Hooker not outflanked and crushes Lee at Chancellorsville

Yeah, and one thing Longstreet wasn't was willfully blind. He seemed one of the more realistic CSA generals.

If there was a more realistic man in the Confederacy, I don't know who he was. Johnston seems to have never had confidence in anything (I'm not saying that's completely true, but he always comes off as thinking nothing can succeed even in the short run).
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
If there was a more realistic man in the Confederacy, I don't know who he was.

Hardee or Cleburne.

seems to have never had confidence in anything (I'm not saying that's completely true, but he always comes off as thinking nothing can succeed even in the short run).

People either love or hate Johnston. I think that Johnston understood better than anyone the need of the Confederacy to maintain its manpower for as long as possible. This was obviously true, but Johnston failed to understand the political and economic importance of maintaining control of the geographic territory of the Confederacy itself. A worthy grand strategy would find a proper balance between both.
 
Hardee or Cleburne.

Point on Cleburne (for I presume his career-scuttling proposal), why Hardee?

People either love or hate Johnston. I think that Johnston understood better than anyone the need of the Confederacy to maintain its manpower for as long as possible. This was obviously true, but Johnston failed to understand the political and economic importance of maintaining control of the geographic territory of the Confederacy itself. A worthy grand strategy would find a proper balance between both.

I've never really understood the idea that the Confederacy preserving its manpower had some inherent value, in the sense strategy should be based around doing so. What point is there maintaining armies if those armies aren't interfering with Federal ones, which necessarily involves casualties?

Its not just the costs of losing, say, Nashville as the issue that gaining Nashville is a gain to the Union war effort - the Union will keep going after such things, and feel more secure in victory, the things that shook such confidence involved fightin' and losin'.
 
Yeah. Still, I do not envy this part of the job for Longstreet any more than the initial salvaging the ANV part.

Honestly, anything after 1862 for anyone in the Confederacy except the willfully blind is going to be stressful.

During 1862, too. One thing people tend to forget due to how much the CSA dominated the history of the war is that in 1862 there was a moment when it seemed the complete collapse of the Confederacy was inevitable. Whatever Lee's defects as a tactician he did reverse that in the East and secured a psychological advantage there, while Bragg ensured that the key Chattanooga region remained a stalemate into the fall of 1863.
 
People either love or hate Johnston. I think that Johnston understood better than anyone the need of the Confederacy to maintain its manpower for as long as possible. This was obviously true, but Johnston failed to understand the political and economic importance of maintaining control of the geographic territory of the Confederacy itself. A worthy grand strategy would find a proper balance between both.

To the point that in Virginia he used the same strategic concept to put the newly redubbed Army of Northern Virginia in the position of having to defeat two US offensives before being able to execute their own properly, meaning the Confederacy's position started even worse-off than it presumably had to. Where in the Atlanta Campaign he moved south repeatedly and whenever convenient claimed either that he faced overwhelmingly superior numbers or had shrunk those numbers conveniently but was still unwilling to fight them. He's more the Confederate McClellan than anything else: great organizer, bad field commander, backstabbing political general.
 
To the point that in Virginia he used the same strategic concept to put the newly redubbed Army of Northern Virginia in the position of having to defeat two US offensives before being able to execute their own properly, meaning the Confederacy's position started even worse-off than it presumably had to. Where in the Atlanta Campaign he moved south repeatedly and whenever convenient claimed either that he faced overwhelmingly superior numbers or had shrunk those numbers conveniently but was still unwilling to fight them. He's more the Confederate McClellan than anything else: great organizer, bad field commander, backstabbing political general.


Also beloved by his troops which is another thing he shares with Mac. What about Davis replacing Lee with Jackson instead of Longstreet?
 
Also beloved by his troops which is another thing he shares with Mac. What about Davis replacing Lee with Jackson instead of Longstreet?

Jackson is junior to Longstreet, but looking at "Okay, so say that's ignored..."

Jackson is a crazier, secretive, less self-aware Sherman (in the sense of Sherman's strengths and weaknesses, not just the Hard War attitude).

This will not be good.
 
Jackson is junior to Longstreet, but looking at "Okay, so say that's ignored..."

Jackson is a crazier, secretive, less self-aware Sherman (in the sense of Sherman's strengths and weaknesses, not just the Hard War attitude).

This will not be good.

I realize he is junior to Longstreet but Davis might see Longstreet as too defensive. I think Jackson is more likely to go on the offensive than Longstreet. This will not be good for the CSA in TTL.
 
Also beloved by his troops which is another thing he shares with Mac. What about Davis replacing Lee with Jackson instead of Longstreet?

The first time Jackson has to lead 60,000 men in a major offensive he will be much worse than John Bell Hood in the Atlanta and Tennessee Campaigns. Hood at least showed he was able to command troops on that level, if badly. Jackson never adjusted to commanding Lee's smaller wing that well, him adjusting to commanding the entire army would be a brilliant move....for the Union.
 
The first time Jackson has to lead 60,000 men in a major offensive he will be much worse than John Bell Hood in the Atlanta and Tennessee Campaigns. Hood at least showed he was able to command troops on that level, if badly. Jackson never adjusted to commanding Lee's smaller wing that well, him adjusting to commanding the entire army would be a brilliant move....for the Union.

What do you think the chances that the religous fanatic would think it was God's will that he attack at once and with the Lord at his side he will scatter the enemy with one swift blow? Or am I reading him wrong?
 
What do you think the chances that the religous fanatic would think it was God's will that he attack at once and with the Lord at his side he will scatter the enemy with one swift blow? Or am I reading him wrong?

Speaking for myself: You're reading him wrong. Jackson's piety did not particularly influence his tactics (his attitudes, but not his tactics).

Wouldn't be impossible for him to determine a swift blow would do it and say "with God on our side we cannot fail", but that's more him being incapable of communicating anything useful to subordinates than him being a zealot who would believe God would move mountains for the Confederates.

Jackson was not Philip II.
 
Speaking for myself: You're reading him wrong. Jackson's piety did not particularly influence his tactics (his attitudes, but not his tactics).

Wouldn't be impossible for him to determine a swift blow would do it and say "with God on our side we cannot fail", but that's more him being incapable of communicating anything useful to subordinates than him being a zealot who would believe God would move mountains for the Confederates.

Jackson was not Philip II.

I didn't mean it quite like that. More that the failure was one of God's tests and if he comes up with a plan quickly and attacks soon they will break. By at once I more mean as soon as he comes up with some sort of plan rather than that very second. I phrased it poorly, I know.
 
What do you think the chances that the religous fanatic would think it was God's will that he attack at once and with the Lord at his side he will scatter the enemy with one swift blow? Or am I reading him wrong?

He's not that kind of fanatic. His fanaticism encouraged him to want to take the war to civilians on the Union side because he saw them as infidels, his tactics, however, show a preference for rapid maneuvers and flank attacks, which are a sign that in fighting his religious fanaticism did not affect how he did it. It did, however, influence him to exhaust his men and goes a long way to explain why Jackson had a continual turnover of officers in his division and quarreled with his subordinates as much as Braxton Bragg did. If he screws up due to that it'd be in an attempt to sack the Hell out of Maryland and Pennsylvania in the expectation Yamamoto-style that the USA must of itself surrender as Yankees are cowardly wretches.
 
I didn't mean it quite like that. More that the failure was one of God's tests and if he comes up with a plan quickly and attacks soon they will break. By at once I more mean as soon as he comes up with some sort of plan rather than that very second. I phrased it poorly, I know.

Right. I think Snake hit it, personally.

He seems to have had a higher opinion of Union soldiers than civilians when it came to morale.
 
He's not that kind of fanatic. His fanaticism encouraged him to want to take the war to civilians on the Union side because he saw them as infidels, his tactics, however, show a preference for rapid maneuvers and flank attacks, which are a sign that in fighting his religious fanaticism did not affect how he did it. It did, however, influence him to exhaust his men and goes a long way to explain why Jackson had a continual turnover of officers in his division and quarreled with his subordinates as much as Braxton Bragg did. If he screws up due to that it'd be in an attempt to sack the Hell out of Maryland and Pennsylvania in the expectation Yamamoto-style that the USA must of itself surrender as Yankees are cowardly wretches.

OUCH! That is even worse! That would drive up Union enlistment, encourage Union troops to fight even harder and make South Carolina the model on how Union soldiers treat Southern civilians.
 
OUCH! That is even worse! That would drive up Union enlistment, encourage Union troops to fight even harder and make South Carolina the model on how Union soldiers treat Southern civilians.

Sufficient to say, "Jackson lives" is not necessarily a good change to Chancellorsville, for the Confederacy.
 
Do you think he really would be THAT foolish? :eek:

As to practice Hard War? Yes.

Its something he believed was an appropriate idea and workable, and he was a narrow minded sort of guy and listened to contrary voices virtually never (as in, I think Lee is the only example of one he would listen to).
 
OUCH! That is even worse! That would drive up Union enlistment, encourage Union troops to fight even harder and make South Carolina the model on how Union soldiers treat Southern civilians.

Yes, this is what would really happen, unfortunately Jackson in too many ways would have been a perfect general.....in the WWII Imperial Japanese Army.

Do you think he really would be THAT foolish? :eek:

Yes, he fortunately died before he got a chance to really and truly do any of it. Hermann Haupt would have repaired what he'dve realistically done, but the legacy of that leads to Deep War, 1860s-style.
 
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