Vilest Beast

1610: At the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, Edward Maria Wingfield must rescue his infant daughter from the tribe of wild sims who kidnapped her. The opening passages reveal that Captain John Smith was killed and eaten by sims in 1607.

And So To Bed

1661: The story is made up of a series of entries in Samuel Pepys' diary. Pepys owns two sims (which can easily be trained in household chores) and contemplates the origin of the species. By watching these sims, as well as observing various other animals found in North America, Pepys develops the theory of evolution.

Only one of the diary's entries in the story has a corresponding entry in the real diary Pepys kept.^[3]

Around the Salt Lick

1691: Thomas Kenton, a scout from Virginia and descendant of Edward Wingfield, and his faithful sim companion Charles, explore the interior of North America. Kenton is after the teeth of the spearfang cats that populate the area. He is captured by a group of wild sims, and must hope that Charles will rescue him. The story structure is reminiscent of James Fenimore Cooper.

The Iron Elephant

1782: The first steam-driven train is invented by Richard Trevithick in Boston, Plymouth Commonwealth. A race is held in a commonwealth bordering the New Nile starting in Springfield and ending in Cairo, with one of the hairy elephant-pulled trains they threaten to replace.

Notes: 1) The story has some parallels to the legend of John Henry. 2) In this story it is learned that England's American colonies broke off into a new nation - the Federated Commonwealths of America - in 1738, and westward expansion began much sooner than in our history, due to the lack of indigenous humans in the regions to be colonized. Instead, the development of a tyrannical absolutist monarchy during the seventeenth century is cited as the chief reason for colonial secession. 3) The character Trevithick is American rather than British, and appears to be twenty years older than his historic age, so he is probably not the historical figure but an analog. In Turtledove works, it is common for historical figures to have fictitious offspring (as with Edward Wingfield's daughter and her own great-grandson Thomas Kenton above) as a result of the butterfly effect. 4) The FCA's system of currency is mentioned as consisting of units called sesters and denaires (presumably FCA equivalents of US cents and dollars).

Though the Heavens Fall

1804: A house-slave named Jeremiah goes on trial for running away, and his attorney presents the argument that, with the existence of sims, there is no need for human beings to enslave other human beings. They are successful, and the court's decision leads to the emancipation of all human slaves. There are echoes of the historical Dred Scott Decision.

Note: More about the FCA is learned in this story. The government is based very closely on the Roman Republic. Although the historic USA used that example as a template, the FCA has gone even further, for example by having two chief executives called censors who can veto each other, and a Senate whose members serve for life by virtue of being former censors or commonwealth governors.

Trapping Run

1812: Henry Quick, a trapper in the Rocky Mountains, is wounded by a bear and is nursed back to health by sims in exchange for making tools such as cups and bows and arrows. While there, he ends up involuntarily impregnating one of the sims, resulting in a Sim-Human hybrid. However, his interference in a challenge to the leadership of the sim tribe, resulting in a fatality, forces Quick to leave. His time among the sims makes him far more sympathetic to them, leading him to establish the sim rights movement.

Freedom

1988: A group of sim's rights activists, including a great-great-granddaughter of Henry Quick, protesting experimentation on sims, "rescue" Matt, a sim infected with HIV, from a medical lab with the intention of releasing him into a sim preserve. Having failed to take enough HIV inhibitor, which is medicine that suppresses the effects of HIV and AIDS, the activists are eventually forced to return Matt to the researchers.