Confederate Capital in Montgomery?

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From everything I've read the move to Richmond was more practical than anything else. As mentioned above the iron works were vital to the Confederacy and they thus had to defend them.

Consolidating the capital and the iron works meant one army could defend both.

Since you could not move the works, you move the capital

That's completely true but you could still defend Richmond and the Iron Works without making Richmond the Capital. There will still be plenty of Confederate troops there as Washington D.C. is so nearby. As the Confederacy now has a Capital in Western Theater and the Union has one in the Eastern Theater the fronts will be equal.

Now, does anyone have any ideas on the new Union strategy?
 
Now, does anyone have any ideas on the new Union strategy?

Probably just the same. Surround the Confederacy via blockade, split it down the middle along the Mississippi, and whittle down the individual rebel armies via battles of attrition.
Virginia's fields would witness all the same carnage, I'm thinking, because it would still possess two things: the breadbasket of the Shenandoah, and Robert E. Lee. There is a real sense in which Lee WAS the Confederacy to people of the time; the Union would have to show it had defeated him.

There's a third thing it has, come to think of it - proximity to Washington. If I'm Lincoln, and if I can look over a fairly small river and see rebel-occupied territory on my doorstep, I'm going to make that a priority.
 
Probably just the same. Surround the Confederacy via blockade, split it down the middle along the Mississippi, and whittle down the individual rebel armies via battles of attrition.
Virginia's fields would witness all the same carnage, I'm thinking, because it would still possess two things: the breadbasket of the Shenandoah, and Robert E. Lee. There is a real sense in which Lee WAS the Confederacy to people of the time; the Union would have to show it had defeated him.

There's a third thing it has, come to think of it - proximity to Washington. If I'm Lincoln, and if I can look over a fairly small river and see rebel-occupied territory on my doorstep, I'm going to make that a priority.

Very true, the first step in Lincoln's plan would be to take Virginia and the Richmond. But, you must remember Robert E. Lee is not leader of AoNV at this time. That command belongs to Johnston if i'm not mistaken. Also, how would the Union try to take Montgomery? Would they make pushes on the western theater or invade from the Gulf?
 
Very true, the first step in Lincoln's plan would be to take Virginia and the Richmond. But, you must remember Robert E. Lee is not leader of AoNV at this time. That command belongs to Johnston if i'm not mistaken. Also, how would the Union try to take Montgomery? Would they make pushes on the western theater or invade from the Gulf?

Push from the Western theater, I'm thinking, the same way Grant wanted to take that area before the Red River fiasco cost him the time. As for Lee's presence with the AoNV, I'm assuming that the only change in the timeline is the capital's location and the direct effects of that. That being the case, Lee will end up in command, unless you want to introduce further diversions.
 
Since the Confederacy defended both West and East pretty vigorously, I don't think the location would have made much of a difference, with one exception: Jefferson Davis might have been far less patient with Johnston's campaign of retreat if it were happening right in his back yard, so to speak, leading to an earlier-than-OTL sacking of the general. If Hood still succeeds to command, and he acts like the same Hood, the Union campaign in that region could have seen success some months earlier than it did.

Alternatively, if the Union was advancing all over Davis' "back yard" he might finally have been able to get his head out of the sand and realize that the West was being lost and he had to stop focusing the majority of his attention and the Confederacy's resources on Virginia.
 
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