WI Garibaldi had accepted the offer of being a federal gen during the ACW ? How would his leadership style have affected the Union's strategy and tactics, and what sort of general would he have made compared to the likes of say McClellan, Burnside, Pope or Hooker ? Conversely, how would the Italian wars of independence and the RISORGIMIENTO during the 1860s have proceeded without him ?
Garibaldi becomes Union gen ACW
- Thread starter Melvin Loh
- Start date
Well, he would have been wildly popular among the Yankees, I think, and likely would have proved all in all a successful commander. He wasn't a stupid, though he, like anyone else in the 19th century, still believed in the "élan" of the troops as a key for victory. I think he would have been taught some lesson here or there by Lee or "Stonewall" Jackson, but he was a resourceful man and would have surely learnt from eraly mistakes. I think he could see the end of the war as one of the foremost US commanders, on pair with Sheridan, Sherman and Grant.
Max Sinister
Banned
The bigger question will be: How will Italy end up? The US will win anyway... Maybe Naples stays independent and the pope keeps all of his territory. Maybe they form an Italian league, as Napoleon III suggested. This also means that in the Prussian-Austrian war, Italy is weaker... Austrians win @ Königgrätz? Or they manage to get Milan back, as a compensation for Schleswig-Holstein? If Prussia still wins, Italy will use the opportunity to grab Rome after Prussia defeats France. The weaker Italy won't fight Turkey or harass Ethiopia, since they'll have to work to unite with Naples somehow first.
Politically he would have been more interesting. He was, I believe, a strong abolitionist. If he was given some power during reconstruction it might have been done better
Max Sinister said:
I thought that by the time of the US civil war the Italian Unification had already taken place, Naples had been taken by Garibaldi and given over to Sardinia-Piedmont to creat Italy on October 26, 1860. After he made an attempt to organise a conquest of the remnants of the Papal States in 1862, which the Italian government arressted him for, he spent the next four years as a semi-prisoner. He was released for war with Austria, and won a few victories that made little difference considering the massive Italian defeats elsewhere. The cession of Venetia was due to Prussia's victories, and even then Austria refused to give the territory to a state they had so throughly beaten on the battlefield, instead giving Venetia to France, which then gave it to Italy.
Assuming Garibaldi does become a Union general, a lot probably depends on what forces he is put in command of. If the Army of the Potomac has a skilled commander right from the start of the war rather than shuffling through the likes of McClellan and other uninspiring leaders first the war might go a fair bit faster, I could certainly see Garibaldi doing much better against Lee, especially if he is as lucky at Antietam as McClellan was. The Confederacy might find a bit of propoganda value in Lincoln hiring a foreign general though.
I doubt Garibaldi would have a major role in reconstruction, both because if the war ends on schedule he will want to return to Italy for the war with Austria in 1866, and because Garibaldi seems much more inclined to seek out a new adventure than to settle into an administrative job like managing reconstruction.