Three means of a faster Union victory in the American Civil War and consequences

1. Widespread adoption of the Spencer and Henry rifles by the Union army earlier in the conflict, ideally no later than December 1862.

2. State of Franklin - Move an army into Eastern Tennessee and sever it along with western North Carolina. This deprives the Confederacy of a key railway, puts the Union in control of most of the Appalachians north of Chattanooga, and gives them a base for operations into western North Carolina. Maybe this can be used to sever Virginia from the rest of the Confederacy?

3. A Union equivalent of John Henry Morgan. Bring hope and possibly arms to slaves across the South while instilling terror and breaking the will of the Confederates to fight.

In any event I am not sure an earlier Civil War victory by the Union solves its problems, it may lead to a 'stabbed in the back' mythos should the politicians try to surrender earlier or worse engender a 'lost cause' mythos worse than OTL. Saving a few hundred thousand lives might make the difference though, especially if they or one of their descendants proves influential in later times.
 

jahenders

Banned
Far more important than most of those would just not have (as many) screwed up US leaders in the field. If the US won decisively at First Bull Run, all momentum would run their way. Then, if McClellan is more aggressive and decisive, he pushes the CSA back on the pennisula -- the CSA is on their heels from day one.

1. Widespread adoption of the Spencer and Henry rifles by the Union army earlier in the conflict, ideally no later than December 1862.

2. State of Franklin - Move an army into Eastern Tennessee and sever it along with western North Carolina. This deprives the Confederacy of a key railway, puts the Union in control of most of the Appalachians north of Chattanooga, and gives them a base for operations into western North Carolina. Maybe this can be used to sever Virginia from the rest of the Confederacy?

3. A Union equivalent of John Henry Morgan. Bring hope and possibly arms to slaves across the South while instilling terror and breaking the will of the Confederates to fight.

In any event I am not sure an earlier Civil War victory by the Union solves its problems, it may lead to a 'stabbed in the back' mythos should the politicians try to surrender earlier or worse engender a 'lost cause' mythos worse than OTL. Saving a few hundred thousand lives might make the difference though, especially if they or one of their descendants proves influential in later times.
 
Maybe if Twiggs hadn't surrendered the Federal Arsenals in Texas so quickly to the South... I read somewhere that around a quarter of Texas population was pro-union, and maybe if they had gotten their hands on those arms held in the arsenals, it would have opened up another front early on against the Confederacy that I am not sure they could have sustained.
 
General Grant said that if the Union had been more prepared, than slavery might have survived.

"I suppose if you had had a large army at the beginning of the war it would have ended in a much shorter time."

"We might have had no war at all," said the General; "but we cannot tell. Our war had many strange features – there were many things which seemed odd enough at the time, but which now seem Providential. If we had had a large regular army, as it was then constituted, it might have gone with the South. In fact, the Southern feeling in the army among high officers was so strong that when the war broke out the army dissolved. We had no army – then we had to organize one. A great commander like Sherman or Sheridan even then might have organized an army and put down the rebellion in six months or a year, or, at the farthest, two years. But that would have saved slavery, perhaps, and slavery meant the germs of a new rebellion. There had to be an end of slavery. Then we were fighting an enemy with whom we could not make a peace. We had to destroy him. No convention, no treaty was possible – only destruction."
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
A Union equivalent of John Henry Morgan. Bring hope and possibly arms to slaves across the South while instilling terror and breaking the will of the Confederates to fight.

This would have the opposite effect of that which you envision, as it would just piss of the Confederates even more and harden their resistance.
 
Far more important than most of those would just not have (as many) screwed up US leaders in the field. If the US won decisively at First Bull Run, all momentum would run their way. Then, if McClellan is more aggressive and decisive, he pushes the CSA back on the pennisula -- the CSA is on their heels from day one.

Honestly, McClellan had multiple very good opportunities to crush the army of Northern Virginia, almost took Richmond, and deluded himself into thinking otherwise, so I'd lay most of the blame for the prolonged was on his shoulders.
 
I was also hoping for others to post ways for the Union to win sooner...

...and what they thought would result from an earlier Union victory.

Anaxagoras:

I respectfully disagree, the presence of Union forces deep into the South might give heart to pro-Union factions and dishearten the Confederates. Wanton pillaging and looting might be a problem and I see your point if that is what you envisioned. But showing the Confederacy could not control their own territories and that no one was safe under their rule might also weaken faith in Richmond's ability to govern.
 
So, so many of these

Posters above have already mentioned a few of them, the McClellan ones being the most glaring, but there are many more. Off the top of my head:

1. A WI mentioned by Bruce Catton in The Coming Fury - Robert E. Lee was in temporary charge of the Army in Texas in the winter of 1860-1, in Twigg's absence. If Twigg had been delayed or never returned, the Texas secessionists would have clashed with him when they demanded the surrender of the Army in the region. Lee, according to Catton, would certainly have resisted, since this was before Virginia seceded. The implications of that are enormous. :eek:

2. Ben Butler actually uses the army that he took to the Bermuda Hundreds in spring 1864. He passed up a good chance to take Richmond while Lee was busy well to the north. :mad:

3. McPherson actually takes his chance to trap Johnston's army at Resaca instead of retreating into Snake Creek Gap (also early 1864). Better still, get George Thomas to make the move instead of Sherman's favourite. Result - Army of Tennessee eliminated, Atlanta falls in the spring instead of the autumn. :)

The massive butterfly that results from an earlier Union victory is that Lincoln probably survives - Booth probably drinks himself into oblivion before any opportunity arises for him. That then has big implications for Reconstruction, in all likelihood.
I am pondering a TL on this theme which I will write if I ever finish my current one.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Some responses

1. Widespread adoption of the Spencer and Henry rifles by the Union army earlier in the conflict, ideally no later than December 1862.

2. State of Franklin - Move an army into Eastern Tennessee and sever it along with western North Carolina. This deprives the Confederacy of a key railway, puts the Union in control of most of the Appalachians north of Chattanooga, and gives them a base for operations into western North Carolina. Maybe this can be used to sever Virginia from the rest of the Confederacy?

3. A Union equivalent of John Henry Morgan. Bring hope and possibly arms to slaves across the South while instilling terror and breaking the will of the Confederates to fight.

In any event I am not sure an earlier Civil War victory by the Union solves its problems, it may lead to a 'stabbed in the back' mythos should the politicians try to surrender earlier or worse engender a 'lost cause' mythos worse than OTL. Saving a few hundred thousand lives might make the difference though, especially if they or one of their descendants proves influential in later times.

1) Actually issuing all the Sharps that were procured would be helpful, but the vast majority of troops raised in 1861-62 ended up with Springfelds and other percussion muzzle-loaders because that's what was on hand or could be produced or procured in Europe; 1862 is way too early for Spencers and Henrys in significant numbers, and ammunition production is another bottleneck. Technically its close to impossible, and operationally it is a bad choice.

2) An expedition into Eastern Tennessee aimed at Knoxville isn't a war winner, but it certainly helps in the Western theater, and Lincoln asked for it repatedly in 1862; unfortunately, after Nashville, Halleck consolidated the armies and moved south into Mississippi (Iuka-Corinth campaigns); an alternative in the summer-fall of 1862 would have been to give Grant his force and Pope's, organized with (presumably) Sherman and Pope as corps commmanders, for an early push on Vicksburg, and keep Buell in the center, based on Nashville, to keep Bragg occupied, and send Rosecrans east over the mountains with a picked corps against Knoxville. These moves, if sucessful, would have essentially gotten the US forces in the west (actually the center, but the trans-Mississippi was generally a tertiary theater) to the lines they (historically) held in mid-1863 by the end of 1862; so call that a six-month-lead. Bring Grant in to drive on Chattanooga and then into Georgia in the first half of 1863 and things look very different for the rebellion.

3) Interesting question; no one in Washington wanted a slave rebellion - Lincoln specifically begged those freed by the EP to refrain from action other than self-defense. However, there were figures like Newt Knight, whose rebellion could have been the nucleus for something similar in 1863, at least in northern Mississippi and/or Alabama. One AH point of departure I have not seen explored is if John Brown doesn't attempt the raid on Harper's Ferry, and so survives until 1861; that may have some impact on the politics of 1859-61, of course, but presuming the 1860 presidential campaign comes out as it did historically with Lincoln's election, and the secession winter plays out more or less historically, what does Brown do once the war begins? He was born in 1800, so he's not exactly youthful, but he was a physically tough individual (George Sears Greene was only a year younger, for example), and Brown certainly had experience in small unit leadership and some in irregular warfare. Other men with Kansas Jayhawk experience were commissioned, so Brown's a possibility. He's a two-edged sword, of course...;)

Best,
 
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1. Fully adopting Spencer and Henry Rifles would help but as mentioned I don't think it is industrially feasible early in the war.

2. This is an interesting idea. I'm not sure whether eastern Tennessee would officially separate like West Virginia but tapping into the Unionist support in the area would be a big help to the North.

3. This option I think is the least plausible. It would rally the South to the Confederate cause and wouldn't play well in the North either. Plus, how is the North suppose to ship guns to slaves in the South?

As far as other early Union victory oppotunites, I would plug my TL where McClellan gets injured/replaced at the start of the Pennusular Campaign. With Richmond Falling in 1862 the Confederacy would start to fall about leading to a complete Union victory by July, 1863.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Maybe if Twiggs hadn't surrendered the Federal Arsenals in Texas so quickly to the South... I read somewhere that around a quarter of Texas population was pro-union, and maybe if they had gotten their hands on those arms held in the arsenals, it would have opened up another front early on against the Confederacy that I am not sure they could have sustained.

Unionism in Texas should not be overestimated. It's true that around a quarter of the population voted against secession in the 1861 referendum. But that doesn't mean that they didn't support Texas after it did secede. There were any number of examples of Southerners who opposed secession in 1860/61 but, when secession became a fact, threw themselves heart and soul into the Confederate cause.

The voters in Vicksburg, Mississippi, voted against secession. . . and then cheered themselves hoarse a few weeks later when Jefferson Davis passed through on his way to Montgomery to be sworn in as President of the Confederate States. In Virginia, Jubal Early fought against secession with every ounce of his strength, but nobody in their right mind is going to accuse Jubal Early of being pro-union.
 
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Saphroneth

Banned
Isn't widespread adoption of the Spencer or Henry early in the war rather hard, given that Spencer and Henry proved unable to meet their OTL orders of rather small numbers of weapons?
Part of the reason that the US government only ordered 1,730 Henry rifles was because they judged the New Haven Arms Company unable to scale up their production of c.200 weapons per month sufficiently quickly.


The US government ordered 700 Spencers for the Navy in July 1861 and 10,000 for the Army in December 1861. Spencer misses his deadline of starting deliveries by March 1862, leading the government to reduce the order to 7,500; it takes him until December 1862 to produce 1,200 weapons and June 1863 to fulfil the order of 7,500.


Burnside was due to deliver his first Spencers in November 1864, a deadline which he misses: he makes his first delivery on 15 April 1865.
 
Or, much more simply:

Handle the political response to Sumter better, however galling such restraint might be, to keep the Virginia Convention from flipping to secession.

Then give the Union Army to R. E. Lee, who can then draw upon such bluecoat Virginian commanders (whether absolute Unionists or "my Old Dominion right or wrong" men) as George H. Thomas, Thomas J Jackson, Powell Hill, Beauty Stuart, Jesse L. Reno, Jubal Early....
 
Slavery would still exist, first and foremost.

Had the bumbling idiot McClellan made any efforts to push during his many campaigns in Virginia, he would have toppled the Confederates easily - his weak attempts and constant frilling about drilling and marching gave the Confederates the advantage they needed early on to help sustain the War.

President Lincoln went into his Presidency proclaiming he held no authority to end slavery where it existed - the war was for the Union. Only as the war progressed was Lincoln able to begin the end of slavery - as a measure of war. Many Confederates boasted they were winning the war (very true in 1861 and 1862, because of their superior society - i/e owning slaves) Lincoln saw this and brought the issue to the northern people, saying "They are winning because they have slaves - it's now a war measure to confiscate them."

Checkmate Lincoln. Without this idea of a superior southern society (and the need for more bodies in the army), Lincoln would not have ever had the grounds to end slavery. The South would have waltzed back into the Union, pissed off from losing, but still holding millions in chains with no real end in sight.
 

jahenders

Banned
With a quick end to the war and quick reconciliation, slavery would last longer, but I still think it'd be largely gone within a decade or two.

Slavery would still exist, first and foremost.

Had the bumbling idiot McClellan made any efforts to push during his many campaigns in Virginia, he would have toppled the Confederates easily - his weak attempts and constant frilling about drilling and marching gave the Confederates the advantage they needed early on to help sustain the War.

President Lincoln went into his Presidency proclaiming he held no authority to end slavery where it existed - the war was for the Union. Only as the war progressed was Lincoln able to begin the end of slavery - as a measure of war. Many Confederates boasted they were winning the war (very true in 1861 and 1862, because of their superior society - i/e owning slaves) Lincoln saw this and brought the issue to the northern people, saying "They are winning because they have slaves - it's now a war measure to confiscate them."

Checkmate Lincoln. Without this idea of a superior southern society (and the need for more bodies in the army), Lincoln would not have ever had the grounds to end slavery. The South would have waltzed back into the Union, pissed off from losing, but still holding millions in chains with no real end in sight.
 
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