Peter J. Orvetti is a political journalist living in Washington, D.C. He has been an Internet writer and editor since 1997, and has been published in many American newspapers including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Washington Times. His stories can be found at http://www.orvetti.com/alternate_history. This is his third, astounding fiction. .

Lester Maddox hustled the few remaining customers out of the Pickrick and locked the restaurant door behind him. It was a Tuesday evening, so business was slow, but a few more folks could have been counted on to trickle in. Still, Maddox did not want to get caught in the curfew, especially on his way to the meeting.
He kept his head down as he walked through the streets of Shermantown, just north of old Atlanta. Tension rose in his belly, but he was always careful not to walk too fast, lest he attract unwanted attention from the blue-clad Southern Guard soldiers that hung about the streets. They were mostly young men, green and nervous, who for one reason or another could not succeed in the regular army. Still, they were armed and it was their side that was in charge. Glancing up, Maddox had to stifle a sneer at the sight of three armed colored soldiers on one corner. If that wasn't the world turned upside down, what was? Of course for Maddox, this had always been the world he knew.
A noisy 1948 Studebaker rattled down Seward Avenue, coughing like it was a mile or two away from death. The 10-year-old machine was in bad shape, but by Shermantown standards, was practically a new car. Maddox had seen a '53 Chevy a few days ago, but that was rare.
Peering around furtively to make sure the patrols were not watching, Maddox ducked into an alleyway and approached a nondescript door. It was plain yellow wood, but for a hastily slapped-on X of blue paint, an identifier of the meeting place. Even that much could be dangerous. He rapped on the door, which opened just an inch. "Mary Surratt," Maddox said, and the door swung open for him.
Inside the old warehouse space, about two dozen members of the Order of St. Andrew's Cross milled about, some sitting on folding chairs and chatting, others standing and laughing at private jokes. After a few minutes, however, the Shermantown chapter president, a man in his mid-forties named Herman Talmadge, went to the front of the room to open the meeting.
"Brothers!" Talmadge shouted, quieting the crowd. "Tonight we meet to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of the first and only true president of our nation, Jefferson Davis." At the mention of Davis's name, most of the crowd whistled, clapped, and stamped their feet. "For nearly a century we have kept his vision, and the vision of the Confederacy, alive, despite the heavy hand of the Northern occupiers. Those who fell in the fight for our freedom would be proud of our humble efforts." He gestured to the wall behind him, where a faded print portrait of Davis hung alongside a print of a Thomas Nast drawing from Harper's Weekly showing three young men standing at the gallows.
"Tonight, as we do every year on this important day, we will screen that great film by D.W. Griffith, the son of Confederate Colonel Roaring Jake Griffith. So, as a reminder of why we fight, and of what we have lost, I am pleased to present 'Death of a Nation.'"
The annual tradition carried a whiff of intrigue about it. Presentation of the film in the South, or even mere possession of it, was banned under U.S. laws passed in the wake of the 16th Amendment, which had permitted curtailment of certain rights guaranteed by the First Amendment in the territories that had rebelled during the 1860s. Its passage dovetailed with that of the 17th Amendment, which repealed the Second Amendment outright within those same areas. While he sympathized with the Southern plight, Griffith was a Kentuckian, and so his rights to free expression had not been altered. But making the film had ended his career; it was so reviled in the North that Griffith eventually emigrated to Germany to make films there. An underground group calling itself "D.W.'s Boys" trafficked in contraband copies of the film, running reels from Kentucky and other one-time border states into the South.
The old film projector wheezed to life, spitting and crackling as the silent film began. The images on screen were familiar to every man in the room. A handsome actor portraying John Wilkes Booth crept up a staircase, the camera following his careful steps, as he gently pulled back a curtain and aimed his pistol at the back of a stovepipe hat-topped head. The lanky, ugly actor seated before Booth whipped around, sneering like a villain in a serial, the hat falling from his head. The caricature of Lincoln grimaced as Booth fired. The hero of the scene then leapt gracefully from the balcony to the stage below, raised his gun triumphantly, shouted his immortal line, and bowed with a flourish to the Ford's Theater crowd before bolting from the scene.
The next scene showed a wily, impish young man rattling a doorknob and sneaking into a bedroom. A mess of a man, hair tousled and clothes rumpled, drool on his chin, was sprawled across a mattress. His formal business dress contrasted with the empty liquor bottle in one hand. The man snored noisily, and offered a hacking cough. The young man smiled and pulled a Bowie knife from inside his coat.
The third familiar vignette came up on the screen. A well-dressed young man rapped on the door of a fancy home and, greeted by a puzzled servant, held up a vial of medicine from an apothecary. The servant waved the man in, and the errand-runner made for a grand staircase. As he began his ascent, an angry young man, probably in his 30s, stepped out from the top of the stairs to block his way. The visitor whipped out a pistol and quickly dispatched of the young man, as the servant looked on in horror. The man threw down the medicine, bolted up the stairs, and threw open a door, firing again.
The film showed soldiers and policemen hauling the bodies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and William Seward out of the various Washington sites where they had died, then John Wilkes Booth, George Andreas Atzerodt, and David Edgar Herold making their way out of the city. The next few scenes were familiar to any student of American history, though in this version, the assassins were the heroes and the pursuing Army troops the villains. The heroes of the story made their way south, crossing the Potomac into Virginia, the army in chase. They were finally apprehended in a barn near Bowling Green. The dashing Booth was portrayed as fighting off the dirty, unshaven Army men with heroic blows before being brought down by a bullet to his shoulder. Herold and Atzerodt expressed a stoic rage as they were bound and carted off with their leader.
The Griffith film portrayed the prosecution of the three men as a show trial, with a lazy judge and a howling, biased jury. Booth had chosen to represent himself, and his impassioned defense of the Southern cause simply brought more catcalls and outcries from the jury and the audience. Finally, the three men were shown at the gallows, heads raised defiantly, a hagiographic take on the same scene shown in the Nast cartoon at the front of the room. Echoing an earlier patriot, Booth said softly, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for the South," then cried, "I die a hero!" The three men fell, and the projector went silent.