A change from CS victory Civil War WIs.....

In the OTL battle, the Union failed to unite McClellan and Pope's forces. Suppose McClellan decides to ship his forces to join Pope's forces before Lee could react, as he had an opportunity to. Suppose that at Second Bull Run, instead of facing Pope alone with 50,000 men, he has Pope and McClellan with 140,000 men. I fail to see how, unless the two generals f*ck up worse than either did alone in OTL, Lee can beat an army that nearly outnumbers him three to one.

How does this affect the Virginia campaign? If McClellan for once in his life can pull a fast one on Lee, Lee will be in dutch. His 50,000 will have to find a good position from which to bleed out this army. Might the OTL Second Bull Run campaign become an early Fredericksburg? Or could the Army of Northern Virginia get smashed to bits by sheer weight of numbers like in the Eastern Front of World War II? And if the two armies beat Lee, what happens to the Confederacy? Would the capital move perhaps to Atlanta?
 
Well, I would expect that, even against Robert E. Lee, even McCLean and Pope could win when they have him pinned against Richmond and outnumbered by such a large margin. Or at least pin him in place. We may see an earlier battle of Fredericksburg. The Confedereacy will be in a bind. Surrender Richmond and Virginia, or pull everything out of a western theatre where the North has a new chance to achieve something (despite squandering Shiloh). Either way, the CSA is up the creek without a paddle.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Even with 140,000 men, McClellan would have found a way to avoid attacking. To start with, he would have estimated that Lee's army of 50,000 men actually numbered 150,000.
 
Your big problem here is McCellan himself. It's just part of his personality that no matter how many men he has and no matter how many men Lee has, McCellan is always going to think Lee's forces are much larger than his own and therefore he cannot attack.

To make this work you are either going to have to make McCellan a very different kind of general in TTL, or have a much more capable general commanding The Union forces.
 
Since I'm way too short on sleep, let me throw something crazy out:

Lincoln travels to AoP HQ and demands to see all officers with the rank of BG or higher. He tells them to either commit to closing to battle or resigning on the spot. Then he picks a commander from whomever's left.
 
In the OTL battle, the Union failed to unite McClellan and Pope's forces. Suppose McClellan decides to ship his forces to join Pope's forces before Lee could react, as he had an opportunity to. Suppose that at Second Bull Run, instead of facing Pope alone with 50,000 men, he has Pope and McClellan with 140,000 men. I fail to see how, unless the two generals f*ck up worse than either did alone in OTL, Lee can beat an army that nearly outnumbers him three to one.

How does this affect the Virginia campaign? If McClellan for once in his life can pull a fast one on Lee, Lee will be in dutch. His 50,000 will have to find a good position from which to bleed out this army. Might the OTL Second Bull Run campaign become an early Fredericksburg? Or could the Army of Northern Virginia get smashed to bits by sheer weight of numbers like in the Eastern Front of World War II? And if the two armies beat Lee, what happens to the Confederacy? Would the capital move perhaps to Atlanta?

First things first, John Pope had 62,000 men at 2nd Manassas and Lee had 50,000 so the Union nubers would be more like 152,000...just to be accurate.

And just because the Union Army has these numbers doesn't mean that they would win. Take Chancellorsville for example, The Union army there numbered around 133,000 men while the ANV numbered around the 60,000 mark but the ANV still won.

Also if Lee knows that McClellan has linked up with Pope then he may not even fight at Manassas. But also I cant see Pope and McClellan working that well together.

If the Union get a victory at 2nd Manassas then it would be likely that the army would be slit appart as McClellan would favour a slow caucitous apporach and Pope would prefer to attack quickly. The two would go off and do their own thing and both would be beaten in turn by Lee.

The commanders of the Union forces in the east at this point in time are either incompitant or useless or both and they would somehow manage to lose any advantage that they could get.
 
Your big problem here is McCellan himself. It's just part of his personality that no matter how many men he has and no matter how many men Lee has, McCellan is always going to think Lee's forces are much larger than his own and therefore he cannot attack.

To make this work you are either going to have to make McCellan a very different kind of general in TTL, or have a much more capable general commanding The Union forces.

Exactly. It's the same problem as all the "What If Hitler hadn't invaded the USSR?"-type scenarios: to propose that sort of theory, you need a complete departure from the well-established nature of the man himself. McClellan was a fine parade-ground general; nothing more. He could have had 200,000 men under his command, and he would have asked for another 50,000 before launching an offensive against Lee.

A more plausible scenario, if you want to have the Army of the Potomac smash the ANV in 1862, is to assume that the Army would have a real general running the show by that point. Perhaps Grant; he'd been fairly well established by this point anyway; it's not unreasonable to think that they might have turned to a western general sooner than they did, given the success he had at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, etc. Or maybe John Reynolds. They offered him command of the Army of the Potomac a year later anyway, and he turned it down (a decision that arguably cost him his life).
 

67th Tigers

Banned
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=13747

It's always interesting to contrast Longstreet's superb offensive tactics (2nd Manassas being the obvious example) with Jackson's rather poor tactics (his mishandled flanking attack on 11th Corps at Chancellorville being the obvious example).

It would be interesting if Longstreet was allowed to redeploy into his prefered (European style) assault formation on day 3 of Gettysburg (i.e. a secession of lines), instead of using Jacksons "all up" formation, but in that case time dictated, it took half a day to set up that attack anyway without a countermarch. Anyway, I digress....

At the time of 2nd Manassas, McClellan's (reduced) army was only 49,000 strong, and Pope had been heavily reinforced to 93,000 men....
 
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