DBWI: George B. McClellan does not crush Lee during the Peninsula Campaign

Anaxagoras

Banned
I'm just glad that McClellan was able to handle Reconstruction as well as he did the war. Who knows had things might have gone if the Radicals had everything their own way? I could imagine terrible backlashs in later years.

Opinion will forever be divided on whether or not McClellan handled Reconstruction well as President. He pretty much let the Southerners off without punishment. But even if one grants that he handled Reconstruction well, he was an awful President. He pretty much threw away the Jeffersonian mantle and acted as if the President of the United States was some sort of Roman Emperor. He even tried to reverse the long-held tradition that the President should only serve for two terms, for God's sake!
 
"We must keep Grant from reaching the James River, if he does it will mean a siege and from there it is a matter of time." Lee did not outgeneral Grant at any point, Grant's outgeneraling him starts with forcing Lee to fight piecemeal and breaking his offensive power in the first battle, capturing an entire division of Lee's army and breaking his line twice in the second, thwarting Lee's attempts to ambush him in the skirmishes, moving 115,000 men right under his nose without a hostile shot being fired at them, and forcing Lee to fight the kind of static warfare that would destroy his army. If McClellan had been suited to command a corps, let alone an army this all would have happened 2 years earlier.

The most crucial part of why Lee was outgeneraled was that he never realized what Grant was after: Grant never wanted Richmond, he was after Lee's army the whole time. Failure to recognize why Grant was hovering near Richmond was why the Lee magic that died at Gettysburg stayed dead.

Saying that he simply permitted his army to get chewed up by artillery hardly reflects well on him. Victory mitigated this at Missionary Ridge, Malvern Hill frankly is the classic Lee battle.



Yes, Lee could have kept sending his troops against overwhelmingly superior artillery and given McClellan the war by default. :)

IC: To make matters sillier, the Confederacy turns to the man that fails in West Virginia and the Carolinas and expected this to work well for them? It's either desperation or a sign that the Confederacy was unable to let Beauregard do anything.

OOC: In Lees' defense Richmond was the target of the other Union generals. Grant was the first one to realize that if you destroy Lee's army Richmond will fall. If you take Richmond without destroying Lee you accomplished something but Lee will reform somewhere in Southern Virginia and keep fighting on. Losing Richmond hurts the CSA badly but it doesn't destroy it by itself.

IC: What do expect from the fools running that government? If they had one brain cell between them they would have realized secession was madness. The Union literally held all the cards. On top of that you have a tin pot dictator in Davis, an idealist who doesn't realize the Confederacy can't live up to his ideals to win in Stephans and a drunk in Toombs. Why would anyone expect any of these clowns to do anything right?
 
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OOC: Has anybody noticed that even in a thread that's singing McClellan's praises 67th Tigers is STILL PISSED OFF!?:(:p:mad::rolleyes::rolleyes:


Yes, but I think it is because the OOC comments say what everyone else knows to be true. Little Mac's lack of guts made him a poor general. The thing is if he did have guts he would have been as good as 67th Tiger makes him.
 
IC: What do expect from the fools running that government? If they had one brain cell between them they would have realized secession was madness. The Union literally held all the cards. On top of that you have a tin pot dictator in Davis, an idealist who doesn't realize the Confederacy can't live up to his ideals to win in Stephans and a drunk in Toombs. Why would anyone expect any of these clowns to do anything right?

The only thing Davis did right was build armies. The rest of them might have made good mayors or something but weren't cut out for what they claimed they were. I actually have some sympathy for Mr. Davis, none for the baboons that the CSA called the Congress.
 
The only thing Davis did right was build armies. The rest of them might have made good mayors or something but weren't cut out for what they claimed they were. I actually have some sympathy for Mr. Davis, none for the baboons that the CSA called the Congress.

If you call those armies. They got kicked to the curb the moment the Union got its act together.
 
If you call those armies. They got kicked to the curb the moment the Union got its act together.

Just because they performed crappily doesn't mean they weren't armies. The real danger of that was that our generals got overconfident and expected any victory would be easily won. That's how France kicked our asses. We really should not have expected the Third Republic to be as crappy as the Confederacy, and we failed to see what use of machine guns skillfully placed (and to make it worse the guy who invented that gun was an expatriate) would do to tactics right out of the 1860s. Nor did we make good use of our own machine guns or artillery, things General Thomas said were key but we failed to actually do.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
For one we might not gone to war with France around the turn of the century.

How do you figure? As already pointed out, even if McClellan had somehow failed to crush Lee during the Peninsula Campaign, Lee would very shortly thereafter have been defeated by the second army coming down from the north. So the basic geopolitical situation in the latter half of the 19th Century would have stayed basically the same, and I see no reason why French imperialism in Latin America should be excluded from this.
 
How do you figure? As already pointed out, even if McClellan had somehow failed to crush Lee during the Peninsula Campaign, Lee would very shortly thereafter have been defeated by the second army coming down from the north. So the basic geopolitical situation in the latter half of the 19th Century would have stayed basically the same, and I see no reason why French imperialism in Latin America should be excluded from this.

And even moreso there was no way the CSA could reverse Buell's lightning capture of Chattanooga when his commanders like George Thomas won that overwhelming victory over Braxton Bragg. McClellan fails and Buell will take up the slack. If anything Buell was arguably in a better position than McClellan, he had even worse opponents than Lee and Joe Johnston. :eek:
 
OOC: I have a real problem with the idea of French Imperialism routing the Monroe Doctrine and the British basically doing nothing about it.:rolleyes:
 
OOC: I have a real problem with the idea of French Imperialism routing the Monroe Doctrine and the British basically doing nothing about it.:rolleyes:

OOC: I agree, the Monroe Doctrine was simply ratifying an existing British idea. France also lacks the simple brute force to make that work, and Britain has always gotten along more or less well enough with the USA post-Treaty of Ghent to make war between those implausible. Britain's own interests are served by aborting Habsburg-ruled Mexico from the first.
 
OOC:

The best guess I can come up with is that Maximillian prevails in Mexico and GB does nothing about it. After all, they didn't do much about it OTL. Lincoln decides not to risk war with France about it as the US is too busy reconstucting the South. Around 1900 the US and Mexico get into a fight over a border dispute. France joins in and hurts the US badly initially, then due to both Thomas and the Brits getting involved the French get kicked out.
 
OOC:

The best guess I can come up with is that Maximillian prevails in Mexico and GB does nothing about it. After all, they didn't do much about it OTL. Lincoln decides not to risk war with France about it as the US is too busy reconstucting the South. Around 1900 the US and Mexico get into a fight over a border dispute. France joins in and hurts the US badly initially, then due to both Thomas and the Brits getting involved the French get kicked out.

OOC: My idea was more that the French and USA get into a shooting war over Venezuela because the ATL USA is quite cocky. It has had all of one major war, the ATL version of the US Civil War where the Confederacy collapses with one good kick, and overran Indian tribes as per OTL. The Spanish-American war of OTL was not as easy as people consider it to have been, here that problem is magnified and the USA loses the Franco-American War of 1902.

The idea was essentially Thomas invents a different kind of modern doctrine to Grant, the USA following a similar postwar policy to OTL shelves that policy and expects a quick win over the French in US turf, so to speak and gets a broken jaw for its troubles. After which the USA revives those old ideas and updates them to reflect more modern technology.
 
Opinion will forever be divided on whether or not McClellan handled Reconstruction well as President. He pretty much let the Southerners off without punishment. But even if one grants that he handled Reconstruction well, he was an awful President. He pretty much threw away the Jeffersonian mantle and acted as if the President of the United States was some sort of Roman Emperor. He even tried to reverse the long-held tradition that the President should only serve for two terms, for God's sake!

Is there anyone who might otherwise succeed who'd have a chance of winning and do better? President Thomas might be the first US President assassinated instead of President Whathisface shot by a disgruntled failed job applicant. President Grant? He was no great champion of Civil Rights. President Pope or President Buell? ROFLMAO.
 
OOC: My idea was more that the French and USA get into a shooting war over Venezuela because the ATL USA is quite cocky. It has had all of one major war, the ATL version of the US Civil War where the Confederacy collapses with one good kick, and overran Indian tribes as per OTL. The Spanish-American war of OTL was not as easy as people consider it to have been, here that problem is magnified and the USA loses the Franco-American War of 1902.

The idea was essentially Thomas invents a different kind of modern doctrine to Grant, the USA following a similar postwar policy to OTL shelves that policy and expects a quick win over the French in US turf, so to speak and gets a broken jaw for its troubles. After which the USA revives those old ideas and updates them to reflect more modern technology.

Why Venezuela ?
 
Why Venezuela ?

OOC:
There was a collision there between the European powers and the US Navy at the time over collection of Venezuelan debts. The European navies went home, except for the Germans, who seemed to be ready to take things to a head. That is, until the Royal Navy sailed in between the two fleets and let the Germans know in no uncertain terms whose side they'd be on if the Germans started shooting. First real positive incident between the USN and Royal Navy since, well, ever really.:) Lots of toasts being raised to the Admiralty at the Navy Department over that one.:D

People, PLEASE use the OOC: as a signal to remind us you are not "IN" thread, but only commenting on OTL. There is room for some confusion, after all.
 
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Is there anyone who might otherwise succeed who'd have a chance of winning and do better? President Thomas might be the first US President assassinated instead of President Whathisface shot by a disgruntled failed job applicant. President Grant? He was no great champion of Civil Rights. President Pope or President Buell? ROFLMAO.

Grant wasn't THAT bad. He was certainly better on that score than his BFF Sherman. And I think you're not taking into account Thomas' fatal stroke in 1870. That failed would-be civil servant did his murderous deed in 1881.

OOC: ROLFMAO???:confused::confused::confused:
 
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OOC:

The best guess I can come up with is that Maximillian prevails in Mexico and GB does nothing about it. After all, they didn't do much about it OTL. Lincoln decides not to risk war with France about it as the US is too busy reconstucting the South. Around 1900 the US and Mexico get into a fight over a border dispute. France joins in and hurts the US badly initially, then due to both Thomas and the Brits getting involved the French get kicked out.

OOC:

Lincoln's kicking the French out of Mexico was holy writ. He had been sending letters pleading with President Benito Juarez to keep on fighting the Imperial French at all costs. "God willing, our own civil war will soon be over. When it is, I promise to do all in my power to aid your people in gaining their freedom"-Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Benito Juarez following the fall of Mexico City.*

It was Mexico's victory over the French at the Battle of Cinco de Mayo in 1861 that delayed the Mexican Conquest for a full year. By the time the Imperial French reached the Rio Grande in the Summer of 1863, Gettysburg and Vicksburg had already happened, and Nappy III was forced to be much more circumspect regarding his relations with the Confederacy.

The region of the Confederacy known as the Transmississippi (Texas, the Indian Territory, Arkansas, and western Louisiana) was better fed, armed, and clothed thanks to uninterrupted supply lines from French occupied Mexico. One of the reasons the region was basically bypassed until the end was that the ability of the Texans to resist was so strong. A good reason for Lincoln to look for payback. The disastrous Red River Campaign is another.

Immediately upon the surrender of all Confederate forces by now General-In-Chief Joseph E. Johnston (including Kirby Smith's command in Texas), General Grant ordered Sheridan to take four Union Corps straight to the Rio Grande (which is why he wasn't present at the final victory parade celebrations in Washington). That's twice as many troops as the French had in all of Mexico. The Union was totally mobilized for war by that point, with the largest active modern army in the world. The French took off within the year. And Maximillian wound up in front of a firing squad.

Even had the US taken the ASB decision to leave an Austrian Emperor on a phantom Mexican throne, the French could not have stayed. With the Franco-Prussian War, the need of French troops in Mexico to get home to fight, the fall of Nappy III, the Commune, the surrender to the Prussians, the Rise of the Third Republic, and the ruinous indemnities the French had to pay the Prussian/Germans, Maximillian would be left fighting a heavily reinforced and rearmed (US ARMY surplus:D) Mexican Republican Army with only a handful of Imperial Mexican brigades of very dubious loyalty.

With the Third Republic obsessed on Revanche, no way in HELL does a democracy like France go to war with a democracy like the US. The French are going to go to war with the US after they've lost Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and have a powerful, United German Empire, with a huge army on their borders, pointed at Paris!?:eek:

Then there's the whole "We just spent all those francs building, shipping, and assembling the Statue of Liberty for the Americans as a friendly gift between democracies, and now we're supposed to throw away all that good will on a few piles of sand?":mad::p
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*-Probably not a perfect quote, but any imperfections are in terms of grammar, not spirit.
 
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Why Venezuela ?
OOC:

What Usertron2020 said. Here the USN would be so full of itself it would be risking a severe beating given its capture of New Orleans exceeds anything done by the Army except the capture of Richmond and destruction of the CS Virginia Army.


Grant wasn't THAT bad. He was certainly better on that score than his BFF Sherman. And I think you're not taking into account Thomas' fatal stroke in 1870.

OOC: ROLFMAO???:confused::confused::confused:

IC: Perhaps, but that's like smelling better than a skunk. A man who married into a family of slaveholders certainly sounds less likely to go after the terrorists in the postwar South than President McClellan. He *did* try, and he made a heroic effort at it, but it was both too little and too late. Grant would probably have ignored it in the first place.

OOC: Rolling On the Floor Laughing My Ass Off.

OOC:

Lincoln's kicking the French out of Mexico was holy writ. He had been sending letters pleading with President Benito Juarez to keep on fighting the Imperial French at all costs. "God willing, our own civil war will soon be over. When it is, I promise to do all in my power to aid your people in gaining their freedom"-Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Benito Juarez following the fall of Mexico City.*

It was Mexico's victory over the French at the Battle of Cinco de Mayo in 1861 that delayed the Mexican Conquest for a full year. By the time the Imperial French reached the Rio Grande in the Summer of 1863, Gettysburg and Vicksburg had already happened, and Nappy III was forced to be much more circumspect regarding his relations with the Confederacy.

The region of the Confederacy known as the Transmississippi (Texas, the Indian Territory, Arkansas, and western Louisiana) was better fed, armed, and clothed thanks to uninterrupted supply lines from French occupied Mexico. One of the reasons the region was basically bypassed until the end was that the ability of the Texans to resist was so strong. A good reason for Lincoln to look for payback. The disastrous Red River Campaign is another.

Immediately upon the surrender of all Confederate forces by now General-In-Chief Joseph E. Johnston (including Kirby Smith's command in Texas), General Grant ordered SHeridan to take four Union Corps straight to the Rio Grande. That's twice as many troops as the French had in all of Mexico. The Union was totally mobilized for war by that point, with the largest active modern army in the world. The French took off within the year. And Maximillian wound up in front of a firing squad.

Even had the US taken the ASB decision to leave an Austrian Emperor on a phantom Mexican throne, the French could not have stayed. With the Franco-Prussian War, the need of French troops in Mexico to get home to fight, the fall of Nappy III, the Commune, the surrender to the Prussians, the Rise of the Third Republic, and the ruinous indemnities the French had to pay the Prussian/Germans, Maximillian would be left fighting a heavily reinforced and rearmed (US ARMY surplus:D) Mexican Republican Army with only a handful of Imperial Mexican brigades of very dubious loyalty.

With the Third Republic obsessed on Revanche, no way in HELL does a democracy like France go to war with a democracy like the US. The French are going to go to war with the US after they've lost Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and have a powerful, United German Empire, with a huge army on their borders, pointed at Paris!?:eek:

Then there's the whole "We just spent all those francs building, shipping, and assembling the Statue of Liberty for the Americans as a friendly gift between democracies, and now we're supposed to throw away all that good will on a few piles of sand?":mad::p

OOC: Indeed. Venezuela's a more likely flashpoint and the primary butterflies here are cultural from the USA having grown far too cocky for its own good. Mexico would happen if and only if the Race invades with WWI technology in 1863. ;)
 
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