WI: Lee links with Johnston in 1865 and fights a last stand?

Dorozhand

Banned
What if Lee manages to, as planned, link with Johnston in North Carolina and together they fight one last pitched battle?
 
Several thousand unnecessary casualties (with all sorts of "since X was dead . . ." side effects) without any meaningful impact.
 
Bingo, the CSA was toast before Appomattox all Lee did was string it out. He should have surrendered after Lincoln's re-election, at the latest.
 
Bingo, the CSA was toast before Appomattox all Lee did was string it out. He should have surrendered after Lincoln's re-election, at the latest.

Someone on a thread from another site pointed out Lee really didn't have that option given his position.

Blame Davis, not Lee.
 
Someone on a thread from another site pointed out Lee really didn't have that option given his position.

Blame Davis, not Lee.

Fair enough, in any case the South should have surrendered after Lincoln's re-election. The war was clearly unwinnable by then.
 
Fair enough, in any case the South should have surrendered after Lincoln's re-election. The war was clearly unwinnable by then.

Yeah. Even if Lincoln hadn't been reelected it might not have mattered, but with a Lincoln reelection, there was simply nothing to halt the ever-more-successful Union war machine.

Certainly nothing wearing grey, and by the popular decision on who would be president, no one on the home front to the north either.
 
Yeah. Even if Lincoln hadn't been reelected it might not have mattered, but with a Lincoln reelection, there was simply nothing to halt the ever-more-successful Union war machine.

Certainly nothing wearing grey, and by the popular decision on who would be president, no one on the home front to the north either.

How much damage was done to the South during these months? A less devastated South, which throws in the towel earlier, actually might have some interesting knock-on effects.
 
Bingo, the CSA was toast before Appomattox all Lee did was string it out. He should have surrendered after Lincoln's re-election, at the latest.

I would tend to agree, but perhaps something of his Southern Gentleman's pride kept him from doing that, as well as the soldier's duty to resist his enemy until he is materially incapable of doing so.

There were also some Confederates, notably General Richard Taylor, who, as I recall, joined the Confederate cause while already believing they would lose.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
I'm not talking about any strategic benefit of course. I know the war was unwinnable at that point. What I'm wondering about is potential social side effects and other subtle things.
 
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