The goal of the time travel was simple: deliver advanced but rugged weaponry to the Confederate forces. Bringing along quasi-futuristic DC, and an organization of robots opposed to lives of ownership, makes the matter wildly more complicated.

SYNOPSIS:

Pete St. Clair had a breakneck life, as the head of legislative affairs for the Kent administration. He'd just started to get a handle on the arrival of a pack of robots fleeing slavery, when the entire tri-state Delmarva area was hurtled back to February 1861.

The centralized political establishment of the Union in crisis is gone, though frankly there wasn't much 'centralized' about it, which is the only reason the country can properly function. Lincoln will be inaugurated in a few weeks. Discussions are ongoing with the application of 'one country, two systems'; 2040 Maryland will not abide by the pre-13th-amendment Constitution, but a century-plus of jurisprudence can't be pushed on Pennsylvania either.

It doesn't take long for the Confederate saber-rattling to show that they've gotten a major upgrade in armaments. Nor are those robots, a faction fundamentally opposed to the slavers' raison d'etre, going to go along cheerfully with the needs of Lincoln and Kent. This is going to be an exceedingly delicate affair.