Stars and Stripes Forever

AFTERWORD

Stars Stripes Forever could be a true story.

The events depicted here actually happened. President Lincoln did have a very secret, secret service that was headed by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Vasa Fox.

A Captain Schultz, purporting to be from the Russian Navy, did turn over plans of the British breech-loading Armstrong cannon to the gunsmith, Robert Parker Parrott.

The British government, newspapers and public were incensed by the Trent Affair. That government did send troops and guns to Canada and seriously considered the invasion of the United States.

The speeches reported here, as well as the newspaper articles, are all a matter of record. The threatening headlines and bombastic newspaper articles published during the crisis appeared exactly as they are quoted.

Captain Meagher, the Fenian rebel, was indeed condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered by the British government. The sentence was later changed to transportation for life to Australia. He was imprisoned in Tasmania, but escaped and went to America where he served in the Union Army.

During the War of 1812 the British did issue the order, in the very words recorded here, to land and destroy property and take the lives of American civilians.

The United States Sharpshooting Corps were excellent shots. Enemy cannon were destroyed by them in the manner indicated here.

Jefferson Davis’s letter to the Governor of Louisiana is a matter of record.

There were over 22,000 soldiers killed at the Battle of Shiloh.

The battle between the Monitor and the Virginia was the first encounter by two iron ships in the history of warfare.

Lincoln’s words on slavery are true and taken from the records. John Stuart Mill’s views on liberty, on American democracy and the state of decay in Europe are quoted at length from his works.

The American War Between the States was the first modern war. Rapid-firing, breech-loading guns and rifles were introduced early in the hostilities.

One week after the battle between the Virginia and the Monitor the North began construction of twelve more Monitor-class ironclads. They were to be armed with incendiary shells that were “filled with an inflammable substance which, when the shell is exploded, burns for thirty minutes without the possibility of being quenched.”

Observation balloons used electric telegraphs to report troop movements, while the railroads played a vital role in moving armies and supplies.

When the Civil War ended the combined armies of the North and the South contained hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers. Not only could this combined force have destroyed a British invasion, but they could undoubtedly have won in battle against the combined armies of Europe — not defeating them one by one but could very well have defeated them even if they had united all of their forces.

Modern warfare began in the Civil War, although it took many years for the rest of the world to realize this.

Events, as depicted in this book, would have happened just as they are written here.

Harry Harrison