Must and Shall
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| "Must and Shall" | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Author | Harry Turtledove |
| First Appearance | Asimov's |
| Collected | Counting Up, Counting Down |
| Illustrator | Bruce Jensen |
| Genre(s) | Alternate History |
| Publication date | November, 1995 |
"Must and Shall" is a short story which first appeared in Asimov's in November, 1995. It was subsequently reprinted in Nebula Awards 32, edited by Jack Dann, Harcourt Brace, 1998; Roads Not Taken, edited by Stanley Schmidt and Gardner Dozois, Del Rey, 1998, and; Counting Up, Counting Down; Del Rey, 2002. It is an alternate history story which is set in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1942, 78 years after the point of divergence. It was nominated for both the Sidewise Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette.
In the story, Abraham Lincoln was killed by a sniper on July 12, 1864 while inspecting the ramparts at Fort Stevens north of Washington, D.C.. He was succeeded by Hannibal Hamlin, who promised retribution in his inaugural speech on July 21.
By the time the story takes place, the South has been seething under oppression as an occupied territory for nearly eighty years. Neil Michaels has been sent down from the North to stop an uprising, backed by the Nazis.
Literary Critique
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Turtledove has described this situation as essentially Northern Ireland in North America. The South is for all intents and purposes an Occupied Territory. Though the Confederacy was destroyed as a political and military entity, it exists underground as a focus of loyalty for the Southern Whites. The Federal Government only count on the support of the black population.
As is common in Turtledove timelines, the divergence from OTL is somewhat localized. While a number of changes have taken place in the U.S., the world has carried on in the exact same way as OTL. The story picks up with the U.S. at war with Nazi Germany, and references are made to World War I. Implicitly, a United States which cannot rely on its southern half in an external war effort and must constantly guard against that half breaking out in rebellion would be greatly hampered in going to war against Nazi Germany or any other foe.
Turtledove's far longer and more elaborate Southern Victory in effect reaches the same final result by a completely different route. It, too, ends with the US in complete military control of Confederate territory and preparing for an open-ended occupation to last decades or even centuries (as clearly implied in Vice President Harry Truman's words to the US occupation troops in the end of In at the Death), while Confederates such as Clarence Potter - while realizing that there was no military way of getting free of the occupation - remain obdurately determined to never accept this situation.
