The Guns of the South is an alternate history novel set during the American Civil War by Harry Turtledove. It was released in the United States on September 22, 1992.
The story deals with a group of time-traveling members of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) from an imagined 21st-century South Africa, who supply Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47s and other advanced technology, medicine and intelligence. Their intervention results in a Confederate victory in the war. Afterwards, however, the AWB members discover that their ideas for the Confederate States and Lee's are not one and the same as they believed and the general and the men of the South have a violent falling out with the white supremacists from the future.
Plot
Alteration of the Civil War
In January 1864, the Confederate States is on the verge of losing the Civil War against the United States. Men with strange accents and oddly-mottled clothing approach Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia. They demonstrate a rifle far superior to all other firearms of the time, operating on chemical and engineering principles that are unknown to Confederate military engineers. They offer to supply the Confederate Army with the rifles, which they refer to as AK-47s. The men, who call their organization "America Will Break" (or "AWB"), establish a base in Rivington in Nash County, North Carolina, along with offices in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
The AWB continues to offer inexplicable intelligence and technology to the Confederacy, including nitroglycerine tablets for treating Lee's heart condition. Finally, Lee questions their leader, Andries Rhoodie, who provides Lee a partially true explanation. The men of AWB are Afrikaner Neo-Nazi ultra-nationalists from post-apartheid South Africa, having traveled back 150 years from the year 2014 to change the outcome of the Civil War. The newcomers claim that white supremacy has not endured to the modern era and that blacks have marginalized whites. Lee is told that President Abraham Lincoln will act as a vicious tyrant during his second term and that his successor, Thaddeus Stevens, will continue his work to ensure that blacks will become the dominant political faction in the former Confederacy, as they outnumber whites in many areas. The AWB says that blacks will take over other countries, including the United Kingdom.
The AWB men train soldiers to use their new weapons and issue ammunition. With the AWB's guns and some direct military aid from the time-traveling Afrikaners, the Army of Northern Virginia drives Union General Ulysses S. Grant's forces out of Virginia. In a surprise night attack they capture Washington, thus ending the Civil War. Lincoln refuses to flee the capital during their advance and appears on the White House lawn, where he addresses them before personally surrendering to Lee. The United Kingdom and France recognize the Confederacy, and Lincoln is forced to accept the Confederate victory.
Events after Confederate victory
The two sides hold formal peace negotiations in Richmond, with Lee as one of the commissioners, to settle territorial disputes and Confederate demands for reparation. At the same time, the Union defeat in the war results in a four-way split in the 1864 presidential election, with Lincoln losing to New York Governor Horatio Seymour. After the election is decided, the Union reluctantly agrees to pay $90 million in gold (more than $1.4 billion in 2019) as reparations; the Confederacy, in turn, gives up any claim to Maryland and West Virginia. At Lee's suggestion, the border states of Kentucky and Missouri hold elections to decide their status; Kentucky joins the Confederacy, while Missouri remains in the Union.
Many Confederate slaves freed by the Union during the war who served in the Union Army continue to fight Confederate forces long after the Union formally surrenders. That frightens many Confederate whites and infuriates the troops charged with fighting them, particularly Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men. Lee, already dubious about slavery and respectful of the courage of the United States Colored Troops during the war, becomes convinced that continuing to enslave blacks is both morally wrong and ultimately impracticable. Despite threats from Rhoodie and the AWB, Lee makes no effort to hide his views.