Facsimile of 1953 Edition. What if Robert E. Lee had won the Battle of Gettysburg and his army went on to capture Philadelphia? What if the United States government was forced to recognize Confederate independence? In this acclaimed work of alternative history, the wealthy and prosperous Confederacy is a superpower, locked into a bitter struggle with its European rival, the German Union. The United States, that is, the Union under Lincoln, is destitute, a sinkhole of lawlessness and corruption. Technology, too, has taken a different turn, as the twentieth-century world travels by stagecoach, communicates by telegraph, and reads by gaslight. But when a young inventor who's experimenting with time travel encounters an amateur historian, the stage is set for a return to a critical point in American history