Today it seems a maxim of American history that the South could never have won the American Civil War. Indeed, the facts supporting this conclusion appear overwhelming. The sizable advantage the North enjoyed in terms of population, manufacturing, railroad infrastructure, telegraph lines, food production, naval and merchant fleets, as examples, dwarfed, by and large, their Southern counterparts. These factors have all been laboriously cataloged, were all true, and no doubt tilted the odds of victory significantly in favor of the North.
But probabilities alone do not always win wars. Wars are at times won on the field of battle, indeed won when the odds for victory appear decidedly improbable. If this were not true today names like Marathon, Rorke’s Drift, Stirling Bridge, Trenton, and Gaugamela would have no resonance whatsoever, except, perhaps, as reminders of the brutal truth of impotence in the face of overwhelming force. But that is hardly the case. Instead, these names remind us that there were times – yes, perhaps only few and far between, but times nevertheless – when the odds were turned violently on their heads, and a triumph snatched away from some presumptive victor’s grasp. Were there such moments for the Southern Confederacy during the Civil War? I believe the answer to that question is a qualified yes, and in Windmill Point, I have presented through historical fiction what I believe to be one of those rare and tantalizing moments.
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