I sort of feel like you're advancing the position that Jubal would find it difficult (which is something I agree with) and then bringing up difficulties which simply didn't apply to contemporaries as major. The city-fighting problem, for example, is not how it tended to work out in those days - formed troops march into the city without the enemy physically stopping them, the city is pretty much considered as lost and needing to be retaken. (That's certainly how it worked in the Napoleonic days.)
I think perhaps part of the disconnect is that I'm looking at this through a broadly Napoleonic lens (the Napoleonic wars seeing various examples of quickly trained troops and fort attacks of this sort) and this looks quite doable in that sense. And there's not really any major change from the Napoleonic wars in this engagement - the guns are almost all smoothbores, the troops use their weapons like smoothbores and so on.
I'll concede to you that there wasn't a great deal of fighting at Bladensburg, North Point or Fort McHenry.
But I'll bet the members of 44th Foot, 1st/93rd (Highlands) or 3rd/95th would have loved to have a word with you about whether they were experienced or not.
For what it's worth, I'm trying to bring in the morale side of things for the Union - imagine the impact if Jubal's pushed past the fort line (no matter how much his force can't then take another big battle and is mostly fit for marching), I can imagine a panicked evacuation of DC!
(Perhaps not likely... but then, not impossible. Arguably more likely than the events of Waterloo, where two veteran units fired at each other and then both broke - whacked, huh?)
Eight years is easily long enough to let the experience fade. Indeed, it's long enough that a substantial fraction of the regiment would probably be new recruits.Service in Spain in 1814 is not a trifling thing even if the guerillas are not out to get you. And before the 93rd moved to occupation duty in the Cape, they had to... you know, take the Cape.
Which is in part why I would expect a more deliberate assault just as a larger force that damn well knew it could take the city would proceed. Early has no solution to the Union deciding to fight it out other than the bluff and hope he is not called on it.
True, but "he bluffs" and "they fall for it" is a non-zero possibility.
Yes, and the 1/44th didn't capture an Eagle.Well, not every battalion can capture a French eagle. And while 1/44th didn't fight in any pitched battles in Spain that I can find about, that doesn't preclude small actions. And Wellington wasn't really one to let his regiments' training fall by the wayside.
Yes, but eight years without any actual fighting is long enough to let skills seriously degrade - it's questionable to call them experienced at that point.As for the 93rd, there's no particular sign it had been relieved or majorly reinforced while in the Cape. No reason to assume strong attrition due to disease before they moved to the Americas, since the climate is quite mild. Furthermore, if we assume they had strongly suffered in their numbers, we have to consider whether II Corps of the AoNV was really made up of "Jackson's veterans" since he had died more than a year before and that Gettysburg and the Overland Campaign, not to mention dysentery, had put it through the wringer.
Sure, but neither Halleck nor Stanton are particularly experienced in this regard (Halleck's fairly undistinguished military career hadn't included many assaults on fortifications, and Stanton was a civilian). Their opinions really shouldn't be seen as reliable in judging the threat to the capital.Until July 9-12, the whole operation was, in fact, a bluff on the part of Lee and Early. Lee's orders never discussed actually capturing Washington but only appearing to threaten it. It wasn't until Early learned of the state of the Washington defenses that he, very briefly, believed that he might actually succeed in temporarily capturing the city; he abandoned the projected attack as soon as he knew the VI Corps had arrived. It should be said, however, that the Union observers in the city at the time, including Stanton and Halleck, believed that the fall of the city was a very real possibility. Lincoln, though he remained more calm than the others, was concerned enough to wire Grant to suggest that Grant himself return north to deal with the situation. Stanton even had a steamer prepared on the docks to whisk Lincoln away if it became necessary.