The word “Vietnam” immediately conjures images of guerrilla warfare, the 1960s peace movements and the flight from Saigon from the top of the American embassy. For South Vietnamese, their memories would be quite different. Theirs would be more local and specific since they not only lived through it, as Americans had, but the South Vietnamese also had to live in it.
The Confederacy as an independent nation is a fantastical idea that has been taken up by numerous alternative history writers. However, it is an interesting exercise to conduct because the separation of the Confederacy from the Union was entirely plausible. It was possible with just a bit more luck on the part of the American South. The Battle of Gettysburg could’ve changed the fate of the war and allowed General Lee to march on toward the capital of the Union. Furthermore, in analyzing how the Confederacy would’ve behaved after independence, we can also discover the many reasons for why they lost and failed in their efforts to secede.
In this case we’re able to study relatively recent history in the comparison of the British colonies of the 17th century to the newly established United States of America in the 1790s.
