If Stonewall Jackson Survived The Civil War....

Eh, I'd prefer it if Jackson never got shot than if he just survived his injury. Takes out all the recovery time. I suspect there is no re-organization, and the Army of North Virginia remains on offensive footing longer. This probably buys the confederacy 3-5 months, and the cost of another 10-30k
casualties.

I think that you are underestimating the effects of having Jackson at Gettysburg, especially on that crucial first day. He would have seized Cemetery Ridge on the first day and that changes the whole tactical situation. He was an aggressive commander always looking for ways to confound the enemy. A victory at Gettysburg does not guarantee a CSA victory in the war, because President Lincoln is not going to give up the struggle unless forced to do so, but it might give the CSA French and British recognition. I do not think either nation will enter the war, but they will guarantee loans and all those warships will get released. What happens then................who knows!
 
C'mon Guys, Let's have a little fun with it, We all know what we want to hear. Jackson routs Wallace at Monocacy and goes on to take Washington in 1864. Lincoln loses the election, the north collapses.
 
Forrest was a slave-trader before the war, while Jackson violated the law in teaching his slaves to read.

I can easily imagine Jackson not being a bitter-ender about the whole thing the way Forrest (founder of the KKK) was.
 
C'mon Guys, Let's have a little fun with it, We all know what we want to hear. Jackson routs Wallace at Monocacy and goes on to take Washington in 1864. Lincoln loses the election, the north collapses.

If he is going to take Washington DC, let's just go ASB and give him a platoon of M1 tanks so he can take DC!
 
I think that you are underestimating the effects of having Jackson at Gettysburg, especially on that crucial first day. He would have seized Cemetery Ridge on the first day and that changes the whole tactical situation. He was an aggressive commander always looking for ways to confound the enemy. A victory at Gettysburg does not guarantee a CSA victory in the war, because President Lincoln is not going to give up the struggle unless forced to do so, but it might give the CSA French and British recognition. I do not think either nation will enter the war, but they will guarantee loans and all those warships will get released. What happens then................who knows!

He might have seized Cemetary Ridge the first day. He might also have tried and failed.

Ewell didn't for reasons that Jackson in his shoes still has to work with - a lack of available forces.

Rodes's division is on the far side of town and kinda chewed up, Johnson's division is a while off, and that leaves part of Early as the only force anything like immediately available.

And this is assuming Jackson is aggressive and doesn't have an attack of drowsyness like the Seven Days or something.

Also, Gettysburg alone is not getting recognition.
 

Dialga

Banned
In a term paper I wrote for college many years ago, I addressed this exact question. Here's how the POD went:

On that fateful May night in the Wilderness, we have the exact same conditions, that IOTL led to Stonewall's death: a bunch of crazy Tar Heels mistake Stonewall and his staff for Yankee cavalry and fire upon him. However, instead of Stonewall getting hit, his horse bites the dust, shielding him from the hail of bullets. Stonewall survives with only a few bruises and a broken leg. He recovers quickly enough to fight in the Battle of Gettysburg, where a mass Confederate assault on the Round Tops and Culp's Hill shatters the Army of the Potomac on July 2.

After Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee gets sent West, and Stonewall Jackson becomes commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee and E. Kirby Smith recapture the Mississippi River, while Stonewall lays siege to Washington, DC. By the end of 1863, the war is over and the Confederacy is victorious.

However, the fruits of victory soon turn into ashes in the CSA's mouth. On April 14, 1865, Jefferson Davis attends a play at one of the better theaters in Washington (now renamed Jacksonopolis for some reason known only to me :rolleyes:). He is shot in the back in the head by an unstable actor named Booth, and dies the next day.

Davis' successor, Alexander Stephens, is helpless to combat the weaknesses inherent in the Confederacy. Strong support for states' rights, the devastation of the war, political infighting, and the lack of will to stay together lead to balkanization. The Confederacy falls apart in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

Virginia becomes a monarchy under the Lees (Robert's the first king). Stonewall Jackson becomes its first prime minister, serving ably in this position until his untimely death under the wheels of a horse-drawn trolley in 1882.

(If you like what you saw, I can share the rest of the term paper with you, along with a few concepts and ideas I've thought up over the years.)
 

Japhy

Banned
Bigot?

When did Jackson go from devoutly pious to "bigot"?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think we're casting an aspersion or two on Jackson here.

What else do you call the "liberal" men of the south whom feel that slavery is not that great, yet then accept that its God's will and the natural order, just so long as it benefits them?

No aspersion, just calling spades spades. Jackson was a bigot no matter who he taught sunday school too.
 
What else do you call the "liberal" men of the south whom feel that slavery is not that great, yet then accept that its God's will and the natural order, just so long as it benefits them?

No aspersion, just calling spades spades. Jackson was a bigot no matter who he taught sunday school too.

As I recall, Jackson wasn't a slave owner. So I'm not sure slavery benefiting him played any role in his thoughts on the subject.

And if we're going at this from the issue of racism, calling him a religious bigot is a misleading way to present it.

Either way, I don't see that making Jackson support the KKK and its kind.
 

Japhy

Banned
As I recall, Jackson wasn't a slave owner. So I'm not sure slavery benefiting him played any role in his thoughts on the subject.

And if we're going at this from the issue of racism, calling him a religious bigot is a misleading way to present it.

Either way, I don't see that making Jackson support the KKK and its kind.

He doesn't have to support the Klan, but there's no way he'd become a scaliwag like Longstreet did. The idea that he'd take a stand against such things is ridiculous white washing. At the very least a surviving Jackson would present a legitimate face for Redemption politics in Virginia.

And really, any White in the antebellum south was profiting from the entirety of the system that slavery underpinned.
 
And really, any White in the antebellum south was profiting from the entirety of the system that slavery underpinned.

http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/uncletom/key/keyIII10t.html

And to avoid any association with a novel (even though "Key" is the factual basis for the novel--it's a collection of research material), here's more:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/yoeman/crack1.html

http://books.google.com/books/about/Poor_Whites_of_the_Antebellum_South.html?id=uZnssLpum0UC

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/trash/trash2.html

The slave system was destructive to the poorer whites as well, but the planter class used racism to manipulate them into fighting for it.
 

Japhy

Banned
http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/uncletom/key/keyIII10t.html

And to avoid any association with a novel (even though "Key" is the factual basis for the novel--it's a collection of research material), here's more:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/yoeman/crack1.html

http://books.google.com/books/about/Poor_Whites_of_the_Antebellum_South.html?id=uZnssLpum0UC

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/trash/trash2.html

The slave system was destructive to the poorer whites as well, but the planter class used racism to manipulate them into fighting for it.

Your continued use of apologetics is noted old sport. Also nice job working to develop more sources, been waiting a while to use those?

It all fails to contradict the point that even the poorest White profited entirely on the benefit that they were always at the very least better then Slaves.

Also I don't think that even you would make the argument that Stonewall was a member of the "Poor White Trash" you're shielding with this.
 
He doesn't have to support the Klan, but there's no way he'd become a scaliwag like Longstreet did. The idea that he'd take a stand against such things is ridiculous white washing. At the very least a surviving Jackson would present a legitimate face for Redemption politics in Virginia.

Longstreet may have owned slaves as well, or at least his family did.

What grounds do you have to say that Jackson would NOT have done what Longstreet did?
 
He doesn't have to support the Klan, but there's no way he'd become a scaliwag like Longstreet did. The idea that he'd take a stand against such things is ridiculous white washing. At the very least a surviving Jackson would present a legitimate face for Redemption politics in Virginia.

And really, any White in the antebellum south was profiting from the entirety of the system that slavery underpinned.

Why is it ridiculous whitewashing?

Jackson being okay with slavery existing and Jackson being okay with terrorism are two very different things. Otherwise, we'd see Lee as a KKK guy for instance (picking Lee as a blatant hypocrite on the subject of slavery, but not someone involved in the KKK).

As for any white benefiting . . . even if Jackson did benefit indirectly, that's hardly the same as having an interest in the existing order.
 
Your continued use of apologetics is noted old sport. Also nice job working to develop more sources, been waiting a while to use those?

If you think The Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin is an apologetic for slavery, you're insane.

I will spell it out to you, since you didn't get it then and you clearly don't get it now.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was written to attack slavery. When pro-slavery people criticized it, Stowe conglomerated her research materials to write Key. UTC is fiction, albeit fiction based on fact. Key is the fact.

How are any of those other sources apologetic? If anything, they're even more damning of the slave system because they show it was destructive to more than those who were enslaved.
 
Also I don't think that even you would make the argument that Stonewall was a member of the "Poor White Trash" you're shielding with this.

I was taking an issue with your second point, that all white people in the South benefited from the slave system.
 

Japhy

Banned
Longstreet may have owned slaves as well, or at least his family did.

What grounds do you have to say that Jackson would NOT have done what Longstreet did?

One odd exception to the rule does not mean that Jackson would have also been an odd exception to the rule. How can you argue that he woudn't have gone with the vast majority of his peers into redeemerist politics?

Why is it ridiculous whitewashing?

Jackson being okay with slavery existing and Jackson being okay with violent terrorism are two very different things. Otherwise, we'd see Lee as a KKK guy for instance (picking Lee as a blatant hypocrite on the subject of slavery, but not someone involved in the KKK).

Lee's actions during the war don't line up with Stonewall "We have to kill them all" Jackson though do they?

As for any white benefiting . . . even if Jackson did benefit indirectly, that's hardly the same as having an interest in the existing order.

Seriously?


The fact of the matter is the vast majority of prominent Confederates at the end of the civil war became redeemers. Even the ones who kept their own hands clean were involved in a para-political system that depended on men with hoods riding out at night, there are very few and rare exceptions to this rule. Based on Jackson's religious views on Slavery, his politics and his statements during the war, unlike Longstreet, there is no evidence that leads in a direction towards post-war Unionism or Republicanism. Jackson may not resort to putting a hood on like Forrest or Gordon but in that instance there's plenty to say that he'd have no problem becoming a Hampton, there to reap the end benefits.
 
One odd exception to the rule does not mean that Jackson would have also been an odd exception to the rule. How can you argue that he woudn't have gone with the vast majority of his peers into redeemerist politics?

It does not mean that he would, but it does not mean that he wouldn't.
 
The fact of the matter is the vast majority of prominent Confederates at the end of the civil war became redeemers. Even the ones who kept their own hands clean were involved in a para-political system that depended on men with hoods riding out at night, there are very few and rare exceptions to this rule. Based on Jackson's religious views on Slavery, his politics and his statements during the war, unlike Longstreet, there is no evidence that leads in a direction towards post-war Unionism or Republicanism. Jackson may not resort to putting a hood on like Forrest or Gordon but in that instance there's plenty to say that he'd have no problem becoming a Hampton, there to reap the end benefits.

Now you're getting into an actual argument. Since Jackson died before the war ended, there's no way to be able to prove one way or the other, but one can take what we do know about him and weigh the odds.

Given how he was willing to violate the laws of Virginia to educate slaves, this shows a certain degree of flexibility on the race issue.

However, you're making references to his politics and statements during the war. Care to share any, particularly the latter?
 

Japhy

Banned
I was taking an issue with your second point, that all white people in the South benefited from the slave system.

Poor whites had political influence and their votes of course were boosted by the 3/5th rule, they used legal violence to maintain control of jobs so as to keep freedmen away from them without repercussion, some of the earliest instances of pork and patronage were directed at them to shore them up as a separate, more benificial group then slaves. They were you know, also not slaves. Cite a source from an abolitionist all you want, you're still using it to defend a myth developed by Neo-Confederates for decades to excuse them of any responsibility for the system that existed before the war, and by extension the system they lived in after reconstruction.
 
Lee's actions during the war don't line up with Stonewall "We have to kill them all" Jackson though do they?

Great, now we're taking a quote out of context to imply Jackson was in favor of Imperial Japanese ways of making war.

Not being the kind of chivalrous don't-shoot-the-brave-ones is not the same as actually doing anything more savage and more hostile than Lee did.

Seriousl?


The fact of the matter is the vast majority of prominent Confederates at the end of the civil war became redeemers. Even the ones who kept their own hands clean were involved in a para-political system that depended on men with hoods riding out at night, there are very few and rare exceptions to this rule.
Seriously, you generalize so broadly as to make it impossible to see how Jackson - not noted for being a normal man even if we dismiss the lemon myth - would be in favor of the men with hoods.

Based on Jackson's religious views on Slavery, his politics and his statements during the war, unlike Longstreet, there is no evidence that leads in a direction towards post-war Unionism or Republicanism. Jackson may not resort to putting a hood on like Forrest or Gordon but in that instance there's plenty to say that he'd have no problem becoming a Hampton, there to reap the end benefits.
What about Jackson's politics or statements during the war indicate that he would be a diehard anti-Unionist or anti-Republican after the war?

Frankly, I'd like to see something more concrete than what appears to be the belief that anyone in gray was a bad guy by definition, which is simply not enough to justify the idea that Jackson would care about "the benefits".

He's not a plantation owner or a prominent figure even in the social circles he moved in.

And while fame might change that, it would still leave us with the fact Jackson doesn't seem to have sought out doing anything that would make him even a local political figure.
 
Top