What if Longstreet wasn't wounded my his own men during the Battle of the Wilderness? What affect would this have on the battle and the war at large?
Battle of the Wilderness: May 5-6, 1864
POD: Longstreet not wounded by friendly fire on May 6
Consequences: The Confederate counter attack on the right achieves more success than it did IOTL, bringing the Brock Road under Confederate control by nightfall. Additionally, Union casualties and prisoners were higher than IOTL.
With the Brock Road under Confederate control, Grant cannot march southeast towards Spotsylvania Courthouse around Lee's right. Consequently, being unwilling to withdraw north of the Rapidan until he has no other choice, Grant launches a full-scale assault on the Confederates, who are now dug in to formidable earthworks. The Union forces are bloodily repulsed, suffering heavy losses while inflicting relatively few.
Boxed in with his back to the river, and his army severely mauled, Grant now has no choice but to withdraw across the Rapidan, adding his name to the list of Union generals beaten by Robert E. Lee.
It's not obvious that Longstreet would be able to take and hold the Brock Road. But accepting the premise that he does and inflicts more casualties on the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the Potomac is still twice the size of the Army of Northern Virginia and he's unlikely to achieve a casualty ratio significantly different than OTL.I think this post sums it up quite nicely:
There's another possibility here that Lee having to depend on more junior corps commanders had a positive effect in the sense that he seems to have realized that delegating as he had when he could depend on Stonewall Jackson was not a successful strategy. Whether Longstreet still in place butterflies that, I couldn't tell you. If Longstreet is sent on the Raid on Washington in Early's place or something, I suspect he either does as well as Early did or worse. Predicting much beyond this runs into a horde of butterflies.
It's not obvious that Longstreet would be able to take and hold the Brock Road.
If Grant is forced back across the Rapidan by some miracle, he's still got the Army of the James operating south of Richmond and Sigel's forces operating in the Shenandoah Valley. If he turns back for Washington he's leaving them to be crushed by a redeployed Army of Northern Virginia. It's hard to see Grant not attempting a flank march via another route or maintaining contact with Lee to keep him in place at least. Grant has too many exposed chess pieces to turn back at this stage.
Re: Longstreet, there's a huge temptation by historiographers to paint him as a defensive genius in contrast to Jackson's supposed offensive genius.
Longstreets the best senior General the Rebs have, but by Overland it’s immaterial. The South’s already lost.
Both Butler and Sigel were defeated by the Confederates IOTL and were no longer very threatening by the time Lee would have even had the opportunity to detach forces to reinforce Breckinridge and Beauregard. I don't think he would want to do that in any event, since the AotP would still be dangerous and Lee would have gained the measure of Grant as an unusuall tenacious commander. Moreover, Lincoln had clearly gambled the outcome of the 1864 campaign on Grant and expended all his political capital placing him in supreme command, so he could not remove him even in the event of a disaster in the Wilderness. And the AoNV will also have suffered enormous casualties, too. So I think we would simply see the two main forces eyeing one another across the river.
We see Early dispatched to the Valley as soon as his corps could be spared from duty on the Overland Campaign in OTL and I wouldn't be horribly surprised to see that or something similar happen earlier if Grant breaks contact with Lee and for some reason doesn't avail himself of another avenue of advance.
I also tend to think Grant is going to be more inclined to continue pushing Lee rather than be seen to be breaking off the campaign entirely. That's how the political incentives were aligned at this point in the war and Grant quite rightly seems to have realized that sustaining heavy casualties while moving forward was more palatable than sustaining heavy casualties and going back to Washington.
I disagree. The South's defeat was not fully guaranteed until Lincoln's reelection was assured. Until the late summer of 1864, they still have a chance.
The problems the western theater faced were less a matter of tactics and more a matter of logistics and political conditions particular to the Army of Tennessee. I don't think see how Longstreet improves those particularly. If anything, he's more likely to adopt the same methods Johnston did at that stage of the war because that was probably the best strategy they had going for them by this stage of the war.I agree, but I think the war was lost in Georgia. The only secondary PoD I could see is making a difference is making Longstreet an Army Commander either sending him or Lee west. Longstreet may not be up to being an Army Commander, but it's hard to be worse than Hood. He might be the Goldilocks general, Hood being too aggressive and Johnston being too defensive.
What do others think.
I agree, but I think the war was lost in Georgia. The only secondary PoD I could see is making a difference is making Longstreet an Army Commander either sending him or Lee west. Longstreet may not be up to being an Army Commander, but it's hard to be worse than Hood. He might be the Goldilocks general, Hood being too aggressive and Johnston being too defensive.
Oh really? That's pretty cool. Love your book series by the way. I've always thought that Longstreet would have done well in an independent command, despite his disaster at Knoxville.Actually, an early version of Shattered Nation involved Longstreet not being wounded and Davis replacing Johnston with him rather than with Hood. I think he might have done well in such a role. Granted, his major change at independent command - at Knoxville in the fall and winter of 1863 - was pretty much a fiasco. But he was given insufficient forces and an incredibly difficult task, so that even the most skilled general would have been very unlikely to succeed.
I don't disagree that Longstreet could do well in an independent command, but by 1864 the learning curve is pretty steep and assuming Longstreet is sent to Georgia after the Overland Campaign comes to a close, that's not a lot of time to familiarize himself with the eccentricities of the AoT and formulate a strategy that will either protect Atlanta or deal a large enough defeat to a union army that the cumulative effects of set backs in the west and heavy casualties in the east could swing the outcome of the election of 1864. Almost anyone that understands that the time of bayonet charges is over does better than John Bell Hood does in this time period, and maybe Longstreet coordinates a more successful attack at Peachtree Creek, but it's hard to say whether that was really in the cards or not. I suspect that replacing Johnston with Longstreet isn't going to create a scenario that substantially improves the AoT's coordination in a way Hood was unable to at the time.