Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore
"Bring the Jubilee" is a notable work in the alternate-history subgenre of science fiction, set in a world where the South emerged victorious in the American Civil War. The story unfolds through the experiences of Hodge Backmaker, a young man who leaves his impoverished hometown for New York City in 1938, navigating a society that has been economically and socially devastated by the war. In this alternate timeline, the United States comprises twenty-six states, and the Confederacy has expanded into Mexico, while global politics have also shifted dramatically.
Backmaker's journey leads him to work in a bookstore where he becomes involved with anti-Confederate revolutionary Roger Tyss and befriends René Enfandin, a Haitian consul. After several years, he transitions into a role as a historian specializing in the War of Southron Independence, but doubts about his work prompt him to experiment with a time machine. His decision to travel back to the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg results in unintended consequences, as he inadvertently alters history, leading to the erasure of his own existence and the lives of those he loves. The narrative explores themes of history, identity, and the moral complexities of altering the past, ultimately presenting a world that starkly contrasts with the one that Backmaker once knew.
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Subject Terms
Bring the Jubilee
First published: 1953 (serial form, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1952)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—alternate history
Time of work: 1938-1952 and 1863
Locale: An alternate United States of America
The Plot
Bring the Jubilee has become a classic in the alternate-history subgenre of science fiction. The bulk of the novel is set in an alternate world years after the South won the American Civil War. This first-person memoir begins with young Hodge Backmaker leaving his backwater hometown for New York City in 1938. Life in the twenty-six United States is hard. The War of Southron Independence, as the Civil War is known, has financially and spiritually crushed the North. Backmaker outlines an unfamiliar world in which the telegraph and gaslight are the norm, the wealthy own steam-driven “minibles” instead of automobiles, and the lower classes sell themselves into indentured servitude. The strong Confederate States stretch south from the Mason-Dixon line into Mexico. Even the European landscape differs. Napoleon VI rules France, and Germany is known as the German Union.
After losing everything he owns to muggers on his first night in New York, Backmaker falls in with Roger Tyss, a bookseller and anti-Confederate revolutionary. Tyss gives Backmaker a job in his bookstore. Backmaker spends several years there, reading as much as he can and learning to think and study. He befriends René Enfandin, consul for the Republic of Haiti, who is an oddity in New York because he is black. Backmaker is crushed when Enfandin is shot and seriously wounded, forcing his return to Haiti.
At the age of twenty-three, Backmaker decides to leave the bookstore. He accepts an invitation to go to Haggershaven, an intellectual community in York, Pennsylvania. There, Backmaker becomes a well-regarded historian specializing in the War of Southron Independence. He marries and settles down, but he calls his own scholarship into question after receiving a letter from a colleague asking him to reconsider some of his ideas. In crisis, he allows physicist Barbara Haggerwells to talk him into trying out her new invention, the HX-1, a time machine. She suggests that he use it to visit Gettysburg, the site of an important Confederate victory, and settle his doubts once and for all.
Without telling his wife, Catty, Backmaker allows himself to be transported to June 30, 1863. He walks the thirty miles to the battle site and positions himself. Unfortunately, Confederate troops spot him and question him. Because Backmaker promised Haggerwells that he would not interfere lest he change history, he says nothing. The nervous Confederates convince themselves that Yankees are up ahead and retreat, but during the altercation, a man is shot and killed. Backmaker realizes that the man looks familiar to him.
The Confederate withdrawal from the area means that history as Backmaker knows it changes. Backmaker watches the battle, and, sickened, realizes that the North, rather than the South, will hold the Round Tops. When he returns to the pick-up site and fails to return to his own time, he realizes something far worse: The dead Confederate was Barbara Haggerwells’ grandfather. His death means that there is no hope of return to his world. He has changed the course of history and wiped out his own world, along with all the people he loves. Ironically, the world he has brought into being is the world of the reader.