The point of divergence occurs on April 14 , 1865 , when John Wilkes Booth 's bullet fails to kill Abraham Lincoln , but renders him a vegetable , and incapable of governing the nation . Secretary of State William H. Seward is widely believed to be the true national policy maker . Seward instigates a harsh policy of removing all Southerners who had owned slaves to the western territories in a neo-Trail of Tears , where many of them are left to die of starvation and disease . The brevity of the story , and the limit of its narrative viewpoint to one young girl in a remote province , do not allow this alternate history to be examined in any great depth
fails to kill
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
The Lincoln Train