Mosby unites with Johnston

After Lee´s surrender , Colonel Mosby and his remaining staff intended to unite with still rebellious General Johnston. However on the way to him, the "Grey Ghost" read in a newspaper of Johnston´s surrender. What if the two guerrillias had indeed united, could it have led to a prolonged Confederate holdout insurgency , as they intended ? Stand Watie hadn´t surrendered at this point, too.
 
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Once Lee surrendered there was no point in prolonging the war. Johnston had performed a minor miracle in scrapping together the shell of a cohesive army for Bentonville, and he had with him over 30,000 men but Sherman had over 60,000 and there was nothing anymore preventing Grant from sending hundreds of thousands of men south through Virginia and into the Carolina's. Joe Johnston, if he'd fought on, would very much have been trapped between the hammer and the anvil with no hope of success. Mosby and a handful of men wouldn't have changed that.
 
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Once Lee surrendered there was no point in prolonging the war. Johnston had performed a minor miracle in scrapping together the shell of a cohesive army for Bentonville, and he had with him over 30,000 men but Sherman had over 60,000 and there was nothing anymore preventing Grant from sending hundreds of thousands of men south through Virginia and into the Carolina's. Joe Johnston, if he'd fought on, would very much have been trapped between the hammer and the anvil with no hope of success. Mosby and a handful of men wouldn't have changed that.

Agreed, after he heard of Lee/s surrender Johnston was pretty eager to surrender to Sherman. It was completely hopeless and he knew it.
 
Agreed, after he heard of Lee/s surrender Johnston was pretty eager to surrender to Sherman. It was completely hopeless and he knew it.

And Beauregard knew it and Breckinridge knew it and Mallory knew it. Convincing Davis of that fact was the difficult bit. Davis never forgave Johnston for surrendering when his army wasn't beaten.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
What if the two guerrillias had indeed united, could it have led to a prolonged Confederate holdout insurgency , as they intended ?

Johnston was about as much a "guerrilla" as he was a Vegas call girl. He was a Virginia gentlemen of the old school and abhorred partisan warfare and would never have have allowed his men to be needlessly sacrificed (indeed, this was his defining quality as a soldier). Moreover, he was determined to bring the fighting to an end as soon as he learned of Lee's surrender.

Mosby was a minor player in the grand scheme of things. In the unlikely event event that he would have gone to North Carolina, it wouldn't have mattered in the slightest.
 
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