Line #10 Literature/BringTheJubilee


1	[[quoteright:310:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bring_the_jubilee.jpeg]]
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3	''Bring the Jubilee'' is a 1953 novel by Ward Moore. Considered a classic of AlternateHistory, the novel depicts a timeline in which the Confederacy won UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar and became a world power, leaving the United States of America as a crumbling backwater. The novel's protagonist and narrator, aspiring historian Hodgins [=McCormick=] Backmaker, is born into this timeline long after the war's end, and in the alternate 1950s becomes involved in a {{time travel}} experiment. He embarks on a historical-research trip back to the Battle of Gettysburg, which accidentally results in far-sweeping changes.
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6	!!Tropes:
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8	* AdaptationExpansion: Originally a novella.
9	* AllohistoricalAllusion: The character Hiro Agati brings up Uganda-Eretz, a Jewish state granted dominion status by the British in 1933. Historically Britain [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Scheme had plans]] of setting up a Jewish homeland in Uganda, but they were never implemented.
10	* AlternateHistory: Although [[spoiler: thanks to Hodgins' inadvertent Civil War-era meddling, he ends up living out the rest of his life in our timeline.]]
11	* AlternateTechline: The CSA of the novel is more advanced technically than our timeline in some ways, and less so in many others.
12	* {{Bookworm}}: Hodgins spends several years happily working and reading in a bookstore in New York City.
13	* BoomTown: Haggershaven is an intellectual version where the Confederacy's best and brightest have fostered a bustling R&D hub. [[spoiler:Thanks to Hudgins' inadvertent meddling, however, the town never comes to be. With the Haggerswells' patriarch dying in Gettysburg, the would-be founding family, and Barbara, are wiped from history. Instead, the site where the town would have been is nothing more than a patchwork rural homesteads in our timeline.]]
14	* CoversAlwaysLie: One paperback edition depicts the time-travel process as being done naked inside a glass and metal sphere, which is not how it works at all.
15	* CrapsackWorld:
16	** The defeated United States is not a pleasant place to live, especially if you're not of European descent. The country does not have a transcontinental railroad, whereas the CSA has seven and even British America (Canada) has one. UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity has less than one million inhabitants in 1938, which is about seven times less than in real life 1938. Also, women can not vote, except in the state of Deseret.
17	** The triumphant Confederacy is a prosperous nation which welcomes immigrants, but grants citizenship only to descendants of those who were citizens at the time of the Civil War victory. People of color are, if anything, treated ''worse'' than they were in slavery.
18	** The German Union is described by Hiro Agati as having exterminated much of its Jewish population in massacres between 1905–1913.
19	** UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}} is described as being the only American republic south of the Mason-Dixon line to preserve its independence, though it is unclear as to whom the others lost their independence.
20	* DeathSeeker / WomanScorned: After the fact, Hodgins speculates that his (rather unhinged) former lover Barbara may have sent him back in time fully expecting [[spoiler: him to screw things up.]]
21	* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Both the rump USA and the CSA are very racist. In the US's case, blacks are blamed for the Union's defeat due to the war being over slavery.
22	* FallenStatesOfAmerica: The rump United States is in very bad shape. The country is plagued by rampant racism, an anemic economy, a poor transportation network and political violence. The living conditions in the USA are so bad that its citizens often willingly enlist in the Confederate Legion, a military organization serving Confederate interests. Doing so is illegal, but the USA has no capability to enforce the law.
23	* FictionalPoliticalParty: In place of the Republican and Democratic parties, the alternate USA has the Whigs and the Populists, both of which are depicted as corrupt and uncaring towards the common man.
24	* HistoricalDomainCharacter:
25	** A [[UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower Captain Eisenhower]] has written an emendation of Edward Shepherd Creasy's ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battles_of_the_World Fifteen Decisive Battles]]''. Hodkins thinks Eisenhower might make a respectable strategist given the opportunity.
26	** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Dewey Thomas E. Dewey]] is elected President of the United States in 1940 as a Whig.
27	* IndenturedServitude: Indentured servitude has largely taken the place of slavery in both the CSA and even the USA. In practice, it's shown to being prone to abuse and exploitation, with Hodgins himself experiencing it at one point. For people of color, however, it's implied to be ''even worse'' than slavery.
28	-->'''Hodgins:''' Negro emancipation, enacted largely because of pressure from men like [Robert E.] Lee, soon revealed itself as a device for obtaining the benefits of slavery without its obligations.
29	* InjunCountry: There are still unconquered Native Americans in existence in Montana and Idaho by the novel's timeframe; Hodgins mentions the Sioux and the Nez Perce. As the USA is such a terrible place for black people, some of them escape to live among the Native Americans instead.
30	* IstanbulNotConstantinople:
31	** UsefulNotes/{{Utah}} is known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret Deseret]].
32	** Canada is referred to only as "British America".
33	** Dakota is spelled ''Dakota'''h'''''.
34	* KilledMidSentence: [[spoiler: Hodgins' narrative, ostensibly written in 1877, ends abruptly in mid-sentence. There's a post-script applied by the person who found it years later in 1953. It is unclear whether or not Hodgins died writing it, or if he even died in 1877, but it's the last thing the reader hears from him.]]
35	* MadScientist: Barbara Haggerwells, the brilliant but unstable woman who invents the time machine Hodgins uses.
36	* PleaseSelectNewCityName: Mexico City is is known as Leesburg, named after UsefulNotes/RobertELee. The city is located in "the District of Calhounia", presumably named after [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Calhoun John C. Calhoun]].
37	* PointOfDivergence: Hodgins blunders into contact with a platoon of Civil War troops, one of them dies, and [[spoiler:the CSA loses the Battle of Gettysburg and then the Civil War.]]
38	* PragmaticVillainy: Despite expanding its influence and control much of the New World, the CSA still leaves the rump United States (relatively) alone. This is more out of plain pragmatism and having a convenient dumping ground for the dredges of Confederate society than any genuine mercy.
39	* RippleProofMemory: Reasonable in this universe: Hodgins and all of his possessions remain as they were in his original timeline (as evidenced by the fact that he exists at all).
40	* TitledAfterTheSong: The novel's title comes from the 1865 song "Marching Through Georgia", about Union general UsefulNotes/WilliamTecumsehSherman's famous march.
41	-->"Hurrah! Hurrah! we '''bring the jubilee'''!\
42	Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!”\
43	So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea\
44	While we were marching through Georgia

Context Literature / BringTheJubilee