Blue Eagle, Whie Sun

Most Recent Update
New content, covering the end of Alternative Gettysburg and the roots for serious divergences from the OTL Gettysburg Campaign/Pennyslvania Emergency.
ETA For Next Content Update: 2/8/15

The Premise In A Nutshell
What’s All This Then?

Blue Eagle, White Sun is a timeline featuring several mid-Nineteenth Century points-of-departure which aspires construct and examine a more diverse geopolitical world in the first-half of the Twentieth Century than existed OTL.

“Several Mid-Nineteenth Century PODs” Is A Euphemism for the Confederacy Surviving, Isn’t It?
That would be the reason why the eagle is blue, yes.

This Smells Suspiciously Like Timeline-191. Is This Another Confederate-Wank TL?
The point-of-departure which enables the survival of the Confederacy is a ripple of events beginning on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. So the odds of a strong Confederacy of the sort Turtledove hypothesized is highly unlikely. (Even if jackbooted Confederate chic does have a certain appeal to it.)

…Isn’t A Confederate Victory Basically Impossible By Mid-1863, Assuming Everything Else Is As IOTL?
Nothing is impossible for alternate history! Especially when you’re willing to liberally define-down “victory”. The TL’s author, needless to say, is well aware of how long the Confederacy’s odds are.

Didn’t You Say Something About Other PODs?
Oh, right! The other primary POD is the Taiping Rebellion’s Northern Expedition succeeds in taking Beijing in 1853.

Wait. So the Taiping Rebellion Succeeded In This TL?
Eventually, yes.

Why Aren’t We Talking About That?! It’s Way Cooler Than Another American Civil War TL!
Because the appearance of certain real-life historical figures in the course of that success would make zero sense, contextually, without covering the Civil War’s divergence from OTL first.

Wouldn’t That Make The Taiping Rebellion Over A Decade Long And, Thus, Just As Destructive As OTL?
While it does make the Taiping Rebellion quite long, the exact details will have to be waited for. Though it can safely be said it’s not nearly as bad as OTL in terms of devastation or loss of life.

This Is Going To End Up With A Great War-Analogue That Features A Land War In Asia, Isn’t It?
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe. And not to give too much away: Just imagine the possibilities for a naval war in the Pacific!

Timeline In-Universe Bibliography
-Adams, Henry. “Objectively Evaluating the Campaigns of George B. Meade”, Collegiate Historical Review (Vol. XVI, Is. 7 (July 1888)).
-Adams, Henry and Savage, Richard, eds. Campaign Memories of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry (Valley Forge; U.S. Army Staff College Press, 1877).
-Merriweather, Leroy Brandon. Invincibility’s Mantle: Lee’s Summer of Conquest (Columbia; Palmetto Press, 2002).
-Lee II, Richard Henry. The Hagiography of President William C. Oates (Durham; Trinity University Press, 1942).
-Xun, Lucius. The Centennial of the Pennsylvania Emergency (State College; Penn State University Press, 1963).

Timeline Posts
Chapter 1: Union’s Twilight
* A Matter of Time (July 2, 1863)
* Meade's Misstep (July 3-7, 1863)
 
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Chapter 1: A Necessary Repost

Chapter 1: Union's Twilight
A Matter of Time
July 2, 1863​
Excerpt from The Centennial of the Pennsylvania Emergency by Lucius Xun (State College; Penn State University Press, 1963)
By chance, this day, a half-hour has unmade the Union; let us not imagine what Providence might do to our nation tomorrow, when It has had a chance to prepare.
--Capt. Washington Roebling (Vol.), evening of July 2, 1863 (allegedly).

The second day of the Battle of Gettysburg has, since the end of the War of Secession, had an intrinsic fascination for both military practitioners and historians alike. Some of the fascination is the result of Gettysburg being the crucible of our schoolyard legends: Every American child is familiar with the deeds of William Oates and Joshua Chamberlain, for both of their ascents began atop Little Round Top. (The light into which both are cast, however, depends upon which side of the Rappahannock you are sitting.) But that is a superficial and, frankly, unsatisfying answer. The real wellspring of such fascination is that south of a small Pennsylvania township events were set in motion which changed the fates of two nations and, but for a few moments, they might have been radically different.

Had, for instance, Longstreet’s First (Confederate) Corps been able to launch its attack before noon as had been originally planned -- which Lee’s personal correspondence adamantly maintain -- the Army of Northern Virginia might well have seized Little Round Top with enough daylight left to decisively resolve the battle. By the same token, had Gouverneur Warren arrived a half-hour earlier on the scene of Little Round Top and Great Round Top, it might have been the 20th Maine defending Little Round Top’s slopes, rather than storming them.

But Longstreet’s launching of the assault upon the Union’s left flank was delayed by, appropriately enough, the late arrival of Law’s brigade. For it is with the men Law’s brigade that history would be made...
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Excerpt of Interview Conducted August 19, 1875 by U.S. Army Oral History Board (Anthologized in Campaign Memories of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry (Valley Forge; U.S. Army Staff College Press, 1877))
Army Interviewer: We are back on record with Captain James Nichols, Company K, 20th Maine Infantry Regiment, United States Volunteers. Is that correct, sir?
James Nichols: Yes.
AI: Our last session ended with the pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia in July 1863 into southern Pennsylvania. Did you serve at Gettysburg?
JN: The 20th Maine didn’t arrive until the second day of the fight.
AI: Yes, it didn’t, but July 2 is a good place to begin. What do you recall of how the day began?
JN: Most it was spent on the march. Not all that different from the days before or after. Arrived close enough to hear gunfire midday or thereabouts.
AI: What happened as you approached the battlefield?
JN: Saw a mounted officer ride up to Colonel Chamberlain, in a hurry as if the Devil Himself was nippin’ at his heels. Couldn’t hear what he and the colonel talked about, but we then got orders to wheel southwest with all due haste.
AI: That was when you started marching for Little Round Top?
JN: Didn’t know it was called that at the time, but yeAI. Colonel took all of us – us officers --aside and said Johnny Reb was assaulting a hill that could let’em set up artillery to blow the whole army to kingdom-come. And we had to stop them.
AI: So you approached Little Round Top?
JN: Arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon or thereabouts.
AI: And then what happened?
JN: We got fired at, I reckon.
AI: Care to elaborate?
JN: Was eerie. Could see the Rebs on the eastern slope, still gettin’ ready for us. Couldn’t have gotten there too long when we arrived. Then saw puffs of smoke, but no peel of gunfire. That came a second later.
AI: You saw the same thing at Fredericksburg, didn’t you?
JN: Had some of my men ask me about it, yes. Never seen it beforethough.
AI: So, you were fired upon?
JN: Yes. Don’t properly recall what I did when I realized the Rebs were trying to shoot me dead.
AI: What do you remember?
JN: Barking orders to prepare for an assault. It’s why we were there, and a little friendly greeting from Johnny Reb wasn’t going to stop us.
AI: So you assaulted Little Round Top?
JN: Along with the rest of the brigade, on the far left of the line. Charged up and fought our way until we could get no further. The eastern slope was boulder-strewn, giving Johnny Reb plenty of hiding places.
AI: So the first assault was repulsed?
JN: Aye. We retreated a ways down the slopes we’d gained and took cover while regrouping.
AI: At that point, what was happening around you?
JN: I was cowering behind a boulder as balls whizzed overhead. Others in my company were doing the same, or had gone prone if not stone cover could be found. The Rebs didn’t have enough time to construct any kind of breastworks which we might have appropriated.
AI: How was your company faring?
JN: I believe we were missing a half-dozen souls at that point. Perhaps another half-dozen had been hit but could still fight. Still plenty of fight left in us.
AI: And then what happened?
JN: If you wish to know about the bayonet charge, you might simply ask.
AI: These are your recollections, Captain Nichols. If you remember nothing else, then you are free to proceed.
JN: It’s what everyone wants to know about, if nothing else. Lieutenant Melcher appeared and bore an order from the colonel to fix bayonets. The regiment would be making another charge.
AI: And did you?
JN: Joshua Chamberlain wouldn’t be a household name otherwise!
AI: Do you have any recollections of the charge?
JN: Someone had brought up a battery of guns to the base of Little Round Top. They’d suppress the Rebs long enough for us to overtake them, or so was the plan. The entire regiment seemed move as one, emerging from behind rocks and hollows, as the guns boomed.
AI: And then you charged?
JN: We yelled our heads off and then made our way up the slope. The Rebs were close: A few hundred yards, at most, uphill. Traded a single volley and you could see holes where men had once been prior to the artillery bombardment. The Rebs began to reload before it sank in the bayonets were not for show.
AI: So they were taken by surprise?
JN: They certainly weren’t expecting it. Some broke when they realized we meant to gut’em. Others tried using their rifles as clubs. Managed to get into their line with enough of my men that we won the melee.
AI: Were you forced to your bayonet?
JN: Aye. No choice in the matter: If I hadn’t impaled that Alabaman, he’d’ve crushed my skull. Didn’t sleep well for weeks after that.
AI: So your company was engaged in a melee?
JN: Hand-to-hand combat of the worst sort. Order dissolved and pandemonium ruled for a seeming eternity as two mobs tried to kill each other. That we’d caught them with our bayonets up guaranteed we’d lick’em.
AI: So you defeated the Confederate forces opposite you?
JN: And then turned right to press home the attack. Unhinged them there, too.
AI: So Company K contributed to driving the Confederates back?
JN: As the Rebs streamed up the hill, being potshot by our boys, it seemed like we’d just saved the Union.
AI: A rather ironic sensation.
JN: Perhaps “jubilance” would be more apt.
AI: So, you broke through the Confederate positions. What happened then?
JN: The Rebs’ fell back before the regiment. The colonel seized the initiative and ordered us up to the summit. And so we continued to ascend as fast as we could.
AI: And what did you find?
JN: Well…
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Excerpt from The Hagiography of President William C. Oates by R. H. Lee II (Durham; Trinity University Press, 1942)
...f there were ever a point where the exaltation of the heroes of the Second War of Independence became a crime against history, it would be at the point in the Battle of Gettysburg when the 20th Maine reached the summit of Little Round Top. If you believe three generation of Oates’ admirers – as almost every Confederate biographer of his has been -- the appearance of several hundred Yankees with bloodied bayonets at the summit was met only with steely determination and a heroic countercharge, for the Palmetto Light Artillery had to be protected and Yankee steel could only be met with Dixie’s own.

While the exact events that happened atop Little Round Top remain a subject of scholarly debate (if, more often than not, one confined to north of the Rappahannock), it is clear from Oates’ own diaries that events played out differently than seen in Technicolor blockbusters like The Heights of Honor. As the diaries of the 15th Alabama recount the plight of the regiment as it slogged up to Little Round Top, subject to constant fire from Yankee forces in the Devil’s Den. A regiment, fresh off a forced march that’s been harassed by enemy fire for several hours, is not going to crispy respond to the sudden appearance of a bayonet charge, no matter how superhuman its commander is. (It also makes it highly likely that the anomaly Oates’s regiment not being in line with the 4th Alabama was due to disorganization or fatigue, not the oft-ascribed military genius of its commander.)

The same diaries, however, tend to be less insightful on the 15th Alabama’s performance atop Little Round Top. The appearance of the 20th Maine seemingly caused every man to become cognizant that they were living in one’s of history’s great turning points and find hitherto untapped reservoirs of courage. (See, e.g., Nash, Shelby, Recollections from the 15th Alabama’s Ranks (Charleston; Sanford & Davidson Publishing, 1878) and Jameson, Henry, Voices from Little Round Top (Pineville; Confederate Historical Press, 1934).) Thankfully, the United States Army – through its Oral History Board and, later, Army Historical Survey – has preserved a rather a more credible accounting of the battle.

According to Yankee archives, the “battle” atop Little Round Top was not nearly organized enough to be called a proper battle. It was a brawl and one in which the 20th Maine caught the Confederates opposite them unprepared. Even assuming a penchant for self-aggrandizement in the Yankees, the Yankees were not disorganized rabble who were swept away by the martial skill of Oates’s regiment. They would seem to have given at least as good as they got, which makes the omission of such mentions from Confederate sources particularly suspicious.

What both Yankee and Confederate sources do concur on is two points. First, that the most iconic image of the War of Secession – the hand-to-hand combat of William Oates and Joshua Chamberlain – did likely happen, though is much debate as to whether their duel was with officers’ swords (as depicted, mostly recently, in The Heights of Honor) or something more pedestrian. They also concur that the Yankees’ offensive was broken when one of the guns from the Palmetto Light Battery finally made itself ready to fire and loosed itself into the melee. Oates’s biographers insist that the arrival of artillery support simply cemented the victory of his regiment, while…
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Excerpt from The Centennial of the Pennsylvania Emergency by Lucius Xun (State College; Penn State University Press, 1963)
... [T]he 20th Maine’s second charge would mark the high-water mark of Unionism: Never again would the United States come as close to maintaining the Union of the Northern and Southern states. For, with Little Round Top, it is highly unlikely that the events of July 3 would have come to pass with the Union holding the whole length of the defensible terrain south of Gettysburg. And with its repulse, the cause of Unionism became doomed, though it would take many months for that to become clear.

After the failure of the 20th Maine to secure the summit of Little Round Top, Vincent’s brigade was a spent force offensively. More confused fighting would continue at the foot of the both Round Tops throughout the rest of the afternoon, but V Corps would make no significant gains prior to the onset of evening. And with the setting of the sun, the fighting shifted to skirmishing and harassment of the Confederate position rather than a renewed attempt to take it, though the recovery of the extreme left of his line would be the primary objective of the Army of the Potomac the next day.

It was in the Army of Northern Virginia’s headquarters, however, that the night of July 2 would have the most dramatic repercussions. For it was here that Longstreet proposed abandoning the Gettysburg battlefield and attempting to maneuver the Army of Northern Virginia between the main Union army before it and its lines of supply, which Lee would have none of, as he was certain a strike at the center of the Union line would cause the whole Northern position to implode. Lee’s certitude was to have profound consequences for his army in the weeks to come…
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My apologies for recycling content in a pseudo-bump, but it was the only way to revamp the original page for the next content dump.
 
Chapter 1: Meade's Misstep

Chapter 1: Union’s Twilight
Meade’s Misstep
July 3-7, 1863

Excerpt from “Objectively Evaluating the Campaigning of George B. Meade” by Col. Henry B. Adams, Collegiate Historical Review (Vol. XVI, Iss. 7 (July 1888))
Recollections of the War of Secession are jaded by the pronounced failure of the Union’s armies to defeat the Southern Rebellion despite their immense preponderance of men and material. It is all too easy for detached observer to believe that, were we but there and given the sanction of President Lincoln, Bobby Lee would be licked and an end brought to all of that “Confederate independence” malarkey. And that anyone who, when given such, could not must be a hopeless incompetent who has no militarily redeeming characteristics.

Such is certainly the prevailing belief in the Army, even amongst the Staff College’s graduates, when it comes to George Meade. The reputation of the “Goat of Gettysburg”, however, is ill-earned. Over the course of this article, it is the author’s intention of the author to demonstrate, a quarter-decade of sneering historiography to the contrary, George Meade was the most competent fighting general the Army of the Potomac was to have at its helm during the War of Secession.
. . .
The night of July 2, 1863 was without question Meade’s finest hour as an operational commander. Having lost the Round Tops which anchored his left, Meade grasped that the next day that the Army of Northern Virginia’s next blow would fall in his center, aided by enfilading artillery fire from Little Round Top. Such flanking fire had to be neutralized, or at least sufficiently threatened so that it turned its attention to its own defense rather than firing on the Union center. Meade thus had to organize a counterattack at the far end of his line while simultaneously bolstering his center. The forces on his left, however, were spent: Sickles’ III Corps had been badly mauled and Sykes’ V Corps had exhausted itself rescuing the situation in the south from total disaster. Meade did have Sedgwick VI Corps, fresh off the march, available along with the Army of the Potomac’s most ably commanded corps – Hancock’s II Corps – which had seen minimal fighting on July 2. II Corps, however, was presently also holding the sector of the line that was to bear the brunt of the assault in the next day.

Meade’s conundrum is the foundation for the basic teaching exercise at the Staff College about force distributions. As Meade only had two choices: Play it safe, leaving II Corps in line and mount the assault on the Round Tops with VI Corps, or gambling that Hancock might make the difference, shifting II Corps south and having VI Corps replacing it in line. Contrary to his reputation for battlefield timidity, Meade opted to risk a shuffling of his lines – with the potential for disorganization and disaster – in the hopes of salvaging the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. That a sizable shift in the resources of the Army of the Potomac went both smoothly and unnoticed by the Confederates is an accomplishment worth recognizing.

In light of what happened on July 3, however, it is all too often is not. Indeed, Meade is more often than not blamed for the VI Corps’ loss of cohesion when pressed by Pickett’s division. Such is the triumph of sentimentality over reason, however: VI Corps’ collapse owed to bad luck more than anything else, with stray fire disastrously felling Maj. Gen. Sedgwick as well as Brig. Gens. Wheaton and Wright. While the shot which felled Sedgwick likely did originate from Little Round Top, those which eliminated VI Corps’ divisional commanders did not, for both were wounded after II Corps had succeeded in retaking Little Round Top.

Meade’s redeployment of II Corps also guaranteed that the Army of the Potomac could extricate itself reasonably intact after VI Corps’ collapse ripped open the Union’s center. For with control of the Round Tops, Union artillery could cover the withdrawal of the army south and east of the battlefield…
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Except from Invincibility’s Mantle: Lee’s Summer of Conquest by L. Brandon Merriweather (Columbia; Palmetto Press, 2002)
“The Army of Northern Virginia will win every battle it is asked to; but if it wins many more battles, there shall be no more Army of Northern Virginia.” – Robert E. Lee to assembled staff officers, 3 July, 1863

The mood in Lee’s headquarters on the night of 3 July 1863 vacillated between jubilant and sullen. The Army of North Virginia had, on the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, broken into the Union center and unhinged the entirety of the Army of the Potomac’s line from the defensive positions it had occupied for the previous two days. The Yankees had opted to retreat rather than continue the fight, and the battlefield was now entirely in Confederate hands. It was another victorious notch in the army’s belt, one which Lee’s subordinates justifiably took pride in.

But unlike previous triumphs over the Yankees, the North had not left the field a beaten foe: The failures of Longstreet’s corps to hold the Rounds Tops against Union counterattack and J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry to cleave into the Union rear allowed the bulk of Union forces to disengage and withdraw in an orderly fashion. No pursuit was launched after the withdrawing Yankees: While the arrival of bad weather the next day is often cited as the reason why, the simple fact was that a third of the army was dead, wounded, or missing following the three hardest days of fighting the Army of Northern Virginia had yet seen. And even if the skies had not opened up, there were simply no forces to chase the withdrawing Army of the Potomac with that didn’t bear the scars of Gettysburg.

Lee found himself trapped strategically: He had led his army northward to engage its Union counterpart in a pitched battle, so as to decisively defeat the Army of the Potomac and ratchet down the pressure on Virginia. A battle of the sort Lee had sought was fought and the Army of the Potomac was defeated. But it had not been beaten soundly enough to abate the threat to Richmond, and victory had come at such a high cost that Lee’s army had lost its cutting edge. With its army’s striking power obliterated, the Confederacy’s strategic objectives were doomed to failure unless a willing favor were done it by the United States.

And, true to form, the Army of the Potomac obliged. Such began the saga remembered as Meade’s Misstep.
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Excerpt from the July 6, 1863 Order of the Day of the Commanding General of the Army of the Potomac
Our Army’s withdrawal to and entrenchment at the Pipe Creek Position has doomed the Southern rebellion. The Army of Northern Virginia is, after Gettysburg, too weak to menace our cities and positions north of the Susquehanna. The Rebels’ only hope for a successful campaign lay in seizing Baltimore or Washington, whose approaches we now block from a fortified position of immense strength. The enemy’s only options are to assault us on ground we have chosen or to abandon its invasion of Pennsylvania, having accomplished nothing.

And the Rebels shall come. General Lee, bloodied but undefeated, will prefer to try to throw the dice in the hopes that his skills, chance, or the Hand of the Divine will give him a victory rather than concede he is beaten. On Pipe Creek, he will be made to see the truth of the matter here.
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Excerpt from Invincibility’s Mantle: Lee’s Summer of Conquest by L. Brandon Merriweather (Columbia; Palmetto Press, 2002)
Even before George Meade was issuing his infamous 6 July Order of the Day, his strategic assessment of the situation was being advocated in Lee’s headquarters by James Longstreet. The commander of First Corps spent much of the morning of 4 July advocating withdrawal to Chambersburg, where the army could regroup and focus on pillaging south of the Susquehanna before withdrawing to the safety of Virginia. Such proved a contentious proposition, however, for he was distinctly in the minority. The majority of Lee’s commanders believed the Army of the Potomac simply needed “one more good licking” before it collapsed and thus favored pursuing the Yankees. Lee himself wished to follow the Yankees after the army was rested enough to do so as well. But perhaps recognizing the state of the army – or the threat of schism with his most able subordinate – he relented in his intention to pursue the Yankees.

By midday 4 July, even as the last Yankee forces were withdrawing, Confederate forces too began falling back towards their base of operations, leaving the battlefield in the hands of the Confederate ambulance service and a thin screening force. Longstreet’s winning the day on strategy was, as Early would later recount, “the greatest triumph of defeatism” in Confederate history and sowed the seeds of Longstreet’s own downfall. But it also saved the Army of Northern Virginia from confronting the irresolvable problem posed by the Pipe Creek Position.
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Excerpt from “Objectively Evaluating the Campaigns of George B. Meade” by Col. Henry B. Adams, Collegiate Historical Review (Vol. XVI, Iss. 7 (July 1888))
The Army of the Potomac’s second residence at the Pipe Creek Position from July 5-12, 1863 is the event for which George Meade will always be remembered. It was the event which precipitated the beginning of the end of the War of Secession and is usually considered the greatest military disaster in the history the United States. What is most disconcerting for this author is that, for once, much of the criticism and scorn levied against Meade is deserved.

But not all of it. Lost in the acrimony of the irony of Meade’s July 6 Order of the Day is the fact that he was not wrong about Lee: Had Longstreet not been so adamant, or had the Army of Northern Virginia emerged from Gettysburg in better fighting trim, he would have marched after the Army of the Potomac into the killing fields above Pipe Creek. The strategic initiative passed to Meade after Gettysburg, whereupon he used his understanding of the enemy’s psyche to craft a plan of attack which could deliver a potentially devastating defeat. That it did not work – and was arguably facially defective because of its requiring Lee to behave just as Meade required – should not be condemned out of hand, for that is exactly the kind of thinking the Staff College has been encouraging in junior officers since its founding.

But, just as Meade deserves praise for endeavoring to leverage a fundamentally correct insight about Lee’s personality, he rightly deserves to be pilloried for squandering his hard won initiative by spending five-and-a-half days at the Pipe Creek Position before coming to terms with his gambit failing. That pillorying should be tempered, however, by a recognition that the vagaries of weather played their role in Meade’s decision-making. From July 4 through July 10, torrential rains followed the Army of the Potomac as it withdrew south and east, making the conduct of offensive operations and effective reconnaissance functionally impossible. Believing that Lee would come, Meade logically bunkered down and waited for the return of good campaigning weather: By the second day of its return, Meade finally had enough information to know disaster was imminent and quickly got his army on the march.
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Except from Invincibility’s Mantle: Lee’s Summer of Conquest by L. Brandon Merriweather (Columbia; Palmetto Press, 2002)
It is unclear at what point Lee decided to amend the Army of Northern Virginia’s pillage-and-withdraw strategy, save that by the evening of 7 July he was determined to do so. The “why” is a better understood: The Army of Northern Virginia’s morale and confidence had reached their zenith. The core of the army, which had endured eight months of unbroken success from Fredericksburg to Gettysburg, believed that it really could do anything and marched with a will towards victory, to borrow a phrase from a later era. And Lee, viscerally, knew that: As Early colorfully recounted after the war, “Marse Robert smelled victory in the air, and wasn’t going to let that old wet-blanket [Longstreet] keep him from it.” Lee’s own phrasing of it, when announcing the change of plans, captured the moment’s zeitgeist even better: “When an army wears invincibility’s mantle, there is no greater sin than to remove it.”

Jubal Early’s “wet-blanket”, however, remained Lee’s ablest corps commander and was the man whose arguments had been heeded just four days prior. Longstreet remained vehemently against returning to the offensive and the resulting rupture with Lee remains one of the most iconic of the Confederate founding myths. “What can be gained,” Longstreet retorted to Lee’s announcement of his intent to resume the offensive, “from asking the tired and hungry to do what they could not when fresh and full?” While likely creative license taken by The Heights of Honor, it did underscore Longstreet’s fundamental point: The Army of Northern Virginia was haggard and at the end of its logistical tether, just as it had been on the night of 3 July when Lee had concurred with his analysis. Lee, however, would not be budged this time, even at the expense of sundering his relationship with Longstreet, who dramatically offered his resignation: Lee, cast forever as a Solomon-like figure for his response, exclaimed that Longstreet was in no position to offer it, and he no position to accept it.

Though Lee was unwilling to accept Longstreet’s resignation, he was certainly willing to keep First Corps far removed to remainder of the campaign. Longstreet’s men would spend the rest of the Pennsylvania campaign recovering from Gettysburg and then securing the Army of Northern Virginia’s southern flank on the Chambersburg-Gettysburg road, for Lee’s renewed offensive would not carry the Army of Northern Virginia to the southeast after the Army of the Potomac. Instead, another roll of the dice was to be made, by doing exactly what Meade had so discounted: Striking further into Pennsylvania, in the hopes that a more decisive victory might be found on the banks of the Susquehanna.
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Let's see, it's taken a month to do about a week in the TL. Good thing time decompresses in updates when not writing about campaigning.
 
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Chapter 1: The Curtin Call

Chapter 1: Union’s Twilight
The Curtin Call

July 8-11, 1863​
Except from AlternativeHistory.net Thread “DBWI: Lee’s Susquehanna Gambit Succeeds?”
YellowLeeBestLee
For Whom the Solar Plexus Liquifies

Is it even possible for it succeed? The ANVA was a spent force and to actually take Harrisburg would require it to:
1) Find enough supplies to defeat the roughly equivalent number of troops at the disposal of Couch;
2) Drive said forces from an entrenched position guarded by rugged terrain and an unfordable river;
3) Capture a bridge across the Susquehanna intact, when they’re all rigged to blow;
4) Do all of this while retaining enough fighting power to confront the Army of the Potomac when it comes marching up from Pipe Creek; and
5) Somehow weld the Idiot Ball into Hancock’s hand so as to keep him from demolishing the remnants of Longstreet’s corps, cutting off the ANVA’s lines of supply and communication, and forcing the ANVA to either attack or surrender.

And, even if that manages to happen through the appearance of Really Alien!ASBs, it still doesn’t change much. The ANVA will raid for a few weeks before withdrawing to Virginia, if they aren’t run out sooner by a reorganized Army of the Potomac. There’ll certainly be nothing decisive, which means that the Confederacy's still doomed.
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Excerpt from The Centennial of the Pennsylvania Emergency by Lucius Xun (State College; Penn State University Press, 1963)
“There is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the Confederate States of America.” – Otto von Bismarck

Uttered more than six decades ago, the Prussian arch-chancellor’s sentiment is inescapable when discussing the events of the second week of July 1863. When the Army of Northern Virginia began heading towards the Susquehanna, it did so with an exhausted force of 40,000-50,000 men in Second, Third, and Fourth Corps whose supply train was in the process of disintegrating. Before them stood the might of the Department of the Susquehanna, with somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 regular forces and federalized militia, while to their southeast lurked the Army of the Potomac, rested and reinforced at Pipe Creek, which could be expected to respond quickly to any Confederate advance. It was a suicidal throw of the dice that should have spelled the final destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia: That it did not is, if not the hand of Providence, reason to believe Napoleon was correct in thinking lucky a skill.

Beneficial weather gave Lee’s army a leg-up on the Federal forces arrayed against them. Following Gettysburg, rain had done much to impede the movement of the armies of both sides. By the morning of July 8, however, the skies cleared above Chambersburg and allowed the Army of Northern Virginia to marshal and then push northeast. The storm continued to linger over the skies of central Maryland until July 10, allowing Lee to steal at two or three days’ worth of marching, which was to prove crucial in the coming days in the compact campaigning territory south of the Susquehanna.

While the Union could not control the weather, it could control its own headquarters. Unfortunately, the headquarters of the commander of the Department of the Susquehanna, Major-General Darius Couch, was in a state of disarray at the start of the second week of July. When word had first reached Harrisburg of the Army of the Potomac’s abandoning the battlefield at Gettysburg, panic momentarily took hold as it was believed that the city would soon be besieged Couch pleaded with the War Department on July 4 and 5 to know the whereabouts of Lee’s army, as he lacked the available cavalry to ascertain such himself. No answer was immediately forthcoming, for the Battle of Gettysburg had thrown President Lincoln’s war cabinet into a crisis.

The nature of the crisis was over the next step to be taken in the campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia. The Lincoln and Stanton believed that the Departments of the Susquehanna and Monongahela should concentrate and be marched southeast, to catch the Army of Northern Virginia between the hammer of a fresh army into its rear and the anvil of the entrenched Army of the Potomac. Halleck, as General-in-Chief of the Army and the most senior military advisor to the President, opposed doing so as it would leave vital strategic sites, such as the rail hub and supply depots in Harrisburg, vulnerable to attack. Meade, as the field commander to whom any new force would be subordinate, questioned the usefulness of a large numbers of federalized militiamen in an offensive role and dreaded that they might present Lee an opportunity to dislodge the Army of the Potomac from Pipe Creek in the event they were routed. The logjam would not be broken until July 10: In the interim, Couch was informed on July 6 that the Army of Northern Virginia was in the process of marching southeast out of Pennsylvania and that he should behave appropriately.

Fearing the combination of disgruntled pickets from out-of-state militias presiding over bridges were hastily, Couch began making plans to remove the explosive placed at the bridges across the Susquehanna and demobilizing the federalized militiamen from New York and Ohio under his command. Pennsylvania’s governor, Andrew Curtin, became apoplectic when informed: He believed that the bulk of the Confederate army was still in Chambersburg based upon reports from allies of the state government south of the Susquehanna. Couch, believing Curtin to simply be seeing phantoms, stood by his orders as commander of the Department of the Susquehanna. Curtin, in response, issued an ultimatum: If non-Pennsylvanian federalized militiamen were stood down, he would, as commander of the Pennsylvanian militia, order his troops to prevent the entraining of any man leaving Harrisburg.

The result was four days of chaos, as the Department of the Susquehanna cleaved itself into two separate armies, each with contradictory priorities: Couch’s regulars and non-Pennsylvanian militiamen, who were in the process of standing down from the readiness provoked by skirmishing at Sporting Hill on June 30, and Curtin’s Pennsylvanian militia which anticipated the arrival of the Army of Northern Virginia. Couch appealed once more to Washington for guidance: The deteriorating situation in Harrisburg simply added fuel to the evolving crisis in Washington.

In the evening of July 10, word finally reached Harrisburg of Washington’s orders: The Army of Northern Virginia was still in Pennsylvania and the Department of the Susquehanna was to entrench itself as best as possible, and then prepare to act in concert with the advancing Army of the Potomac to fix and destroy Lee’s army. By the time these orders arrived, however, events had overtaken them…
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Excerpt from The Hagiography of President William C. Oates by R. H. Lee II (Durham; Trinity University Press, 1942)
Separating man from myth is always difficult. Even in these most literate of times, with so many diaries, memoirs, and other contemporaneous accounts available to the historian, it can still be hard to differentiate where history ends and folklore begins. And all the more so with events that, despite their factuality, have more than a whiff of narrative excess to them. With all of those qualifiers disclaimed, the Hummel Heights Heist can be discussed.

Following the theatrics of July 2, 1863 on the summit of Little Round Top, Oates found himself the talk of Lee’s headquarters. While much of the feting for his deeds at Gettysburg would come later, he had garnered a reputation amongst his superiors as a tenacious fighter notable for conspicuous amounts of personal bravery and a penchant for gallantry. Most importantly, he caught the eye of Major-General Jubal Early, who was most impressed by any man willing to cross steel with the Yankees. Early, despite being merely a divisional commander in Ewell’s Second Corps, approached Lee about brevetting Oates to brigadier-general and assigning him to command Hoke’s Brigade, which had lost its commanding officer on the third day of Gettysburg. While a brigade of North Carolinians being commanded by an Alabaman in an army defined largely by local forces being led by local officers was unorthodox, Early’s star was ascendant and Longstreet’s in decline. Lee granted the request as part of the wider reorganization of Longstreet’s First Corps at Chambersburg. By the time Second Corps was on the march to Harrisburg, now-Brigadier-General Oates was acclimating to his new chain-of-command. That said chain-of-command was in the process of disintegrating due to Ewell’s infuriation that Early had bypassed him entirely usually goes unremarked upon, both by Oates’ biographers and Early’s.

The Army of Northern Virginia spent July 8 and 9 on the march, with the city of Carlisle being occupied without opposition on the evening of the 9th. That night, it was decided by Lee’s war council that Second Corps would be the vanguard the following day: Ewell, in turn, determined that Early’s division would march at the head of the column. Ewell’s decision was intended to spite Early for his perceived insubordination in going directly to Lee instead of through channels: A few extra predawn hours of marching were an appropriate unofficial punishment for slighting his authority. (See Ewell, Richard, The Diaries and Papers of Richard S. Ewell (Pineville; Confederate Historical Press, 1878).)

Ewell’s attempted malice, however, was to win Early more laurels than he could ever have dreamed of. Early’s division arrived in Mechanicsburg by noon the next day, where he was tasked with conducting reconnaissance of the approaches to the Susquehanna and Harrisburg. Seeing this as a fitting opportunity for his newest subordinate to demonstrate his abilities, Early commanded Oates to assemble his staff and personally ride ahead to ascertain the lay of the Camp Hill and the surrounding area known locally as the Hummel Heights.
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Excerpt of Interview Conducted February 19, 1866 by U.S. Army Oral History Board (Published inAppendix G of A Report On The Military Conduct of the War of Secession, 1861-1864 (Washington, D.C.; Library of Congress Press, 1868))
Army Interviewer: Please state your name and rank.
Tobias Wycliff: Tobias Wycliff. Captain in the United States Volunteers. Retired.
AI: How long did you serve in the United States Volunteers?
TW: Three years. I mustered out not long after the ink was dry on the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1864.
AI: Where were you stationed?
TW: Camp Curtin. Or Harrisburg more generally. I did a lot of clerical work on the Pennsy’s Main Line before the War of Secession, so I got assigned to Camp Curtin once I enlisted.
AI: Were you ever assigned to the staff of the Commander of the Department of the Susquehanna?
TW: Yes. I was General Couch’s liaison officer with the quartermaster at Camp Curtin.
AI: How long were you General Couch’s liaison?
TW: Until July 10, 1863, or close enough thereto as makes any difference.
AI: What happened to have you dismissed from your position as General Couch’s liaison?
TW: You and everyone else knows damn well what happened!
AI: The purpose of this interview is to commit to paper your recollections of the events in question, not assign blame.
TW: That’s what the court-martial was for, after all, wasn’t it?
AI: That acquitted you, didn’t it?
TW: Only after tarring and feathering me.
AI: The question, Captain Wycliffe?
TW: Fine. I ceased in my position as General Couch’s liaison with Camp Curtin following the capture of General Couch and most of his staff, including myself, by Confederate raiders.
AI: How did that happen?
TW: It started about noon. General Couch had just had another meeting with Governor Curtin and he found himself at his wit’s end. He decided he wanted to conduct an inspection of Forts Washington and Couch.
AI: Did General Couch state why he was infuriated with Governor Curtin?
TW: Other than my home state’s militia mutinying against its commanding officer?
AI: So it was about the, shall we say, dysfunctional command situation?
TW: Yes.
AI: Why did General Couch want to inspect the forts?
TW: “Those forts are federal property and I’ll be damned if I let them be occupied by an insubordinate governor!”
AI: Is that a direct quotation or a paraphrase?
TW: Direct, as far as I can recall.
AI: So, General Couch assembled his staff and rode out to inspect Forts Washington and Couch?
TW: Yes.
AI: So what happened then?
TW: We got turned around somehow: I was never one for orienteering, so I wasn’t handling the compass or the map. All I know is that we missed a turn somewhere.
AI: So you got lost?
TW: Until the Rebs found us, yes.
AI: So you just ran into a group of Confederate cavalrymen?
TW: Yes.
AI: What happened then?
TW: We had about equal numbers, but they got the drop on us, and had their weapons drawn. They asked us to kindly surrender or else things might get uncivilized.
AI: What was your impression of the Confederates?
TW: Looked like a group of officers doing pretty much what we were.
AI: What did General Couch do?
TW: The obvious thing! No point in dying pointlessly. The general surrendered and were taken captive.
AI: What happened then?
TW: The Confederates took our guns and then talked amongst themselves. And then we were ordered to strip.
AI: ...strip?
TW: Yes. Strip. This the part where folks normally gasp at how lurid things have become.
AI: Do go on.
TW: Well…
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Except from Invincibility’s Mantle: Lee’s Summer of Conquest by L. Brandon Merriweather (Columbia; Palmetto Press, 2002)
Oates immediately understood what he had: By blind luck, his scouting mission had waylaid a Union general and most of his staff. And not just any general, but the commander of the army on the opposite bank of the Susquehanna. There was an opportunity here, but it likely required moving quickly, before it was realized Couch was missing. And in a flash of genius an idea came to him that would rewrite the history of the North American continent.

In hindsight, it is amazing that Oates was brave enough to try the gambit he envisioned. For his plan was quite simple: Expropriate the uniforms of General Couch and his staff, pretend to be the commander of the Department of the Susquehanna on an inspection tour, and in the process capture a way across the Susquehanna for Lee’s army. For the problem of getting across the river had loomed ever larger as they had approached it. At Harrisburg, the Susquehanna was almost unfordable, and it was most likely that the bridges across it would be destroyed once it became clear that the Confederate army was approaching in force. The Army of Northern Virginia needed both speed and luck in order to menace Harrisburg: Its coverage of 65 miles in two-and-a-half days of marching accomplished the former, while Couch’s capture was a bountiful harvest of the latter.

Dressed in Couch’s ill-fitting uniform, Oates began a whirlwind ride of the western shore of the Susquehanna. The scope and scale of the Hummel Heights Heist is, deservedly, the subject-matter for an entire book on its own: Sufficed to say, Oates and his entourage were not caught, and by the time he returned to Mechanicsburg at 4:00PM, he had identified four bridges across the Susquehanna plus a site where fording might be possible. Most importantly, the two railroad bridges at Marysville, four miles north of the city, were not fortified and minimally guarded. He believed he could push his brigade across and camp on the east bank of the river. To which Early infamously quipped: “What’s so special about your brigade, Mr. Oates?”

Making good on his boast, Early rallied his division for another bout of marching: Minimal resistance was met, as Oates had predicted, and the bridges across the Susquehanna at Marysville were secured intact. Early’s division, exhausted though it might have been from the day’s marching, was fully across the Susquehanna by the sun’s setting. The North Carolinians under Oates’ command believed the next day would bring a great battle to determine Harrisburg’s fate. Unknown to them at the time, its fate was already sealed.
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Excerpt from The Centennial of the Pennsylvania Emergency by Lucius Xun (State College; Penn State University Press, 1963)
July 10, 1863 was a disaster for the Union, as all of the Department of the Susquehanna’s myriad command-related issues exploded into a cascade of failure. The conflicted visions of the military and political leadership in Washington were directly to blame for the lack of men at the bridges south of Maryville, Pennsylvania: Prior to Couch’s standing down of them, they had been guarded by Ohioan militiamen, and were exactly whom Couch had been most concerned about. In turn, the capture of Couch was owed directly to his feud with Curtin over control of the Pennsylvania militia: But for that, Couch likely never is on the west bank of the Susquehanna to be captured.

It cannot be overstated how damaging the capture of Couch was to the Department of the Susquehanna’s position. While much is made of “the Hummel Heights Heist” and its finding of the Marysville bridges, the real harm came from the removal of the senior commander from the army’s headquarters at the crucial moment: For several hours it was unclear whether Couch was simply delayed or was truly missing, during which his few remaining subordinates could not or would not make orders to stand up the army even amidst reports of Confederates as far north as Mechanicsburg swirled. Ironically, it was the receipt of orders from Washington to entrench that finally got the necessary orders issued: By the time Washington’s orders arrived, however, they were contemporaneous with news that Early’s division was now on the eastern bank of the river above the city.

Pandemonium descended upon Harrisburg, as it was clear that the Army of Northern Virginia was not only still in Pennsylvania, but would soon be marching on the city. Decapitated and barraged with rising levels of civilian panic, the authority of the Department of the Susquehanna disintegrated: The only person left in Harrisburg with the authority to organize defense was Governor Curtin. As impressive as his organizational skills might be, however, the preceding week of bickering had left local forces too disarrayed or distant to save Harrisburg. While estimates have varied, Harrisburg had 15,000-20,000 men ready to defend her the next morning. After conferring with what was left of Couch’s staff and the quartermaster at Camp Curtin, it was determined the only thing which the army could do was destroy as much war material as possible prior to dawn and then withdraw. It would be the Pennsylvanian militia which screened the army’s retreat: “The state capital could not fall without a fight, and it was only fair that Pennsylvanians protected it,” Curtin would say when news of the Battle of Fishing Creek reached him.

For it was at Fishing Creek at the Pennsylvanians made their stand on the morning of July 11, 1863: There was never any doubt as to the battle’s outcome, nor any hope for Union victory. By the time Confederate and Pennsylvanian forces clashed, 6,000 Pennsylvanians were facing the full weight of Second (Confederate) Corps plus detachments from Third (Confederate) Corps, while the remainder of Third Corps struck directly at the ford to the city’s west. All that could be done was buy time, to allow for more of the massive Union supply depots at Harrisburg to be destroyed.

But there was never enough time to destroy the massive quantities of war material at Camp Curtin and other sites around Harrisburg, for Harrisburg had become the great logistics hub of the Eastern Theater. And by 2:00PM on July 11, it was in Confederate hands.
*=*=*=*=*
And there's how the Confederacy takes Harrisburg after a Gettysburg victory that is just as pyhrric as OTL! With many willing favors and just plain dumb luck. Is that Confederacy wanking? I'm not sure: Stuff like this does happen periodically in history. (See, e.g., Ludendorff at Liege in 1914.) Heck, Ludendorff at Liege was what inspired the idea: Not quite knocking on the doors of a fort with a saber-hilt, but plenty theatrical nonetheless. (I'm very tempted to do an entry dedicated to the exact specifics of the Hummel Heights Heist, but that's an interlude project.)

Got a little foreshadowing in, too! At least we now know the name of the diplomatic accords that end the ACW! ...Copenhagen's a bit of a weird choice, but hey, it's not like there's anything happening in Denmark in 1863-64 that might ping-pong its way into the ACW, right? And our friend Winfield Scott Hancock was brought up by an ITTL AH.net poster. Wonder where he's headed given that things have hit the blender for the North in Pennsylvania?
 
Very interesting TL; I have never seen a double POD. Look at the thread title though, change it while you can.

If we want to be technical, there's only one PoD: A chain of events occurs on the Yellow River in the summer of 1853 which allows the Taiping Northern Expedition to succeed where IOTL it failed. Everything following it is a butterfly. But functionally, the TL doesn't really produce macro-level changes until you get to the U.S. Civil War. But I think it's easier to describe as a twin-PoD TL, as the waves of the PoDs start colliding in the mid-1860s.

I also had no idea there was a time limit on editing the title post. Whoops. Hopefully if this grows to 10 pages of content folks will be able to cotton on that it's still not waiting for the next update in early 2015.
 

Spengler

Banned
Is the CSA going to be engaging in some pogroms against unionist whites? Also what are you're goals with the Taiping rebellion?
 
Is the CSA going to be engaging in some pogroms against unionist whites? Also what are you're goals with the Taiping rebellion?

1) "Pogrom" is such a...harsh word. The Confederacy is many, many things, but a line would be crossed by organizing a mob for the express purpose of terrorizing fellow white Protestants who had the temerity to have different political sentiments than you. No, the South is a place tradition is paramount! State-sanctioned mobs are only there to deal with uppity blacks. (Unionists shall be dealt with as their Loyalist forebearers were, through the systematic expropriation of their property and wealth, thank you very much.)

In all seriousness, though, the fate of Unionists in what becomes the CSA is definitely a nettlesome issue that absorbs copious time and energy during the process which eventually creates the Treaty of Copenhagen. Without getting too spoilery, the North has its fair share of Confederate symapthizers in the border states who're in roughly the same position as Unionists, so the idea of population transfers and expatriation protocols are logically an issue in any treaty negotiations.

2) My goal with the Taipings is to halve the so-called "Century of Humiliation" and make the Orient a more interesting place economically and diplomatically than OTL. Simply removing Cixi from the scene unleashes sufficient butterflies to fill libraries, let alone what affirmative butterflies are created by the Taipings. Though "Taipings" is probably a misnomer, as I've said elsewhere that it there's little chance that a successful Taiping Rebellion remains true to Hong Xiuquan's cult of personality. As to be an enduring force, they'll either have to end up being co-opted by someone who de-cultifies things, be the beneficiaries of ASB-levels of fortuitous low-probability events, or just have actual Alien Space Bats appear and begin flapping their wings.
 
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