Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
For the sake of discussion just suppose that General's Sheridan and Sherman didn't advance and win at Shenandoah and also at Atlanta during the late summer and fall of 1864 and so Lincoln had lost to General McClellan in the presidental election of november as he was way behind in the polls until those two northen victories correct. I assume that McClellan when inaugurated as the new president would have ended all hostilities towards the Confederacy and so my thoughts are that wouldn't Grant and the Union army then refuse to allow that to happen after some four years of war and hundreds of thousands of war dead already.
Would Grant have possibly overthrown McClellan as a military dictator and suspended the Constitution until the war was won by the north??
With what I know of Grant, I don't think it would happen. He was a good soldier that followed orders. From what I remember of his writings, a military dictatorship would have run counter to his beliefs and opinions on governmental power.
But the word in your question "possibly" makes it...possible. Probable is another matter.
while grant would have objected, strenuously, about mcclellan ending the war against the south, he would in the end, like macarthur 90 years later, have followed orders or retired from service.
The hypothetical is based on a false premise...that McClellan planned to end the war on terms favorable to Southern independence. That is not the case.
Among the reasons why McClellan lost was that he was at odds with the Democrat's platform. The convention of 1864 did indeed announce that it was in favor of a negotiated end to the war, but then they nominated McClellan under the assumption that he was in favor of this as well.
He was not. McClellan repudiated the platform in public and disassociated himself from it. He campaigned on a pledge to continue the war until the union had been restored.
What Grant most likely does in such a case is go after Lee with everything he has, in an attempt to break the Confederate Army before Inauguration Day in March 1865.
Lincoln would probably "second" him by getting Acts of Congress passed funding the war, and authorising further drafts, until December 1865. This would enable President McClellan to prosecute the war without needing to call the new Congress into session before that date. Hopefully, by then the war would be over and it wouldn't mstter what the Democratic party thought about it.
He was not. McClellan repudiated the platform in public and disassociated himself from it. He campaigned on a pledge to continue the war until the union had been restored.
Grandstander ... i wonder if that's only because since he was the former commander of the Union armies in that he knew that the army and it's generals would be opposed to him or the democrats ending the war until the Confederacy had lost and surrendered?
What Grant most likely does in such a case is go after Lee with everything he has, in an attempt to break the Confederate Army before Inauguration Day in March 1865.
Lincoln would probably "second" him by getting Acts of Congress passed funding the war, and authorising further drafts, until December 1865. This would enable President McClellan to prosecute the war without needing to call the new Congress into session before that date. Hopefully, by then the war would be over and it wouldn't mstter what the Democratic party thought about it.
I see now as that does make sense launching an all out attack and try to crush them before Lincoln left office in march 1864.
Grandstander ... i wonder if that's only because since he was the former commander of the Union armies in that he knew that the army and it's generals would be opposed to him or the democrats ending the war until the Confederacy had lost and surrendered?
It was the realization on McClellan's part that the Democrats notion that the South would negotiate an end to the war without demanding independence, was a naive belief.
McClellan did indeed believe this himself for a number of years, a part of his caution in his campaigns may be related to his not wanting to the war to spiral out of control and harden the resolve of the Confederates. McClellan's notion in the early going was a restored union with slavery still intact and some sort of new compromise negotiated. As the war continued, he came to recognize that the Southern attitudes made this impossible. They had declared for independence and no end of the war which failed to recognize this was going to be acceptable.
The Democratic Party was slower in grasping this and as late as 1864, clung to the idea that stopping the war would lead immediately to the return of the rebelling states.
Being at odds with your own party platform is a good formula for losing an election, but if McClellan had somehow won, he would have been in an extremely difficult position in that his stance on the war more closely mirrored the party on its way out than the party on its way in. I suspect that this would have led to executive paralysis, and it never took much to freeze McClellan into inaction.
Prosecuting the war to a triumphant conclusion would have been very vexing for Mac because he would have lacked support from the very people who elected him. If A Democrat controlled Congress had been elected along with Mac, we would have had a situation where Congress and the executive were looking to head in opposite directions. And I think Mac would have lost that battle, he was never an artful politician.
I see now as that does make sense launching an all out attack and try to crush them before Lincoln left office in march 1864.
The Union had been launching what were intended to be all out attacks since 1861, so I have no idea how a post election campaign would have faired any better than those that were launched under Grant's overall leadership.
Grant overthrown President Mac to be dictator? Not in Grant's makeup as a human. Nothing I have read, countless historical accounts, portray him with that sort of ruthless ambition. You are talking about a guy who's uniform was generally a mud splatterd private's coat.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
