Japhy
Banned
So as an off the cuff way to put Rosecrans in the position that he is brought to Washington in the aftermath of the First Battle of Bull Run is the fact that at the start of the American Civil War George McClellan was contacted by agents of or received outright offers to command the state militias of either three or five states depending on the source. IOTL he accepted command of the Ohio militia and thus became the man sent into modern West Virginia where the minor battles of the campaign were taken as great victories and he was quickly summoned to Washington to build what would become the Army of the Potomac from the Bull Run survivors and various other commands. Having McClellan take the job in any of the other states that approached him (Pennsylvania and New York as open offers, New Jersey and Illinois as conversations) the West Virginia campaign is out of his hands.
Rosecrans IOTL was McClellans second in command in the campaign and due to the nature of it is the man who did a lot of the leg work that led to the various victories the Union gained in the region, with a near-universal consensus giving him more credit than McClellan for them, if only because of the distances and terrain involved, so for the sake of discussion I think its fair to say the campaign need not be too different, and if Rosecrans was the overall commander he is the hero of the hour and the closest option to bring to Washington to command the new Department of the Potomac.
And so, how do things develop differently from that point on? On one hand with the Army of the Potomac and the obvious potential of him becoming General-in-Chief as McClellan was for a time, Rosecrans was a firm believer in utilizing large Staffs in a manner more in line with Continental European Doctrine than his contemporaries. He was also noted for creating units of Pioneers as an elite engineering force in the Army of the Cumberland, which facilitated many of the rapid movements he used while in command of it, and which would be used after his relief. At the same time he certainly had a tendency for not moving until he was ready, something which goes without saying was a problem in the Eastern Theater of the War, he had clear political aspirations in opposition to the politics of the administration and the political coalition it commanded (Though no talk of dictatorship, either self-deprecatingly or openly) and of course there is the issue of his conduct when the war turned on him and left the field at Chickamagua.
***I am not asking for another rehash of the Grant vs McClellan discussions that have gone on in the last few ACW threads, or a discussion of McClellan's merits as a commander. Obviously we all have to talk about McClellan in this, but let us please try to keep the discussion limited to him vs Rosecrans and how Rosecrans would have operated been responded to both by the Confederates and the Federal Government differently***
Rosecrans IOTL was McClellans second in command in the campaign and due to the nature of it is the man who did a lot of the leg work that led to the various victories the Union gained in the region, with a near-universal consensus giving him more credit than McClellan for them, if only because of the distances and terrain involved, so for the sake of discussion I think its fair to say the campaign need not be too different, and if Rosecrans was the overall commander he is the hero of the hour and the closest option to bring to Washington to command the new Department of the Potomac.
And so, how do things develop differently from that point on? On one hand with the Army of the Potomac and the obvious potential of him becoming General-in-Chief as McClellan was for a time, Rosecrans was a firm believer in utilizing large Staffs in a manner more in line with Continental European Doctrine than his contemporaries. He was also noted for creating units of Pioneers as an elite engineering force in the Army of the Cumberland, which facilitated many of the rapid movements he used while in command of it, and which would be used after his relief. At the same time he certainly had a tendency for not moving until he was ready, something which goes without saying was a problem in the Eastern Theater of the War, he had clear political aspirations in opposition to the politics of the administration and the political coalition it commanded (Though no talk of dictatorship, either self-deprecatingly or openly) and of course there is the issue of his conduct when the war turned on him and left the field at Chickamagua.
***I am not asking for another rehash of the Grant vs McClellan discussions that have gone on in the last few ACW threads, or a discussion of McClellan's merits as a commander. Obviously we all have to talk about McClellan in this, but let us please try to keep the discussion limited to him vs Rosecrans and how Rosecrans would have operated been responded to both by the Confederates and the Federal Government differently***