So you’ve been transported back to 186X and can take one action that would end up in the CSA winning. You don’t chronoport into someone so you can’t become Jefferson Davis and give Johnston the seniority he deserves. You can take back credentials so for example you could be a CSA general from the Western Theater transferred to the Army of Northern Virginia on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg but then how do you convince Ewell to take the high ground in the early hours of the battle? The question is also what are you willing to personally do, not just a cerebral exercise. For example, I could probably assasinate Grant, his being a soldier during a war but I couldn’t assasinate Lincoln in cold blood.
Off the top of my head, a couple of ideas:
Assassinate Grant before he set siege to Vicksburg
Intercept the infamous cigars and Special Order 191 before they are found by the Union soldiers before the Battle of Antietam
What would you do?
If you could somehow save Albert Sidney Johnston’s life at Shiloh, that might have made a big difference. With Johnston commanding in the west & (eventually) Lee in the east, the war might have had fewer Confederate disasters. Maybe enough to cost Lincoln a second term.
I would convince Jefferson Davis not to fire the first shot.
No Battle of Ft Sumter or anywhere else. Up until that time, secession was a legal issue. Let the lawyers handle things. Lincoln issued a call for troops three days AFTER the shooting started in Charleston Harbor. The remaining United States were furious that the CSA would actually start shooting at a United States fort.
The newly created Republican party wanted to end slavery. The Democrat party wanted the non-slave States to mind their own business or at least stay out of the southern States business. 7 States seceeded. The U.S. Congress claimed they couldn’t do that. The 7 States replied, “Who are YOU to be talking to ME? You aren’t the Boss of me. We voluntarily joined the United States of American and now we’ve change our minds. If you don’t like it - SUE ME.”
After Ft Sumter and Lincoln’s callup, 4 more States seceeded. The western part of Virgina seceeded twice so it couldn’t have been all that difficult to do.
What made the Civil War an actual war was the fact the both sides began shooting at each other. If Jefferson Davis could be convinced to convince the CSA not to begin firing in a northern direction, Lincoln would have no reason to order federal troops to shoot south. No war.
Northern courts, including the United States Supreme Court, would hear arguments about the legality of secession and who owned what bits of federal land. Southern courts would refuse to recognize the norther court rulings. The CSA would have been established without a shot being fired.
Would Lincoln have order federal troops to march south to enforce northern court rulings? There was no popular public support for sending northern troops south for any reason. Until the shooting started.
Even if he had survived, AS Johnston would have been against US Grant, and there is no doubt as to the outcome, Grant would have defeated him throughly.
I would fire Robert E Lee and have Joe Johnston return to command in the East. Lee was too focused on defending Virginia, when ( as Johnston understood) the most important thing was to keep an Army in the field long enough to make the Union say, "you know what, fuck this, just as had been done by the British.
I’ll take Longstreet’s suggestion, and free the slaves before the war starts at Fort Sumter (and I’d be careful not to start it).
Of course, that nullifies the whole purpose of Secession; but it removes Lincoln’s two greatest pillars – Southern responsibility for belligerency and the evil of slavery. Perhaps freed slaves would have been willing to serve in the army, too…win/win/win.
A South with slavery didn’t deserve to win, anyway.
I’m inclined to agree. That seems kind of like thread-shitting, except that the OP includes the following:
In light of that statement, I wouldn’t do anything to help the South win the Civil War.
Otherwise, yeah, “intercept Special Order 191” or “convince Jefferson Davis not to start a shooting war by opening fire on Fort Sumter” seem like the most likely possibilities to me.
How would you convince Jefferson Davis not to fire on Ft. Sumter? He was a West Point grad and former Sec’y of War (and effectively his own Sec’y of War for the CSA). He wanted a shooting war so how would you convince him otherwise? Their contention was that a foreign power had a fort in one of their harbors. How do you counter that with Jeff Davis during your meeting with him?
Sailboat, how would you free the slaves before the war? You don’t have ultimate power in this scenerio.
The south dominated the war the first year. They didn’t take Washington because they were fighting a war of attrition. The strategy was to bloody the north’s nose just a little bit and the north would leave us alone. Conquering territory was not even an option. No one expected the war to last more than a few months.
That didn’t work out. Instead we got Sherman and his butchers burning his way through Atlanta and other cities the last year. The guy was a war criminal imho.
Do we know if Davis personally ordered the attack, or was it a bunch of South Carolina firebrands acting independently and Davis ended up owning it by not disowning it?
The South got off easy. Sherman should have been unleashed sooner, and with no rules.
Like others, I would not lift a finger to help the South win. I would, in fact, make a supreme effort to insure that they lost even harder than they really did.
Again, you’re not Lincoln so how would you convince him to keep McClellan.
Everyone remember that in this hypothetical you do not have absolute power to do anything you want. You do have immaculent (given 21st century technology) credentials so for example you can’t say “Have the UK recognize the CSA” because you would never have that power. You could however present yourself to Lincoln as a British diplomat - but that would only last as long as it took to confirm (or in this case) contact London and get the reply.
We’ll assume you could fake records and have yourself in the military at any rank as a transfer so if you say “Have Beauregard NOT shell Ft. Sumter” then explain how a new officer could convince him not to shell. YOU are NOT Beauregard.
I am with doorhinge on this. Try to imagine the outcome if the south (whether Jefferson Davis ordered it or not) had not fired on Fort Sumter. Lincoln had already made it clear he was sending just a resupply ship, not a warship. And the north was not interested in a war. So long as the south did nothing stupid, nothing would have happened. A year passes, it would start to look permanent. A second year, a third,…, a decade, a second decade. It has become a fait accompli. Whatever the legalities, there would be a CSA separate from the USA. I guess they would bar the southern senators and representatives even if they did try to sit. And throw out the southern supreme court justices, even if that violates the constitution. The Dred Scott decision and the fugitive slave laws would be toast. But no, the southern radicals could not wait.
Does it have to be the 1860’s? If I was traveling back in time to help the South, I’d go back to 1850 and start building foundries and shipyards in southern states.
If it has to be in the 1860’s, I’d tell them not to fire on Fort Sumter. This was an overt act of hostility that unified northern public opinion against the south. The south was better served by delaying hostilities as long as possible and trying to force Lincoln into the position of having to fire the first shots.
An interesting sidebar on the Sumpter story… While I (and probably millions of other American kids)had learned in school that the first shots of the war were fired on Fort Sumpter in April of 1861, that is arguably not true, assuming Wiki is correct. The first shots of the war were fired in January, at a ship heading to Fort Sumpter to resupply it. The is no infomation on whether any damage was done, but the ship apparently turned away without reaching the fort.