| “ | We're going to win this sucker. Win it, you hear me? We're going to lick the damnyankees, lick 'em right out of their boots, lick 'em so that they stay licked. | „ |
| ~ Jake Featherston |
| “ | I'm Jake Featherston, and I'm here to tell you the truth. | „ |
| ~ Jake Featherston |
Jake Featherston is the Chairman of the Freedom Party and the main antagonist Harry Turtledove's Timeline 191 series of alternate history novels. He was originally an Artillery Sergent of the Confederate Army during the First World War and later rose through the ranks of the Confederate government and politics becoming the Chairman of the Freedom Party by 1918 and later the 13th President of the Confederacy by 1933 and later helped instigate the Second World War.
History
Jake Featherston was a soldier in an alternate First World War taking place in a world where the Confederacy won the American Civil War. Featherston was a sergeant in the First Richmond Howitzers, fighting against the U.S and a black Socialist uprising (the slaves in the CSA had been gradually freed in the 1880s, but were still second-class citizens). During the war, the Featherston was blamed for the death of Confederate Captain Jeb Stuart III, grandson of famous Confederate General Jeb Stuart, and was kept from promotion. This angered Featherston greatly and, after the war, Featherston started to blame the Confederacy's defeat (and subsequent Treaty of Versailles-like conditions, including crippling reparations) on the black uprising and the aristocratic Confederate ruling class in a book analogous to Mein Kampf entitled Over Open Sights. Featherston joined the Freedom Party after the war. Featherston quickly took over leadership of the Freedom Party, and, after some setbacks in the 1920s, was elected president in 1934, with Ferdinand Koenig as vice president, and quickly began a massive military buildup, culminating in a invasion of the US in 1941, taking control of all of Ohio, effectively cutting the US in half, before driving east to Pittsburg, where the Confederate advance was halted. The US launched a counter attack, eventually taking Atlanta. In a last ditch attempt to secure victory, Featherston ordered an atomic bomb constructed and smuggled into Philadelphia, the alternate US capital. Amazingly, the scheme was a partial success, with the bomb being sucessfully built and smuggled into the city. The bomb, however, detonated on the outskirts of town, not directly impacting the executive residence or Congress.
During Featherston's regime, the Confederate Black population saw increased oppression. This culminated with the imprisonment of blacks in concentration camps located throughout the South, and shortly afterwards, the genocide of the black population in "population reductions". The population reductions were initially carried out by gunfire, but camp director Jefferson Pinkard would later devise more efficient methods using carbon dioxide and later hydrogen cyanide gas.
Shortly after the bombing of Philadelphia, the US retaliated, detonating an atomic bomb in Featherston's suspected hideout in Newport News, North Carolina. Featherston, however, escaped the blast and flew to Georgia, only to be shot by a black resistance man. He was later succeeded by Don Partridge after his death and later unconditionally surrendered the entire Confederacy after most of the Confederate Army and leadership was wiped out and the entire CSA was occupied and re-annexed back into the United States.
Trivia
- Jake Featherston is clearly based on infamous World War II German dictator Adolf Hitler. In fact, Hitler makes an appearance Turtledove's "Southern Victory" series, as a German Army sergeant, having never been driven to joining the Nazi party as Germany was victorious along with the US in the alternate First World War.