What is this?

In June 2016, after accumulating nine warnings or temporary suspensions for launching angry personal attacks on other posters, TFSmith121 was finally banned from alternatehistory.com. Though he has made several attempts to sneak back onto the site using sockpuppets, the likelihood is that he will never return.

In February 2017, two alternatehistory.com posters actually attempted properly to read his magnum opus: the timeline Burnished Rows of Steel, which attempts to answer the question of what would have happened if the Union and the United Kingdom went to war over the boarding of the mail packet RMS Trent. What they found was a farrago of American exceptionalism, historical misunderstandings, and frankly incomprehensible phonetic accents. However, because linking to the work of banned members is forbidden on alternatehistory.com, there was nowhere properly to discuss the work. After a flurry of personal messages, and much eye-rolling over the timeline's flaws, this blog was born.

Its focus will be twofold. Firstly, it will point out the many, many factual and internal continuity errors in the timeline which have so far escaped proper scrutiny. Secondly, it will also show how the author's intense anglophobia and American exceptionalism permeate and pervert the work, producing a piece of American hagiography rather than the 'fair and accurate' work he claims it to be.