Harry Harrison: Stars and Stripes Forever

Stars Stripes Forever could be a true story.

The events depicted here actually happened. President Lincoln did have a very secret, secret service that was headed by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Vasa Fox.

A Captain Schultz, purporting to be from the Russian Navy, did turn over plans of the British breech-loading Armstrong cannon to the gunsmith, Robert Parker Parrott.

The British government, newspapers and public were incensed by the Trent Affair. That government did send troops and guns to Canada and seriously considered the invasion of the United States.

The speeches reported here, as well as the newspaper articles, are all a matter of record. The threatening headlines and bombastic newspaper articles published during the crisis appeared exactly as they are quoted.

Captain Meagher, the Fenian rebel, was indeed condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered by the British government. The sentence was later changed to transportation for life to Australia. He was imprisoned in Tasmania, but escaped and went to America where he served in the Union Army.

During the War of 1812 the British did issue the order, in the very words recorded here, to land and destroy property and take the lives of American civilians.

The United States Sharpshooting Corps were excellent shots. Enemy cannon were destroyed by them in the manner indicated here.

Jefferson Davis’s letter to the Governor of Louisiana is a matter of record.

There were over 22,000 soldiers killed at the Battle of Shiloh.

The battle between the Monitor and the Virginia was the first encounter by two iron ships in the history of warfare.

Lincoln’s words on slavery are true and taken from the records. John Stuart Mill’s views on liberty, on American democracy and the state of decay in Europe are quoted at length from his works.

The American War Between the States was the first modern war. Rapid-firing, breech-loading guns and rifles were introduced early in the hostilities.

One week after the battle between the Virginia and the Monitor the North began construction of twelve more Monitor -class ironclads. They were to be armed with incendiary shells that were “filled with an inflammable substance which, when the shell is exploded, burns for thirty minutes without the possibility of being quenched.”

Observation balloons used electric telegraphs to report troop movements, while the railroads played a vital role in moving armies and supplies.

When the Civil War ended the combined armies of the North and the South contained hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers. Not only could this combined force have destroyed a British invasion, but they could undoubtedly have won in battle against the combined armies of Europe — not defeating them one by one but could very well have defeated them even if they had united all of their forces.

Modern warfare began in the Civil War, although it took many years for the rest of the world to realize this.

Events, as depicted in this book, would have happened just as they are written here.

Harry Harrison

Abraham Lincoln President of the United States

Hannibal Hamlin Vice-President

William H. Seward Secretary of State

Edwin M. Stanton Secretary of War

Gideon of the Welles Secretary of the Navy

Salmon P. Chase Secretary of the Treasury

Gustavus Fox Assistant Secretary of the Navy

Edward Bates Attorney General

John Nicolay First Secretary to President Lincoln

John Hay Secretary to President Lincoln

William Parker Parrott Gunsmith

Charles Francis Adams U.S. Ambassador to Britain

John Ericsson Inventor of USS Monitor

Captain Worden Captain of USS Monitor

UNITED STATES ARMY

General William Tecumseh Sherman

General Ulysses S. Grant

General Henry W. Halleck

General George B. McClellan Commander Army of the Potomac

General Ramsay Head of Ordnance Department

Lieutenant General Winfield Scott Commander West Point

Colonel Hiram Berdan Commander U.S. Regiment of Sharpshooters

General Benjamin F. Butler

Colonel Appier Commander, 53rd Ohio

General John Pope Army of the Potomac

UNITED STATES NAVY

Commodore Goldsborough

Charles D. Wilkes Captain of USS San Jacinto

Lieutenant Fairfax First Officer of USS San Jacinto

David Glasgow Farragut Flag Officer, Mississippi Fleet

Lieutenant John Worden Commander USS Monitor

Victoria Regina Queen of Great Britain and Ireland

Prince Albert Royal Consort, her husband

Lord Palmerston Prime Minister

Lord John Russell Foreign Secretary

William Gladstone Chancellor of the Exchequer

Lord Lyons British Ambassador to the United States

Lord Wellesley Duke of Wellington

Lady Kathleen Shiel Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen

BRITISH ARMY

Duke of Cambridge Commander-in-Chief

General Peter Champion Commander of British Invasion Forces

Major General Bullers Infantry Commander

Colonel Oliver Phipps-Hornby Commander 62nd Foot

Lieutenant Saxby Athelstane Cavalry officer

General Harcourt Garrison Commander of Quebec

BRITISH NAVY

Admiral Alexander Milne

Captain Nicholas Roland Commander of HMS Warrior

Commander Sydney Tredegar Royal Marines

Jefferson Davis President

Judah P. Benjamin Secretary of State

Thomas Bragg Attorney General

James A. Seddon Secretary of War

Christopher G. Memminger Secretary of the Treasury

Stephen Mallory Secretary of the Navy

John H. Reagan Attorney General and Postmaster General

Stephen Murray Secretary of the Navy

John Slidell Confederate Commissioner to France

William Murray Mason Confederate Commissioner to England

CONFEDERATE ARMY

General Robert E. Lee Commander-in-Chief

General P.G.T. Beauregard

General Albert Sidney Johnston

CONFEDERATE NAVY

Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan Captain CSS Virginia

Harry Harrison’s career as a science fiction writer has virtually spanned the history of the genre. Born is Stamford, Connecticut, in 1925, he grew up reading Astounding Science Fiction in the Borough of Queens in New York City. Following WWII, in which he served as gunnery instructor in Laredo, Texas, volunteering every month for overseas service, Harrison attended a number of art schools, then worked for some years as a commercial artist and art director. From this he moved on to publishing and editing, sold articles and stories, and started his first novel. Finding New York City an impossible place in which to write, he and his wife, Joan, and unprotesting year-old son, Todd, moved to Mexico in 1956. From there to England in 1957. To Italy in 1958. After a quick visit to New York in 1959, where daughter Moira was born, the family moved to Denmark in 1959. The peripatetic Mr. Harrison, at present, resides in Ireland. He is the author of more than forty novels, among them The Stainless Steel Rat books, the acclaimed West of Eden trilogy, Make Room! Make Room! (made into the movie Soylent Green), and, most recently, Stars Stripes Forever, the first in a new alternate history series. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages, including that perennial favorite, Esperanto. He received the Nebula Award in 1973.