Snake Featherston
Banned
A/N: This initial post is from an ATL history book called "The Hammer and the Anvil: Grant's Hanover Campaign of 1864:
One little-known aspect of the War of the Rebellion is that the Union at one point considered putting Vice-President Butler as army commander of the Army of the James. In reality, President Lincoln, facing challenges from the Copperheads and the Radicals, decided on an unusual means to outfox them both. He chose General Benjamin Butler to be his Vice-Presidential Candidate, while picking the military governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson, to be his intended next Secretary of State, replacing the unpopular Seward.
In offering this plum position to Southern Unionists, and replacing Johnson with Brownlow, Lincoln is generally recognized as having in the short term strengthened Tennessee Unionism. However there is a general tendency to see the possibility of Butler as leader of the Army of the James as an if that would have won the South the War.
I personally do not see this as the case, as Grant's victories would have happened with or without that army, and certainly Sherman's campaign was moving forward all the same. All the same, there is something instructive in how Grant's Hanover Campaign disproved the assertion about the Civil War that battles did not display an operational grasp like that seen in the later wars in Europe.
Instead, the Hanover Campaign fully justified faith in the victor of Vicksburg and Chattanooga, though the Confederate government proved the lesson the European armies later learned, that overwhelming victories on the battlefield do not of necessity end the existence of governments........
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So.....comments? The TL proper starts after I post a couple of chapters in my Star Wars TL I'm starting back up again.
One little-known aspect of the War of the Rebellion is that the Union at one point considered putting Vice-President Butler as army commander of the Army of the James. In reality, President Lincoln, facing challenges from the Copperheads and the Radicals, decided on an unusual means to outfox them both. He chose General Benjamin Butler to be his Vice-Presidential Candidate, while picking the military governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson, to be his intended next Secretary of State, replacing the unpopular Seward.
In offering this plum position to Southern Unionists, and replacing Johnson with Brownlow, Lincoln is generally recognized as having in the short term strengthened Tennessee Unionism. However there is a general tendency to see the possibility of Butler as leader of the Army of the James as an if that would have won the South the War.
I personally do not see this as the case, as Grant's victories would have happened with or without that army, and certainly Sherman's campaign was moving forward all the same. All the same, there is something instructive in how Grant's Hanover Campaign disproved the assertion about the Civil War that battles did not display an operational grasp like that seen in the later wars in Europe.
Instead, the Hanover Campaign fully justified faith in the victor of Vicksburg and Chattanooga, though the Confederate government proved the lesson the European armies later learned, that overwhelming victories on the battlefield do not of necessity end the existence of governments........
___________________________
So.....comments? The TL proper starts after I post a couple of chapters in my Star Wars TL I'm starting back up again.
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