The point of this exercise was to point out the obvious. Even if Lee and the other Confederate decisions make PERFECT decisions as to where to deploy their troops, it’s hard for them to win.
Sure, if they captured Washington early, maybe. But after the first year of the war, so many Union soldiers had died that it hardened their resolve. No one is going to give up a war that you’ve already lost tens of thousands of your people fighting, if you think you can win.
And if General Grant rolls all his armies into a line, so you can’t flank around to his supplies, and slowly marches south, what can you do? In the scenario I’ve suggested, Lee doesn’t get longer ranged weapons than the other side, he has exactly the same material resources and soldiers he had historically. The Union has vastly more of both. If he wants to stop General Grant, he has to move his troops into range of Union guns.
Moreover, he doesn’t get real time communication, either - these “time traveling ghosts” can only be seen by Confederate generals.
I can see, however, that this kind of advantage might allow the war to be dragged out several additional years. However, even with a different president than Lincoln, does that even matter? Again, by the time of Lincoln’s death, so many Union soldiers had been lost that even if the war was still going, how could anyone stop it?
That’s absurd. With drone and sat feeds, the South would have known where the federal troops presently were, troop strengths, and where they were being deployed. Every battle with the North would have resulted in a rout.
The public would believe, and rightfully so, that the southern armys were virtually unbeatable. Their biggest concern would be that the South wouldn’t be satisfied with just suceeding from the U.S.A. but that the C.S.A. would use it’s unbeatable army to conquer every state and territory under U.S.A. control.
My first thought also, except the op stipulated no material aid, just perfect intelligence. I am pretty sure that an AK-47 counts as material aid.
Multiple major victories on every front would have demoralized the Union. And most likely brought England and France in on the CSA’s side, which would have been the end of the war. No way the Union could have stood up to all of them.
doorhinge, While Lee would have kept going north as far as necessary to win the war, there was no way he would have done so as a conqueror. He was a firm believer in states rights and if the northern states wanted to be part of the USA, he would have let them.
Grant wasn’t appointed Lieutenant General until March 9th, 1864. If the North had been losing every battle, and by large numbers, there would have been no reason for the North to continue the war into 1862.
Lee’s battle decisions would have been based on current, up to date (if not up to the minute) data. The North could not have surprised the South anywhere. The North wouldn’t have encountered the South anywhere unless the South decided to confront them.
The North could not beat the South if the South had drones and satellite data.
You mean like he did when he quit the Union army and was then appointed a general for the CSA? And even if he did try and conquer the North, do you really think the much smaller CSA could have kept it down, even with drones and satellites? We can’t do that in the present day, when we are the much larger adn richer country.
Seriously? You think a 500 mile wide line of soldiers marching south would be an unbeatable steamroller strategy? Do the words “concentration of force” mean anything to you?
Yes. Lee could follow orders or offered to resign.
While Lee was a remarkable general, it would not take a leader of Lee’s high caliber to beat an opposing army that waited for reports from scouts on horseback, hand written messages delivered by runners, telegraphed messages, and outdated or incorrectly drawn maps. Battles would be fought when and where CSA forces knew they had tactical advantages. Union losses in men and material would have been at least twice as high as they had been, if not higher.
Drones would have provided the South with real time battle field conditions. Sat Nav would have provided accurate and detailed overlays of battlefields and surrounding areas.
The battle at Antietam would never have been fought because Lee would have known how many troops McClellan had and where they were positioned. A battle would have been fought but only where the CSA had superior numbers and held the best ground. No CSA soldiers would have wandered into a scirmish as they had at Gettysburg. No CSA blockade runners would have been captured at sea.
You cannot compare 1861/1862 acceptable (and sometimes questionable) methods of fighting a war to present day situations where even individual soldiers are subject to daily oversite by commanders and JAG lawyers.
Maybe Habeed is thinking of a battlefield with no trees, no hills, no mountains, no valleys, no rivers, and no lakes? Something like Death Valley, the Sahara, or Atacama?
Tactically-speaking, it wouldn’t be very difficult for concentrated force(s) only one mile wide to punch multiple holes thru an offense strung out over 500 miles. It would be easy to then roll up the flanks of their thinly manned opponents, disengage when they met stiffening resistance, regroup and do it again and again and again after checking their overhead photos.
I didn’t say they couldn’t defeat the armies of the Union. But in order to actually conquer the North, and keep it, they would need to garrison the much more populous states there with troops that didn’t sign up to do that. They were mostly there to protect their states, not take over other states. There was plenty of political will and desire in the South to defeat the North and successfully secede, but I doubt there was enough for a complete conquest and long term occupation.
Indeed, if the North had been losing every battle in the Eastern theatre, it’s doubtful we’d know who Grant was. He might still have conquered Fort Donelson but by mid-'62 the USA would have had to give up.
The idea that the South could not have won the war with near-perfect intelligence is just insane. I’m sorry, but it betrays an almost fanatically crazy assumption that the larger side always wins, which, obviously, cannot be true, because
The smaller combatant has won many wars. Not to push anyone’s buttons, but Americans should know that, having lost to a smaller, weaker opponent in Vietnam. History is full of examples of the smaller-in-numbers belligerent coming out on top. If it wasn’t, no smaller country would ever bother fighting.
The scenario described is exactly the sort, albeit in a fantastical way, where a smaller combatant WOULD win a war. We’re positing a CSA with an edge in intelligence that is literally of a science fiction level; if they had that starting in 1861 the fighting would have been ridiculously lopsided.
The American Civil War was a great example of a war where the political will to fight, and the politics of how to fight, were of enormous importance in the war’s prosecution. It is inconceivable that Lincoln could have held the Union together to fight the war in the face of an uninterrupted string of horrific defeats. IT’s worth noting there was still a strong peace movement in the Union as late as mid-1864, to the point that Lincoln despaired of re-election, and to a large extent it was Sherman’s victories in Georgia that served to convince the Union electorate that victory was truly at hand.
It cannot be emphasized enough that the American Civil War wasn’t won in Virginia. At that point it was just playing out the clock; Grant was holding the CSA down while his subordinates were kicking the shit out of it. The war was won in the West, a fluid, dynamic and wide-ranging war where the CSA was torn apart by armies that were not only more numerous but MUCH better generaled. Conferring upon the CSA the ability to see what Federal armies were doing in 1862 and 1863 stops that sequence of disasters, and the events of 1864 in Virginia never happen.