Lee dies at Gettyburg?

Driftless

Donor
If Lee dies, what will the reaction be among the opponents? A cease fire for a day or two to show respect?

Meade sends his condolences, and proceeds with whatever plans he had. If anything, the Union moves to position it's forces better to take advantage of the situation.

Any number of Generals on both side were killed in the war up to that point, and many of them had good friends on the other side of the battle line. Even though Lee was a a senior leader, I don't see either side taking a day of mourning under any circumstance.
 
Meade sends his condolences, and proceeds with whatever plans he had. If anything, the Union moves to position it's forces better to take advantage of the situation.

Any number of Generals on both side were killed in the war up to that point, and many of them had good friends on the other side of the battle line. Even though Lee was a a senior leader, I don't see either side taking a day of mourning under any circumstance.

Agreed, you don't play games like that in war. You want to win ASAP and you don't win ASAP if you allow the enemy to regroup. I can't think of a time in warfare where that happened. I am not saying that it never happened BTW just that I can't think of an instance.
 
Indeed. The Confederacy loses after his death (just like they lost OTL, only with the timing changed), and the Lost Causer temptation will be to blame it not on Lee, but on Lee's death. The meme will be "had Lee not died at Gettysburg, surely he would have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and saved the Confederacy."

The Lost Causers will probably claim that only the death of Lee and Jackson within a few months of each other allowed the "Damn Yankees" to win, and both will have even more of a cult of martyrdom around them.

As for successors, remember that Johnston has just failed to relieve Vicksburg, so Davis will be even less willing to entrust him with command than OTL. I agree that Longstreet and Bragg are the two most likely options.

The only problem I see here is how the "Cult of Lee" could be any stronger short of making him a virtual god. :rolleyes:
 
The biggest impact will be later on, when Lee won't be around telling gen. Alexander to forget about guerrilla. No formal surrender, large scale fighting turns into guerrilla/occupation/counter guerrilla/reprisals etc.
 
The biggest impact will be later on, when Lee won't be around telling gen. Alexander to forget about guerrilla. No formal surrender, large scale fighting turns into guerrilla/occupation/counter guerrilla/reprisals etc.

Which leads to armed former slaves and a lot of dead slavers, net good for the country.

19th century powers didn't mess about when it came to guerrilla war, they just killed everyone until whoever was left threw in the towel. The South had no allies, no safe areas and a large minority more than willing to put the knife in.
 
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