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.
Had the Confederates not made some serious errors in Gettysburg they may well have won without British help. They were winning the war until that point, and had the Union been defeated there the rest of the North was wide open. Lee made some major miscalculations and different tactics likely would have changed the outcome.
The British would have loved to weaken the U.S. and get more territory. They could have easily taken some Northern states.
"What ifs" are always fun in history.
I have to respectfully disagree. Had the confederates somehow "won" at Gettysburg it would have been no different than any of the other victories Lee won. That is the losing union army would have limped away and Lee would have been forced to lead his exhausted army - critically short of ammunition - back to his supply base. Civil war armies depended on rail lines to support them, and Lee had none to invade the North. Just as importantly the garisons in Northern cities made them effectively invulnerable. Lee was conducting what amounted to a giant raid in 1863. He had no real strategic goal and no chance with the forces at his disposal to win a decisive victory. His army was too small and his ammunition to limited to achieve anything signficant. All he could have hoped to do is win a tactical victory on northern soil. Than, out of ammunition, he would have had to fall back to Virgina.
By 1863 the chances that England or France would come in on the Southern side was nonexistent. France was heavily involved in Mexico and England had lost interest after the Emancipation Proclamation. The North was not going to give up, elections were not for another year and Lincoln was entirely commited. Even the vague hope that Grant might be forced to abandon the Vicksburg seige was unrealistic, and indeed it fell the day after the battle meaning nothing that happened at Gettsyburg could have effected the seige there.
Civil War battles between major armies were never decisive militarily, the nature of the technology and the size of the forces made this effectively impossible. Invariably the losses were similar with the loser retreating and the winner exhausted, regrouping before its next operations. Gettsyburg was only going to be decisive in the North gave up, and that was hardly likely.
A Southern victory was always predicated upon the exhaustion of the North's will to sustain the fight. There was never a chance of the South invading and overwhelming the North, followed by a military occupation to prevent rearmament for a second round. Confederate independence would have required the US giving up trying to subdue the South and extending recognition.
There was ebb and flow to Northern morale, closely tied to military fortunes. Union confidence and drive to prevail would rise with Grant's victories in the West or the Navy's capture of another port city, but then sink with each lesson in warfare that Lee administered to the Army of the Potomac's commanders.
No prolonged peaks of any sort were reached in the early years, the pendulum kept swinging both ways. 1861 was primarily a rebel year, the first half of 1862...Forts Henry and Donalson, New Orleans, Shiloh, Corinth..nothing but victories in the west, and in the East, at the end of June, the Army of the Potomac had Richmond under close siege. The Confederate attempt to break the siege (Fair Oaks/Seven Pines) had failed. All seemed doomed.
Then like the sudden change in fortune you see in professional wrestling, the Confederates got off the floor and went on the attack. Lee stampeded timid Mac away from Richmond, bamboozled Pope at Manasas and all of a sudden the rebels were on Union soil making noise. In the west, Grants first attempt at Vicksburg came apart and Bragg and Kirby Smith were marching into Kentucky.
The sun shined on the South until the middle of 1863 when we had another one of those dramatic shifts. Vicksburg surrendered the day after Gettysburg and the North was on the rise once more. They sustained their advantage through May of 1864 when Grant and Sherman launched their campaigns. Grant's astonishingly high casualty lists, accompanied by no result achieved other than establishing a siege, demoaralized the North once more. In the west, Sherman and Johnston danced their way down to Atlanta, but again there was no victory, only the establishment of a siege.
Northerners had been expecting the war to be ended that summer. Grant and Sherman were the superstars who would crush the rebel armies and sieze their two major cities. A lot of blood and treasure was expended, but the summer ended and the rebel armies were still very much full of fight.
Here was the singular key moment when a rebel victory was still possible. Lincoln had made it clear that he was going to prosecute the war until it was won, or he was removed from office. At this point in time, Lincoln was assuming that he would not be re-elected, and he called in his cabinet and told them so. He added that they had to do everything that they could in the time remaining to them to try and win the war because if they lost, it will be to someone whose position was that the war could not be won and should be stopped.
Had the South been able to hang on to Atlanta a few more months, to Mobile for a few more months, had it been Stonewall Jackson facing Sheridan in the Valley rather than Early...then...maybe..
Jefferson Davis lost the war the day he decided to fire Joe Johnston and replace him with Hood at the head of the Army of Tennessee. A stalemate around Atlanta would have worked in the Confederate's favor and encouraged the peace voters in the North. Instead, Hood provided the aggression that Davis demanded and bled his army in a series of attacks rather than taking measures to sustain the stalemate. He hastened the fall of Atlanta, and along with Sheridan's complete victory at Cedar Creek, and the Navy capturing Mobile Bay, Northern morale rose once more and people decided that the war could be, and soon would be, won. They stuck with Lincoln and the South's fate was sealed. There was never a momentum swing back to the rebels from that point through the end of the war.
So, while I agree that a victory at Gettysburg would not have meant the North had lost the war, I believe that the war might still have been lost. It all hinged on the 1864 election and that election was decided by those three Union victories in the fall of 1864, most importantly the capture of Atlanta.
If I was writing one of those "Dixie Triumphs" counterfactual novels, I would not have the South winning at Gettysburg, I would have the train carrying Hood to Atlanta crash off a bridge into a ravine and kill him.
The British might have been able to impact the outcome if they'd inserted themselves diplomatically and helped negotiate a settlement between the sides short of surrender.
I think GS's comments about when the Union was most in danger, in late 1864 before the fall of Atlanta, are exactly correct. What is interesting to me is that histories of the Civil War don't seem to give as much attention to the conflict after the battle of Chicamagua in September 1863. I agree replacing Johnson with Hood was the worse blunder of the war, although Davis made many.
Britain only seriously considered intervening once, shortly before the Antietem campaign. Diplomacy was actually not an option - the US made it clear that such behavior meant war. A war which would have cut off the UK from key food supplies, threatened Canada, and led to the destruction of much of its commerce for uncertain gain. And which might have encouraged rebellion in Britain's colonies. It would have been immensely unpopular with the British public as well.
Uncle Billy would'a flanked Old Joe out of Atlanta. I think replacing Johnston with Hood was the right thing to do; it WAS time to fight. But the great army of the West was like the big boy that couldn't be licked.
Uncle Billy would'a flanked Old Joe out of Atlanta. I think replacing Johnston with Hood was the right thing to do; it WAS time to fight. But the great army of the West was like the big boy that couldn't be licked.
Eventually...but the timing was critical. Atlanta needed to fall before the 1864 election.
Joe Johnston would not be my idea for a commander to launch an attack or lead an invasion, but he was the premier defensive fighter of the South. Sherman's march from Chatanooga to Atlanta wasn't with the objective of simply capturing Atlanta, the primary target was the Army of Tennessee, we know this from Grant's instructions to him. Each time Sherman manuevered to try and trap Johnston in the open, he found that Johnston had countered the move and established a fortified position. Atlanta was the final fortified position and a siege would be required to take it.
That was not what Grant, Lincoln or Sherman had in mind. Time was their enemy, some sort of obvious victory was mandatory to secure Lincoln's re-election and having the two major rebel armies under siege at a cost of 75,000 union casualties wasn't the sort of thing which would send Lincoln voters rushing to the polls.
Johnston was the perfect Confederate commander for that situation. Ultimately he would have been forced out of Atlanta by Sherman, but how long would that have taken as compared to how long it took Sherman once Hood had arrived and went over to the offense?
I strongly disagree with your position that it was time for the Confederates to come out and fight. History has already invalidated that decision...look what happened when they did come out and fight. Prolonging the stalemate until Lincoln was defeated was the South's final chance at victory. All actions which tended to work against that, were actions which destroyed that chance.
They don't realize it because it never was close to winning. The closest they came was in the fall of 62 and even then they didn't do so well.
I guess your missing the point that the British got the cotton from the South and the blockade on the trade with Britain, is one of the reasons the British almost joined in.
At the time the British were a force to be reckoned with. Who can say for sure but it would have been a very different war had they joined in.
I guess your missing the point that the British got the cotton from the South and the blockade on the trade with Britain, is one of the reasons the British almost joined in.
Well seeing as the Brits never "almost joined in" I reckon I am missing some point you hold with.
I strongly disagree with your position that it was time for the Confederates to come out and fight. History has already invalidated that decision...look what happened when they did come out and fight. Prolonging the stalemate until Lincoln was defeated was the South's final chance at victory. All actions which tended to work against that, were actions which destroyed that chance.
Because Hood lost the battles doesn't mean that fighting them wasn't the right thing to. For Johnston to get surrounded in Atlanta and put his entire army at risk of being bagged doesn't sound like a better option than Hood going out to fight. Given the choice of getting surrounded or going out to fight I say go out and fight.
Had Hood whipped Sherman we'd be saying that going out to fight was the proper move. The problem was the execution and outcome of the fights not the decision to make them. And remember if the fights had not been made Atlanta would've been cut off even sooner than it was. Had he been in Hood's position Old Joe would've had to make similar fights, stand siege or evacuate; just like Hood.
Davis had no reason to believe that Johnston would succeed in defeating Sherman or even holding him off. And for good reason; Johnston was the southern Little Mac.
I also wonder about the supposed lack of northern will and nationalism inherant in 1864 election argument. It bespeaks a belief that Americans don't have much grit and determination and have far lesser resolution and national fervor than the Europeans displayed in the great wars of the 20th Century. Was The United States really that brittle? Perhaps it was, Hell, perhaps it still is.
Because Hood lost the battles doesn't mean that fighting them wasn't the right thing to. For Johnston to get surrounded in Atlanta and put his entire army at risk of being bagged doesn't sound like a better option than Hood going out to fight. Given the choice of getting surrounded or going out to fight I say go out and fight.
Prolonging the stalemate was the best hope for the Confederacy at that point, and any strategy which had a high chance of rushing an unfavorable conclusion was the wrong one to pursue.
Quote:
Had Hood whipped Sherman we'd be saying that going out to fight was the proper move.
Well, yeah, but he didn't, so we, except for you, are saying it was not the proper move. Are we to base our judgments on what happened or on what might have happened if what happened had not happened?
And doesn't probability of victory factor into this? Would we argue that since Travis and his command at the Alamo were wiped out while making a defensive stand, the right thing for him to have done would have been to have marched out the gates and attacked Santa Anna's army? How likely was Hood to achieve anything worthwhile with his assaults? If his chances had been good, or even 50/50, then maybe, yeah, that was the thing to do. But if they were not very good, and the price of defeat was going to be the hastening of the fall of Atlanta, then such a strategy would have top be regarded as foolish.
Do you honestly think Hood could have accomplished much? He was an aggressive and courageous general, but seemed to lack many of the other desired attributes in an army commander. Lee, who was in a better position to pass judgment on Hood's abilities than anyone else, told Davis that Hood was a splendid division commander, but was not qualified to lead an army.
So we have an aggressive but unimaginative general, leading an attack on a force twice the size of his own.
You a betting man, Irish? Where would your $ have been placed in that dustup?
Quote:
Davis had no reason to believe that Johnston would succeed in defeating Sherman or even holding him off. And for good reason; Johnston was the southern Little Mac.
He was when the task was offensive, but identify the Civil War general who retreated better than Johnston, threw up instant field fortifications better than Johnston, and lost fewer soldiers than Johnston. Give credit where it is due.
Quote:
I also wonder about the supposed lack of northern will and nationalism inherant in 1864 election argument. It bespeaks a belief that Americans don't have much grit and determination and have far lesser resolution and national fervor than the Europeans displayed in the great wars of the 20th Century. Was The United States really that brittle? Perhaps it was, Hell, perhaps it still is.
Before those three victories I referenced, Lincoln was genuinely convinced that he was going to lose. We are looking back on events, and back at someone who has become a great American icon....Lincoln defeated? Why...preposterous! The North give up? Unthinkable! We enjoy the certainty of a retrospective view.
Lincoln was not nearly so loved while he was in office as he has become since his death. Americans who had been handed a savage shock by the casualty bill at Shiloh, had become used to such huge losses ten major battles later. Grant shocked them all over again by his strategy of continuous contact and fighting. Where before it had been 10-15 thousand lost followed by a few months of recuperation, now it was 60,000 lost in a month's worth of serial engagements.
Those "brittle" Americans in the North had been putting up with years of higher casualties than had ever before been experienced in any of their wars. Now all of a sudden they were being informed that the price was going to triple.
And from the viewpoint of September, 1864, what had that higher price yielded? Were the Confederates close to surrender? Were they unable to resist any longer? Was the end clearly in sight?
So, maybe from their perspective, they had good reason to be questioning the worth of it all. They were not looking back on a job completed, as we do, they were looking at the task remaining and being asked to sacrifice even more than they had already done.
Cedar Creek, Atlanta and Mobile Bay altered mentalties. It made it appear that the end was in sight, that the previous sacrifices had not been in vain and that further sacrifices were justified.
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.
