Anaxagoras
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I know this is Newt Gingrich's scenario, but why should we think Grant will be rushed East in a CS-Wins-Gettysburg scenario? There are still plenty of qualified generals in the Army of the Potomac.
Impact of a CS Victory of Gettysburg?
- Thread starter Anaxagoras
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I know this is Newt Gingrich's scenario, but why should we think Grant will be rushed East in a CS-Wins-Gettysburg scenario? There are still plenty of qualified generals in the Army of the Potomac.
Um, I'm not sure if this is an innocent mistake, a brain fart, or some bigass Confederate win.
Do you mean the big hill SE-ish of Gettysburg? That's Culp's Hill.
LRT is an hour or two (by foot, in daylight) to the south.
The ANV (except for the three brigades with Stuart - their poor horses are seeing some hard wear thanks to the Union cavalry being too stubborn to let Stuart pass without challenge) has been living high on the hog in Pennsylvania. Even if Lee's supplies as in ammunition and all could use some replenishing (OTL, the only real issue there was long range artillery ammunition, and even that only for the guns that took part in the bombardment before Pickett's Charge). He's not going to have to retreat back to Virginia any time soon.
Lincoln was willing to keep Hooker despite him losing at Chancellorsville.
But let's say Lincoln does decide that Meade needs to go.
Hancock is too junior. He hasn't even had a corps for more than a month.
Butler is a theoretical possibility, but elsewhere.
Sedgwick has seniority (second most senior corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, I believe, but I'd have to check) and no special signs of talent or inability that Lincoln would know about.
Reynolds's name is going to come up again, I'll bet.
P.S. Technically, Grant gets rushed into his (OTL) 1864 position in the G&F trilogy - Sickles of all people gets the Army of the Potomac because Gingrich wanted to bash the Democrats or something.
Oh definitely. I'm just addressing him as LOLFOF mentioned him.
Personally, I'd keep Meade. But if I had to replace him, Reynolds (realistically) or Hancock (given free reign).
Hancock's battle record is consistently good.
No, it is not. It is one thing for the Army of the Potomac to be defeated in a secessionist state like Virginia -it is quite another to be defeated north of the Mason-Dixon, on northern soil. Psychologically that can be devastating, more so than any previous defeat had been.
To use an example from the western theater, if Bragg's Army of Tennessee had won a decisive victory against Rosecrans at Perryville, that would have been more traumatic to the North than the OTL Confederate victory at Chickamauga a year later. Why, you ask? Because it is in Kentucky. And Kentucky was a Unionist state. And Kentucky would have subsequently joined the Confederate cause. You can imagine the butterflies from that....
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Anaxagoras
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Exactly. Invading enemy territory and defeating an enemy army on enemy soil is something a sovereign nation does, not a bunch of rebels.
This explains why Britain was crushed by the American victory at Montreal.
Oh wait.
Or, to pick an ACW battle, why everyone remembers Munfordville.
. . . does anyone remember Munfordville?
People drastically underestimate Union morale when thinking that the Union will be shaken to its foundations just because the Army of the Potomac lost a battle north of the Potomac.
Anaxagoras
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Munfordville, IIRC, was in Kentucky. That was a disputed border state. Pennsylvania is undeniably a Union state.
Disputed only in the sense the Confederacy had delusions Kentuckians wanted to be part of the CSA.
Anaxagoras
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The majority of the population was Unionist, but you can't deny that there was a large minority that favored the Confederacy. And the fact that you side with a particular party in a dispute does not change the fact that the dispute exists.
The majority to the point that it can't be honestly described as "disputed".
In 1861 it might be possible to say Kentucky could have gone either way had things turned out right. By late 1862 Kentucky is in the Union as securely as New York.
I don't think that the fact some Kentuckians preferred exile to the Union makes losing there relatively meaningless to Unionists, which is the main point.
This isn't like the Tet Offense where people have been told over and over again that the other guy is on the verge of losing and a successful battle shatters the credibility of the leaders.
The Confederates could claim that it wasn't until they were blue in the face, doesn't change Kentucky being pretty unambiguously on one side to most everyone else.
Calling it "disputed" just because the Confederates clung stubbornly to delusions isn't very meaningful for weighing how Kentucky stood.
I would argue that. The elections of 1860 were largely boycotted by the pro-Confederates so while many areas of the state were notably pro-Southern only the far western area (Jackson purchase) sent a pro-Southern representative to Congress. There were many people sympathetic to the Southern cause in central, eastern, and southern parts of the state but there is a difference between sympathy and action. Most people wanted to stay neutral which was unrealistic, or act as a mediating body/territory which was also probably unrealistic. Perryville was notable because it also saw the removal of the Kentucky shadow government from Frankfort shortly after its establishment there, a Confederate victory would have given Hawes more legitimacy and time to eastablish some sort of defense there.
Interestingly look across the Ohio at what Governor Morton of Indiana is doing at the time. He seemed to think that southern Indiana might secede and implemented quite a few...changes...in the wartime government of that state. A Confederate victory at Perryville with a capture of Louisville soon after (or in place of Perryville altogether) would create an interesting scenario, especially if Morgan decides to lead a diversionary raid into Indiana shortly after the battle. It would cause severe panic in Indiana and perhaps southern Illinois where Little Egypt had briefly considered secession as well.
My favorite way has always been, he puts a company on Culp's Hill at nightfall of the first day, drives the (enfiladed) Bluecoats off at daybreak, & the battle goes into the history books as a minor meeting engagement.Fiver said:
This has the advantage of not needing Stuart to be present, nor for Pickett to sacrifice his division for Lee's ego.
My favorite way has always been, he puts a company on Culp's Hill at nightfall of the first day, drives the (enfiladed) Bluecoats off at daybreak, & the battle goes into the history books as a minor meeting engagement.
The 7th Indiana and the six hundred survivors of the Iron Brigade eat your company and gripe about losing sleep.
Next.
Still, it's better than any day 3 scenario, and my day 2 scenario requires the Army of the Potomac to do an awful lot of fumbling.
M79: I think we can get at least some sense of how pro-Confederate Kentucky was by the disappointing turn out when Confederate armies entered the state (both in 1861 and 1862), and the total number of Kentuckians in gray vs. in blue (40k to 100k if memory serves).
Munfordville was not a major battle on the scale of Perryville, Murfreesboro, Antietam, or Gettysburg, with the outcome in doubt, and the future of the Union and the Confederacy on the line. If it was, we would have remembered it, regardless of who might have won it.
A Confederate win on July 1, 1863 including the subsequent takeover of Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill would have sufficed, considering two entire Corps of the Army of the Potomac had been virtually destroyed.
And I think you overestimate northern morale. Remember that throughout the previous two years since the war began at First Manassas, the Union had not had a single major victory over the Army of Northern Virginia worthy of the name (Antietam was basically a draw, that turned technically into a 'victory' upon Lee's subsequent withdrawal). In the wake of yet another Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, Union morale would have been fragile by the time Lee invaded Pennsylvania. Another victory by Lee on July 1, combined with the destruction of two entire Corps of the Army of the Potomac, and the retreat of the remnants of the northern army on northern soil before victorious invaders -the news headlines would have been unforgiving before a war-weary northern readership. And then there's the panic factor setting in, with widespread fears that Lee could strike Baltimore, Philadelphia, or even New York before besieging Washington.
Lee's ultimate intention was to break the will of the North to continue the war. If he had won a complete victory at Gettysburg on the First Day, that mission would have been accomplished, say what you will of its military significance. That is why President Davis had sent a peace envoy along with terms of surrender to Washington. The South could never militarily defeat the North, but psychologically? They came damn close in OTL.
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