Don't doubt it for a minute. How long do you think he'd last? Would he even make it to the field against Lee? (god knows Burnside did...)To put in one word: catastrophically.
Don't doubt it for a minute. How long do you think he'd last? Would he even make it to the field against Lee? (god knows Burnside did...)
He'd encourage massive slave insurrections.
Making it a war on slavery earlier is going to speed up the evaporation of what little support the CSA enjoyed in Britain and France.
And weaken Lincoln's position at home in the process. Not a good tradeoff.
Not at all convinced inciting servile insurrection (which is the kind of "making it a war on slavery" Fremont would do) would really be the best of ideas in regards to the positive side either.
The war would definitly have been more vicious, bloody and gruesome,
Nope, he'd not last past his first attempt to direct overland operations against Joe E. Johnston.