Great Reads: Non-Alternate History

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The New York Times has been running a great series of articles about the American Civil War. This is the best stuff I've been reading all year, hands down.  "One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America's most perilous period -- using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded."

Currently, in this timeline, it's December, 1860, and things are going South (literally and figuratively).  The Buchanan presidency is collapsing.  Senator Andrew Johnson just made a hellova speech.  Walt Whitman begins an imaginary conversation with president-elect Lincoln.  The U.S. Coast Survey uses a new technique in statistical cartography to create a map that will soon appear in a famous painting.  And Henry Longfellow's new poem is about the Revolutionary War in exactly the same way that M*A*S*H is about Korea.  

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoofbeats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

There's also a Facebook page, just in case all this time travel hasn't given you whiplash yet.