A Facebook friend, Bernadette Durbin sent me a link to this perfectly splendid alternate history short story by Harry Turtledove: Lee at the Alamo.

It could very well have happened like this, you know: the Alamo was rebuilt, did serve as the quartermaster depot for the US Army in the far southwest before and after the Civil War (until Fort Sam Houston was constructed in the mid-1870s), and Robert E. Lee was indeed a senior military commander in Texas until the outbreak of the Civil War. And he was also on the short-list for being offered command of the Union Army…