The North wins the Battle of Bull Run


For once, Bard, I cannot fault your logic. A defeat at Bull Run for the Confederacy would be disasterous. They would be left with a broken army, no proven commanders, limited supplies, and degrading morale. Finally, where to the Confederates fall back to? They don't have any real fortifications in the region to withdraw to, and that's a long retreat for a green, defeated army. And it doesn't have any built up defenses to resist an offensive at this time either.

IOTL, Abraham Lincoln wanted Robert E. Lee to be the commander of
the Army of the Potomac.

I remember reading somewhere that Lee was never actually offered the Army of the potomac, just some high office (commander of the defenses of Washington, I believe). Cant find the source, unfortunatly.

He asked his good friend, George Blair,

you have any source for this? Or any reason why this is relavent?

whose house is now the official guest residence of the United States Government,

:confused::confused::confused:

to offer Lee the position. Blair did. Lee refused saying "I can't fight against my
country."

As stated earlier, I believe that Lee wasn't offered the potomac. However, the basic facts are correct. Which leads to the question of why Lee is at all relavent to a discussion of the first bull run, at which he was not present. In fact, he was in west virginia (and lost, although nobody knows today) at the time.

The irony? Lee was opposed to slavery was about to free his slaves
yet he was fighting to preserve it.

Debatable. He made comments which can be interpreted as opposing slavery, but which can also be taken to mean that he thought it would end if and when god willed it would. He did own slaves, however.

McClellan, owned slaves, and was fighting
to abolish it.

I'll give you this one. Not sure if he owned them, but he did not personally oppose the institution.

Thank you. Not yet, anyway. The Civil War, at this time, wasn't about freeing
the slaves. It was about holding the Union together. That was why Lincoln resisted calls by Frederick Douglass to put blacks in uniform.

Irrelevant
 
One point of departure for the South losing at Bull Run was if the Confederate Shenandoah forces don't sneak out and make it to the Bull Run battle at the last minute to rally the defeated first Confederate army.
If the Shenandoah Union forces find out the Confederates are leaving they can attack and pin them down. Or alternatively, they could send a cavalry patrol to disperse the Confederate guards and burn several sections of the railroad the Confederacy used to send the second army to rally the defeated first Confederate army at Bull Run. If they didn't outnumber the Union they would have stayed whipped.
I think the South would fight on if Richmond was lost, though. It's the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog in the fight, that determines how long a fight will last. Not who wins, but how long until it's over.
If the South had lost at Bull Run they would have lost their ability to conscript soldiers from North Virginia just as they lost their ability to conscript soldiers from West Virginia. Not being able to conscript soldiers from Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware, West Virginia, and Missouri was a serious handicap for the South. They got less volunteers than the Union did, per capita. And the Union had a lot more capita.
They would also have lost the railroad route to Knoxville to the Union as the battle lines shifted south, eventually. The whole of Appalachia was full of Unionist sympathizers. The Union wouldn't have been able to keep the line open, but they could have kept the Confederacy from using it as much as they did.
http://www.csa-railroads.com/Confederate Railroads.htm
 
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A tactitcal victory for the Union does not equal the fall of Richmond.

Given the rather poor organization and logistics and training of both sides at this point, not to mention several thousand Union volunteers set to leave in a short time, a successful advance on such a scale seems rather unlikely. All the Union really gains is bragging rights and a larger buffer in northern Virginia, which may backfire if the less confident CSA takes more practical measures, such as recruiting/freeing slaves or taking a more defensive stand which ensures greater Union losses through 1864.

Note that the most likely reason for a Union victory would be if the two Confederate forces do not unite which leaves the CSA one army for defensive purposes and also gives the CSA the cold comfort of having lost a battle to due to superior numbers, 5 to 3 on paper although less in reality. No reason to celebrate but understandable.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Lee was to be the 4th Major General and command the Eastern Dept, which was initially the Washington Defences, but the disposable men from that command were the men who moved south under McDowell OTL.

If Lee had accepted this command then yes, he would have been the commander at Bull Run, assuming the engagement isn't butterflied.
 
This is not the battle-hardened Armies of the Union and Confederacy of 1863 we are talking about here, these are the unorganized armies of 1861 and they are not going to be that well disciplined.

While the Confederate Army may be defeated and disorganized following Union victory at 1st Manassas the Union would be overconfident and disorganized. It wouldn't take much to turn that Union Army into the one we all know about of the OTL, that is to say the one that proved countless times before George Meade took command that it wasn't prepared to stand up to any kind of Confederate assault.

If, for example, a battle is fought (I dont know where, I'm not that familar with Virginia's landscape) where Joe Johnston stop the initial Union assault against the Confederates and then someone, Jackson I suppose is most likely, launches an attack on the Union flank then it is likely that the Union Army would do what it alway did in that situation and run.

I honestly dont see the Union getting any major war ending victory this early in the war and the Confederate politicians are too set on war to accept any political end in 1861. There is very little chance that the confederate forces are going to collapse and also very little chance at an overconfident Union Army isn't going to some major defeat some time soon after 1st Manassas.

The confederates will rally and return and the Union will suffer a major defeat, its only matter of when and where.

A major problem for the Confederacy would be raising funds by selling bonds. The Confederacy has to win quickly or they are going to have real problems buying arms and ships abroad.
 
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