alternatehistory.com

30 April

McClellan launches another assault on the Confederate lines around the Turnpike. His artillery arm is reasonably competent given the circumstances, but his infantry are armed very poorly and their morale is consequently not very good.
Most of the brigades bog down in front of the Confederate defensive line (which is armed much better in general, some regiments equipped with brand-new Enfield rifles) and one - part of III Corps - is shattered in moments when caught in a storm of cannister from the guns intended to act as siege weapons. Perhaps a hundred casualties hit the brigade in a matter of seconds as hundreds of half-pound balls rip into them, and their disintegration makes the whole of III Corps go to ground before they suffer the same fate.
The left wing of II Corps (the California brigade, consisting of men from Pennsylvania) manages to penetrate into the defences - largely due to counter-battery fire which fell somewhat short having inflicted casualties on the Confederate defenders - but without support they are contained and a bloody firefight begins (which costs the Union troops more casualties than the Confederate, simply because of the way some Union muskets are non-functional.)

At about 4 pm, McClellan is informed of trouble - the Confederate Army of Eastern Maryland (the army investing DC to the south and east of the turnpike) has 40,000 troops maneuvering against his rear. Mindful of the danger of being trapped and losing his entire force (and possibly assuming that the 40,000 troops may in fact be closer to 60,000), McClellan has V Corps (his reserves) prepare to cover a retreat to the north. (This decision is the cause of blistering semaphore messages between Washington and McClellan, relayed over the heads of the Confederate lines of countervallation. McClellan holds that his army is badly tired by the engagements of the day and will not be able to fight properly if a battle develops tomorrow, Lincoln considers him more willing to retreat than to fight.)

Worse news reaches Washington at 6 pm, when a dispatch from one of the cut-off forts to the west of the Turnpike Gap reaches Washington. The message informs the capital that, as the DC forts were intended to form a ring rather than a set of individual strong points, they were not properly provisioned - and that the entire arc of forts has only a day or so of food left for their substantial garrisons. (It is impossible to resupply by river due to the CSS Virginia, still operating on the Potomac.)

The Governor of Michigan, Austin Blair, is informed that (due to the "inactivity of the region in a military sense compared to the great peril elsewhere") he will need to strip the forces defending Detroit and the Lower Peninsula by at least 20,000 troops so as to form a reinforcement for the Western Theatre. The missive also informs him that he will need to make up the shortfall with his militia - which puzzles him, as he has been requesting weapons for his state for at least two months now and his militia is essentially unarmed (the Army of the Detroit and the Army of the St Clair have almost every firearm in Michigan between them) - but the biggest problem is that such a drastic drawdown would reduce his force by more than half.
The Imperial army in Windsor is also quite large. While Blair does not know the precise size, he does know that it is around the size of his own force as it currently stands - giving up 20,000 troops would render defence impossible.


The ironclads Libra, Scorpio and Pisces enter Lake Ontario, picking up a tow from civilian shipping to conserve fuel and avoid recoaling, and sail for the Welland canal.