The Guns of the South/YMMV


 * Alternate Universe: Considering that the time machine the AWB possesses can only travel forward and backward exactly 150 years, and considering that the "butterflies" that change historical events must have started flapping their wings as soon as Rhoodie & Company began meeting with various Confederate notables and doling out their future tech, it's possible that the universe in which the events of the book occur is actually a different continuum from the one that the AWB is from. The time travelers might not be aware of this at first, which is why Rhoodie hesitates when Lee asks if the "Rivington men" can supply rations for the Army of Northern Virginia in addition to arms and ammunition.
 * Complete Monster: Piet Hardie.
 * Benjamin Butler, to the Confederates, which is very much Truth in Television thanks to the things he did while occupying New Orleans (such as instituting a law saying Confederate women who disrespected Union soldiers would be treated as prostitutes). When he's named one of the peace commissioners, everyone on the Confederate side expresses disgust, and Jeff Davis says that if he didn't have diplomatic immunity he'd gladly have the man arrested and hanged.
 * Lee then immediately orders a detachment of armed guards be posted around Butler's hotel room, to prevent the possibility of a lynch mob happening on by and leaving the Confederacy with a major diplomatic incident to explain.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: When Robert E. Lee (having acquired an up-time textbook) realises that the Rivington Men do not represent the mainstream of views on race in the future, and he delivers what to Rhoodie must be the ultimate insult: "You and your men are as out of place in your time as John Brown was in mine."
 * The Confederates defeat a machine-gun by tunnelling under it and blowing it up (the Battle of the Crater in reverse, ).
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: A Confederate chemist at the Tredegar Ironworks figures out that the active ingredient in some of the Rivington Men's future explosives is nitroglycerine...which is also the active ingredient in the heart disease treatment tablets they've been giving to Lee. Lee is briefly convinced they're attempting to assassinate him by feeding him explosives.
 * Genius Bonus: Several lines of dialog spoken by the historical characters are things they actually said or wrote, just in different context; only a historian or Civil War scholar could get them all. As one example, Robert E. Lee says "Let the tents be struck" after the war ends in both reality and Turtledove's novel, the only difference being that in the former he lost and in the latter he won.
 * A variant of his last words, which were actually, "Strike the tent".
 * In one scene, Lee calls for his aide by saying "Mr. Marshall, come quickly, I need you"; this is (supposedly) the first phrase ever transmitted via telephone (except of course for the proper name; Alexander Graham Bell's assistant was named Watson).
 * Moral Event Horizon: The AWB crosses this in the eyes of the Confederacy when attack Lee's inauguration with Uzis in an attempt to kill him, spraying bullets all over the place and killing countless civilians, including Lee's wife Mary.
 * This is also a case of Reality Is Unrealistic, because the Confederates are outraged that anyone would try to assassinate a president in such a way and sure that none of their own people would do such a thing, not knowing that in the original timeline John Wilkes Booth would have done just that to Lincoln, although there were no innocents killed there-to be fair that would be hard using a single-shot pistol like Booth did.
 * To be fair, every Confederate we see expressing such disgust is a Confederate army regular or senior official, who would be far more concerned about the established rules of warfare than an irregular fanatic like Booth.