Lee Does Not Invade Pennsylvania

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What if Lee fought a purely defensive war? How does the Civil War turn out if the battle of Gettysburg never happens? Would Lee continue to win every battle? Would the Union eventually give up, and grant the south independence? If so, how long would it take? What would be the Union's best course of action to defeat the Confederate army?
 
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What if Lee fought a purely defensive war? How does the Civil War turn out if the battle of Gettysburg never happens? Would Lee continue to win every battle? Would the Union envetually give up, and grant the south independence? If so, how long would it take? What would be the Union's best course of action to defeat the Confederate army?

If Lee fought a purely defensive war . . . what's the POD? You'd have to go back to the Seven Days, or at best the Maryland Campaign.

Meanwhile, the rest of the war outside Virginia is presumably going on as OTL - maybe worse than OTL.
 
What if Lee fought a purely defensive war? How does the Civil War turn out if the battle of Gettysburg never happens? Would Lee continue to win every battle? Would the Union envetually give up, and grant the south independence? If so, how long would it take? What would be the Union's best course of action to defeat the Confederate army?


Keep attacking.

Lee had a horrific casualty ratio for the outnumbered part eventually his army breaks the real disasters were out West anyway.
 
What if Lee fought a purely defensive war? How does the Civil War turn out if the battle of Gettysburg never happens? Would Lee continue to win every battle? Would the Union envetually give up, and grant the south independence? If so, how long would it take? What would be the Union's best course of action to defeat the Confederate army?
Just keep pushing Lee, even at worst casualties still favor the Union

The South is doomed, the blockade, coastal and western campaigns will still kill it eventually

At best Lee stretches it out another few months
 
If we're talking May 1863 here

The choices before the Confederate cabinet were basically two: 1) Allow Lee to take the ANV up into Pennsylvania to seek a decisive battle, or 2) detach a corps from Lee's army to send out west - either to reinforce Rosecrans or, more likely, to send to Joe Johnston to break the siege of Vicksburg. Longstreet favored the second option, as did Postmaster General John Reagan. Davis and the rest of the cabinet supported the former once Lee lined up behind it.

Of course, in OTL, Option 2 was tried after Option 1 failed anyway.

But if Lee does not invade the north, he's going to lose that corps, at least for a while. Vicksburg was under siege, and Chattanooga was under threat. Something *had* to be done. And what good are interior lines if you aren't going to use them?

An interesting (if unlikely) twist would be one where Lee was also sent with the corps, to take over command of the reinforced army in question (Bragg's or Johnston's), on the theory that wherever the CSA was going to make its big summer push, Lee ought to be in charge of it. That could have produced better results - Rosecrans really smashed, or Grant thrown back and the siege broken - but even a victory like that would only have delayed the inevitable.
 
The choices before the Confederate cabinet were basically two: 1) Allow Lee to take the ANV up into Pennsylvania to seek a decisive battle, or 2) detach a corps from Lee's army to send out west - either to reinforce Rosecrans or, more likely, to send to Joe Johnston to break the siege of Vicksburg. Longstreet favored the second option, as did Postmaster General John Reagan. Davis and the rest of the cabinet supported the former once Lee lined up behind it.

Of course, in OTL, Option 2 was tried after Option 1 failed anyway.

But if Lee does not invade the north, he's going to lose that corps, at least for a while. Vicksburg was under siege, and Chattanooga was under threat. Something *had* to be done. And what good are interior lines if you aren't going to use them?

An interesting (if unlikely) twist would be one where Lee was also sent with the corps, to take over command of the reinforced army in question (Bragg's or Johnston's), on the theory that wherever the CSA was going to make its big summer push, Lee ought to be in charge of it. That could have produced better results - Rosecrans really smashed, or Grant thrown back and the siege broken - but even a victory like that would only have delayed the inevitable.

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/confederate-strategy-in-may-june-1863-the-what-ifs.10013/

I don't think we can say it would only delay the inevitable if you really and truly smash Rosecrans and/or Grant. The Union doesn't have infinite will to keep fighting - stronger than it's often credited with when people discuss the Union will collapsing because of Confederate wins, but it is finite.

The thread linked to addresses the problems with a big victory in Tennessee or Mississippi - well worth a read if one wants to explore that.

For what it's worth, I'm Elennsar on that site.
 
http://civilwartalk.com/threads/confederate-strategy-in-may-june-1863-the-what-ifs.10013/

I don't think we can say it would only delay the inevitable if you really and truly smash Rosecrans and/or Grant. The Union doesn't have infinite will to keep fighting - stronger than it's often credited with when people discuss the Union will collapsing because of Confederate wins, but it is finite.

The thread linked to addresses the problems with a big victory in Tennessee or Mississippi - well worth a read if one wants to explore that.

For what it's worth, I'm Elennsar on that site.

Well, I *do* think Snake is onto something when he argues that once the West was breached in 1862, the CSA had really lost it irretrievably. The geography, and the quality of commanders, really allowed the union to take full advantage of its advantages.

I'm just not sure that the Union public willpower had been anywhere near crested in the spring of 1863. I'm not sure that a failure to capture Vicksburg or a Chancellorsville in the West is enough to crack the North. I think you need something more.

I *am* trying to figure out how to pull out the huge kind of victory you'd need to make a difference. So where do the extra troops go? Johnston or Bragg? Vicksburg was the point of acute danger. Reagan was (rightly) of the opinion that a determined general like Grant could not be jarred loose short of a direct attack. But assembling sufficient forces in Mississippi in time was no easy feat. Johnston only commanded a scratch force of...about 15,000 men by May 15. Even adding two of Longstreet's corps won't give him a decisive advantage over Grant (over 50,000 by that point, to increase to 75,000 by July); you'd have to detach units from Bragg, and perhaps elsewhere as well. And all those troops have farther to travel. Having Grant die in a tragic drinking accident doesn't help much, since Billy Sherman would just take over.

So the more likely choice seems to be sending Longstreet to Chattanooga. Perhaps you take his two corps, and you strip Beauregard down, too. With all that you have an advantage of 15-20,000 men, perhaps, over Rosecrans, with the Virginia & Tennessee RR still available for faster transport, as soon as possible (second week of May onward) though supplying that suddenly larger army would be a real challenge. But even so, the real problem is that you still have Bragg commanding it. Perhaps if *he* had a drinking accident, you could have Longstreet take command on short notice, or at worst, Hardee or Joe Johnston. But maybe it's Old Pete, and he has a good day and manages to defeat a big part of Rosey's army in detail somewhere south of Tullahoma.

The problem is that this seems to only get Grant moved to Tennessee, and plenty of troops available to move with him. To me, that seems to only buy some time, a couple months, perhaps. Pemberton might have hung on, but his force won't be good for much, and Lee is entirely on the defensive with a skeleton force on the Rappahannock, waiting until Hooker/Meade/whoever refits the AOP for another big push; the window for accomplishing something is fairly small. So even this doesn't seem like a great scenario for the South.

Thanks for the link. Interesting discussion. I'm inclined to agree with your theory there: Lee was still the South's best hope because he was its best army commander, and the mistake may have been not maxing out all available forces to Virginia for a maximum push under his command.
 
Well, I *do* think Snake is onto something when he argues that once the West was breached in 1862, the CSA had really lost it irretrievably. The geography, and the quality of commanders, really allowed the union to take full advantage of its advantages.

I'm just not sure that the Union public willpower had been anywhere near crested in the spring of 1863. I'm not sure that a failure to capture Vicksburg or a Chancellorsville in the West is enough to crack the North. I think you need something more.

I agree. I think it might be a good start - but in and of itself, no. It's more that inflicting that would potentially mean that as things unfold - by the time of the elections - things have fallen short.

But there's no possible "if the Confederacy wins at X it wins the war" - even Washington.

So the more likely choice seems to be sending Longstreet to Chattanooga. Perhaps you take his two corps, and you strip Beauregard down, too. With all that you have an advantage of 15-20,000 men, perhaps, over Rosecrans, with the Virginia & Tennessee RR still available for faster transport, as soon as possible (second week of May onward) though supplying that suddenly larger army would be a real challenge. But even so, the real problem is that you still have Bragg commanding it. Perhaps if *he* had a drinking accident, you could have Longstreet take command on short notice, or at worst, Hardee or Joe Johnston. But maybe it's Old Pete, and he has a good day and manages to defeat a big part of Rosey's army in detail somewhere south of Tullahoma.
(snip.)

Thanks for the link. Interesting discussion. I'm inclined to agree with your theory there: Lee was still the South's best hope because he was its best army commander, and the mistake may have been not maxing out all available forces to Virginia for a maximum push under his command.
Yeah. The West simply does not have anywhere the Confederacy can win big enough to disrupt things enough to matter. Grant doesn't have to pull out of Mississippi to reinforce Rosecrans even if somehow the AoT pulls off the closest thing to a Cannae the war permits.

Not that the ANV on its own can win the war, but it might be able to deliver enough of a blow to dislocate the Union's plans enough to lead to a situation around election time where people are angry about the losses of the Third Battle of Chattanooga and wanting to get rid of Lincoln - and get anyone who promises to oppose his polices in his place.

McClellan in OTL being elected would not be able to lose the war, McClellan handed that situation might manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory IF the AoT and ANV are hanging on.

But as you noted Snake noting, the situation in the West stinks. I disagree with him that it's absolutely hopeless, but the best the CSA can do is - effectively - an effective delaying action, making it impossible for the Union to score significant triumphs without paying through the nose for them, and keeping its armies intact and fighting as tenaciously as the Eastern armies did OTL.

Get that, and the advantages of the North actually run into the difficulties of facing so much to fight over. Don't get that, and it really isn't that big a deal that the CSA is so damn huge.

Trying to win the decisive thing in Tennessee runs into the fact all the advantages play to the Union not losing, and the CSA having unbelievable trouble keeping a big enough army together to be a major dilemenia - or even forming it.

Mars's crimson soaked jock strap, I have a hard enough time figuring out how to get 90,000 Confederates under Lee, and that with Lee OTL being 75,000 at Gettysburg.

15,000 men is a lot of men to pry loose from anywhere with the situation as it is. North Carolina and Richmond supplying ten thousand would mean twisting Harvey Hill's arm practically out of its socket - it's not flat out impossible, but it would take total commitment on Davis's part. And five thousand from elsewhere - where is there an "elsewhere" which can do that? Beauregard's forces are scattered thinly, Sam Jones and Buckner's departments are undermanned as it is . . .

So . . . long story short, it's a mess. And Lee going on the defense doesn't really change that at all except forfeiting the opportunity to force Union strategists to respond to Confederate operations instead of vice-versa.
 
Funny I had a college course where the Professor SWORE that if Lee had fought the same limited war, guerilla strategy that Washington used in the Revolution, the South would've won. But would this have been wise with the considerable advancement in technology since then?

Unless I'm mistaken folks, wasn't a reason for Lee's invasion to force a domestic political demand for a peace settlement in the North? Then again Lee adopting his relative Washington's aura of surviving his numerically/militarily superior adversary, force the Union army to chase him like a fool after a chicken, don't give the North moral victories to convince them to slug it out? Outlast them because the clock is against the North..

Of course strangely enough Richmond remained as a target that Lee was always concious of, even though why the Confederates didn't learn from the Revolution that capturing a city was meaningless if you didn't capture the government leaders (or destroy their army)? Move the capital to North Carolina.
 
Funny I had a college course where the Professor SWORE that if Lee had fought the same limited war, guerilla strategy that Washington used in the Revolution, the South would've won. But would this have been wise with the considerable advancement in technology since then?

Limited war, guerrilla strategy? Washington?

That aside - Lee is only one army commander, and he did hold Virginia up until the rest of the Confederacy was lost because others couldn't defend their areas.

Unless I'm mistaken folks, wasn't a reason for Lee's invasion to force a domestic political demand for a peace settlement in the North? Then again Lee adopting his relative Washington's aura of surviving his numerically/militarily superior adversary, force the Union army to chase him like a fool after a chicken, don't give the North moral victories to convince them to slug it out? Outlast them because the clock is against the North..
Washington repeatedly tried to actually fight - even fight aggressively - the British army.

Of course strangely enough Richmond remained as a target that Lee was always concious of, even though why the Confederates didn't learn from the Revolution that capturing a city was meaningless if you didn't capture the government leaders (or destroy their army)? Move the capital to North Carolina.

Richmond is immensely valuable even if the capital is in a different dimension, nevermind a different state, so Lee still has to defend it.

Plus, moving the capital to North Carolina doesn't really help when drawing the Federals to focus on taking Richmond is drawing them to face the CSA's best army in the best conditions the CSA had to fight in (from Two Great Rebel Armies).
 
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fighting a defensive war would be Longstreet's forte... from all accounts, it was something he was pretty good at. At the same time, fighting nothing but a defensive war against a larger and stronger power means that you'll just lose more slowly... sooner or later, the Rebs have to go on the offensive, or they'll just be ground down...
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
fighting a defensive war would be Longstreet's forte... from all accounts, it was something he was pretty good at. At the same time, fighting nothing but a defensive war against a larger and stronger power means that you'll just lose more slowly... sooner or later, the Rebs have to go on the offensive, or they'll just be ground down...

They'll be ground down only if the Northern public continues to support the war. If adopting the strategic defensive in Virginia produces more Confederate victories and heavier Union casualties, the Northern public might throw in the towel and elect a peace administration in 1864.
 
They'll be ground down only if the Northern public continues to support the war. If adopting the strategic defensive in Virginia produces more Confederate victories and heavier Union casualties, the Northern public might throw in the towel and elect a peace administration in 1864.

true... but only if the Rebs do win more than they did in OTL. At the same time, a war that is fought entirely in the south is going to be good for northern morale. You have to wonder about how a Union army that is always on the attack is going to fare... will Grant come to the forefront that much faster? And with no Gettysburg, you might have Reynolds survive longer; by most accounts, he was a pretty good general...
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
true... but only if the Rebs do win more than they did in OTL. At the same time, a war that is fought entirely in the south is going to be good for northern morale. You have to wonder about how a Union army that is always on the attack is going to fare... will Grant come to the forefront that much faster? And with no Gettysburg, you might have Reynolds survive longer; by most accounts, he was a pretty good general...

But adopting the strategic defense does not really mean allowing the Union army to attack all the time. After all, the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville and the Wilderness were all battles which were strategically defensive but tactically and/or operationally offensive.
 
But adopting the strategic defense does not really mean allowing the Union army to attack all the time. After all, the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville and the Wilderness were all battles which were strategically defensive but tactically and/or operationally offensive.

And all took a heavy toll on the confederates.
 
And with no Gettysburg, you might have Reynolds survive longer; by most accounts, he was a pretty good general...

Reynolds was the best Union commander to come up in the East. Lincoln dropped the ball when he declined to give him the command.

With Grant and Sherman in the West and Reynolds in the East...
 
Hello Elf,

Mars's crimson soaked jock strap, I have a hard enough time figuring out how to get 90,000 Confederates under Lee, and that with Lee OTL being 75,000 at Gettysburg.

15,000 men is a lot of men to pry loose from anywhere with the situation as it is. North Carolina and Richmond supplying ten thousand would mean twisting Harvey Hill's arm practically out of its socket - it's not flat out impossible, but it would take total commitment on Davis's part. And five thousand from elsewhere - where is there an "elsewhere" which can do that? Beauregard's forces are scattered thinly, Sam Jones and Buckner's departments are undermanned as it is . . .

So . . . long story short, it's a mess. And Lee going on the defense doesn't really change that at all except forfeiting the opportunity to force Union strategists to respond to Confederate operations instead of vice-versa.


Oh, I think you probably could find them - they won't all be high quality, or well officered - if you strip out Beauregard and perhaps Buckner, Pickett's other two divisions...you'd be taking a risk, and Jeff Davis wasn't big on risk. I don't think that's the issue so much as how do you supply them all in one place?

The CSA could better supply a big army in Virginia, but less so in Tennessee (let alone Mississippi) - another strike against John Reagan's strategy. With Longstreet on hand, the AOT could strike a blow all right, but they'd have a short reach. Even if they whip Rosecrans out of his boots, trying to supply a repeat of Kirby-Smith's and Bragg's invasion of Kentucky with twice as large an army would be a real challenge.

It seems to me that the better (Virginia) idea would have been what Lee wanted - to assemble a big enough subsidiary army in Virginia to threaten Washington (or create the perception of the same, since we're talking about 15,000-20,000 troops, tops), and force Hooker (and whoever replaces him) to stay somewhat honest while Lee moves up into Pennsylvania. Otherwise, Lee is going to have a fun time supplying 90K men off the land, much of them forces scratched up from elsewhere suddenly and unaccustomed to working together, with little organic supply of their own...

Still seems the best bet to me. Otherwise, next best is to send Lee himself and a corps of his choosing off to Chattanooga, and try to wreak as much damage in Tennessee as possible before Vicksburg falls and the AOP recuperates, leaving Longstreet in command on the Rappahanock. Not much of a choice, I'm afraid. But as you say, maybe that could allow a stalemate to form, East and West, until the election, if they get a few lucky breaks.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
So did almost every battle in the Eastern theater. You want to avoid heavy casualties, the only way to do so is avoiding major battles - and that won't work at all.

Unless Lincoln decides to keep Burnside in command after Fredericksburg. Which, of course, would never happen in a million years.
 
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