In this special guest post, Dr Peter Templeton discusses a curious nineteenth-century American novel by a forgotten author
Imagine a world in which the South seceded, successfully, from the United States. Virginia, caught in two minds as a border state, is occupied by Federal troops who get caught into a guerrilla war with a band of noble would-be Confederates? This version of history, though it looks like a nightmare to most contemporary eyes, is exactly what Nathaniel Beverley Tucker asks us to picture in his 1836 novel, The Partisan Leader.
One thing needs to be stated upfront –