There’s been a lot out there about the Civil War lately due to the sesquicentennial and one thing I read intrigued me. There was a blog post over on the Atlantic.com by Ta Nehisi Coates about Robert E. Lee’s decision to resign from the U.S. Army and stand with his home state, Virginia (sorry, a search failed to turn up the post). This post by Mr. Coates mentioned some old letters recently found that suggest R.E. Lee’s family actually wanted him to remain in the U.S. Army. This got me thinking: what if Robert E. Lee fought for the Union?
Personally, I think his leadership and tactical skills would’ve brought the conflict to an end before 1863 and maybe even brought victory at the first battle of Bull Run/Manassas in 1861.
It never ceases to amaze me how history can pivot on a single person or one seemingly insignificant event.
I don’t think there’s much debate that Lee was a better general than anybody the North had early on (or, possibly, ever; of course that’s more debated), and also a charismatic and inspiring figure apart from his absolute military value. So it can’t have been anything but a hurt to the secesh cause and a help to the unionist, had he gone that way.
At the same time, I think the South was determined to fight, if put to it. I suspect few federal soldiers were as motivated. No doubt Lee going the other way would have made a difference. But apart from Lincoln, I don’t believe that there was any course of action open to any one individual that would have made that much difference.
I’ve mused on this myself. Shelby Foote maintained Lee’s choice was inevitable - that he would always side with Virginia over the Union - but other historians disagree.
I figure the war would have been wrapped up in two years, tops, with a Northern victory, but with Southern infrastructure left largely intact and slaves not freed, making another rebellion inevitable ten to twenty years later and after a significant Southern buildup of arms and defenses, with Civil War 2 being as much worse than Civil War 1 as World War 2 was over its predecessor. Vast destruction of the Southern states results and a weakened U.S. isn’t in a position to wage McKinley’s foreign wars or push the Progressive agenda…
Well, some resolution of the slavery issue would have been inevitable eventually. It need not have been war; other countries managed to divest themselves of the institution without massacring each other over it. And if that could have been resolved without bloodshed and occupation akin to what actually happened, I have long felt, far fewer white Southerners might have held such bitter resentments, or been inclined to helplessly turn them against black folks.
I don’t think so. There may not be total war, but probably even after a short war there is going to be gradual abolition of some sort and moreover secession is going to be completely discredited. Plus the disparity between the North and South will continue to grow.
I’d assume the Peninsula Campaign and subsequent Seven Days Battles would have gone the other way had Lee been in charge of the Northern Army, with Richmond captured in mid-1862.
It seems we’ve got similar thoughts, Mr. Ekers. I was also thinking Lee may have come up with something better than a frontal assault at Fredericksburg.
There was a quote from the recent History Channel special “Lee & Grant” that said something along the lines of “Grant with Lee’s army doesn’t change the outcome of the war, but Lee with Grant’s army is a completely different story”.
Bri2k
Yeah, I was going to say the Peninsula Campaign. McClellan has a reputation of being a very good raiser and organizer and trainer of armies, but he seems to have had a real knack for convincing himself that he was outnumbered (when in fact his forces outnumbered the enemy). A more aggresive Union commander would probably have captured the Confederate capital in 1862.
Of course, that alone wouldn’t necessarily have knocked the Confederacy out, and as Bryan Ekers suggested, a (relatively) quick and easy Union victory might have had all sorts of strange and unforseeable consequences as compared to the real-world bloody and horrible destruction of the South.
I don’t really see how putting him in command during the Peninsula Campaign would necessarily have changed anything. Lee was always at his best when he was on the tactical defensive (even if he was on the strategic offensive).
Fredericksburg I could see. Definitely Chancellorsville.
I’m kinda wondering if the capture of Richmond (assuming it happened somewhere in 1862) would have fractured the CSA (itself not that tightly-bound an organization) so at least some of the southern states declared themselves wholly independent republics that the Union would have to decide to invade, starve/blockade into submission or write off. I can see Texas going this route, for example, given their history, possibly even fighting among themselves. The Machemehl family and their supporters, for example, return from their self-imposed exile in Mexico to try to seize power in Texas as a prelude to returning to the Union.
Foote was a Southern apologist, and a huge fan of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a general that unbiased historians think was rather insignificant- except for the massacre against the USA Black soldiers and his founding of the KKK. Mind you, he was a able cavalry raider, but the CSA had several of them. As a general, he was forgetable.
But I agree- RE Lee joining the North is a very interesting alt-hist, one never touched upon, afaik. The North might have been able to wrap up the war in a short time, leading to another conflict of sorts down the road. Perhaps only a political conflcit, however.
I’m sorry, did you just dismiss Nathan Bedford Forrest’s abilities as a commander? The man who paralyzed whole armies through cavalry raids, crushed superior units time and time again with quite varied strategies, from courage to superior manuevering to surprise to deception? The man who
It doesn’t matter whether you like him or not. Forrest may have been the most gifted soldier of his day leading independant units. He notably changed the course of the war, and against a lesser general than Grant might have been able to prevent Vicksburg’s fall. No other cavalry commander comes close, except possibly Benjamin Grierson. Forrest notably never weakened - he enjoyed success even as the Confederacy crumbled, it was simply that all his efforts could eventually no longer change the face of campaigns.
I know of no reputable historian whatsoever who says that Forrest was “forgettable.” Both good and bad - and what’s interesting is just how incredibly American and complicated he was - Forrest was a man to remember.
I’ve read that one of the key factors in the early months of the war was that the Union had a standing army and the Confederates were starting a new army.
There had been a pool of military professionals in 1860. With the secession, the southern army men went south and joined the Confederate army. The northern army men, obviously, stayed in the Union army.
And that meant that the northern professionals stayed in their existing units. The Confederates, on the other hand, were starting up all new units and their professionals were assigned to these new units. The Union army was expanding and also forming new units, but as was the practice of the period, they did not reassign trained soldiers from older units.
So the Union army had a handful of units that were filled with professional soldiers and a bunch of new units that were filled with green recruits. The Confederate army had all units that were mostly recruits but each was formed around a cadre of professionals.
You don’t need a lot of experienced soldiers to greatly improve a unit - one or two veterans can be an example for dozens of recruits. So the new Confederate units started out much better than the new Union units. As long as the Confederate units avoided the small number of old Union units, they could expect to beat any unit in a one-on-one match.
The Confederates lost this initial advantage after the first year as all of the units began experiencing combat and becoming veteran units. After that, the Confederates had a disadvantage, if anything, because the belief that they were superior to their Union counterparts was now ingrained in them but was no longer true. That led to some disasters on the battlefield.
Well of his contempories; Nathan Bedford Forrest was the only general that US Grant feared; he did not think much of either Lee or Jackson for instance and Sherman famously was ready to bankrupt the treasury to finish him.
Yes I have always disliked that assessment. Grant is (outside the US) always considered as one of the premier generals of all time and Lee if he is even remembered is thought of as “one of the guys Grant beat”.
Grant was miles ahead of Lee as a strategist, Lee had not a hope against him vis a via logistics and Grant was definatly his superior tactically.
Lee with Grants army would never have been able to achieve any thing like what US Grant did; he would not have Grants strategic outlook nor his abilities with logistics.