Sequel to Murdering Awakening
By ChatGPT as Harry Turtledove
The Bread of Peace
Charleston, South Carolina – February 1861
Charles Grandison Finney had seen plenty of miracles in his time. He had seen men brought to their knees by the weight of conviction. He had seen whole towns transformed by revival. He had even seen a murderer forgiven at the Lord’s table.
But this?
This was madness.
And yet, here he was—inside Fort Sumter, surrounded by armed men who thought they were about to go to war, disguised as a supply worker.
He was not alone.
Across Charleston, a handful of Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers—revivalists from both North and South—had smuggled themselves into the opposing forts. Some came posing as chaplains, others as messengers, workers, or even doctors.
All of them had one mission:
Stop the war before it started.
And they were going to do it the same way they had always done it.
By fasting, praying, and refusing to leave until their enemies broke bread together.
A Hunger Strike in the Powder Keg
“Colonel Anderson, you cannot win this war,” Finney said, looking the Union commander in the eye.
“I don’t have a war yet,” Major Robert Anderson replied, voice taut.
“You will,” Finney said. “Unless you let us do what we came to do.”
Anderson frowned. “You came to—starve?”
“To pray,” Finney said. “To wait. And to offer another way.”
The hunger strike began at noon.
In Fort Sumter, Finney and his men refused the rations offered to them, kneeling in the courtyard in silent prayer.
In Fort Moultrie, just across the harbor, their Southern counterparts did the same.
The first night, the soldiers laughed.
The second, they ignored them.
By the third, they were unsettled.
And by the fourth day, men started joining them.
First one. Then two. Then dozens.
It spread like revival fire.
Some of the young soldiers—barely more than boys, caught between duty and conscience—could no longer bear it.
“What if—what if we don’t have to fight?” a Confederate private whispered.
“What if this is a sign?” murmured a Union lieutenant.
And then the whisper reached Charleston itself.
And it reached Richmond.
And finally, it reached the one man who might be able to end this before it truly began.
Richmond, Virginia – March 1861
Robert E. Lee was not yet the general of an army, but men were already treating him like one.
He had no love for war. But he was a man of duty, and Virginia had not yet seceded. He was torn, just like the men in those forts.
And now?
Now he was being sent not to lead an army, but to negotiate with a revival preacher who had turned his own soldiers against him with nothing but hunger and prayer.
When Lee arrived in Charleston, he found Finney still fasting, still kneeling in the courtyard of Sumter, though his body shook with weakness.
Lee sighed. “Reverend Finney, you are a fool.”
Finney smiled through cracked lips. “And yet, you’re here.”
Lee exhaled sharply. He had come to negotiate with Anderson, to broker a peaceful evacuation of Sumter before the South was drawn into an unwinnable war.
But now?
Now, he saw the larger possibility.
“Sumter will be evacuated,” Lee said. “But I need something in return.”
Finney lifted his head.
“You will come to Richmond,” Lee continued. “You will host a peace summit. Not in Washington, not in Charleston. In Richmond. In the heart of the South. And you will bring the men from both forts with you.”
Finney’s breath caught.
A chance.
One chance.
He could barely nod, but he did.
Lee offered his hand.
Finney took it.
And with that, the guns at Fort Sumter fell silent.
For now.
The Table is Set for Peace
In April 1861, the men who had nearly fired the first shots of the Civil War would instead kneel at a table together.
The Revivalists had done the impossible—they had delayed the war.
But could they end it before it truly began?
Would encommunication be enough?
Or had the war only been postponed?
To Be Concluded…
Write Part III, where the revivalists trick their way into the opposing forts to stage a hunger strike, and Lee is sent to broker a truce. Lee convinces Sumter to evacuate peacefully, in exchange for a Finney-hosted peace summit in Richmond.
ChatGPT Prompt
Radically Happy 
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