DBWI: The Summer of 1863!

What Vice President Alexander Stephens hadn't ordered General Robert E. Lee to send Longstreet's corps to Vicksburg? They didn't make it in time to save the city IOTL, but might Lee have had enough men to launch a new invasion of the North and force the final battle he always sought?

Second Fredricksburg might not have happened, and where would we be then?
 
Possibly, but the Confederacy was doomed anyways. It might have dragged on to late 1864-early 1865 but not much past that. The North was simply too rich and had too many people for the South to handle.
 
Lee's invasions of the North didn't have a good track record. Sharpsburg was a shambles when he unnecessarily split his forces before the enemy then had to quickly regroup with their backs to the Potomac. But the ANV was at it's best by mid-63 and their spirits high after Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, so there is a good chance that Bobby Lee might've learned the lessons past and made the victory Confederate independance demanded: the capture of Washinton and free reign in the North-East. Vicksburg wasn't nearly as important as the North thought it was. The city was written off by Richmond months ago, the Confederacy was already cut in half, with or without its capture. If anything it was the loss of 60 000 CS soldiers that hurt the most. So we have a pretty dire picture for the US: Grant regrouping in the Mississippi Valley, Rosecrans stuck at Chattanoonga and Lee moving as he pleases between Philadelphia and Washington. Britain steps in; wars over.
But if Lee LOST an invasion of the North I can only imagine that would speed the Confederacy's demise. This was the only real chance to strike before the US fully flexed it's muscles and the CS victories of '62 and early '63 still in the minds of all. Either way it would have been a shorter war instead of the meatgrinder it became in OTL.
 
Then again, the military occupation of the region would have been shorter. We might have had troops out of the region before 1914. I am pretty sure that the resentment of Alexander Stephens would have prevented him from being labeled the "The Great Traitor". Maybe the assassination of V.P. Charles Lindbergh in Atlanta, Georgia in 1940 would have been "butterflied
out of existence.....
 
Lee's invasions of the North didn't have a good track record. Sharpsburg was a shambles when he unnecessarily split his forces before the enemy then had to quickly regroup with their backs to the Potomac. But the ANV was at it's best by mid-63 and their spirits high after Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, so there is a good chance that Bobby Lee might've learned the lessons past and made the victory Confederate independance demanded: the capture of Washinton and free reign in the North-East. Vicksburg wasn't nearly as important as the North thought it was. The city was written off by Richmond months ago, the Confederacy was already cut in half, with or without its capture. If anything it was the loss of 60 000 CS soldiers that hurt the most. So we have a pretty dire picture for the US: Grant regrouping in the Mississippi Valley, Rosecrans stuck at Chattanoonga and Lee moving as he pleases between Philadelphia and Washington. Britain steps in; wars over.
But if Lee LOST an invasion of the North I can only imagine that would speed the Confederacy's demise. This was the only real chance to strike before the US fully flexed it's muscles and the CS victories of '62 and early '63 still in the minds of all. Either way it would have been a shorter war instead of the meatgrinder it became in OTL.

How in God's name was Lee going to take DC? It was the most fortified city on the planet which made assaulting the city a no go and since the Union army was much larger he could not sit down and besiege the place.
 
Then again, the military occupation of the region would have been shorter. We might have had troops out of the region before 1914. I am pretty sure that the resentment of Alexander Stephens would have prevented him from being labeled the "The Great Traitor". Maybe the assassination of V.P. Charles Lindbergh in Atlanta, Georgia in 1940 would have been "butterflied
out of existence.....

Why would it be shorter? :confused: There is no reason why it should be.
 
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