Publisher: Del Rey : New York, 1992
Turtledoves atmospheric and richly detailed novel starts with the premise of time-travelling South African white supremacists interfering at a crucial point of the American civil war, by flooding the Confederacy with advanced weapons and other modern innovations (such as long-life combat rations and camouflage clothing). The titular "guns of the south" - the AK47 assault rifles - are a key delivery from the "Rivington Men", in that they are easy to use, can be easily repaired and fire using the tools and primitive ammunition of the day. Nonetheless their firepower enables the numerically inferior Confederates to turn certain defeat into a string of victories, with President Lincoln himself captured alive in the White House.
The United States is permanently divided into two separate countries. As president of the Confederate States of America, General Robert E Lee Lee rapidly becomes convinced of the moral, diplomatic, and economic obsolescence of slavery. Uunfortunately, his sinister time-travelling backers are aghast and prepare to exact a terrible price for his unexpected role in blocking them from ensuring both white supremacy being the norm, and slavery surviving into the 21st century.
Turtledove bases this novel on massive research; almost all of the characters were real people whose depictions stick as close to known facts as possible, and the locations, except for the town of Rivington, are mostly real places and described accurately, as they were in the Civil War period . The behavior of Lee, Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Nathan Bedford Forrest, General Grant and the other political and military figures is entirely consistent with their known personalities and attitudes, and the developments of his alternate history are extremely plausible if we accept his initial premise.
This is a long book but it's a gripping page turner all the way. The minor characters are believable, flawed, but mostly likeable people you come to really care about.
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