledove is very good at understanding the responses of the human to events. To that, he adds good research into the original history. I found his 'Guns of the South', for example, contained as good an understnding of the Civil War as Shaara. That is what makes him such a good alternative historian.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted February 21, 2001
I have been interested in the Civil War for a long time. I thought that it would be neat to read a story about the south winning. The book was great and the first chapter had action going on. I wuold have rather seen the northern army act a bit smarter so that they might have had a better chance. I thought that the book was great other than that.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted July 21, 2000
How Few Remain is an excellent choice for those who value history and love alternate history. Harry Turtledove has done a superb job altering the point in history that has been accurately described as 'the crossroads of our being.' How Few Remain is a must read for any historian as well as one who justs enjoys a good action/adventure novel.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 28, 2000
I became a fan of Turtledove's after reading 'The Guns of the South,' and while the notion of a southern victory in the Civil War is a chilling one to comtemplate in reality, (think pre-Mandela South Africa, with no America to urge them towards decency) Turtledove succeeds in making the case from the South's perspective. He even renders Robert E. Lee as a great man who would have freed the slaves. This second try at the South Winning The War Between the States fails on several levels. First, it postulates pure idiocy on the part of the northern leaders. Would you declare war on a neighboring nation and not put your own troops on alert? Or fail to even try to protect your capital from attack? Or spend the entire war bogged down trying to invade one city along a border stretching thousands of miles? Or possess a new technology like the Gatling gun that you don't use in your biggest battle? Or fail to protect your nation's Mint from a military raid? Even more incredulous, why are the only capable, decent, statesmanlike leaders all on the Southern side? And, like all of Turtledoves interminable multi-book series, there are too many characters, which makes the story line drag and loose focus. Finally, while Turtledove is perhaps trying to capture the spirit of the times, his overdrawn picture of Mark Twain reduces him to little more than a cardboard racist, eagerly spewing the word 'nigger' as many times as the author thinks he can get away with it. Turtledove is in love with the word 'nigger,' even stooping to having Nazi's (who I thought spoke German and referred to blacks as 'schwartzes') using the term in his World War series when it fits neither the historical reality nor the character. Someone should tell Turtledove that an author has an implied contract with the readers which includes informing them up front how many books you intend to drag them through in order to complete a story. The book fails largely because it is not a complete story; rather, it is an overlong chapter in a serial that stretches infinitely into the unseen future. I am through with four and five and six book series that never seem to end. Especially from another boring, 'n word' loving Southern apologist. Enough already. The South lost. The nation and the world are better for it. Get over it.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 18, 2000
I had an extremely difficult time reading this book because of the format to it. The paragraphs were too long and the writing was very small. There were too many details and the story really never held my interest for more than a few pages. I liked the story idea of another war between the states but perhaps they should have someone else write it.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted December 21, 2008
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
From the master of alternate history comes an epic of the second Civil War. It was an epoch of glory and success, of disaster and despair. . . .
1881: A generation after the South won the Civil War, America writhed once more in the bloody throes of battle. Furious over the annexation of key Mexican territory, the United States declared total war against the Confederate States of America in 1881.
But this was a new kind of war, fought on a ...