Results of July 4 Union Attack at Gettysburg

What would the result of a July 4 Union attack at Gettysburg have been?

  • Union forces slaughtered. Confederacy wins the battle

    Votes: 5 5.6%
  • Union forces repulsed, but Confederates retreat as IOTL

    Votes: 19 21.1%
  • Indecisive. Heavy losses on both sides but otherwise as IOTL

    Votes: 19 21.1%
  • Clear Union victory, but defeated Confederates reform and escape

    Votes: 16 17.8%
  • Decisive Union victory. Lee's Army smashed. War over in a few more months

    Votes: 24 26.7%
  • Other (please specify)

    Votes: 1 1.1%
  • Blame Thande

    Votes: 6 6.7%

  • Total voters
    90

67th Tigers

Banned
Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy is outstanding work too

Being completely overtaken by Beattie though, just wish he'd write faster.

You really rate McClellan highly? That is pretty rare I have to say. From what I read McClellan was a decent strategist, and a superb organizer of troops. However, he seemed to have what was called then a 'case of slows', was too predictable (according to Lee), took council in his fears way to often, and missed his big chances.

He was at the gates of Richmond, and if he had kept his nerve, accepted his casualties, and ignored what should have been clearly bad intelligence (as he thought he was outnumbered, when clearly a more objective look would have seen that was impossible) he would have forced the Johny Rebs to either bleed to death in a desperate effort to force him back, fall back into entrenchments and eventually lose to superior Union firepower and numbers or retreat and lose the most important industrial city in the South.

a. The "200,000" was one figure in McClellan's estimates, but is not the one McClellan believed. He fought about 120,000 (and had overestimated by 5-10,000). Halleck OTOH used the 200,000 figure to project a false picture of Lee's strength in Washington, with the aim of denying McClellan the 20,000 men he was asking for.

b. McClellan actually was outnumbered. It we simply go with "Present" then Lee has about a 10% advantage. If we go with "Effectives" it changes massively to a 2:1 advantage with Lee (after Jackson's arrival)

c. Lee thought McClellan was the hardest Union general to fight. Lee's prime modus operandi was to exploit the mistakes of his opponents. McClellan was too methodical to make such mistakes, and so Lee couldn't win cheap victories against him like he later did against Pope, Burnside and Hooker.


At Malvern Hill he pounded the hell out of Lee, who kept launching ill advised attacks throughout the day into the biggest concentration of artillery the Union was able to get on the battlefield until Gettysburg and Picketts Charge, and if McClellan had attacked, he might very well have restored the situation. However, he ordered an evacuation and ended the campaign.

No, McClellan was in the middle of being enveloped. Ha he done anything else but pull back to Harrison's Landing his army would have been destroyed.

This didn't end the campaign, but it stalemated for several weeks. When the order came to withdraw McClellan was actually on the offensive. He'd recaptured Malvern Hill and had captured the southern bank of the James and was just starting to move on Richmond again.

At Sharpsburg / Antitem he had 87,000 men vs Lee's 25,000 but launched a series of unsupported attacks that failed in the end. The next day he let Lee retreat even though he had reserves available and failed to pursue. Which is why Lincoln was looking for an excuse to fire him when McClellan sent in one resignation too many.

Actually, McClellan had about 45,000 on the field (rising to 57,000), including 15,000 new levies who'd never even loaded before. Lee had 40,000 on the field.

Grant repeated his strategy to an extent, but more importantly, Grant realized that Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia was the center of gravity for the Southern cause. Defeat Lee, destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, and the cause is lost. Which turned out to be the case. Grant kept after Lee the entire 18 months of the last campaign in the East and the only really serious mistakes were at Cold Harbor (an ill advised frontal assault) and The Crater (replacing a trained Black division ready to carry out the mission for a battle weary White one).

Grant's campaigns in the West showed a remarkable ability to win a manuever campaign in very difficult conditions. Just as important, Grant did not take council in his fears and kept his nerve in a brutal slugfest with an opponent many in his own army openly held in awe.

Grant is nowhere near as brutal as some make out. He was as maneuvrist as McClellan (as shown by some of his campaigns out west), and like McClellan was quite happy to resort to sieges (he conducted longer sieges with a greater superiority of forces than McClellan ever did).

In the East, his main contribution though is shielding Meade. He also had the same attacks levelled at him in Washington as every other AoP commander, but Grant was able to fend off the wolves.
 
c. Lee thought McClellan was the hardest Union general to fight. Lee's prime modus operandi was to exploit the mistakes of his opponents. McClellan was too methodical to make such mistakes, and so Lee couldn't win cheap victories against him like he later did against Pope, Burnside and Hooker.

Does this necessarily make McClellan the best general, though? He might not make any mistakes, but just because he wasn't going to lose doesn't mean he was going to win.

While he's certainly better than the other three AoP commanders who could not beat Lee, I'm not sure he could match up to the best commanders out west.

Not only that, though, he failed to understand the nature of the war that he was fighting, which required him to deal with the President and keep him in the loop. McClellan gave Lincoln no choice but to breathe down the army's neck because he wouldn't give him anything to work with, and wouldn't keep Lincoln informed.


Grant is nowhere near as brutal as some make out. He was as maneuvrist as McClellan (as shown by some of his campaigns out west), and like McClellan was quite happy to resort to sieges (he conducted longer sieges with a greater superiority of forces than McClellan ever did).

But he was also much more relentless. McClellan never would have undertaken Grant's final march on Vicksburg, at least. Even though Grant conducted sieges, he had a fundamentally more aggressive mindset.

In the East, his main contribution though is shielding Meade. He also had the same attacks levelled at him in Washington as every other AoP commander, but Grant was able to fend off the wolves.

I don't know about this; everything I've read about Grant's campaign in the East has him giving at least as much direction in combat as Meade did, to the point that Meade's letters to his wife even had him offended at being little more than a glorified chief of staff (although that's an exaggeration).

Grant was directly in the field was giving orders on a pretty direct level. With the exception of the Cold Harbor debacle, he did a pretty solid job at it, too.
 
Grant had become dysfunctional. On Buell's arrival late on the first day he assumed total command of the combined force.

You do realize the source you link to clearly says that was a false rumor? :rolleyes:

Only some very large markers called in from Halleck prevented Grant being sacked, and as it was he was moved to a staff position where he could inflict no further damage on the army.

So where's your source claiming Halleck as Grant's friend and benefactor?
 
That's a rather bold statement, especially considering his actual performance.

Well, let's look at their campaigns strategically.

Grant
Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers - Won
Vicksburg Campaign - Won
Chattanooga - Won
Overland Campaign - Won
Richmond-Petersburg - Won
Appomattox Campaign - Won

Lee
West Virginia - Lost
Seven Days - Won
North Virginia Campaign - Won
Maryland Campaign - Lost
Fredericksburg - Won
Chancellorsville - Won
Gettysburg Campaign - Lost
Bristow Campaign - Draw
Overland Campaign - Lost
Richmond-Petersburg - Won
Appomattox Campaign - Lost

Now let's looks at the war strategically.

Grant developed a strategic plan to win the war and it worked in spite of Banks, Butler, Sigel failing.

Lee did not develop a strategic plan to win the war.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Grant
Overland Campaign - Won

Lee
Overland Campaign - Lost

That's debatable. By the end of the campaign, Grant's army had lost around 60,000 men and arrived at Richmond/Petersburg so weakened that its potential for further offensives was virtually eliminated. Lee's army remained intact and Richmond/Petersburg remained in Confederate hands. Lee's army had suffered severe casualties, to be sure, but by June 1864, the Union was no closer to capturing Richmond than it had been during the Peninsular Campaign, two years earlier.
 
a. The "200,000" was one figure in McClellan's estimates, but is not the one McClellan believed. He fought about 120,000 (and had overestimated by 5-10,000). Halleck OTOH used the 200,000 figure to project a false picture of Lee's strength in Washington, with the aim of denying McClellan the 20,000 men he was asking for.

b. McClellan actually was outnumbered. It we simply go with "Present" then Lee has about a 10% advantage. If we go with "Effectives" it changes massively to a 2:1 advantage with Lee (after Jackson's arrival)

Actually, McClellan had about 45,000 on the field (rising to 57,000), including 15,000 new levies who'd never even loaded before. Lee had 40,000 on the field.

Where are on earth are you getting these numbers from? I have several sources available just in my own library, and not one of them gives anything like numerical parity, much less superiority to any Southern Army at any time during the war. Online sources also bear out numbers I am quoting (starting with official US Army history of the campaign) and none of them mention numbers like what you are saying.
 
That's debatable. By the end of the campaign, Grant's army had lost around 60,000 men and arrived at Richmond/Petersburg so weakened that its potential for further offensives was virtually eliminated. Lee's army remained intact and Richmond/Petersburg remained in Confederate hands. Lee's army had suffered severe casualties, to be sure, but by June 1864, the Union was no closer to capturing Richmond than it had been during the Peninsular Campaign, two years earlier.

problem is that Lee's army took similar losses numerically, and only maintained strength by stripping every command available in North Carolina and Virginia to keep up to 60-70,000 men in strength, while Grant received a steady stream of newly raised units, replacements for existing ones, and incorporated the Army of the James once he reached Petersburg to give him roughly 2:1 odds at the start of the Petersburg Campaign.

After Cold Harbor Grant realized that a frontal assault was tactically pointless, so his strategy changed to keep Lee pinned, while Sherman in Georgia and Sheridan in the Valley destroyed the logistical underpinnings of the CSA, assisted by some campaigns in other areas like Alabama.

Note that Grant's Army then proceeded to stretch Lee's line further and further until at in the Spring of 1865 he launched a breakthrough assault that was followed by a decisive pursuit and encirclement.

Hardly the mark of an army that was incapable of offensive operations.
 
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