Clear Confederate Victory at Battle of the Wilderness

Anaxagoras

Banned
IOTL, the Battle of the Wilderness was essentially a standoff. Arguably it was a tactical Confederate victory, as the Southerners repulsed the Union attacks and proceeded to smash in both Union flanks, but it was arguably a strategic Union victory because Lee failed to drive Grant back across the Rapidan River and Grant was therefore able to continue his offensive.

What if Lee had actually won a clear victory over Grant at the Battle of the Wilderness? There are numerous PODs that could allow for this. If Gordon's attack on the Union right flank had been launched at the same time as Longstreet's counter attack on the Union left flank, the result could have been disastrous for the Yankees. If Hill had been more attentive during the night of May 5, rather than trusting that Longstreet would come up on time, the Union attack that smashed his line on the morning of May 6 might instead have been repulsed, allowing for a more decisive blow to be struck against the Yankees later that morning.

The battle was so touch-and-go that there are probably dozens of opportunities for clear Rebel win (there are also innumerable opportunities for a decisive Union victory, too, but that's for another thread).

Suppose that Lee had been able to win such a clear victory that Grant was forced to withdraw back across the Rapidan River, having suffered even heavier losses than he did IOTL. What impact would this have had on the subsequent course of events? Would the grand strategy Grant and Lincoln had worked out would have come unravelled? Would Butler's army near Richmond have faced defeat at the hands of reinforcements dispatched be Lee? What would have been Grant's next move?
 
I dont know enough about tactical civil war history to comment. On a macro strategic level, the union could afford the losses, the confederates could not. The union would just keep out spending the confederates in lives and material. A single tactical confederate victory was not going to alter the situation and the confederates ability to win a string of devastating victories and thus remove the union will to fight was gone by 1864.
 
I don't know how many casualties it would take to make Grant retreat, but it would have to be a huge number. The kind that makes people go blind.
 
A clear CS victory is impossible because if the battle starts as per OTL the CSA will be starting committing its forces in a piecemeal fashion, in a terrain where neither side can gain any decisive force in terms of attacking the other. There is no real means for the CSA to win the war in the 1864 campaign in the East. It can in a few scenarios stalemate it, but actually winning is beyond its power. Lee at least understood that much. The CSA might in the right circumstances inflict even higher casualties but Lee, with 60,000 men in the open against Grant with 120,000 in the open can only end in one way, and it's not good for Lee or his army. The man that transformed Vicksburg into the greatest campaign of the war against a guy whose main habit is charging like a bull headlong into his enemy will smash Lee in any scenario where the two fight in the open. In the Wilderness the terrain prohibits either side from decisive attacks, and any factor handicapping the USA will affect Lee equally in this sense.
 
I don't know how many casualties it would take to make Grant retreat, but it would have to be a huge number. The kind that makes people go blind.

Yep, that's pretty much what I was thinking. Cold Harbor ring any bells? Grant had committed to a war of attrition because he knew the Confederacy (in the long run) couldn't keep up with the losses. Lee would have to erase the Army of the Potomac from the field to deter Grant.
 
Yep, that's pretty much what I was thinking. Cold Harbor ring any bells? Grant had committed to a war of attrition because he knew the Confederacy (in the long run) couldn't keep up with the losses. Lee would have to erase the Army of the Potomac from the field to deter Grant.


Which he can't do in any even remotely realistic scenario. If he couldn't do that to Burnside or Pope he sure as hell can't do that to Grant.
 
Yep, that's pretty much what I was thinking. Cold Harbor ring any bells? Grant had committed to a war of attrition because he knew the Confederacy (in the long run) couldn't keep up with the losses. Lee would have to erase the Army of the Potomac from the field to deter Grant.

Grant didn't commit to that, Lee did. Grant wanted to fight in the open in what would have been the biggest battle of the war had he had the chance. Lee understandably did not want an open-field battle when outnumbered 2:1, as he understood full well he'd get stomped in the ground. The Overland Campaign is more properly understood as what happened when Grant kept up an endless, continual pressure and the initiative against Lee, and it properly speaking *is* a series of Grant outflanking Lee by going around his left-flank attack.

Unless Lee has a psychological edge over the AoTP's generals he can't defeat it, as he defeated its commanding officers, never the army in itself, and to judge by how many casualties Lee sustained IOTL in any case of him somehow destroying the AoTP the Army of Northern Virginia will no longer exist after the battle required to do that.
 
I dont know enough about tactical civil war history to comment. On a macro strategic level, the union could afford the losses, the confederates could not. The union would just keep out spending the confederates in lives and material. A single tactical confederate victory was not going to alter the situation and the confederates ability to win a string of devastating victories and thus remove the union will to fight was gone by 1864.

Ironic this is said given that Lee took more casualties than Grant did, was less able to afford them, and had a blinkered approach to the war that did more to doom the Confederacy than many of the Eastern Theater's battles did. In the open outnumbered by "merely" 5,000 Lee got curbstomped at Gettysburg. If he tries for a decisive fight against the winner of Fort Donelson and Champion Hill outnumbered 2:1 he'd be the Samsonov to Grant's Hoffman.
 

Spengler

Banned
I wonder if Anaxagoras is thinking that Lee could pull another Chanclersville. (Which had a large part to do with the Unions lack of cavalry, and Hooker being unprepared for army command).
 
I wonder if Anaxagoras is thinking that Lee could pull another Chanclersville. (Which had a large part to do with the Unions lack of cavalry, and Hooker being unprepared for army command).

Actually by Chancellorsville the AoTP was well on the way to fixing its previous weakness in cavalry. Chancellorsville was the result of the gap between a concept and executing that concept. Had Hooker executed his plan properly that would have been the end of Lee's army in a campaign, at least, if not the battle. As it was the fight was won not by Stonewall Jackson but by JEB Stuart capturing the one place in the Wilderness where artillery could work with great effect and Hooker's ordering the capture of Fredericksburg kept Lee from exploiting his victory over Hooker.

In 1864, against Grant, Lee will never have the chance to start the battle and with his army as it was their war ends at that moment no matter what they do.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
I wonder if Anaxagoras is thinking that Lee could pull another Chanclersville. (Which had a large part to do with the Unions lack of cavalry, and Hooker being unprepared for army command).

Well, the Union cavalry was pretty must wasted in the Battle of the Wilderness, because Meade's insistence that its job was to protect the wagon train combined with Sheridan's insistence that its job was to find and kick Stuart's ass resulted in a confused jumble of contradictory missions. As it was, out on the Union left flank, the Yankee cavalry pretty much had its ass handed to it by Rosser's men and played no decisive role in the fighting.

But as Snake points out, Chancellorsville was won more because Lee overawed Hooker and not because the AoNV actually beat the AotP in a stand-up fight. What I am thinking of is more of a Second Manassas scenario, in which the Yankees are clearly beaten on the battlefield and forced to retreat. This did NOT happen at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, or the Seven Days, but it did happen at Second Manassas. There were times during the Battle of the Wilderness were it seemed at least possible for the Southerners to score a similarly decisive coup.
 
Well, the Union cavalry was pretty must wasted in the Battle of the Wilderness, because Meade's insistence that its job was to protect the wagon train combined with Sheridan's insistence that its job was to find and kick Stuart's ass resulted in a confused jumble of contradictory missions. As it was, out on the Union left flank, the Yankee cavalry pretty much had its ass handed to it by Rosser's men and played no decisive role in the fighting.

But as Snake points out, Chancellorsville was won more because Lee overawed Hooker and not because the AoNV actually beat the AotP in a stand-up fight. What I am thinking of is more of a Second Manassas scenario, in which the Yankees are clearly beaten on the battlefield and forced to retreat. This did NOT happen at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, or the Seven Days, but it did happen at Second Manassas. There were times during the Battle of the Wilderness were it seemed at least possible for the Southerners to score a similarly decisive coup.

Trying to figure out how the ANV creates a victory like 2nd Manassas in 1864 is like looking for unicorn horns in the grocery store. Could the South still win independence at that date? Sure, but not on that theatre. By 1864, the linchpin to Southern nationhood had become Atlanta. When you look at the men Lee lost in the Spring campaign fighting off Grant before they both settled down in the trenches before Richmond and Petersburg, you wonder what those extra men could have done for the South if posted elsewhere...
 
Well, the Union cavalry was pretty must wasted in the Battle of the Wilderness, because Meade's insistence that its job was to protect the wagon train combined with Sheridan's insistence that its job was to find and kick Stuart's ass resulted in a confused jumble of contradictory missions. As it was, out on the Union left flank, the Yankee cavalry pretty much had its ass handed to it by Rosser's men and played no decisive role in the fighting.

But as Snake points out, Chancellorsville was won more because Lee overawed Hooker and not because the AoNV actually beat the AotP in a stand-up fight. What I am thinking of is more of a Second Manassas scenario, in which the Yankees are clearly beaten on the battlefield and forced to retreat. This did NOT happen at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, or the Seven Days, but it did happen at Second Manassas. There were times during the Battle of the Wilderness were it seemed at least possible for the Southerners to score a similarly decisive coup.

Second Bull Run owed itself to the tactical mediocrity of both Pope and Jackson. If Pope had made just one attack that was not piecemeal he would have defeated Lee's army in detail. As it was between Jackson and he the Army was squeezed into a sequence of bloody stalemate battles that gave Longstreet his opportunity. Second Bull Run was also in open field, if the AoTP fights the ANV in the open under Meade and Grant there will be no Army of Northern Virginia after that fight.
 
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